"And all the school dances."
"And got to spend football games getting warmed up beneath the bleachers instead of freezing off their booties in the cold wind whipping through the stands."
Kinsey glanced at her two girlfriends and grinned. "Can you imagine what we would've been like in school together?"
Izzy shook her head madly. "Uh-uh. You two with your blue eyes and blond hair? I can see it now. You would've clawed at each other's eyes and pulled hair with all that competition going on."
Laughing, Lauren draped an arm over Kinsey's shoulders. "Maybe it's a good thing we didn't meet until college. I was pretty much over my competitive streak by then."
"Don't believe a word she says," Macy countered, walking by. "Lauren's still a master at
oneupmanship
."
"You
were
the first to get married, you know," Kinsey accused.
"Well, duh. Anton and I
have
been together forever. And," Lauren continued with a suspiciously secretive expression, "
he
tells me that Doug is more distracted than usual these days. I'm thinking he senses the trap closing in."
Kinsey sighed. "That means he's probably about to bolt before he's caught."
"Uh-uh. I don't think so. Look at the boy's face. I'd say he's trying to figure out how to trip the catch before you get away."
At Izzy's comment, Kinsey found herself unable to avoid looking at Doug. She turned only her
head,
slanted her eyes and felt the impact of his gaze in a direct hit to her heart.
He was watching her as if she were the only woman in existence.
She loved him unconditionally, and the rapid-fire beat of her heart came from the realization that he would never know how much. He would be no more than a memory weeks from now, and she'd blubber around, heartbroken, pathetic and sad.
She took a deep
breath,
brought up both her chin and her gaze and swore to go down fighting. "What has he told Anton about selling his half of Neville and Storey?"
Lauren shook her head. "Nothing yet, so I'd say you
have
time to change his mind."
"No. Not change it." Kinsey took a deep breath. "I'm going to help him make it up."
* * *
With only a little bit of help from her girlfriends on Spin the Bottle, Kinsey found herself on the floor of the foyer's coat closet with Doug.
Sitting between his spread legs, she leaned back and shifted around to get comfortable. The rules of this game meant they were going to be here for a nice little while; she didn't plan to leave without setting matters straight.
"You know," he began, pulling her snug against him, "in junior high we called this Heaven in
Seven
, not the Dirty Thirty."
Kinsey smiled, feeling the rumble of his voice like tickling fingers down her spine. "Just one of the perks of playing as an adult instead of a teen."
"Is that so?" he asked with a laugh.
Oh, but being with him felt so, so right. "Yep. You get a full thirty minutes to show me your stuff. In junior high, guys rarely needed the full seven."
Doug made a sound that was half chuckle and half snort—a sound she would've marked down to jealousy if he'd had reason. "Are you speaking from experience?"
She shook her head, wrapping her arms over his, which were around her middle, and snuggled her head back into his shoulder. She breathed in the scent of his skin as her cheek grazed his jaw.
"I'm a closet virgin," she assured him. "You're definitely going to have to show me what we can do with the time we have."
He nuzzled his face to hers. "Don't tell me you've never had a quickie?"
"Of course I have. Just not in a closet." She grinned to herself and nuzzled back. "And not with you."
"So what are we waiting for?"
"Hello? This is junior high."
"In that case, forget it."
"Why do you say that?"
"You know junior high girls. All talk and no action. They get a guy where they want him, then bam. He pays up or they don't put out."
"Damn prick teases," Kinsey said with a laugh. Against her cheek, she felt Doug grin.
"It wasn't really so bad in junior high. The guy would only have to promise to take the girl to a school dance and then second base was a given."
"And as you got older?" she teased.
"Hey, there. Who said we were talking about me?"
Kinsey lifted a hand, threaded her fingers back into his hair, wondering if he would regret opening this particular window, because she certainly planned to climb in. "I thought maybe you were relating your own experiences. With Gwen."
Doug's fingers, which had been twining in and out of hers in her lap, stilled where they rested low on her belly. "I don't remember ever making out with Gwen in a closet."
"Just every other room in the house?" Kinsey asked, finishing his thought.
"A few, yeah. But not all of them."
"Why not?"
Doug laughed then, but it didn't sound the least bit joyous. "Because we did most of our making out down behind our houses. Our yards sloped in back toward a creek bed hidden by scrawny pines and underbrush."
She wondered how long he'd keep talking, how soon he'd realize that he was. "Hmm. For some reason you don't strike me as the back-to-nature sort."
"A guy can be any sort a girl wants him to be when second base is within reach."
Kinsey laughed. God, but they had such a good time together. She laid her hands over his and laced their fingers together, lifting and settling his palms over her breasts. He drew in a sharp breath at the contact; she did the same when he fondled and squeezed.
"Thought you said you didn't have any closet experience," he said with a deep, throaty growl.
"I don't. But I have experience with you." He started to open her buttons; she slapped him away. "Uh-uh. Junior high, remember?"
"Then let's blow this joint and head back to my place for some purely adult fun."
She shook her head. "No can do.
gAME
night is a big part of the gIRL-gEAR experience. But I will move out of your lap if you'd like."
"No. I don't want you going anywhere. I'll just save the groping for later," he said, and returned his hands to her waist.
The simple contact was all she needed. He was here and she was here and the dark, silent closet actually had her in a more reflective than sexual mood.
It didn't matter that they were here because of a game. Playtime was over. She took a deep breath. "Doug?"
"Kinsey?"
"Does your move to
Denver
have anything to do with your breakup with Gwen?"
"That was quite a few years ago, darlin'. I'm long over that loss."
"Are you?" she asked. Before he could interrupt, she hurried to add, "I don't mean that you still have feelings for her, but maybe you're still looking for what she represented."
A tic started up in his jaw; she felt the pulse in her temple. "You think that's why I'm here with you? That I want you to replace Gwen?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying." She scooted around to lean against the closet's back wall, draping her legs over Doug's once he'd stretched them out. There wasn't enough light to truly see his face, only the hint of his profile. "I'm saying that
Denver
is replacing Gwen."
Doug turned his head, shifted where he sat, pulling up one knee and draping his arm on it. "Does Macy's game require we stay in here the full thirty minutes?"
She'd hit a nerve. "Tired of me already?"
"No. Not of you." He blew out a long breath. "Just tired of everyone getting in my
Denver
business."
She reached for his hand. "We're just looking out for you, Doug."
"I'm old enough to look out for myself, you know."
"I know. But this is what friends do. Especially friends who are as close as family."
Doug chuckled. "You and your family issues."
One second ticked by, two, then three before she let go of his hand. "You think
I
have family issues?"
"You're saying you don't?"
"No, I do not." At least none she wanted to talk about now when she had his to get out of the way. She crossed her arms over her chest.
"Then come to
Denver
with me."
"What?" What? Her stomach plummeted; her heart followed. Damn this dark closet that kept her from seeing his eyes and what he was feeling.
Her life was here, as was the career that had been everything to her since leaving university. She couldn't walk out on something she'd helped build, even if he could.
Then there were her girlfriends, and her family…
Oh, no. Oh, no.
She saw what he was doing, and she was not going to fall for his tricks.
He thought he was so smart, trying to make their imminent split seem like her fault because she wouldn't leave her parents and gIRL-gEAR to go with him to
Denver
.
Time to turn these particular tables in a very big way.
She pretended uncertainty, hoping she would be able to pull this off now that her blood had
began
to boil. "I don't know, Doug. Leaving
Houston
after living here all of my life…"
"Think about it." He rubbed a palm up her bare thigh, beneath her skirt, all the way to her panties. "No more time wasted in flight. Being together every night. All that kinky fun waiting to be had."
"You do make it sound tempting." She reached for his wandering hand and returned it to his lap with a disciplinary smack. "I'm just not sure I can leave gIRL-gEAR."
She waited for him to insist that she could, to give her a list of reasons. But he didn't try to talk her into it; he didn't have anything more to say.
So she pressed forward. "On second thought, if you can come to terms with leaving Neville and Storey…"
He shifted restlessly.
Exactly the move she'd been waiting for. "Okay. Yes. Yes, I'll come with you."
"You will?"
"Yes." She nodded, though doubted he could see. Just as well, considering it probably wasn't very convincing in its enthusiasm.
Then again, neither was his tone of supposed excitement. "Just like that?"
Excitement, ha! Panic was more like it. He wasn't any more ready for her to pack up and go with him than she was ready to leave. "No, not just like that. I mean, there's my house. Then I'll have to make arrangements for my share of gIRL-gEAR. You know how that goes."
"Uh, yeah."
"This is going to be great." She squirreled around and climbed up to straddle his lap, moving her hands from his chest, where his heart thundered, to his shoulders, where his muscles had seized, to his face, where his breaking sweat gave him away. "We're going to have
so
much time to spend together."
"Well, yeah. But Kinsey, we probably need to talk about this before—"
"Shh." He'd had his chance to talk. Now she planned to make him squirm. He deserved it for being such a rat. For making her fall in love with him when he didn't want to be with her at all.
Fueled by a mixture of anger and hurt, she kissed him and kissed him hard. He met the slant of her mouth with a tilt of his head, covering her hands on his face with his.
She imagined she felt his fingers tremble, or maybe she was feeling nothing more than the shudder working its way the length of her limbs.
She didn't know if she had scared him to death or if he was truly jarred by the thought of her coming with him.
It didn't matter because the moment he parted his lips she was there—ready, wanting, needing, loving him, telling him so with her touch and her tongue and her tiny breathy whimpers.
She moved her hands to his wrists, her lingers stroking the soft skin and the tendons of his forearms.
And then she set him away.
He waited for a long moment before he let what had just happened sink in. And then he hung his head and sighed. "You didn't mean it, did you? You're not going to come with me, or leave gIRL-gEAR. You were just determined to make your point any way you could."
She gave a shrug, hiding her hurt in the darkness. "Does it matter? I'm staying. You're going. End of story."
A sharp rap on the closet door came long before she was ready. "Thirty minutes is up, you two," Macy called. "Get decent and get your butts out here. It's time to eat."
Doug moved away with obvious reluctance, and Kinsey pressed her fingertips to her mouth. She started to say something sexy and flip and teasingly risqué, but Doug stopped her by reaching out a hand and tucking her hair back behind one ear.
"Listen, Kinsey," he
began,
his voice raw and hoarse, his tone vulnerable and uncertain. "I don't want either of us to have regrets. And I sure as hell don't want to hurt you."