Part 7 (1/2)

Tony helped her into the truck, wis.h.i.+ng she would meet his eyes and knowing he might not like what he saw there if she did.

Amber fiddled with her seat belt. He gave up and walked around the truck. Climbed in and started the engine.

”You know where you're going?” she asked.

”Yeah, I think so. Just let me know if I head the wrong way.”

He turned left and drove along the playing fields at the edge of the Camelot College campus.

A too-pretty town, it hardly seemed real to him. Not that Mount Pleasant was a cesspool-it had brick streets downtown, festivals in the summer, and quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned businesses. But it also had a long commercial strip with one of every chain store, and neighborhoods full of ugly duplexes.

Camelot didn't have any of that. It was a college town, full of liberal professors and spoiled rich kids whose parents could afford to spend more than forty thousand dollars a year educating them.

Tony wondered where Amber fit in all that, growing up at the apartment complex. She'd have gone to elementary school in Camelot, but they bused the Camelot kids into Mount Pleasant for middle school and high school. Then she would have driven into town for her college cla.s.ses at the Naz.

She wasn't quite from either place, maybe. Somewhere in between.

Her fingers kept plucking at the knee of her pants, as if it were vitally important for the wet fabric not to touch her leg.

Spooked again. He wondered if she was half as spooked as he was.

They'd gone their separate ways inside the building, Tony checking out the site while Amber moved through all the rooms and made sure everything had come through the storm okay. Then he'd offered her a ride.

He almost wished he hadn't, though he would have been a total d.i.c.k to leave her there by herself.

It was just that she looked too good in his truck.

He drove almost all the way out to the two-lane state highway that connected Camelot to Mount Pleasant, then hung a right and headed uphill toward the apartment complex. Amber s.h.i.+vered.

”You okay?” he asked.

”I'm fine.”

She didn't offer any more conversation, and he wasn't sure what to say. He turned on the heat, angling the vents in her direction. The dashboard clock read six forty-five. Ninety minutes since the tornado siren had sent him into the bas.e.m.e.nt with her.

Ninety minutes since he'd first said more than three words to her. So how had he ended up practically nailing her up against a tree, in public, where anybody could have seen them? What the f.u.c.k was wrong with him?

He was hot for her, sure. That kiss had been off the charts. Her body, her tongue, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s ... just thinking about it made his b.a.l.l.s ache and his d.i.c.k get heavy all over again.

But he'd been reckless, and reckless was no good. Bad things happened when you started thinking the rules didn't apply to you. He and Patrick used to think that, and Patrick had ended up in prison for it. Patrick had ended up destroyed by it.

It could just as easily have been Tony.

Somebody had told her he was trouble. He wished whoever it was had told her the rest of the story. He was starting to think he was going to have to.

At the entrance to the complex, he slowed down.

”Second building on the right,” she said.

He pulled into a s.p.a.ce out front and cut the engine. She turned toward him, her eyes deep and liquid dark, full of an emotion he couldn't identify. Something in them made him want to wrap his arm over her shoulder, but he knew where that would lead.

She'd never even had an o.r.g.a.s.m with a man, and he wanted to hand her her first one. Of course he did. He was hard-wired to want that. Spread his seed, perpetuate the species. But what did that leave Amber with? Memories of getting off with some hard-hat-wearing roughneck who tumbled her around for a few hours and then never called her again?

Was he really that big of an a.s.shole?

He didn't want to be.

”You want to come up?” she asked.

She would get the wrong idea, and she'd end up hurt. h.e.l.l, he'd probably already hurt her, out there in the parking lot. She would regret it later on. But it would be worse if he took her up to her apartment and took her to bed the way he wanted to, because she would wake up in the morning thinking they had something that didn't exist.

It couldn't exist. This pull he felt when he looked at her, and the out-of-control way he'd felt under the tree, as if he had to touch her or something would slip away from him, something he needed-that was all an illusion. It took a long time to get to know somebody, to figure out all the stuff about them that was going to drive you nuts over the long haul. Weeks and months to find out how compatible you were in the sack and to get your sense of humor lined up.

This thing with Amber-it was some kind of temporary attachment, the result of spending that time in the dark with her. Probably the result of flipping out in front of her, too. Attraction and fear came with potent chemicals. Surely they could make you think you had something that wasn't really there.

”Go ahead and say no, if you're going to say no,” she said. ”Don't sit there trying to decide how to break it to me.”

She had that snap to her voice again. That don't-bulls.h.i.+t-me tone that he liked, even when she was busting his b.a.l.l.s. ”That's not what I was trying to decide.”

”Sure you were. If you were going to say yes, you'd already have said it.”

”You know what happens if I come up.”

She glanced at him, then away. ”Probably.”

”Definitely.”

Her chin lifted. ”I can fix you something to eat, if I can get the burners to light. The stove's gas. I can't dry your clothes off, though.”

”So I strip, you offer me a towel, and then we sit around in the dark with candles lit, and what? Talk about baseball?”

”I like baseball.”

”You do, huh?”

”I watch it with my dad.”

He reached out to cup her shoulder, knowing his touch would rattle her and wanting it to. ”Look, Amber. If I come up, I'm going to have you naked in no time flat. I'm going to f.u.c.k you. Is that what you want?”

She squirmed. ”Do you have to say it that way?”

”Say it what way, f.u.c.k'?”

”Yeah.”

”What would you call it, honey? Until a couple hours ago, I'd never even had a conversation with you. We do this tonight, it's not gonna be making love. It'll just be s.e.x. And then I go to work Monday, and you unlock the place, and we gotta figure out how to be around each other after. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like a terrible idea.”