MAKE ME A MATCH (Running Wild) Page 7

  “Your will?” This was getting too weird. “What are you worried about your will for, Ma?” Surely she didn’t think Tessa’s father might murder her? Through years of her yapping, Walter had never laid a hand on Maria.

  “Because we’re going on your father’s motorcycle.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Will you let me get lucky with you?

  Tessa felt her eyes widen and her chest contract. “Mom, please tell me you’re joking. You know Dad’s had a couple of tickets for speeding on that thing, and if you’re going to a pub…..Mom, this is not a good idea. ”

  “As long as you know where my will is, Tessa, I’m fine with it. Walter always rode a motorcycle; it was one of the things I liked about him.”

  It was the first positive thing Tessa had ever heard her mother say about her dad, and it wasn’t reassuring in the slightest.

  “Do you even have a helmet?” Tessa’s brain was having serious difficulty with the mental image of her chubby mother holding on to her overweight father’s middle, balancing on the back of a candy apple red Harley. “What are you going to wear?” Leather did protect somewhat, but Tessa’s leather pants wouldn’t begin to go around Maria’s hips. They barely went around Tessa’s, since she’d almost stopped smoking.

  “I’m buying new jeans. My old ones don’t fit. I’ve gained a few pounds. And Walter has a spare helmet.”

  Tessa just bet he did. He’d undoubtedly been tearing around with Buffy wearing it.

  “Walter’s promised me that if he has anything to drink, we’ll just stay down there and come home the next day. There’s a motel there that’s decent, we used to stay there when we were dating.”

  Tessa felt like gagging. The motel might be decent, but the thought of her parents having sex in it was far worse than the motorcycle thing. She couldn’t do this anymore.

  “Mom, I’ve gotta go. I have clients.”

  She did. She just didn’t have any at this exact moment. She hung up the phone and did some deep abdominal breathing before she lit a cigarette, but just as she was reaching for one the phone rang again.

  Tessa snatched it up. Maria had probably come to her senses.

  “Mom?”

  “Nope, it’s Eric.”

  Thursday had gone so far south the Gulf of Mexico was only a memory.

  “If you’re phoning to find out if I’ve matched you up for the weekend, I have to confess I haven’t found quite the perfect match for you just yet.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer was otherwise occupied. “But I’ll line something up by the weekend, I promise.” Which gave her exactly one day to do it.

  “That’s not why I’m calling. I’ve been thinking things over, Tessa, and I think we need to talk.”

  If it had been anyone but Eric, she would have believed she was hallucinating. In living memory, she couldn’t ever remember a single guy using that line. Wasn’t it copyrighted for use by females only? There had to be a catch.

  “Talk? Talk about what? Actually, I’m pretty busy right now. Could it wait?” Guys used that line all the time, why shouldn’t she?

  “I want to clear the air. About what happened between us. Those two nights we dated. Back when we were kids.” His voice was low and intense.

  “When I was a kid.” She felt like saying that at the time, she was still shitting yellow. That had been one of Gram Blin’s best lines, but she held her tongue. “You were over twenty-one, if I remember correctly.”

  “Now that’s the sort of remark that makes it hard to apologize to you, Tessa.”

  “You want to apologize?” She’d waited a long time for this. “So go ahead; I’m all ears.” But she had butterflies in her stomach.

  “I’d rather do it in person. Can you meet me after work?”

  She could. She wasn’t due at Karen’s until six, but did she want to?

  “Please, Tessa?”

  “Oh, all right. Where?”

  “I’ll pick you up. What time are you done?”

  She glanced at the clock. It was after four, she’d been here since eight-thirty this morning, nothing had gone well. Enough was enough.

  “Half an hour.” Might as well get it over with, she told herself, wishing she’d worn the blue sheath instead of this gray skirt and red sweater. At least the skirt was good and short. She’d have to put her pantyhose back on, though. She’d taken her hose off to let her legs breathe a little. Why hadn’t she used that free coupon for the tanning spa?

  “See you then.” He hung up.

  Twenty minutes later, he rang the bell and barged through the door when she pushed the buzzer. She’d used the time to wash her face and reapply makeup, and she’d struggled back into the damned pantyhose.

  He looked better than he had two days before. He was clean-shaven, no bloodshot eyes, khaki pants fit snug over his butt, loose white polo shirt under a butter-soft brown leather jacket. He must work out, or else he’d had liposuction. Nobody had a stomach that flat. He even smelled faintly of something tangy, probably delayed guilt.

  “Hi, Tessa. Ready to go?”

  She was, more or less, but she was nervous. “Where?”

  “Somewhere we can talk. Feel like a drink?”

  “In the afternoon?”

  “Why not?”

  She couldn’t think of a reason.

  “Okay.” She was feeling ridiculously antsy, and alcohol had its uses. “But I don’t like pubs; they smell bad.”

  “There’s a licensed cafe just around the corner from here.”

  She grabbed her raincoat, but it had stopped raining outside. Instead, it had poured down inside the office.

  They walked the half block in silence. The place was quiet and almost empty. They sat. He glanced at the wine list and then ordered a bottle seemingly at random.

  “An entire bottle?” Maybe he’d become an alcoholic.

  “This is sort of a celebration. I thought we could just put all this old shit behind us and start over, okay?”

  “This old shit? This is what you meant by an apology?” She stood up and grabbed her handbag. “Right, I’m outta here. Bye.”

  “Wait.” He was on his feet, holding her arm. “Sorry, I’m so bad at this. Sit back down, please. I’ll do better, just give me a minute here.”

  She relented and sat. Obviously, he hadn’t had any practice at apologizing.

  The anxious, elegant waiter presented the bottle of wine Eric had ordered as if it were the Holy Grail, and then insisted on going through an elaborate uncorking, sniffing, stress-ridden ceremony before he finally poured two glasses and reluctantly left them alone with his pride and joy. His doleful face indicated that he knew they wouldn’t really appreciate it.

  Tessa lifted her glass and took a hefty slug.

  “Is it okay?” Eric looked anxious now. “I figured maybe it was a dud and he was just trying to put one over on me.”

  She took another mouthful and pretended to roll it around in her mouth before she swallowed. “For a simple little vintage, it has an amusing undertone, a deep, penetrating bouquet evocative of aged wood.”

  “Wow.” He lifted an eyebrow and took an experimental gulp. “It’s not bad, I guess. Kinda sweet. You some kind of wine connoisseur?”

  She had to grin at that. “I know three things about wine,” she confessed. “Sweet, sour, medium dry.”

  He grinned. “That’s about it for me, too. You had me worried there for a minute.” He took another mouthful, swallowed, and set the wineglass down. “Look, Tessa, I really don’t want bad feelings between us. Maybe we could work toward an emotional détente, start out fresh. What’d’ya say?”

  “Good vocabulary.” She gave him a level look. He was slippery all right. “You said something about an apology.”

  “God, you’re a hard woman. You’re gonna force me to go over it piece by piece, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, jaw set.

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry for what happened way back when. I should never have taken you out that first time, you were
my kid sister’s pal, I wasn’t thinking straight that night. I’d had a couple beers; you were so damned—”

  He was making excuses. She narrowed her eyes and waited, knowing he was going to work around to blaming her, and when he did he was going to wear the wine. But he surprised her.

  “Pretty.” He didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he fiddled with the glass, rubbing a thumb slowly around the top edge. It made her body clench.

  “You were so pretty. Sexy. Soft. And that mouth of yours—” He caught himself and sat up straighter. “I never intended to let it go as far as it did. It just went out of control real quick, and, well, you know what young guys are like.”

  “Yeah.” She watched him and nodded. “Rumor has it they think with their dicks.” She hadn’t known that then. She’d learned it from him.

  His head jerked up and down. “You got it.”

  “That doesn’t account for the lecture you gave me afterward.” It was past time for him to know how it had affected her. Remembering still made her insides shrink and her face go hot. She narrowed her eyes and gave it to him straight up.

  “I felt like a slut, Eric. You treated me like a half-witted child. You told me all the nasty things your asinine friends said about girls who had sex first time out. You told me word got around. You repeated all the dirty names girls like me were called, you said”—this part still hurt like a son of a gun— “you said I wasn’t fit company for Karen. Then you drove like a maniac to my house and bruised my right arm dragging me to the front door. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. ”

  He rubbed a hand over his curls. “I was an idiot. What can I say? I worried myself sick about those sisters of mine, I thought for sure one or more of them would get pregnant, or run away, or get mixed up with a real lowlife. All of which Karen ended up doing, actually.”

  He stared down at the table for a few minutes, and Tessa thought about Karen and felt sad. Once when they were kids, they’d pretended for a whole day to exchange lives.

  Karen was Maria’s daughter that day, getting scolded for dirtying her new white shoes, and Tessa had big sisters and a brother who held ribbons in his teeth and scowled while he braided hair into pigtails. It was one of her best memories.

  “Then I ended up seducing my little sister’s best friend,” he said with a groan. “I was horrified and really ashamed of myself.” He waited a beat and then he looked her straight in the eye and added, “Plus, you said you loved me, Tessa. Remember that part? You said you’d always loved me. That totally freaked me out. It scared me half to death.”

  Tessa felt her face go hot. That night with Eric hadn’t been the first time she’d had sex, or even an orgasm, but it had never been mind blowing before. She’d been emotionally overwhelmed, raw and open and astounded at the power he’d unleashed, and she’d blurted out the truth.

  “I had a crush on you,” she improvised. “People joke about it being puppy love, but it sure feels real at the time. I had this big thing for you, the whole time we were growing up. You were Karen’s big brother, and she idolized you, so I did too.” Of all things, her chin wobbled, remembering. She took control of it and added in a sprightly voice, “Well, congratulations, you sure got me over that in a hurry. I could have gone on mooning after you and missed out on my real life.”

  “I didn’t have a clue how you felt until that night.” He was giving her a strange look.

  “Well, like I said, I got over it fast, there one day, poof, gone the next,” she lied. Maybe he had a built-in lie detector, because he was giving her a funny look. Or maybe the wine was making her eyes go funny.

  She’d polished off two glasses already, nerves were making her drink too fast. She blotted her lips with the napkin and released her death grip on the glass. When he didn’t answer, she burst out, “And if you were so horrified and ashamed, how come you phoned two weeks later, said you were sorry and wanted to make it up to me, and asked me out again? Explain that, Eric Stewart.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There’s a fine line between pain and pleasure

  Eric groaned and slouched into his chair. “Don’t remind me. That was my second major mistake.” He looked uncomfortable, and that pleased her.

  “It was all about sex, right?” Even back then at eighteen, she’d figured that out. “You just wanted sex with me again. You figured I was easy, so why not?”

  It took a minute for him to answer, and then he looked shamefaced, as well he ought. “It wasn’t that I figured you were easy, Tess. Well, you were, sort of, you’ve got to admit that. But the sex, man alive, the sex was smoking hot, it blew me away I couldn’t believe it could be like that. I wanted more.”

  Hearing him admit that it had been good between them satisfied some old yearning, but they weren’t finished here, not by a long shot.

  “So you figured you’d take me out to Lulu’s for dinner and then we’d have an instant replay in the front seat of your truck.”

  “My old Ford, I should have kept that baby.” He saw the look on her face and quickly added, “Hey, be honest here, you were pretty agreeable. I should have wondered about that. You planned it all, right?”

  “Right.” Even now it gave her a good feeling to know she’d outsmarted him. It had taken finesse and a good bit of acting, considering how furious and ashamed and hurt she was. And how fat. She couldn’t believe even now that she’d ignored her extra poundage and actually worn a little blue minidress.

  “You made me come to the door when I picked you up, and your mom gave me a hard time and told me to have you home before midnight.”

  She remembered. She’d been anything but ladylike after they got out the door. She’d brushed against him with her breasts and repeatedly touched his hand and arm.

  “And you were the one who insisted we park on that deserted beach, same place I took you two weeks before.”

  “Yup.” And she’d slid over on that shiny old truck seat before he had a chance to slide an arm around her. And then she’d kissed him, tongued him, let him touch her breasts and run his hand up under her dress. She’d reached down and stroked the bulge in the front of his jeans. And when he was breathing like a freight train and fumbling with the zipper, she’d taken revenge.

  “I remember word for word what you said, Tess. You asked me what made me think you wanted another quick screw on my truck seat.”

  She nodded. It had been her finest moment. “And then I just parroted back to you what you’d said to me.”

  “You said that nothing in the world would persuade you to make out with me ever again. You said you never wanted to see me again.”

  “I didn’t, either. Like I said, Eric, you taught me a hard lesson about men, one I’ve never forgotten. What men say and what they do are two different things.”

  “Not always. Maybe just when guys are really young.”

  She could tell by the look on his face that he really believed that, poor misguided idiot. Still, it was a wonder he hadn’t made her walk home that night. He’d driven like a maniac, tense and silent, but this time when he pulled up in front of her house Tessa slammed out of the truck before he could move from behind the wheel. He’d peeled rubber for half a block.

  He couldn’t know that she’d cried just as hard that night as she had the first time she’d been out with him. It should have felt like victory, but instead it was defeat, and the end of her girlhood dreams.

  “You sure did a good job of making me feel like pond scum.” His mouth twisted into a wry grin. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Tess, it took a good few years to get my confidence back.”

  It had taken her longer. She’d perfected her smart mouth and breezy manner to cover up insecurity. And she’d married the first guy who asked her before she really knew him, because her self-esteem was in the basement and she figured nobody else would be lining up.

  He leaned toward her. “For what it’s worth, Tessa, I still feel really bad about what I did to you. Once I got over being mad, I saw myself for the self-
righteous idiot I’d been. I wanted to tell you I was sorry, but by the time I worked up nerve enough to do it, you’d moved to Calgary.”

  That wasn’t an excuse. “You could have written me a letter, phoned me. Karen knew where I was.”

  “I could have, yeah. I should have. The longer I waited, the harder it got. Other stuff happened, and I guess I just shoved it out of my mind.”

  “Well, lucky you.” It hurt, that he could do that and not look back.

  He scowled. “You’re not trying to tell me I ruined your entire life, are you?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him yeah, and then realized it wasn’t true. Nobody else ruined a life. A person did that all by themselves.

  “C’mon, Tessa, it was a long time ago. We were a lot younger. Give me a break here. I’m trying to clear the air, not qualify for Guilt Award of the Century.”

  Part of her wanted to go on needling him, carrying a grudge and resenting him, but another part knew he was right. It really was time to lay down the gauntlet. She was on her way to Karen’s in another hour. She honestly wanted them to be friends again, without Eric being a reason or a complication. He was Karen’s brother; it would be tough to hang with Karen and have bad feelings for him. And there was Synchronicity to think of. It didn’t look like Clara was coming back anytime soon. Tessa would have to line up his matches, it would be simpler if they were on speaking terms.

  “Okay.” She had another long sip of wine. It really was excellent.

  “Okay. I agree. Let’s shake on it.”

  He looked at her as if he thought there might be a catch, and then he smiled that killer smile and stuck his hand out across the table.

  “Friends?”

  "Friends.”

  They shook. His hand was big and warm and callused, and she didn’t like holding it. Or maybe she did, too much. She pulled away before he did.

  He whistled, long and low. “Hey, this is good, Tessa. This makes me feel so much better; everything settled between us.” He poured her more wine and took some himself. “A toast, to us.”