It's in His Kiss Read online

  “Well, that sucks,” Becca said.

  “Gets worse. One night I had a break-in, and he happened to be with me. He ran out the front door screaming into the night like a little girl, without so much as looking back for me.” Olivia shook her head. “FBI agent my ass.”

  They both laughed. Some of the hilarity had to be attributed to the wine, but mostly it was Olivia’s delivery. She knew how to spin a tale, and she knew how to be kick-ass, and not just the pretend, fake-it-till-you-make-it kind.

  Becca needed to learn that particular skill.

  “So. . .,” Olivia said, making the word about fifty syllables.

  “So what?”

  “So now it’s your turn to regale me with an ex story,” Olivia said.

  Becca became suddenly extremely engrossed with finishing her wine. “I don’t really have all that many,” she finally said.

  “Come on. Be serious.”

  “I am serious,” Becca said.

  Olivia had been lying flat on the couch, her head hanging over the side, while Becca—sitting on the floor—braided the long mass. But at this statement, Olivia lifted her head, pulling her hair from Becca’s hands.

  “Unlikely from a woman who looks like you,” Olivia said slowly, taking Becca in, “with that gorgeous hair and those big, warm eyes, not to mention your amazing skin, which probably came from a rosy-cheeked baby with unicorn wings who poops golden fairy dust.”

  Becca laughed. “You should be the writer.”

  Olivia’s smile reminded Becca that her new friend still had lots of secrets. “So no ex at all?” Olivia said, heavy on the disbelief.

  “Well, sure,” Becca said, busying herself with picking out a fortune cookie. “A few here and there.”

  “Name ’em,” Olivia said.

  “Taylor Bennett,” Becca said. “He dumped me because I couldn’t name the jazz songs he played.”

  “Uh-huh,” Olivia said. “And how old were you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “That’s the best you got?” Olivia asked.

  She racked her brain. The problem was, during those years, she’d been traveling with Jase, and it hadn’t exactly been a normal coming-of-age situation. She’d dated, but hadn’t really sunk her teeth into any real relationships other than with Nathan. “There were others, just no one memorable.”

  “Come on, there’s got to be a story to tell.”

  “Maybe.” Becca nudged the fortune cookies around with her fingers. “But I don’t like to revisit the only other one I’ve got.”

  Olivia was quiet a moment. “This have anything to do with our impromptu sleepover?”

  Becca shrugged. She didn’t want to go there sober, much less half-baked.

  “Men are bastards,” Olivia said with feeling.

  Becca made a noncommittal response to this and opened her fortune cookie.

  Your future is your own, it said.

  “Damn it,” Becca said. “This one’s defective.”

  Olivia peered over the edge of the couch and read it. “Hey, it sounds good to me. I like making my own future.”

  Becca shook her head. “I’d rather hear something like: Your future is prosperity-filled, or You’ll spin money from your ass, or. . .”

  “Or,” Olivia said, “There’s a hot guy waiting for you if you only open your eyes?”

  “Yeah. That’s a good one.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “It’s a true one.”

  “That’s ridiculous. My eyes are open.”

  Olivia laughed and came up on an elbow, eyes slowly going serious. “How do you not realize that you actually, really do have a hot guy waiting for you?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do.”

  “Don’t.”

  Olivia sighed. “You’re an annoying drunk.”

  This was undoubtedly true. “I chose the job, remember?” she asked.

  “Sam doesn’t care about the job. That’s not what’s holding him back.”

  “How do you know?” Becca asked. “You’ve holed up in here, laid so low no one even hardly knows you’re here.”

  Olivia shrugged. “I’ve got windows, don’t I? And I’ve been around longer than you. I know that he looks amazeballs on a surfboard, that he looks amazeballs on a boat, that he looks amazeballs—”

  “Okay, okay,” Becca said, and she did laugh then. “I get it. He looks amazing all the damn time.”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s how he looks at you.”

  Becca sighed. “Listen, I pretty much forced him into giving me the job.”

  “Honey, no one forces Sam Brody to do anything.”

  Also true. . .But he’d known she needed the money, and that had been that. He cared about her. He cared about all the people in his life. Cole and Tanner, for example. He’d do anything for them, and had. The same went for his dad, and Cole’s mom. Sam was a man who was careful with his emotions, he’d been brought up to be, and yet he could still give and care with every ounce of his body.

  Unlike her.

  Oh, she cared, but not deep. Going deep hurt. She’d learned that once and had never looked back. She loved her parents because they were her parents, but she couldn’t count on them.

  And then there was Jase. When that situation had gotten to be too much for her to handle, she hadn’t just backed off. She’d backed off and moved thousands of miles away, leaving him alone to deal with his issues.

  She couldn’t imagine Sam doing that to someone in his life, ever.

  They both jumped at the knock on the door.

  “That’s not my door,” Olivia said. “It’s yours.” She got up and looked out her peephole. “Well, well, speaking of the devil.”

  “Oh, my God,” Becca whispered. “Back away from the door!”

  Olivia kept her eye glued to the peephole. “You know, he’s got a really fantastic ass. And I’m only looking at the profile—”

  “Shhh! He’ll hear you.”

  Olivia turned to her in surprise. “You’re not going out there?”

  Earlier, that’d been all she’d wanted. A late-night visit from her sexy surfer. Now . . . now she didn’t know what the hell she thought that would accomplish.

  “It’ll accomplish plenty,” Olivia said, making Becca realize she’d spoken out loud. “You’d probably get boinked, for one. And nothing personal, but you’re wound pretty tight. You could use it.”

  Becca came up on her knees, waving wildly for Olivia to shut up. “The walls,” she whispered. “Thin. You can hear me breathing. I can hear you swearing. Which means he can hear you.”

  “No, he can’t.”

  “Yes, I can,” Sam said.

  Becca and Olivia went stock-still at the sound of his voice, right on the other side of her front door now.

  Shit! “Don’t let him in!” Becca hissed.

  “I have a tin of ranch-flavored popcorn,” Sam said through the wood.

  “From the pier?” she asked, unable to help herself.

  “Yep.” The sound of the tin being shaken came through the door. “And it’s good,” he said, mouth sounding full.

  “Hey,” she called out, straightening up. “Are you eating my popcorn?”

  “You bet your sweet ass. Lance warned me it was damn good, but I had no idea. You’d best hurry before I eat it all.”

  He’d bought her popcorn. Oh, God. She was a dead woman.

  “He’s funny, hot, and he likes you enough to buy you popcorn,” Olivia whispered.

  “Don’t let him in!” she whispered back.

  “Don’t listen to her, Olivia, let me in.”

  Just his voice, calm but steely, made Becca’s nipples hard. Damn it. And Olivia was looking at her like Santa Claus had just shown up. Knowing she was too weak to be trusted, Becca leapt to her feet and looked for somewhere to hide. Unfortunately she tripped over the coffee table and went down with a thud.

  That’s when she realized she was maybe more than half-baked. She might be fully baked