See Jane Score

Chapter 17

On the Limp: Injured

She’d been a fool. Several times over. First for falling in love with Luc, even as she’d known he’d break her heart. Then for looking him in the face and telling him that she was Honey Pie. He hadn’t known. Chances were that he never would have known.

She knew, and it had burned like a charcoal briquet right beneath her sternum. In the end she’d told him to relieve his mind. He’d been so freaked out thinking that someone was lurking in the shadows… and she supposed someone was. Her. And she’d told him to relieve her own conscience. So why didn’t she feel better?

Jane tossed her suitcase on the floor and burst into tears. She’d spent roughly seven hours in taxis or airports or on planes trying to get home. Trying to keep it together. She couldn’t anymore. The pain of losing Luc racked her body and huge sobs tore at her lungs. She’d known losing him would hurt, but she’d never imagined so much pain was even possible.

Moonlight poured through the window of the small bedroom in her apartment, and she shut the curtain. Shutting herself up in darkness. She’d taken the first available flight out of Phoenix that afternoon. She’d had a two-hour layover in San Francisco before continuing on to Seattle. She was a physical and emotional wreck. She’d had to leave. She hadn’t had a choice. She could not have walked into the locker room the next night and seen Luc’s face. She would have fallen apart. Right there in front of everyone.

Before she left, she’d called Darby and told him she had a family emergency. She was needed at home, and she would catch up with the team once they returned to Seattle. Even though there was nothing in it for Darby, he’d helped arrange her flight, and she realized that he was more than just a cocky wheeler-dealer. There was a heart beneath those thousand-dollar suits and bad ties. And just maybe he would be good for Caroline.

She’d called Kirk Thornton, too. He hadn’t been as understanding as Darby. He’d asked the nature of the emergency and she’d been forced to lie. She’d told him that her father had a heart attack. When it was actually her whose heart was breaking.

She fell onto her bed and closed her eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about Luc or remembering his face when she’d walked into the sports bar. He’d looked stunned, as if someone had hit him with a brick. She could recall every excruciating detail. The worst was his concern for her. And when he’d finally accepted that she was Honey Pie, his concern had turned to contempt. In that moment, she’d known she’d lost him forever.

Jane rolled onto her side and touched the pillow next to her. Luc had been the last person to lay his head on that pillow. She ran her hand over the soft cotton case, then she held it to her nose. She could almost smell him.

Regret and anger mixed with the pain in her soul, and she wished she hadn’t told him that she loved him. She wished he didn’t know. Mostly, she wished he’d cared. But he hadn’t.

Then I would hate to see what you do to people you don’t love, he’d said.

Tossing the pillow aside, she sat up in bed and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She changed into a large T-shirt, then moved through her dark apartment to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. It had been a while since she’d cleaned it out. She grabbed an old jar with one pickle chip floating on top and set it on the counter. She reached for an empty bottle of mustard and a half gallon of milk a week past its pull date and put them by the pickle jar. Her chest ached and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She would love to fall asleep until the pain went away, but even if that were possible, when she woke, she would face it again.

The telephone rang, and when it stopped, she took the receiver off the hook. She got her garbage can and some Formula 409 from beneath the sink and set them next to her within the light from the refrigerator. She cleaned to keep busy. To keep from completely going insane. It didn’t help because she relived every wonderful and exciting and horrible moment she’d spent with Luc Martineau. She remembered the way he threw a dart as if he could muscle a bull’s-eye. The way he rode his motorcycle and how it had felt to ride behind him. She recalled the exact color of his eyes and hair. The sound of his voice and the scent of his skin. The touch of his hands and body pressed to her. The taste of him in her mouth. They way he looked at her during sex.

She loved everything about Luc. But he didn’t love her. She’d known it would end. Eventually. The Honey Pie column had just prompted the inevitable. Even if she’d never sent it in, even if she’d never even written it, a relationship between her and Luc wouldn’t have worked out, despite her hope to the contrary. Ken hooked up with Barbie. Mick dated supermodels, and Brad married Jennifer. Period. That was life. The breakup was not her fault. He would have left. It was probably a good thing he’d left now, she told herself, instead of in a few more months when she would have discovered even more to love about him. When it would have hurt worse. Although she couldn’t imagine anything hurting worse. She felt as if a part of her had died.

Jane set her 409 on the counter and glanced across her apartment at her briefcase tossed on the coffee table.

There are some things in that Honey Pie piece-of-shit article that are just too close to be a coincidence, he’d said.

She’d always figured he’d recognize himself in the column, but she hadn’t figured he’d recognize her. She moved to the couch and sat. Things that were written about you and me that actually happened. She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. She brought up her Honey Pie folder and clicked on the March file. Until now, she’d been reluctant to read it. Afraid it was horrible and not flattering and not as good as she’d originally thought or intended. As she read, she was struck by how obvious she’d made it that it was her. It would have been more surprising if he hadn’t suspected anything. The more she read, the more she wondered if she’d left clues on purpose. It was almost as if she were jumping up and down from the pages and waving her arms and yelling, it’s me, Luc. It’s Jane. I wrote this.

Had she wanted him to figure out that she’d written the column? No. Of course not. That would be stupid. That would mean she’d purposely sabotaged the relationship.

She sat back and looked across the room at the fireplace mantel. At the photo of her and Caroline. At the crystal shark Luc had given her. When had she fallen in love with him? Was it the night of the banquet? The first night he’d kissed her? Or the day he’d bought her the hockey book all tied up in a pink bow? Perhaps she’d fallen a little in love with him all of those times.

She supposed the time didn’t matter as much as the bigger question. Was what Caroline always said about her true? Did she enter relationships with one foot out the door? With an eye toward the exit sign? Had she purposely written the article in such an obvious way to get out of her relationship with Luc before she fell too deep? If that was the case, she’d gotten out too late. She’d fallen deeper and harder than ever before. She hadn’t even known it was possible to fall so hard.

Her doorbell rang and she rose from the couch. It was past two a.m., and she couldn’t imagine who’d be standing on her porch. Her heart pinched even as she told herself that it wasn’t Luc, racing across the country after her like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

It was Caroline.

“I called all the hospitals,” her friend said as she hugged Jane tight against her chest. “No one would give me any information.”

“About what?” Jane extracted herself from Caroline’s grasp and took a step back.

“Your father.” Caroline lowered her chin and peered into Jane’s eyes. “His heart attack.”

Jane shook her head and rubbed her chilled arms through her long T-shirt. “My dad didn’t have a heart attack.”

“Darby called me and told me that he did!”

Oh, no. “That’s what I told the paper, but I just needed to come home and I needed a good excuse.”

“Mr. Alcott isn’t dying?”

“No.”

“I’m glad to hear it, of course.” Caroline sat hard on the sofa. “But I ordered flowers.”

Jane sat next to her. “Sorry. Can you cancel them?”

“I don’t know.” Caroline turned and looked at her. “Why the lie? Why did you have to come home? And why have you been crying?”

“Have you read Honey Pie this month?”

Caroline usually read all the columns. “Of course.”

“It was Luc.”

“I gathered that. Was he flattered?”

“Not at all,” Jane answered, and then she told her why. Through tears that wouldn’t stop, she told her friend everything. When she was finished, a frown pulled at Caroline’s brows.

“You already know what I’m going to say.”

Yes, Jane knew. And for the first time she actually listened. Jane had always been the smart one. Caroline the pretty one. Tonight Caroline was the pretty and smart one.

“Can you fix it?” Caroline asked.

Jane recalled the look in Luc’s eyes and him telling her to stay away from him and Marie. He’d meant it. “No. He would never listen to me now.” She leaned back against the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Men suck.” Jane rolled her head and looked at her friend. “Let’s make a pact to swear off men for a while.”

Caroline bit her lip. “I can’t. I’m sort of dating Darby now.”

Jane sat up straight. “Really? I didn’t know things had gotten that serious.”

“Well, he isn’t my usual type. But he’s nice to me and I like him. I like talking to him and I like the way he looks at me. And, well, let’s face it, he needs me.”

Yes, he certainly did. Jane figured Darby could probably fill Caroline up with a lifetime of need.

The next morning, Jane received flowers from the Chinooks organization expressing their condolences. At noon, flowers from the Times, and at one, Darby sent his own arrangement. At three, Caroline’s were delivered. They were all gorgeous and smelled wonderful and filled her with guilt. This was pure karmic retribution, and she promised God that she would never lie again if He would make the flowers stop.

On television that night, she watched the Chinooks play the Coyotes. Through the wire of his mask, Luc’s blue eyes looked out at her, as hard and as cold as the ice he played on. When he wasn’t cursing the air blue in front of his net, his lips were compressed into a grim line.

He looked up and the camera caught the anger in his eyes. He wasn’t in his zone. His personal life was affecting his game, and if Jane had harbored any hidden hope that she could fix the relationship, that hope died.

It was truly over.

Luc drew three penalties as he let his rage loose on anyone dumb enough to step inside his crease.

“What’s the matter, Martineau?” a Coyote forward asked after the first penalty. “Got your period?”

“Kiss my hairy beanbag,” he answered, hooked his stick in the guy’s skates, and pulled him off his feet.

“You’re an asshole, Martineau,” the guy said as he looked up from his position on the ice. Whistles blew and Bruce Fish was sent to the penalty box instead of Luc.

Luc picked up his water bottle and sprayed his face. Mark Bressler joined him at the net.

“Having an anger management problem?” the captain asked.

“What the fuck do you think?” Water dripped from his face and mask. Jane wasn’t in the press box. She wasn’t even in the same state, but he couldn’t get her out of his head.

“That’s what the fuck I think.” Bressler punched his shoulder with his big glove. “Try not to draw any more penalties and we just might win this thing.”

He was right. Luc needed to concentrate more on the game than on who was or wasn’t in the press box. “No more dumb penalties,” he agreed. But in the next frame, he wacked an opponent in the shin and the guy milked it for all it was worth.

“That didn’t hurt, you pussy,” Luc said as he looked down at the guy holding his shin and writhing in pain. “Get back up and I’ll show you hurt.”

The whistles blew and Bressler skated by, shaking his head.

After the game, the locker room was more subdued than usual. They’d put up two goals late in the third period, but it hadn’t been enough. They’d lost three-five. Phoenix sports reporters combed the room searching for sound bites, but no one was talking much.

Jane’s father had suffered a heart attack, and the players felt her absence. Luc didn’t believe the heart attack story, and was surprised that she’d turned tail and run. That wasn’t like the Jane he knew. Then again, he didn’t really know her at all. The real Jane had lied to him and used him and made a fool out of him. She knew things about him that he did not want to read in the newspapers. She knew that he iced down his knees and that everything wasn’t one hundred percent.

He was an idiot. How in the hell had he let a short reporter with curly hair and a smart mouth into his life? He hadn’t even liked her at first. How had he fallen so hard for her? She’d turned his life upside down and now he had to figure a way to get her out of his head. To get his focus back. He could do it. He’d battled back before, and he’d battled bigger demons than Jane Alcott. He figured all he needed was determination and a little time. Darby had told the team she wouldn’t be back to work until next week.

One week. Now that she was out of his life physically, it shouldn’t take that much time to get her the hell out of his head and get mentally back into the game.

And a week later, he was right. Partly, anyhow. He was back in his zone. Back to playing with skill instead of brute strength fueled by emotion, but he’d failed to get Jane out of his head completely.

The day he returned to Seattle, he felt bruised inside and out. He just wanted to sit on his couch, relax, and watch mindless television until Marie came home from school. Maybe they’d order out and have a nice relaxing dinner.

He should have known better. Like always with his sister, one minute things were fine, and the next everything went straight to hell. One minute she was filling him in on her day at school, then she took off her big bulky sweatshirt. Luc’s jaw dropped when he got a good look at her tight T-shirt and her breasts. They were a lot bigger than when he’d left on his trip a week ago. Not that he stared, but he couldn’t help but notice the difference.

“What are you wearing?”

“My BEBE shirt.”

“Your boobs are a lot bigger than they were last week. Are you wearing a padded bra?”

She folded her arms over her chest like he was a pervert. “It’s a water bra.”

“You can’t wear that outside the apartment.” He couldn’t let her outside with her breasts pushed up and out like that.

“I wore it to school all last week.”

Holy shit, he’d bet just about anything that the guys at her school had stared at her chest too. All week. While he’d been on the road. Christ, his life was a mess. A whole churning cauldron of crapola. “I bet the guys at your school had a real good time staring at your hooters. And you can bet they weren’t thinking very nice things about you.”

“Hooters,” she gasped. “That’s disgusting. You’re so mean to me. You always say mean things.”

Hooters wasn’t a bad word. Was it? “I’m telling you how guys think. If you show up in a big padded bra, with your breasts falling out, they’ll think you’re smutty.”

She looked at him as if he were a child molester instead of her brother who wanted to protect her from the little perverts at her school. “You’re sick.”

Sick? “No, I’m not. I’m just trying to tell you the truth.”

“You’re not my mom or my dad. You can’t tell me what to do.”

“You’re right. I’m not Dad and I’m not your mother. I may not be the best brother either, but I am all you’ve got.”

Tears leaked from her eyes and messed up her makeover. “I hate you, Luc.”

“No, you don’t. You’re just throwing a fit because I won’t let you walk around in a padded bra.”

“I bet you like women who walk around in padded bras.”

Actually, he’d grown an affection for, and an obsession with, small breasts.

“You’re a hypocrite, Luc. I’ll bet your girlfriends wear padded bras.”

Out of all the women he’d known, the one woman who had fascinated him the most didn’t wear a bra. He wondered what that said about him. He tried not to care, but he did. His cauldron of crapola churned a bit more.

“Marie, you’re sixteen,” he reasoned. “You can’t walk around in a bra that turns boys on. You’ll have to wear something else. Maybe a bra that has locking hooks.” That last he’d thrown in to be funny. As always, she failed to share his humor. His sister burst into tears.

“I want to go to boarding school,” she wailed and ran to her bedroom.

Her mention of boarding school set him back on his heels. He hadn’t thought of boarding school for a while. If he sent her to boarding school, he wouldn’t have to worry about her wearing padded bras when he was out of town. His life would be simpler. But suddenly the thought of her going away held not the slightest appeal. She was a pain and moody, but she was his sister. He was getting used to having her around, and the thought of boarding school no longer seemed like any kind of solution.

He followed her to her room and leaned a shoulder into the doorframe. She lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling, her arms spread out like she was a martyr on the cross.

“Do you really want to go to boarding school?” he asked.

“I know you don’t want me here.”

“I’ve never said that.” They’d had this conversation before. “And it’s not true.”

“You want to get rid of me,” she sobbed. “So I’ll go away to school.”

He knew what she needed to hear and what he needed to say. For her as much as for him. He’d been indecisive long enough. “Too late.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not going anywhere. You live here with me. If you don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”

She looked over at him then. “Even if I want to go?”

“Yeah,” he said and was surprised at how much he meant it. “Even if you want to go, you’re stuck here. You’re my sister and I want you to live with me.” He shrugged. “You’re a pain in the keister, but I like having you around bugging me.”

She was quiet a minute, then whispered, “Okay. I’ll stay.”

“Okay, then.” He pushed away from the doorframe and moved into the living room. He looked out the tall windows toward the bay. His relationship with his sister wasn’t the best. Their living arrangement was less than ideal; he was gone almost as much as he was in town. But he wanted to know her before she left for college and grew into an adult.

Over the past sixteen years, he should have seen her more. He certainly could have. He had no excuses. No good ones, anyway. He’d been so wrapped up in his own life, he hadn’t thought about her all that much. And that made him ashamed for all the times he’d been in LA and had never made a real effort to see her. To know her. He’d always known that made him a selfish bastard. He just hadn’t ever really thought there was anything wrong with being selfish-until now.

He heard her soft footsteps and he turned around. With her cheeks still wet and mascara running down her face, she wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. “I like living here bugging you.”

“Good.” He hugged her. “I know I can never take the place of your mother or dad, but I’ll try to make you happy.”

“I was very happy today.”

“You still can’t wear that bra.”

She was quiet a moment, then gave a long-suffering sigh. “Fine.”

They looked out the windows together for a long time. She talked about her mother, and she told him the reason she kept the dried flowers on her dresser. He guessed he understood, although he did think it was creepy. She told him she’d talked about it with Jane too, and that Jane had told her she would put them away someday when she was ready.

Jane. What was he going to do about Jane? All he’d wanted was a peaceful life. That’s it, but he hadn’t had a peaceful moment since he’d met Jane. No, that wasn’t true. When she’d been with him for those few short weeks, his life had been better than he could ever remember. Being with her was like being home for the first time since he’d moved to Seattle. But that had been an illusion.

She said she loved him. He knew better than to believe it, but deep down in a place he couldn’t ignore, he wanted that lie to be true. He was a sucker and a chump. He would see her tomorrow night for the first time in a week, but he hoped that, like all pain, after the initial sting he’d become numb and wouldn’t feel it anymore.

That’s what he hoped, but that wasn’t what happened when she walked into the locker room the next night. Luc felt her presence even before he glanced up and saw her. The impact of seeing her slammed in his chest and left him winded. When she spoke, her voice poured through him, and against his iron will, he soaked her up like a dry sponge. He was in love with her. There was no denying it to himself any longer. He’d fallen in love with Jane, and he didn’t have a clue what to do about it. As he sat there with his feet jammed into his untied skates and the laces in his hands, he watched her walk toward him, and with each step his heart felt like it was pounding a hole in his chest.

Dressed in black, with her smooth white skin, she looked the same as always. Her dark hair curled about her face, and he forced himself to lace his skates, when what he really wanted to do was shake her, then hold her tight until he absorbed all of her.

The hardest thing Jane had ever done was walk across the locker room and face Luc. When she approached, he looked down at his laces. For several long seconds she watched him lace his skates, and when he wouldn’t look up at her, she spoke to the top of his head. “Big dumb dodo.” She balled her hands into fists to keep from reaching out and touching his hair. “I want you to know,” she said, “that I have no intention of writing anything about you ever again.”

Finally he looked up. His brows were drawn over the turmoil in his blue eyes. “Do you expect me to believe you?”

She shook her head. Her heart cried for him. For her. For what they might have had together. “No. I don’t, but I thought I’d tell you anyway.” She looked at him one last time, then walked away. She joined Darby and Caroline in the press box and took out her laptop to take notes.

“How’s your father?” Darby asked, heaping more guilt on her head.

“He’s feeling much better. He’s at home now.”

“His recovery has been amazing,” Caroline added with a knowing smile.

After the first period, the Chinooks scored a goal against the Ottawa Senators, but the Senators rallied in the second frame and put up a goal of their own. When the final buzzer sounded, the Chinooks won by two points.

As Jane moved to the locker room once again, she wondered how much longer she could take this. Seeing Luc constantly was more than her heart could take. She didn’t know how much longer she could continue covering the Chinooks, even though it meant giving up the best job she’d ever had and a chance for a better career.

She took a deep breath and entered the locker room. Luc sat in front of his stall as usual. He was bare from the waist up. His arms were folded across his chest, and he watched her as if he were trying to figure out a puzzle. She asked as few questions of the players as possible and beat a hasty exit before she broke into tears in front of the team. They’d assume she was crying because of her sick father and would probably send her more flowers.

She practically ran from the room, but when she was halfway to the exit, she stopped. If ever there was something she needed to stick around and fight for, Luc was that something. Even if he told her he hated her, at least she would know.

She turned and leaned a shoulder into the cinder block wall, in the same place Luc had once waited for her. He was the first to enter the tunnel, and his gaze locked with hers as he walked toward her, looking obscenely handsome in his suit and red tie. With her heart in her throat, she straightened and stepped in front of him. “Do you have a minute?”

“Why?”

“I wanted to talk to you. I have something I need to say, and think it’s important.”

He looked behind him at the empty tunnel, opened the janitor’s closet they’d been in before, and shoved her inside. He flipped on the light as the door shut behind them, sealing them together in the same place where he’d once kissed her passionately. As she gazed into his face, he neither smiled nor frowned, and his eyes looked tired but gave nothing away. Nothing of the emotion she’d seen earlier in the locker room.

“I thought you needed to say something.”

She nodded and leaned back against the closed door. The scent of his skin filled her with a visceral memory and deep longing. Now that the time had come, she didn’t know where to begin. So she just talked. “I want to tell you again how sorry I am for the Honey Pie column. I know you probably don’t believe me, and I don’t blame you.” She shook her head. “At the time I wrote it, I was falling in love with you, and I just sat down and poured out my fantasy about you. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to send it in. I just wrote, and when I was through, I knew it was the best thing I’d ever written.” She pushed away from the door and walked past him in the small closet. She couldn’t look at him and tell him everything that needed to be said. “When I finished it, I knew I shouldn’t send it in, because I knew you wouldn’t like it. I knew how you felt about untrue things written about you. You’d made that really clear.” With her back to him, she wrapped her hand around a part of the metal shelving. “I sent it anyway.”

“Why?”

Why? This was the hard part. “Because I loved you and you didn’t love me. I’m not the kind of woman you date. I’m short and flat-chested and I can hardly dress myself. I didn’t think you’d ever care for me the way I care for you.”

“So you did it to get back at me?”

She looked over her shoulder and forced herself to turn and face him. To face the contempt she might once again see in his eyes. “No. If I’d wanted just to get back at you for not loving me, I would have kept myself anonymous.” She folded her arms across her chest as if to keep her pain from spilling out on the floor. “I did it to end the relationship before it began. So I could blame the article. So that I wouldn’t get in too deep.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No. I’m sure it doesn’t to you, but it does to me.”

“That’s the most ass-backward excuse I’ve ever heard.”

Her heart sank. He didn’t believe her. “I’ve been thinking a lot this past week, and I’ve realized that in every relationship with a man that I’ve had, I’ve always entered an escape hatch just in case I might get hurt. The Honey Pie column was my escape hatch. Problem was, I didn’t get out fast enough.” She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I love you, Luc. I fell in love with you, and I was so afraid that you would never love me. Instead of thinking a relationship with you was doomed to end, I should have fought to keep it together. I should have… I don’t exactly know what. But I do know it ended badly. I take the blame for that, and I’m sorry.” When he didn’t say anything, her heart plummeted further. There was nothing left to say except, “I was hoping we could still be friends.”

He raised a dubious brow. “You want to be friends?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

She’d never thought one little word could hurt so much.

“I don’t want to be your friend, Jane.”

“I understand.” She put her head down and moved past him to the door. She hadn’t thought she had any more tears to shed. She thought she’d cried them all, but she was wrong. She didn’t care if the rest of the Chinooks were in the tunnel; she had to get out of there before she fell apart. She twisted the door handle and pulled, but nothing happened. She pulled harder, but the door didn’t budge. She turned the lock, but it still didn’t open. She looked up and saw Luc’s hands above her head holding the door shut.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she turned to face him. He stood so close her nose was inches from his chest and she could smell the clean cotton scent of his dress shirt mixed with his deodorant.

“Don’t play games, Jane.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why do you tell me you love me in one breath, and then in the next tell me you just want to be friends?” He placed his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “I have friends. I want more from you than that. I’m a selfish guy, Jane. If I can’t be your lover, if I can’t have all of you, then I don’t want anything.” He lowered his face to hers and kissed her, a soft press of his lips to hers, and the tears she’d been trying to hold back filled her eyes. Her hands grasped the front of his shirt and she held on tight. She would be his lover, and this time she wouldn’t invent reasons to get out. She wanted this too much.

He slid his mouth across her cheek and he whispered in her ear, “I love you, Jane. And I’ve missed you. My life has been total shit without you.”

She pulled back and looked into his face. “Say it again.”

He raised his hands to her face and brushed his thumbs across her cheeks. “I love you, and I want to be with you because you make my life better.” He pushed her hair behind her ear. “You asked me once what I see when I look into my future.” He slid his palm down her shoulder and took her hand. “I see you,” he said and kissed her knuckles.

“You’re not mad at me?” she asked.

He shook his head and his lips brushed the backs of her fingers. “I thought I was. I thought I’d be mad at you forever, but I’m not. I don’t really understand your reasons for sending that column in, but I just don’t care anymore. I think I was more pissed off about feeling like a fool than about the actual column.” He placed her palm on his chest. “When I saw you waiting for me, my anger evaporated and I knew I’d be a bigger fool if I let you go. I want to spend the rest of my life getting to know your secrets.”

“I don’t have any more secrets.”

“Are you sure there isn’t at least one?” He wrapped an arm around her back and kissed her neck.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re a nymphomaniac?”

“Are you serious?”

“Well… yes.”

Jane shook her head and managed a weak, “No,” before she burst out laughing.

“Shh.” Luc pulled back and looked into her face. “Someone will hear you and bust in on us.”

She couldn’t stop laughing and so he silenced her with his mouth. His lips were warm and welcoming and she slid into the kiss with the abandon of a true nympho. Because sometimes in life, Ken didn’t always choose Barbie. For that, he had to be rewarded.