Page 27 of Feels Like the First Time
“Easy, you say no. N. O. Or how about, ‘Hey, I am sorry, Marty, but you’re going to have to hold my ex-wife’s engagement party somewhere else, because holding it in my bar is wrong on so many levels.’”
Too many to count. Although Ali came up with seventeen on the fly, without even trying. What was her family thinking?
That normal boundaries didn’t apply. Not when it had to do with a wedding. Which was why she’d wisely been too busy to call Nolan Landon.
“Where else should I tell him to go? The Moose Lodge? The senior center? Neither of those places is big enough for what he wants to host. Not to mention I have the only liquor license in town.” Ali went to argue that they could have it at the park, a nice and sophisticated BYOB affair, but he cut her off. “If she remarries, it’s finally over, Ali.”
The ache in Hawk’s eyes reached out to her, reminded her how painful it was to be stuck in limbo with someone you loved. How impossible it was to love fully when you weren’t sure where you stood.
“No more alimony, no more whispers, no more wondering.” Hawk let out a breath. “No more ties. It will finally be over and we both get to move on.”
Ali wondered if she was part of the ties he wanted to sever, and she knew she’d never move on from Hawk. She’d tried, and now was back—about to be stuck between him and his relationship with Bridget. Again.
“I’m not saying she can’t have her party here in Destiny Bay. But your bar? You can’t really think this will work out?”
“It has to,” he said. “Because what would people say if I told my girlfriend’s sister no?”
Ali opened her mouth to argue, then closed it because there was that. Who knew one kiss could lead to such a mess? Leaning her head against the back of the couch, she muttered a miserable, “Fuck me.”
“That’s not generally the attitude I go for. You’d need some kind of adjustment before we got there,” Hawk said, and she felt him scooch a little closer on the couch. “Maybe we can work on that during foreplay.”
His hand, big and strong, rested on her thigh and gave a little squeeze. Ali opened one eye and slid him a look that was cold enough to freeze his nuts off.
“What? If you jump every time I touch you, people are going to figure out we’re faking it.”
Ali wanted to say that the only thing she was feigning at the moment was immunity to his touch. He was so handsome it was haunting, the memory of their kiss sneaking up on her at the worst times. Like now.
“We were faking it.” She swallowed that half lie, the reality of it clogging her throat and burning her chest as it went. Hawk had been faking it, but she’d embarrassingly been all in the second their lips touched.
“Were we?” he asked, leaning back and rolling his head toward her, until they were nose to nose and she couldn’t feel his breath skate over her lips—feel her need collide with the confusion churning inside her. “Because I’m pretty good at knowing when a woman is into it or not, and you seemed to be pretty into it.”
Ali fought hard not to lick her lips. Or worse, lick his. “Maybe I’m just better at pretending than you are at reading women.”
“Maybe.” His eyes dropped to her mouth and he grinned. “I guess I’d need more time to assess…”
His gaze lingered, long and hot, until her lips heated as if he were kissing her. As if she were kissing him back. She told herself to move, but her body didn’t seem to want to listen. It was too interested in the way Hawk was moving closer, her breath coming shorter.
His hand reached out to touch her cheek, and she didn’t flinch, didn’t want to. And that more than anything worried her. But when his mouth closed in, instead of the soft flutters she experienced the other day, her heart pounded violently.
What was she doing?
She’d dreamed about this moment for over a decade, yet now that it was about to happen, she couldn’t help wondering why. Why now? Was it because the kiss had opened his eyes to the possibilities? Or was it because Bridget was getting remarried?
She wanted Hawk, but not if she was merely the fill-in for the real thing. There wasn’t a world in which Ali could replace Bridget; the two sisters couldn’t be more different. And Hawk had a type—and it wasn’t Ali.
Terrified that she was making a mistake that could ruin everything, she reached for the only thing she knew for certain.
“This isn’t right,” she said and watched as his eyes fluttered open.
“It’s hard to get it right when you’re talking,” he said.
“No.” She placed a hand between their mouths. “Last time, I kissed you as a spur-of-the-moment solution, to what could have been an awful moment. But the more I think about this, the more I realize it was a mistake.”
Hawk’s face went carefully blank and he sat back, on the opposite side of the couch. “Funny, I’d call it eye-opening.”
“Hawk, every woman is eye-opening to you, which is why you burn hot and fast. Add that to my history with men and we’re destined to go off like a firecracker.”
“Fireworks, because there would be lights, sunshine.”
