Читать книгу Triple Threat - JENNIFER LABRECQUE - Страница 8

“Eli’s flying in this afternoon. Greg’s picking him up at the airport and they’re heading straight to the rehearsal,” Lisa Mosley said as she strolled into Tara’s now-empty classroom after a cursory knock.

Tara knew he was coming, that he was one of the groomsmen, but hearing Lisa say it, sent her stomach somersaulting. Tara was a bridesmaid. She’d be at the rehearsal. He’d be at the rehearsal. The situation had disaster written all over it. But then, she’d known Eli had disaster written all over him from the first minute she’d seen him in high school and felt her heart drop into her stomach…and he hadn’t seen her at all.

She glanced up from the pile of essays her eighth graders had turned in last period. Despite the upheaval inside her, she strove for calm nonchalance. “And I care why?”

Lisa settled on the edge of Tara’s desk. “Hel-lo. I distinctly remember what happened two years ago when Christy and Matt got married.”

Good Lord, Lisa would be insufferable if she only knew that it had been the second time Tara had slept with Eli. In a moment of weakness, she’d confessed that second indiscretion to Lisa, but thank God, had the good sense to not tell her it was bedroom romp numero deux. “Everyone’s allowed one mistake—” or two “—in a lifetime.”

Lisa stared her down, continuing her interrogation Spanish Inquisition-style. “Are you bringing a date to the wedding?”

Tara abandoned the essays. Grading them wasn’t going to happen today. She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms and returned Lisa’s stare. “I don’t need to bring a date to the wedding. I’m an independent woman who doesn’t have to have a man attached to her side to prove anything, thank you.”

“Anthony was busy?”

Smirking really wasn’t attractive on Lisa, but Tara held her tongue.

“Well, yeah.” Okay, so Tara had known a moment of last-minute panic. True enough, she didn’t need a man, but having a human shield between her and Captain Hard Body had suddenly struck her as a prudent move.

Eli Murdoch was her Achilles’ heel. Her weak spot. If she could keep him at arm’s length then he couldn’t get close enough to get around her. She just didn’t think she could put herself through another great-sex-and-then-he-never-calls episode again.

Hence, she’d made an emergency plea to Anthony Caldwell, who was nothing more than a friend and totally, blindly in love with Trish McGee, who’d stupidly moved in with the good-for-nothing Mac Taylor—the intricacies of small-town relationships could be mind-boggling. But Anthony was out of town on business.

Which meant that Tara had to face Eli Murdoch on her own.

“Eli’s going to be your escort.” Lisa shot her an arch look.

“I wish you hadn’t…”

“Where there are sparks, there’s fire. Look at me and Greg. We’re the last two people you’d expect to get married.”

Wasn’t that the truth? Lisa was the smart chick with the smart mouth and Greg was your typical Tennessee good ol’ boy—but what they had worked. Still, Lisa, who always thought she knew best, was wasting her time having Eli escort Tara. Whatever.

“I think I can handle hooking my arm through his without throwing him to the church floor and having my wicked way with him.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Actually, she wasn’t altogether certain—but she was darn sure going to try. For some crazy, totally frightening reason, all of her self-control seemed to desert her whenever she was close to his dark-haired, dark-eyed, chiseled-lipped, breathtakingly broad-shouldered, hard-bodied six-foot-two self.

Willpower? Gone.

Common decency? Out the window.

She remembered every inch, every nuance of him in excruciating, maddening detail even though it had been two years. The way his fingers had curled through hers when he held her hands above her head, against the smooth cotton sheets…the low, guttural sound he made in the back of his throat when she traced her finger along the muscled ridge bisecting his hip.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Tara said.

“You do realize that if Eli wasn’t a problem for you, you wouldn’t have had to turn to Anthony as a stand-in date? You’d have a real date.”

Now Lisa was just getting ridiculous. As if Eli Murdoch had any bearing on her love life or immediate lack thereof. “Please. I’ve dated guys. I just happen to be in between.”

She’d had two lovers since the last time she’d slept with Eli. One guy a year didn’t seem excessive. They’d been competent, and one would think that one man’s warm breath against her neck would feel the same as another’s, that the rasp of male stubble against her bare skin shouldn’t vary much from man to man. But it did. Neither of her subsequent lovers had come close to measuring up to Eli—literally or figuratively.

Unfortunately, Eli was the wrong man for her. She’d always known it–from the very first moment she’d laid eyes on him when she’d transferred to Jackson Flats High School as a sophomore. Her breath caught in her throat as she recalled the very instant she’d seen him, a senior, decked out in his ROTC uniform, so commanding with his broad shoulders and height, so compelling with his piercing dark eyes, so handsome, it was as if everything inside her melted.