LITMIR.BIZ

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her cheeks. No guy had ever made her blush.

      “Slip of the tongue,” she muttered, grabbing for any halfway believable excuse she could find. “I mean, you know, the words, they sort of go together. Naked. And bodies. I might just as easily have said dead and bodies.”

      Argh! Just stick a spike through your hand and get it over with, Cat. It’d be less painful than this.

      “I think I’d prefer naked ones to dead ones,” he murmured.

      She kept prattling on, like an out of control car careening toward a cliff. “You know what I mean, though, right? Some words are kind of a natural fit. Like fried and oysters.”

      His lips twitched again. “Most people would say fried goes better with chicken…but if you prefer oysters…”

      “I don’t. Prefer oysters, I mean, no matter what their, uh, reputation,” she said, wondering why she’d had to immediately latch on the sex food group when there were so many others available. Bacon and eggs. Hot and tamale.

      Dead and duck.

      “Me, neither. Nasty little things,” he said, obviously still talking about the oysters.

      Cat nodded in agreement. “Shiny and slippery and wet.”

      One of his brows shot up. “Shiny…slippery…wet?”

      Cat pictured putting her mouth in front of a firing squad for continuing to bring both their minds to places they had no business being. She closed her eyes, unable to manage a single word. She could only shake her head in dismay. When, in the name of heaven, had Cat Sheehan turned into a babbling idiot?

      Spence started to laugh—a low, husky laugh that made her tingle, all over. “I’d offer you a shovel, but I don’t have one on me. Besides, you’re doing a pretty good job digging yourself deeper into this hole all on your own.”

      “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go shoot myself now.”

      “I just told you I don’t have a shovel, Cat.”

      “So you can’t bury me?”

      “Uh huh.”

      She tapped the tip of her index finger on her cheek, thinking about it, even as she gave in and laughed a little with him. “Hmm, so how about backing up ten minutes and starting this whole thing over?”

      Spence leaned over the bar, propping his chin on his fist. “Hi. Thanks for the water. What’d you think of the music?”

      “You guys really are good,” she said, thrilled at the chance to keep the conversation neutral.

      “Thanks.” He leaned closer, raising his voice as more people crowded close to the bar, waving at Cat to place their orders. “We have a lot of fun doing it.”

      Getting back to work, she filled a few mugs, poured a few shots, blew off a few jerks, then returned her attention to the bass player in the corner. “I really liked that song you did about the girl with the fire in her eyes and the moonlight on her hair. Who sang it originally? I didn’t recognize it.”

      Spence shrugged, lifted his bottle to his mouth and sipped more water. After sipping, he lowered the bottle and wiped the moisture off his lips with the back of his hand.

      Cat just stared, acknowledging the truth: the man was poetry in motion. No small talk in the world was going to make her oblivious to that.

      “You didn’t recognize it because I wrote it,” he said.

      Wrote it. Wrote poetry? She blinked a couple of times, trying to backtrack and remember what the heck they’d been talking about before he’d gotten her all distracted with his water-drinking abilities. Then she remembered. “You wrote that song? The one about the hot night and the whispers in the dark?”

      Wow. She never would have guessed. Not only because the music had been so good, but also because of the unbridled emotion of the words, juxtaposed against the raw, haunting power of the melody. It had sounded…hungry. That was the only word she could find to describe it. “I’m impressed. You must have had quite a lot of inspiration to write such a powerful song.”

      She hadn’t been fishing for information. She hadn’t. It was none of her business what inspired him to write such a sensual, heated ballad. But she still held her breath, waiting for his response, hoping he wouldn’t say he’d written it for the love of his life. His longtime girlfriend.

      God, please, not his wife!

      When his answer came, she couldn’t help feeling a sharp stab of disappointment. Because a faraway look of longing and hunger accompanied his words. “I wrote it for a girl I was crazy about a long, long time ago.”

      HE’D WRITTEN the song for her.

      Staring at Cat, Dylan focused on those vivid green eyes of hers—those catlike green eyes. He silently willed her to read the truth that screamed loudly in his brain but didn’t cross his lips. It was you. It was always you.

      The girl in the song, with moonlight shining on her hair, had been Cat Sheehan bathed in the glow of an enormous bonfire the night of a homecoming game many years ago. If he closed his eyes, he could still see her there, standing completely alone, staring at the flames. She’d been lost in thought, seeming separate and distinct from the rowdy teenagers all around her.

      It was so easy even now to remember the way her eyes had glittered and her skin had taken on the golden sheen of the fire. Her hair had positively come alive, as brilliant and dazzling as the flames that leaped and crackled against the star-filled night sky. And even from several feet away, he’d seen the way her lips had moved, as if she were whispering something for her ears alone.

      He’d wanted to be the one she whispered to.

      Wondering why she looked so sad, so serious and so lonely, he’d even moved closer. He’d been driven to understand why she stood there by herself, as if a curtain had descended between her and everyone else. Everyone except him.

      Then someone had taken her arm and she’d rejoined the living, laughter on her lips, as always.

      And, as always, she hadn’t even noticed him standing there in the shadows. Apparently, she’d never really noticed him. Certainly not enough to make an impression. Because judging by tonight, Cat had absolutely no idea that they’d been classmates at Kendall High a mere nine years ago.

      It wasn’t her fault. Cat had never shunned him; he’d just been too intimidated to make her notice him. Not intimidated by her…but by the intensity of his own feelings, which had simply overwhelmed him, particularly after the night of the bonfire.

      Because that had been the night he’d realized there was so much more depth to the beautiful, vivacious Cat than she ever let the world see. The night he’d realized the two of them had something very deep and intrinsic in common.

      Their solitude.

      Things had changed, though. Because now, she definitely noticed him. For the past ten minutes, during her adorable, fumbling conversation—which was so unlike the self-assured Cat he remembered—she’d been staring at him with intensity, interest and pure, physical want.

      He knew the look. Tonight, he almost certainly mirrored it.

      Then again, if she’d ever really looked at him, she would have seen that look on his face throughout the entire year they’d gone to school together.

      Not meeting his eyes as she rubbed the surface of the bar with a damp rag, Cat said, “You have a lot of talent.”

      “Thanks. Music’s my passion.”

      “Your only passion?”

      “Not only. There’s also video games.”

      One of her delicate brows lifted. “Rock and roll and video games. So are you just a mature-looking fifteen-year-old?”

      “Smart-ass.” He didn’t elaborate

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