Unwrapped (2 page)

"You should have called it off after a month, the way
he treated you," Derrick said.

He'd tried to keep the
I-told-you-sos
to a minimum, but it amazed him that
Mia—formerly so confident—had been deliberately blind for so long
with this one. Barry had constantly condescended to her in public, something
she never would have stood for in the past. He'd remarked loudly on the calorie
counts of her meal selections at restaurants and embarrassed her over her
wardrobe choices. He'd brushed off any attempts at affection as juvenile
clinginess.

That one, particularly, had hurt her. Mia was a major
hugger. It was one of her chief forms of expression. A friend? Hug. New
acquaintance? Hug. Happy? Sad? Unsure? Hug, hug, hug.

She was the best hugger he knew. A Mia hug could brighten
the day of even the saddest sack around. Except Barry, evidently.

Barry's list of crimes went on. One by one, he'd somehow
taken all the things that made Mia. . . Mia, and unmade her. But Mia had set
her mind on him, and she was nothing if not stubborn.

Hell, Barry had even sneered at Derrick's career as a
computer game developer, wanting to compare perks and salaries as though
breaking out the ruler to compare the lengths of their cocks.

Allison, an event coordinator running her own business, had
also gotten a dismissive look down the nose, though Jeff Denton, their fourth
Musketeer and Derrick's college roommate, had somehow escaped the surgeon's
derogatory comments. Derrick suspected Barry hadn't quite known what to say to
a man like Jeff, a brilliant businessman building an entertainment empire on
the one hand, and a flaming drag queen on the other.

"I just thought he'd finally be the one, to, you know.
. ." Mia said, tears running faster.

Ah. The prize for The Rule's winning contestant.

After years of dating disasters, she'd been getting
desperate. Desperation could do crazy things to people. Like make a woman put
up with all sorts of crap. Or make a guy like him think about declaring his
love at a very inappropriate moment.

"And the love thing doesn't matter," Mia
continued, tossing another cherry in her mouth. "There's commitment and
loyalty and common interests. Those are good, solid reasons to get married,
build a life. I thought—but I let him down, and. . ."

She dissolved against Allison, and Derrick worked to get
himself under control. He hadn't realized she'd been thinking along those
lines, not that seriously. Barry had shown his true colors in the nick of time,
in blazing neon Mia could no longer ignore.

"I repeat," he said. "Bullshit."

Shaking his head, Derrick considered the two women.
Tough-as-nails Allison, with her penchant for lots of men and lots of sex, and
sweet-as-cotton-candy Mia, who claimed not to believe in love but had the
softest center of anyone he knew. She loved so hard it broke her heart. The
only place she protected herself was romantically, and even that, he
suspected—hoped—was a sham.

Was there a cause she hadn't championed? She worked her ass
off through her magazine—print and electronic—to bring attention to
the most vulnerable people, the forgotten issues, all through the guise of
profiling the rich and powerful. She was a fundraising demon. The social elite
ate out of her hand and begged for more, throwing money wherever she pointed
them, bringing plenty of prestige to themselves, but doing a lot of good in the
process. She'd started small after college, focusing on Orange County and
gradually expanding to include the entire state. Now she had staff and
volunteers all over the country and was working on expanding into foreign
fields.

"Mia," Allison cut into his thoughts, her tone as
razor-edged as Derrick's had been, "the only person you let down was
yourself for getting taken in by that worthless, hyper-critical, skanky-assed
man-whore. Now you're free to be yourself again. We should be
celebrating."

Over Mia's head, Derrick and Allison exchanged looks of
frustrated commiseration. Every word Allison had said was true, but persuading
Mia was another story.

Mia blew her nose and strove visibly to throw off the
weepiness. "I know you guys are right," she said. "I do. He
could be such a jerk, but—"

"Exactly," Derrick said, his voice now
matter-of-fact. "Besides, I think Barry's gay."

Allison gasped and choked to cover a laugh, and even Mia
snickered guiltily, but while Derrick had said the words hoping for just that
reaction, he wasn't entirely sure it wasn't true. What other explanation was
there for refusing what Mia had tried so hard to give the slime ball?

Then again, all the gay guys Derrick knew were pretty damn
decent and didn't deserve to be lumped in with the likes of Barry Anderson. No,
Barry was just a straight dick.

"Don't let Jeff hear you say that," Allison
scolded, wagging a finger beneath his nose.

Derrick winced. The flamboyantly homosexual Jeffery Denton
might play the lead in one of the most popular drag shows in Hollywood, but at
a muscular six-four, he could, and would, kick Derrick's ass nine ways to Boy's
Town for even suggesting a queer bone lived in Barry Anderson's scrawny,
holier-than-thou body.

Clarifying, Derrick said, "I just meant the man had to
either be gay or crazy to not want a woman as hot as Mia."

Shifting her head on Allison's shoulder to glare at him
through slitted, red-rimmed eyes, Mia swiped a hand beneath her nose.

"I'm a twenty-five-year-old virgin," she said, as
if he could ever forget. Her voice, bitter as unsweetened cocoa, tore at the
part of his heart he'd been trying to cement shut for years. In her expression
he saw the shadows of every guy she'd dated since high school. "They can't
all be gay."

"Crazy, then," Allison said.

Allison had been Mia's college roommate, and, along with
Jeff, the four of them had bonded like the proverbial glue. The good girl, the
bad girl, the computer geek and the drag queen. What a quartet they made.
Derrick wouldn't trade their relationships with each other for anything, but he
was determined to tweak his status with Mia. Soon.

"As I recall," Derrick added, the edge creeping
back into his tone, "you've had plenty of opportunities to lose it with a
guy—" himself included, on one memorably drunken night
"—if that was all you really wanted."

"So it's my fault for holding out for someone special?"

That stung. In hindsight, he wouldn't have wanted her first
time,
their
first time, to be the result
of too much alcohol, but he couldn't count the nights he'd cursed their
friendship over the years. He valued it more than just about anything, but the
fricking 'FRIEND' stamp on his forehead blinded Mia to the possibility that he
could be that someone special, if she'd just open her stubborn eyes.

"I didn't say that," he muttered, "just that
it's not like guys haven't wanted you. Barry's an aberration."

"Alan?" Mia asked.

"Surfer dude with no potential," Allison answered.
"He never focused on anything but the next wave."

"He owns his own Fortune 500 company now," Mia
countered.

"And between that and the surfing, he'd never be around
for a relationship." Allison folded her arms and gave a satisfied nod as
though she'd won a round on Jeopardy.

"Carl?"

"Rapist," Derrick said with a snarl, bringing a
flush to Mia's cheeks.

"He was not. He just. . . forgot himself a little when
he was drunk."

"Ha," Derrick and Allison said together.

Carl had forgotten himself all right, until Derrick's fist
in his face brought his memory—and his manners—back with a snap.
Derrick's hands curled into fists just thinking about that night. Thank God
he'd heard Mia yelling before anything irreversible had happened. Although, if
he was honest, Mia had been holding her own pretty well before he'd gotten
there. She was tougher than she looked.

"Terrence," Mia persisted, ticking names off on
her fingers. "Steve, Rob, Dennis—"

"Dennis really is gay—" Derrick began.

"But—"

"And," he continued, speaking over her, "none
of that's relevant. Do you really wish any of them had lasted longer than they
did?"

Subsiding, Mia bowed her head, playing with the cord on her
sweats. "No," she admitted, "but I wish someone had."

"The right one will," Allison said. "The one
who deserves you."

Derrick silently agreed. He might not deserve her, either,
but he'd do his best to make her happy, if she'd give him a chance. But Mia had
thrown the wall of friendship between them their freshman year of college, and
he'd never been able to scale the bricks.

He wished he knew why.

For now, though, enough was enough. She needed a
distraction.

"Come on," he said, patting her thigh. "Let's
go for a swim. You'll feel better."

"I don't want to," Mia said, sounding all of about
four years old.

Allison overrode her. "Good idea!" Voice bright
and cheerful, she disentangled herself from Mia and sprang to her feet,
snatching the box of chocolates out of Mia's grasp. "Go get changed while
I put these away."

"Really, you guys, I just want to go back to bed and
pretend today never happened."

"Not an option," Derrick said.

Taking matters into his own hands, he stood, grabbed Mia
around the waist and hoisted her over his shoulder in one swift move. Her
startled shriek ended in a
woof
as her
belly connected with his left shoulder. Derrick wrapped his arms firmly around
her upper thighs, ignoring her kicking feet and the temptation of her sweetly
rounded ass perched so close to his Mia-starved fingers. He strode from the
room before she could catch her breath to protest.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Mia hung upside down, motionless with shock for one long
beat before she started to kick and hit at Derrick, wriggling madly, but she
couldn't get any traction in her awkward position. Had he gone crazy?

Allison's laughter pinged down the hallway toward the
kitchen as her best friend abandoned her to Derrick's caveman routine.

Et tu, Brute?

Sucking in a breath, Mia opened her mouth to insist he
release her right when he reached the narrow stairs. He jogged up them two at a
time, jouncing all the air out of her lungs with each
fwumping
step.

Derrick swung into her blue-and-yellow bedroom and dropped
her unceremoniously on her white four-poster. She bounced up immediately,
swiping her hair out of her face, indignation hot on her tongue.

"What the hell's gotten—" she managed before
Derrick slapped a hand to her chest and pushed her back onto the bed. She sat
with a thump and stared at him, nonplussed, her mouth hanging open.

Placing his big hands on either side of her hips, Derrick
leaned down into her face until they were nose to nose.

"You've felt sorry for yourself long enough," he
said, his topaz eyes blazing. "We've tried to tell you what a loser Barry
is for weeks, but you didn't want to hear it. Now he's finally proven it to
you, so hooray, we can move on. Where's your suit?"

Mia gaped at him, hardly able to follow his words. She'd
never seen him so. . . roused. He looked so. . . so sexy. A coil of lust unfurled
in her belly, shocking her to her core. His breath, warm and minty, bathed her
face, mingled with hers. The pulse in his throat pounded, close enough for her
to lean forward and lick, just there. If she dared.

Oh, my God, where did that thought come from?

Awareness—tingly, treacherous longings she'd kept
deeply buried for years—erupted, swamping her with unfamiliar sensations.

His scent—ocean fresh and hotly male—swam
through her senses. His body heat seemed to bake right inside her, igniting
little fires up and down her nervous system, flicking her libido to bright,
blazing life.

Good Lord.

Her belly, already slightly queasy from the excess of sugar
she'd ingested during her pity party, and bruised from her trip up the stairs
on Derrick's rock-hard shoulder, went to a full, quivering roil of nerves.

Had she never noticed before how sensual his lips were? How
full and tempting. How the tiny golden stars ringing his jewel-toned irises
blazed with light. Why did she suddenly want to run her fingers through his
tousled, sandy-brown hair with its sun-lightened tips? Or grasp his head and
pull him to her for a long, fierce kiss?

Whoa
.

Every nerve in her body snapped to attention and coiled into
a hard, tight knot. Then loosened in a rush of liquid passion. Lust flooded her
center like a tidal wave and dampened her panties in a heartbeat.

His mouth was
right there
, so close. So tempting. The hollow beneath his chin, where she'd
nuzzled a thousand times for a friendly hug or while snuggled up watching
movies together, suddenly seemed like virgin territory. And she ached to
explore.

All of that and more slammed into her body in the space of
mere seconds, like an earthquake in her soul. Her world had shifted on its
axis, leaving her confused and dizzy. And hungry.

For Derrick.

Oh, no.

"Mia! Suit?"

His voice slapped her back to reality. Shock and
embarrassment robbed her of speech. Derrick was one of her best friends. What
the hell had just happened? She couldn't think with his big, muscular body
surrounding her, overwhelming her senses. Was it only her injured pride looking
for a lifeline, a distraction?

Of course.

Rebounding. That was all. Looking for validation. Barry had
slammed her confidence hard, and she'd let him. Her psyche was looking to get a
little of herself back, to start healing. Perfectly natural. Derrick was hot,
potently male. And safe. A friend. Someone she trusted implicitly. Of course
her body would respond to him. She just had to tamp that surge of lust back
down. Any woman with half a hormone would be physically attracted to Derrick,
they couldn't help it. But he was her friend. Off limits.