Pride

  She opened the door—and there he was, the same ratty T-shirt, the same smoldering eyes, and suddenly she was right back where she’d started.

  On the brink of disaster.

  “I heard you’re having a party,” Reed said by way of greeting. “My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”

  “You weren’t—” Kaia cut herself off, torn between wanting to slam the door in his face and wanting to rip his clothes off. Telling him he purposely hadn’t been invited didn’t seem like the right move, but what if he wanted to stay? That could never be allowed. Your guest list defined you, and she refused to be known as the type of girl who invited—or even acknowledged the existence of—his type of guy.

  “I don’t do parties,” he informed her.

  She struggled not to look too relieved. On the other hand, she wasn’t quite ready for him to leave. And she definitely wasn’t ready for the realization that a part of her wanted to leave with him. “So why are you here?” she asked, trying to sound as if she didn’t care.

  Which, she assured herself, she didn’t.

  “I figured we’d start the New Year together,” he explained.

  “It’s eight thirty,” she pointed out caustically.

  “I thought you could just pretend,” he said, flashing a knowing grin. “You’re good at that.”

  He pulled out a paper noisemaker and gave it a half-hearted toot. Then, tossing it aside, he pulled her into his arms.

  “Happy New Year,” he whispered, his breath hot against her cheek, and then kissed her, sucking deeply on her lower lip, digging his hands into her flesh. She tore at him with urgency, at first, and then something shifted—the rough and raw energy between them softened, deepened. As his hands cupped her face, she opened her eyes, and he was watching her, his bottomless brown eyes only centimeters away. She could see herself reflected in them. She closed her eyes again and shut in the darkness, her world narrowed to the taste of his lips, the touch of his fingers, the sound of his breathing.

  Happy New Year? She mused. Just maybe.

  chapter

  13

  “You’re the only one I want, the only one I need….”

  Adam let the lyrics wash over him and pulled Harper in tighter as they swayed slowly back and forth to the music. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her auburn waves cascading down his chest.

  Kaia’s house, even more impressive than he’d remembered, was filled with people—some lounging in the hot tub, some picking their way through the gourmet spread, and a few couples off on the fringes, lost in their own world, like Harper and Adam.

  A cool, bluish light lit the oversize room, giving the stark white furniture and walls an icy sheen.

  “I could never live here,” Harper murmured, voicing his thoughts. “It’s too …”

  “Cold,” he finished for her. And it was true. Living like this, like Kaia, you could freeze to death.

  “But its a great party,” she continued. “Don’t you think?”

  “Definitely.” Also true. “But any party would be great—with you.” Adam had already had a couple drinks, and, with a little alcohol poured into him, his cheesiness factor skyrocketed.

  Harper raised her head from his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Ad, you don’t need to butter me up. You’ve already got me,” she pointed out, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “What?” he asked defensively. “It’s true!”

  She laughed and shook her head, her hair whipping across his face. “You’re a little drunk, my friend. But you’re also pretty damn sweet, so I guess it’s okay.”

  “Well, as long as I have your permission,” he blustered.

  She laid her head back against his shoulder. “I love this song,” she said softly.

  “All I ever needed, here in your arms …”

  More couples had joined them on the impromptu dance floor—but only one of them caught Adam’s eye.

  Kane had his back turned, but Adam could see her face, peeking over Kane’s shoulder. Her blond hair was down, falling across her cheek like a golden curtain. And her clear blue eyes met his.

  “… the only one I want, the only one I need …”

  He closed his eyes—but he still saw her face.

  Beth jerked her head away.

  Stop watching him, she instructed herself sternly, knowing it was no use. She’d been following him with her eyes all night, catching a glimpse of him embracing Harper by the doorway, holding hands on the stairs, kissing on the back deck. They were everywhere—and Beth couldn’t force herself to stay away.

  “What’s wrong?” Kane asked, peering down at her in concern.

  “Nothing,” she said quietly, thinking fast. “I was just looking … at all these couples dancing. It’s kind of sad, isn’t it, how no one really dances anymore?”

  “We’re dancing,” he pointed out.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. We’re just standing in one place, rocking back and forth. That’s not dancing—not really. In the old days …”

  “Let me guess: women in fancy ball gowns, men in tuxedos sweeping them around the dance floor?” he suggested.

  “Waltzing the night away,” she added, with a dreamy, faraway smile.

  “Don’t forget the ‘forbidden dance,’” he put in with a smirk.

  She gave him a teasing push. “Kane, I’m serious!”

  “And like I always say, your wish is my command.” He grabbed her hand in his, placing her other hand firmly at his waist. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where—?”

  Without answering, he swept her feet off the floor and, in classic ballroom form, began leading her around the room, weaving through couples and crowds of people, twirling her out and then reeling her back in.

  “People are staring at us!” she gasped through her laughter.

  “Let them stare,” he crowed. “They’re just jealous.”

  The whole room had, indeed, gradually stopped talking and turned to gape at the couple whirling through the room as if clumsy extras in a remake of Cinderella. But for once, Beth didn’t care. She was having too much fun, breathless with laughter, flying in Kane’s arms, feeling suddenly, wildly alive. He was right: Who cared what anyone thought?

  Finally the song ended, and he dipped her with an exaggerated flourish and then swept her back up into a deep kiss. “Happy New Year,” he whispered.

  “I’ve never—that was unbelievable,” she babbled, still flushed and giggling.

  “I promised you I’d show you a good time,” he reminded her. “You just have to trust me.”

  “I guess I’ve learned my lesson,” she agreed, unable to stop smiling. She kissed him again. “So, what’s next on the agenda?”

  “Funny you should ask.” He pulled a small box out of his pocket and handed it to her. “I’ve got a little surprise for you—Merry belated Christmas.”

  “What is it?” she asked in delight, tearing off the wrapping paper. Her smile faded as she opened the box and saw what lay inside.

  Two small yellow tablets. And that was it.

  “Kane, what is this?” she asked in a dull, flat voice.

  “Just something to make our New Year’s extra special,” he explained, putting an arm around her.

  She shrugged it off.

  “I don’t do drugs,” she snapped. “You know that.”

  “It’s not like this would make you a junkie,” he wheedled. “It’s just something special, a one-time deal. And you won’t believe how it will make you feel.”

  Beth suddenly felt like she was in the middle of one of those horrible after-school specials they forced on you in junior high health class, where the heroine almost bows to peer pressure but, in the end, wises up and decides to “just say no!” Or maybe this was one of those where the heroine decides to throw caution to the wind … and ends up living in a cardboard box with needle tracks tracing across her arms.

  No, I don’t do drugs, she’d assured her parents the one time they’d
gotten up the nerve to ask. Trust me, even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know where to find them.

  It had been true—for seventeen years—and now, suddenly, it wasn’t.

  Beth looked at the small open box, the innocuous-looking tablets. How much harm could they do, just this one time? What about all her talk about trying new things, taking risks—was it just that? Talk? She was always so predictable, so good, always doing the right thing. She looked across the room and there he was again, Adam—her gaze drawn to him no matter how hard she tried to avoid it. He kissed Harper, and Beth shivered. She’d done the right thing with him, and where had it gotten her? He still thought she was a cheater. A traitor. Everyone did. So why not actually do something, for once? It’s not like she had a reputation to protect, not anymore. Was she going to go through her life too afraid of consequences to ever really live?

  She picked up one of the pills between her thumb and index finger and looked at it thoughtfully.

  “You said you wanted some excitement in your life, a thrill,” Kane pointed out. “This is it—it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.”

  “I don’t know, Kane … it’s not … is it safe?”

  “As safe as can be,” he promised. “Would I be willing to take them myself if it weren’t safe?”

  She raised an eyebrow, and he gave her a rueful grin.

  “You have a point,” he admitted. “But I would never put you in danger.” He grabbed her and kissed her, lifting her off the ground, and then, slowly, eased her back down to earth. “I just want to show you something that’s almost as amazing as you are.”

  It was tempting—and it would be so easy to say yes. But skiing down a mountain was one thing, Beth decided. Throwing yourself off a cliff was another. “I don’t think so,” she said, wishing she sounded more resolute.

  “Come on,” Kane urged. “You know you want to.”

  Beth looked at him and, suddenly, snapped back to reality. You know you want to? This wasn’t even creative peer pressure—it was absurdly textbook, as if he’d lifted the line from a drug pusher’s manual: How to Drug Friends and Influence People. She might be naive, but not naive enough to fall for this.

  Beth put the tablet back into the box, replaced the lid, and tried to hand it back to Kane, but he refused.

  “Take it,” he said irritably. “I went to a lot of trouble to get these. I promise nothing will happen to you. Don’t you want to have some fun, for once in your life?”

  Without a word, she slipped the box into her purse, shook her head, and began to turn away. She needed—well, she didn’t know what she needed, exactly, other than to be somewhere else, away.

  “Don’t you trust me?” he asked plaintively.

  And that’s when she finally figured it out.

  No. I don’t.

  It was 11:29, and Miranda pushed her way out to the back deck, her heart pounding in her chest. He was out there, somewhere, her mystery man. He’d told her he would be wearing a gray-and-green-striped shirt, and she’d told him she would be wearing a pale blue, off-the-shoulder top. She still hadn’t told him that she was mousy and flat-chested, with rust-colored hair and a big mouth—but he’d find all that out soon enough. She hoped he wouldn’t care.

  She saw the shirt first.

  Normal build, normal height, no extra limbs—so far, so good.

  Then she saw his face.

  She raised her eyes to the ceiling. Was it too much to ask that she not be the punch line of every cosmic joke?

  Introducing Bachelor #1: Greg. Of course. The Greg she’d dated a couple of times and then blown off, the Greg who reamed her out every time he saw her, then raced off in the opposite direction. Miranda choked back a spurt of crazed laughter and resisted the impulse to offer up a feeble request: Can I see what’s behind door number two?

  But then, maybe because of the champagne, maybe because of the holiday spirit, maybe because she was just tired of being alone, Miranda took a moment. And reconsidered. After all, she remembered another Greg, the one who had been so good to her, before everything went down. A guy it had been so easy for her to talk to, and who, back in the beginning, at least, had seemed to like her so much.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a disaster. Maybe it was actually the universe’s way of giving her a second chance.

  “Miranda?” he asked in disbelief. “Please tell me you’re not Spitfire?”

  “Guilty,” she replied with a weak smile.

  The look on his face mirrored her own expression of a moment before: a mixture of disappointment, incredulity, and disgust.

  “It figures,” he mumbled under his breath, and turned to walk away.

  “Greg, wait,” Miranda said, grabbing his arm. “I know this seems—”

  “Pathetic? Like a cruel joke?”

  “Weird” she said firmly. “But think about it. This kind of makes sense. We have a lot in common, we get along … we used to get along…. Maybe this is a sign? That we should give it another shot?”

  “A sign?” He shot her a look of disbelief, then shook his head. “It’s a sign, all right—a sign that I should have listened to my instincts, that I should have known better than to try to meet someone on a Web site. What was I thinking—what kind of girl could I really have expected to find on the Internet?”

  “Could you lower your voice?” Miranda begged, edging away from him as the people nearby turned to stare.

  “I told myself they wouldn’t all be desperate and pathetic,” he continued, just as loudly. “I lied to myself. I should have known, they would all be just like you.”

  Kane took another gulp of vodka from his trusty silver flask.

  She’d walked away from him. Again. On New Year’s.

  This was getting old.

  And what had he done wrong this time? Just tried to show her how to have a little fun. But she was too good for that, wasn’t she? Too trapped by her narrow-minded view of the world to even notice when someone offered her an escape route.

  Kane reached in his pocket and pulled out another of the little yellow pills. Good thing he’d kept an extra supply on hand, just in case. He had hoped they could share this experience, that it would loosen her up and bring them closer—and isn’t that what she was always whining about? Wishing he would open up, let her get close? She’d had her chance—and she’d blown it.

  He popped the pill in his mouth and let it dissolve on his tongue, washing it down with another swig of vodka.

  He hated to take this stuff on his own, it was such a waste—but soon the drug would sweep over him and take him away, and then he wouldn’t care. Besides, he was used to alone. Alone was how he lived. It had never stopped him before, and it wouldn’t stop him tonight.

  He wouldn’t let it.

  She’d been a fool. Made an enormous mistake. That much was clear. But so much was still muddy and confusing.

  Beth threaded her way through the crowd and found her way out to the back deck, taking a deep gulp of fresh air. Turning her back on the noise of the party and the revelers in the hot tub, she leaned against the railing and looked out into the night. She’d made a mistake, yes. But what was it? Walking away from Kane? Or walking toward him in the first place?

  Half of her wanted to run back into the party and apologize; the other half wanted to leave and never look back. And, much as she hated to admit it, there was a small, small part of her conscious of the pills lodged in her purse, wondering: What if…?

  Too many options; too many decisions. So instead, she stayed at the railing, still, willing herself to think about something other than herself, than her bad choices. If she could clear her mind completely, maybe she could start over, start fresh. But before she could reboot, she’d need to shut down her mind, shut off her thoughts—and they were racing too quickly to be caught.

  She heard the footsteps, getting closer and closer, then stop, just behind her.

  She heard her name spoken, softly, hesitantly.

  But she didn’t turn around?
??not yet. She didn’t know what she was going to say. And as long as she kept her back to him, she wouldn’t have to decide.

  “How many rooms does this place have?” Harper asked in astonishment as she stumbled into the study after Kaia.

  “I’m still trying to figure that out,” Kaia giggled.

  Harper goggled at the room as they stepped inside—it was about eight by eight and, as far as she could tell, seemed to serve mainly as a closet for the Sellers’ CDs. “This is unbelievable,” she gushed.

  Under normal circumstances she might not have been so eager to expose her awe at Kaia’s starring role in Lifestyles of the Rich and Bitchy, preferring to mask her longing for the other girl’s clothes, car, house …life. But these weren’t normal circumstances. It was New Year’s Eve, she was at a party, her life was nearly perfect—and she’d already had maybe a little too much of the fluorescent pink punch sitting in a Waterford crystal bowl by the door of the kitchen. She was totally buzzed—but was it the alcohol? she wondered. Or was it Adam?

  Kaia, a few miles away from sober herself, was pawing frantically through the wall of CDs. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” she insisted. “You have got to hear this song.”

  “I can hear it later” Harper pointed out. “We can’t spend the whole night in here while you look.” But she wasn’t annoyed—her umbrella of goodwill was large enough to cover Kaia. Especially since Kaia was, after all, the one who’d delivered Adam to her doorstep. She felt a wave of friendship toward her former rival and, just as Kaia found the right CD and slipped it into the stereo, pulled her into the center of the room, and began twirling her around. An intense driving beat burst from the speakers, matched by a pumping base line. Harper and Kaia whirled around, throwing themselves into the music, the moment.

  Suddenly, the door swung open, and Kane stumbled into the room, grabbing Harper away from Kaia and swinging her into his arms. “Can I cut in?” he asked gruffly and belatedly, his breath hot and stinking of vodka.