Midsummer Night’s Steam: One Night on a Balcony Page 2

  “We don’t have a relationship,” she snapped, knowing it made her sound like a prudish schoolmarm. Rolling her eyes, she came back up the three stairs and bravely met Cole’s laughing eyes.

  Blue eyes that reflected the sky and the sea and… Oh shut up.

  “Okay, look, what I did last night was…” she scratched her head, then shook her hands out by her hips, “…inexcusable. I have no idea what got into me, and if you want to lie in my chaise, go ahead. Now, I’m late for work.” She took two steps down this time before stopping. She didn’t turn around because she couldn’t take another moment of looking at Cole Adams, his short blond hair bed-ruffled, his shirtless chest sunbathed and his damn hard-on tenting his work-out shorts. She squeezed her eyes tight, not believing she was actually having this conversation. “Don’t have sex on it, please.”

  She swore to God she heard that stupid man snickering at her as she fled.

  Well, what did you expect? Mere mortals can’t play with the gods and expect to come out untouched. Oooh, wrong choice of words.

  She stuck the keys into the Celica parked on the tree-lined street in front of the small building that housed four two-bedroom apartments. She couldn’t see the side balcony from here, but somehow she still felt as if his eyes were on her. She hoped that sensation wouldn’t last all day, or more than a few people were going to end up with food in their laps.

  Cole shook the last of the salt water from his hair, remnants of his late-morning swim. He’d lived his whole life on this beach, from the time he was a kid hanging out at his grandparents’ restaurant on the cove. The restaurant he now proudly owned and operated the same way his grandfather and father had before him. Normally he was out in the water by dawn. Growing up on the beach, he loved everything about it, surfing, swimming, holding a woman’s hand as he walked along it. But today he couldn’t resist waiting around to hassle his sassy little neighbor.

  Good God, she deserved it.

  When he realized she was there last night, watching him, he couldn’t remember ever being more turned on in his life. It had taken every ounce of strength he had not to dump Valerie on that pretty ass of hers, grab Jill and slam her up against her kitchen wall. His cock started stiffening again. If that keeps happening all day, I’ll never get anything done.

  Cole walked along the shore to the wooden pier steps, knowing he’d find his best friend somewhere along the old wooden and concrete structure. Leaning on a side rail, he pushed his feet back into his shoes. A pair of kids on skateboards zipped by him and every breath he took now included the aroma of corn dogs and pizza as it invaded the pure scent of sea air. The carousel was busy as always as it spun around, entertaining small children and lovesick teenagers. The music from the calliope nearly drowned out that of the sideshow games, but just as Cole passed the pitch-a-ball-in-the-milk-can game, someone won big and the small crowd gathered shrieked in delight.

  He caught up with Ross, halfway down the pier, sitting on a bench with his twelve-year-old daughter, who had a line in the water. He spread his hand over her thick blonde hair. Give it a couple of years and Ross was in for hell with that girl. Cole had already offered to go in halfsies with him on a chastity belt, and he’d been only half kidding.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school, squirt?”

  It was their standard greeting as Ross was home-schooling his daughter and Cole liked to tease them about it.

  “The world’s my school, honey,” she said, her voice a passable imitation of Cole’s.

  “Smart-ass.”

  “Better a smart-ass than a dumb-ass.”

  This was when Ross always jumped in with, “Watch your mouth. You’re teachin’ Uncle Cole bad words.”

  Cole sat beside Ross with an accompanying old-man grunt. Ross slapped him on the forearm. “Man, what are you now? Forty-five?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “So, how’d it go with Valerie?” Ross raised both brows in query. With his long dark hair blowing around his face he looked a lot like a bearded collie.

  “Fine.”

  “Oh come on. Details. Do you have any idea the last time I got laid?”

  “Dad!”

  Ross cleared his throat, looking sheepish, “Sorry, sprite.” Lowering his tone, he leaned closer to Cole. “And that would be why.”

  Cole laughed, tipping his face into the breeze, enjoying the warmth of the sun in contrast. “I’m not giving you details in front of the kid.”

  Ross made a disgruntled sound, folded his arms over his chest and sank down farther on the bench.

  “You know, if you wanted to date, I’d take Hailey for the night.”

  Ross laughed so hard he nearly fell off the bench. Cole wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t find near as much humor in the situation, or his friend’s reaction. Folding his own arms over his chest in a mirror position of Ross’ sulking, he said, “What the hell’s so funny?”

  Ross took a minute to sober, then turned, facing Cole with a look of incredulity in his eyes. “You are kidding, right?”

  “About what? Taking her, or wondering why you’re laughing your ass off at the idea?”

  “Uh…both? Come on, Cole.” He slapped Cole’s biceps again with the back of his hand. “This has to be a joke. First of all, you wouldn’t know what to do with a kid for a whole night. Probably not even fifteen minutes, for that matter. And then there’s the fact that you don’t have a free night—ever.”

  Cole continued his sulk. All of that might be true, but Ross didn’t have to laugh at him. After all, he’d been being magnanimous by offering. The least Ross could have done was pretend to appreciate the gesture. The thing of it, though, was that he wasn’t kidding—a night with Hailey could be fun. They could set up his telescope on the balcony and watch for constellations, make brownies or some female-type thing they sold in all-in-one sets at the store and watch PG-13 action flicks. Oh well. It would have been fun. Besides, how much trouble could a twelve-year-old be, anyway?

  The more he thought about it, the more offended he became. He turned to face Ross on the bench. “I’m not joking.” Then he yelled over his shoulder to Hailey, who was wiggling her line with not much luck. “Hey, kid, you wanna come stay with me some night?” Hailey shrugged. Cole took that positively and focused on Ross. “See?”

  Ross shook his head as if confused. “See what?”

  “Hailey’s all hyped. So who are you gonna ask out?”

  Ross choked on a laugh, got up, rubbed his palms on his denim shorts and moved to the metal railing separating the pedestrians from a long fall to the ocean below. Cole joined him and for a while the two stood there silently, watching the waves crest and roll to the shore.

  “I’m not like you, Cole. I can’t pick up any old woman and screw her. Even if I could, I also don’t have half your charm. And where you are the sun-bronzed Heath Ledger type, I am the nerdy sidekick type. By the time I even found a woman willing to do the nasty with me, Hailey would be filling out college apps.”

  Cole ran a hand through his hair, drawing a breath, wondering how honest to be with his friend.

  “I’d trade what you had with Hailey’s mom for every one of the women I’ve fu…” He glanced over his shoulder. Hailey had lost interest in the fishing line and was running a radio-controlled car along the side rails. “…had sex with.”

  Ross snorted. Cole scowled. They hung arms over the rails, and Cole stepped up on the bottom rail as Hailey’s car buzzed him. She laughed hysterically as Cole shot her a “quit it” look both of them knew he didn’t mean.

  “I’m serious, Ross. You had it with Shelly. What my grandparents had, what I…”

  Ross’s furrowed brow said that maybe he was finally taking Cole seriously. Cole squinted into the sunlight, then pulled his shades from his pocket, sliding them on more for the chickenshit factor than for the sunlight. Though he’d confessed, he didn’t want to stand here and analyze it or his past mistakes in the relationship department. Three times he thought he’d found it; thre
e times he’d gone down in flames. One of his marriages had only lasted three-and-a-half months. The last one had lasted four years, exactly three years and eleven months too long.

  Even a thickheaded beach bum like him knew it was time to pack it in. Meaningless sex—like he’d been drowning himself in since the divorce was final—was all that was left for him until he got too old for even that. Because, no matter how lonely or desperate he got, he wasn’t going to a cosmetic surgeon to keep himself looking twenty and plastic forever.

  “Your taste in women sucks, Cole. You pick one-night-stand types and try and make it last a lifetime. It ain’t gonna. Plain and simple. Shit, at your last wedding, you were both hitting on other people by the reception.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, but close enough. His marriage to Wendy had been so bad, they’d both spent more time in other people’s beds then in their own. Ross scratched his jaw and squinted, his gaze seemingly traversing the waves. A pair of sailboats raced on the horizon. The sun was sitting pretty high now and it glistened on the water, stunning in its intensity, both visually and emotionally.

  “Honestly, man, I think you set yourself up. I think you pick women you know it ain’t gonna last with, so when it fails, you didn’t have that much at stake. If you ever did meet the right woman, I wonder if you’d take the risk and go after her.”

  Cole ached. That hit way too close to home and sounded too much like one of those women’s bonding sessions. It had the hair on the back of his neck all prickly. He wished there was some way to brush off what he said with a smartass comment, but there wasn’t one fitting for the occasion, so rubbing at those prickly hairs, he hedged. “Yeah. I oughta get back.” He sighed, pulled the glasses from his face and met Ross’ distant stare. “You’re probably right, but I’m not sure what to do about it, pal.” Shrugging, he slid the glasses back up and captured Hailey with the other arm, picking her off the ground and dropping a kiss to her head. “You be smart.”

  “I will, cause you an’ Dad are gonna need me to look out for ya at the home.”

  Cole laughed. Hailey was one of a kind. She looked so much like her mother who was the epitome of femininity, but since Hailey’d only been three when Shelly died, she was the product of a single father who was doing his best. Cole loved her all the way to his core.

  Walking away, he turned and waved back at them, a familiar punch of jealousy hitting him in the solar plexus until he had to catch his breath. The one thought foremost in his mind as his heart clenched with regret was Jill Reed, his next-door neighbor.

  It was nearly three in the morning before Jill pulled her little car up in front of her building. Parking was a bitch, but an extra three hundred a month to have a garage wasn’t in the budget. Any residence in the beach areas of southern California had exorbitant rent, but having grown up landlocked in the Midwest, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. After the last roommate attempt had blown sky high, Jill picked up a third job as a cocktail waitress in a club downtown. The tips from her Friday and Saturday night shifts almost doubled the rent a roommate would pay and it was worth it to have her sanity and her peace.

  The only drawback was Saturday when she worked all three jobs and came home dead tired and senseless. She’d discovered the senseless part after one particular late night and a half-dozen purchases on QVC of things like waterproof slippers. Tonight, because of last night’s little escapade and her lack of sleep, she was practically seeing double, yet she still wasn’t sure she’d get any sleep once she actually fell into bed. Even the thought of those little miracle pills the clinic doctor had prescribed her for sleeping gave her the heebie-jeebies. She couldn’t help it. Her family tree was riddled with branches addicted to one thing or another; she wasn’t about to add a sleeping pill addict into the mix.

  As she started up the rear stairs, she had a moment of hesitation and stood still to listen for any moaning or panting. When all she heard was crickets and the distant rolling surf, she figured the coast was clear and headed on up. There were front stairs, but they ran between the two units and left her feeling claustrophobic whenever she used them, so her usual routine was to come and go from the back. After last night, however, she decided to seriously give that some consideration.

  One eye out of commission while she rubbed it, the other one not overly clear, she thought maybe she was hallucinating. Blinking a couple of times didn’t make the vision go away so she had to take it seriously that her blindingly handsome neighbor was indeed still lounging on her patio furniture.

  She was too freakin’ tired for a conversation that would make any sense and was more than a little concerned. It would be like her to lose control of her tongue and blurt out something like, “Wanna be my first?” That was a humiliation she would never recover from.

  Slipping quietly by, hoping he’d fallen asleep, she froze solid at the sound of his low tenor.

  “Hey, brown eyes. Wanna have a drink with me?”

  Chapter Three

  It took Jill a minute to realize that he meant that literally. As she strained her eyes in the darkness, he appeared to only have the one longneck that he was holding out to her. Admittedly, though, she did see several empties on the floor…and one in her ficus.

  “Cole, it’s late and I’m beat. I’m going to bed. G’night.”

  She only managed a step in the direction of her door before the man’s hand snaked around her wrist and he toppled her into his lap. She took a long deep breath and tried to keep her brain functioning enough to handle this properly, but before she had a chance to utter a single word in protest, his arm was around her waist and he had her settled back against his very evident erection.

  “Oh my God, Cole. Are you drunk?”

  He laughed derisively, his warm breath fanning her cheek when he whispered, “Not by a long shot, brown eyes.”

  Jill tried to wriggle out of his hold, but gasped when her movements either enlarged the thing further, or brought her in closer contact. She wasn’t sure which and she didn’t care. She felt like a complete dolt. If he hadn’t caught her last night, he never would have wanted her, and last night she had given him a very wrong impression. It wouldn’t take long to give him the right one, though. She bet when he figured her out, he’d run screaming from the room so fast, he might even leave any clothing he wasn’t currently wearing behind.

  “Damn it to hell, Jill. You make me hard. You make me fucking crazy with want.” His tongue made a slow pass along the shell of her ear. “Do you think I don’t notice you watching me? Shit, honey, I mis-wired my damn alternator last week because I was so fucking hard. Knowing you were behind me, in your bedroom. I imagined you touching yourself, but I wasn’t sure—until last night.”

  His mouth slid over her neck, onto her shoulder, while the arm braced around her middle made a slow, hesitant move towards her breast. Jill wriggled, trying to free herself.

  “Cole, I’m not who you think I am. Let me go.”

  “Is that what you want, brown eyes?” He brushed over her nipple, which peaked instantly. Jill found herself actually having to bite back a moan of mixed desire and need. “I’ve fought it for months, Jill, but all I ever do is think of you.”

  “What?”

  “Christ, honey, what are you wearing?”

  “It’s my uniform,” she answered blindly, still stuck on his last statement and the fact that his fingers had moved under the electric-blue spandex leotard she wore beneath a very small dancer’s skirt. His thumb rubbed her flesh, his forefinger joining to gently pinch and tease her nipple, while his mouth nuzzled her neck. No matter how many times she’d had this fantasy—or a variation of it—she’d never come close to getting it right. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but her skin felt tingly from head to foot, her nipple ached for his mouth, her inner muscles clenched, and she found herself having to fight hard for any kind of resistance.

  She had no idea what had suddenly come over Cole, other than last night. And that had been so far from her real
personality that it would have been laughable if she wasn’t in the man’s arms at the moment. He wanted a hoyden, a woman who was brazen enough to watch a couple fucking and pleasure herself at the same time. While she had to admit that was exactly what she’d done, it hadn’t been her. She’d obviously been taken over by some remnant sex spirit. Probably one left behind from one of his many…many girlfriends.

  His entire hand flattened on her breast. God, how I’ve wanted this. It scared her how much she wanted this, wanted Cole, all of him touching her, taking off her clothes, kissing her, being the first one, the only one, to ever enter her. She wanted to feel him stretch her until he fit deep within, then she wanted to know how it felt to hold a man intimately when he came inside her.

  He dipped to the side to set the beer bottle on the ground. When his hand came back, it rested on her thigh, but only for a mere second before skimming under her skirt.

  “Cole, I think you have the wrong idea.”

  Despite her own traitorous thoughts and aghast at how thready and broken her voice was, she swallowed back the lust threatening to engulf her. She knew all about men and their desires. Even if Cole didn’t freak when he found out she was a virgin, once he’d had her, he’d lose interest and she’d be forced to watch his late-night balcony exhibits, knowing what it felt like to have him in her—knowing his touch and his kiss. If she knew anything about herself, she’d also be longing for those things and knowing there would be no hope of ever having him again.

  “I do not do one-night stands.” She was beginning to sound panicked, her voice rising on each word. Although, in fairness, he had brushed against her crotch right about the time the word stands came out.

  How in hell did he get my legs open?

  She tried to close them tightly, but since Cole’s hand was already between them, it did her no good. In fact, the damn man moaned.

  “You’re soaked, baby. Let me touch you.”

  “No.” She shook her head furiously, but since it was resting back against his chest at the time, she wasn’t sure it had the effect she meant for it to have.