THIS PERFECT KISS Read online

  "Kim." He said her name out loud, and it stabbed him like a knife. His belly clenched, cramping against the pain, but it still came, more pain, again and again, in sharp, burning bursts. Tears stung the inside corners of his eyes.

  Some months—years?—from now, when his sanity returned, he'd have to call his agent. Maybe he could play a character like Ned Smith after all. Because seeing again the first woman he'd ever loved, the only woman he would ever love, hurt like hell.

  * * *

  On his way to Jilly's shop, Rory maneuvered his Mercedes through the dusk and the late Saturday afternoon traffic, the large box holding that damned dress beside him on the leather passenger seat. Greg had surprised the hell out of him a few hours ago by stalking into the library and tossing the box onto the desk without explanation. Greg's face, tight and pale, had surprised him even more. There was a glitter in his brother's eyes that had warned Rory right away to keep his mouth shut.

  So Rory had bent over the stacks of paperwork on his desk. Wrapped up in his work, he had ignored the box, too.

  For about nine minutes.

  But, like a quarter burning a hole in a little boy's pocket, the box refused to be ignored.

  Telling himself it was a preemptive strike—if she did come to get it herself, God knew how long she'd want to swish around the house, distracting him, irritating him—he'd grabbed his keys and headed in the direction of West Hollywood. He had a vague recollection of the area where he would find Jilly's shop. Ten years ago it had been a seedy collection of bars, secondhand stores, and rooming houses. He assumed it was different now.

  And when he turned onto Freewood Drive

  , he realized it was different, all right. A neon sign arching over the street flickered to life just as he drove beneath it. FREEWEST, it proclaimed in startling blue letters. As exclamation point, a palm tree burst into chartreuse green.

  The colors hurt Rory's eyes. He winced and looked away, taking in the odd collection of shops and businesses. Christ. Tattoos and tarot cards. A shop specializing in motorcycle leathers, and a dance club advertising Saturday night was "Boogie in Bubbles Night… Bring Your Own Towels."

  Boogie in bubbles. What the hell was that? he wondered, shaking his head. It was L.A., he answered himself. Admittedly, his adopted city of San Francisco had its share of eccentricities, but a layer of Old World, tongue-in-cheek chic softened all the edges like the fog softened the northern California air.

  In L.A., everything was neon-bright, unabashed, and in-your-face. And, Rory thought as he pulled into a parking space and noted the sole type of stock in the shop beside Jilly's—condoms—in L.A. everything was about sex.

  Which was all he could think about when he spotted Jilly at the back of her shop. With darkness now fully descended, the windows of Things Past were lit like a TV screen. Rory's gaze skipped over her window display to land on the woman herself, standing beside a rack in another of her improbable outfits.

  Her compact body was dressed in a hot-pink skirt with a matching short jacket. A round hat of the same color was perched on her head, with a veil that hung over her eyes to brush the bridge of her pert nose. The outfit should have looked ridiculous, but instead, as she bent over a rack to adjust some hangers, Rory stared at her round butt and thought it looked raunchy.

  Christ. He rubbed the back of his neck. Face it. It didn't matter if Jilly was dressed like Janis Joplin or Jackie Kennedy; to him, her body was Sexyland and he itched to get in line for all his favorite rides.

  Tightening his jaw, Rory grabbed the box and forced himself out of the car. Just give her the dress and get out. Now wasn't the time to be thinking of what he could do with a bonus admission ticket.

  He'd been steering as clear of her as he could, and doing a good job of it, damn it, because he knew that somewhere between her uncontrollable hair and her unbelievably small feet he'd find his downfall. But not if he controlled his lust.

  It just never had been so damn hard to manage. After leaving L.A. almost a decade ago, he'd certainly not cut women out of his life. He'd enjoyed them and bedded them with pleasure. But cautiously. Temperately. He hadn't been looking for high passion, only mutual satisfaction, and he'd found it with women who saved all their passions and their focus for their careers. But Jilly didn't strike him as the cautious or temperate type.

  Bells jangled brightly when he pushed open the door to Things Past. Jilly jumped, her hand flying to her chest as she twirled in his direction.

  "Oh," she said, and swallowed. "We're closed."

  Her lips matched the bright pink of the dumb hat she wore. "I'm not here to make a purchase, Jilly," he said. "And the door was open."

  "Well, oh, all right." She swallowed again. "What are you doing here?"

  The air of the store smelled light and sweet, like the scent Jilly brought into Caidwater. The scent that chased away the heavy dread of old memories. "I've brought you something."

  "Yes?" she said warily, her pink lips pursing. "What?"

  Rory stared at her mouth. He didn't know why he didn't mention the dress. He didn't know why he didn't just take the box from under his arm and lay it down somewhere, anywhere, and leave. But something about her discomfort in seeing him and her near-truculent suspicion … amused him.

  As he approached her, she backed around a circular rack of clothes, toward the door he'd just come through. Yes, for the past two days, ever since she'd lit into him after the canoe incident, he'd been avoiding her. But now he wondered if it wasn't the other way around.

  He halted and his eyebrows rose. "Are you going somewhere?"

  Her shoulders hit the plate glass of the door, and she glanced behind her, as if surprised to find herself there. "Uh. No. Of course not." Her hand turned a lock. "Just, um, locking up. We're closed."

  "You already said that." Rory didn't also point out that she'd just locked him inside. With her.

  Though God knew it was an infinitely appealing idea, it was also one he should be running from. But as he watched her nervously lick her full lips he relaxed a little, enjoying her tension. After a few days of living at Caidwater with her scent, her presence constantly teasing and tempting him, it seemed only fair to give her a taste of her own medicine in her own territory.

  He started toward her again and she immediately sidled away from the door. When he changed direction to follow her, his hip brushed against a rack of clothes, and he had to grab the metal rod to save it from going over. The dresses hanging from it continued to swing, though, and a fluttering price tag caught his eye.

  "Whoa." He grabbed the hand-lettered ticket to recheck the dollar figure. "Whoa," he said again.

  That much? He set the box he held on the floor and pushed at the hangers to get a better look at the white, lightweight dress. The thing was decorated with lace on the neck and sleeves and a bunch of other places. Rory noticed there were several similar dresses on the rack. Astonished by how much she was asking for someone else's castoff, Rory looked over at Jilly. "You sell much of this stuff?"

  A little smile lifted the corners of her mouth. "As much as I can find. That's what's known as a lingerie dress, and it's from the early 1900s."

  He frowned. "But it's still someone else's old clothes."

  She laughed. "To you. To someone else it's a collectible antique. To someone in the movie or TV business, it could be a costume."

  The top part of the dress was very full, but the waist was tiny. "Who could wear something sized like this?"

  Jilly shrugged. "Collectors don't generally wear their clothes, and a costumer might just use it as the basis for a pattern. But I—" She clamped her mouth shut and her cheeks turned pink.

  Rory looked from the dress to Jilly, then back to the dress again. Yeah, she'd fill out the full bodice sweetly, but even with her small waist… "This wouldn't fit you."

  "Not without a corset," she agreed, her cheeks even pinker.

  A corset. Rory remembered that intriguing category listed on her Web site, "Victorian Underg
arments." As if it burned, he dropped his fingers from the dress, but that didn't stop a vision of Jilly, her waist made even smaller, her breasts thrusting forward. And what was burning was him, burning with the kind of lust he'd promised himself to control.

  Drawing in a breath, he swung his gaze in the opposite direction of that devilish dress and Jilly. Clothes filled the store—dresses and blouses on racks, stacks of sequined sweaters on shelves against the wall. Hand-lettered signs indicated time periods and types of clothing. There wasn't a Victorian undergarment in sight.

  Thank God.

  Damn it.

  But he wasn't ready to look at Jilly yet. He wasn't ready to leave yet either. He needed the camouflage of the racks to hide what the idea of a corseted Jilly had done to his body.

  Taking another deep breath, he turned his back on the clothes and looked out the window into the evening darkness. Across the street was another neon sign, this one a moon and stars announcing the presence of an astrologer's parlor.

  "So, um, what made you settle on this location? Another suggestion of your astrologer's?"

  "Another what?" she asked, her voice puzzled, but then she caught herself. "Oh. Oh, no. This had been my mother's shop. I inherited it when she passed away."

  Rory looked at her now. "I'm sorry."

  "I was really sorry, too." Jilly dropped her gaze and brushed at something on her skirt.

  He tried to change the subject. "So … what made your mother go into the vintage-clothing business?"

  Jilly brushed at her skirt again. "I don't know exactly. I never had the opportunity to ask her." She looked up at him, that pink veil masking the expression in her eyes. "I was raised by my grandmother. She didn't quite … approve of my mother. I'd guess you'd say they were estranged. I never knew my mother until … until I opened the door of this shop, I suppose."

  Something lurched in his gut. "When was this?"

  "Four years ago. Four years ago I left my grandmother's." Her thumb jabbed in the direction of the ceiling. "I live upstairs."

  "So you just came here on your own and took over your mother's business?"

  "Yep." She absently straightened a blouse on a nearby hanger. "I was twenty-one and determined to prove something."

  She'd been just a kid, Rory realized. A kid who hadn't known her mother, a kid who'd opened the door to a different world and then stayed there.

  Not so different from himself.

  He shoved the thought away and tried to ignore the spurt of admiration he felt for Jilly, too. As similar as their stories might appear, they'd chosen different worlds. Unbridgeable worlds.

  He leaned over to pick up the box that held the dress. "I came to give you this," he said, moving toward her.

  Her brows drew together, then lifted. "The dress!" A smile broke over her face. "Thank you. I was in such a hurry to leave yesterday, I forgot all about it."

  She moved toward him now, her mouth soft and her eyes bright as she held out her hands. A lick of annoyance burned in his belly and he drew back the box. "Why in such a hurry yesterday?"

  "What?"

  "Did you have a date or something?"

  She made a face and grabbed one end of the box.

  He didn't let go. "Well?"

  She tugged on the box. He still held on. "Did you?" he repeated.

  Jilly rolled her eyes. "Did you?" she asked.

  When he didn't release the box or answer, she made that face again. "Anyway, I'm under no obligation to explain my personal life to you."

  He still didn't let go, because, yeah, she did need to explain her personal life to him. Because, dammit, when he'd wanted to think of her only as sex candy, she'd gone ahead and shown him the soft center of her, that part of Jilly who had been a young woman who hadn't known her mother until she'd opened up a door. Someone who brushed away nonexistent lint instead of letting him see that her mother's death still saddened her. Someone who had taken a business and run with it.

  Thinking of her as sex candy was safer. Thinking of her as some other man's sex candy was safer still.

  "Tell me if you had a date last night, Jilly," he said quietly.

  At his new tone, the exasperation left her face. But she tightened her grip on the box and lifted her chin. "What about you?" she said. "Did you have a date last night?"

  Something tickled the back of his mind. Jilly, hovering in the doorway of the library at Caidwater yesterday. He'd been talking on the phone to Lisa, a woman he casually dated in San Francisco. He'd been trying to coax her into taking the next plane out and then a limo from LAX to Caidwater. If she got there by five, he'd promised her dinner at Spago's.

  He narrowed his eyes. Sometime in the middle of that phone conversation, Jilly had disappeared from the doorway and then later had been in such an all-fired hurry to leave before five o'clock that she'd forgotten the dress they were now playing tug-of-war with. "Are you jealous?" he asked.

  She gave him a look that should have eviscerated him. "Of what? Of whom?" she said. "Of some woman you took to Spago's?" With a vicious tug, she jerked the box from his hands, then obviously realized that she'd also just given herself away. Her fingers fumbled, and the box and its contents fell to the floor.

  Jilly looked down in dismay, her face a brighter pink than her skirt and jacket. He knew she knew he knew she'd been listening to that phone call. "Now look what you've done!" she said.

  Rory bent to retrieve the dress, trying not to laugh. She looked so put out with him for catching her. He should tell her it didn't matter, that he'd always known the attraction ran both ways. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the kind of heat they generated required two. As a matter of fact, he'd made that phone call to Lisa only to prove to himself he could think of a woman other than Jilly.

  He picked up the dress by the shoulders—it was black and rustled—shaking it out as he straightened. His gaze met hers and in her eyes was equal parts embarrassment and awareness. He bit back his smile again. Jilly flustered was kind of … cute. Sweet.

  God.

  He thrust the dress at her. "Put this on for me," he said.

  She closed her arms around the garment and held it against her. "What?"

  "Put the damn dress on."

  Cute. Sweet. What was he thinking? Thoughts like those were as scary as the dimple. He had to remember that she was dangerous to him. She was potential disaster, his downfall, the symbol of all that could go wrong if he let down his guard in L.A. Hell if he was going to start thinking of this walking taste of sin as anything less than lethal.

  He glanced down. The dress looked bare enough. A little glimpse of Jilly's flesh and he'd remember all over again why he couldn't touch it. Why he shouldn't touch her.

  He groaned inwardly. God, he hoped she wouldn't ask him to explain all that, because it wasn't making sense to him either. He just knew it had to be done.

  "Go on," he said, softening his voice. "I want to see what the fuss is about."

  Obviously puzzled, she cocked her head. He wasn't going to let himself think of her confusion as cute, too. "Go on," he said again. "Show me what makes this dress so special."

  She seemed to accept that explanation. Still clutching the dress against that hot-pink suit, she retreated in the direction of a couple of shuttered dressing rooms. "I'm pretty sure this one isn't a costume," she said, as if he really cared. "Though it looks like something Audrey Hepburn might have worn."

  He stopped listening as she went into more detail. Instead, he concentrated on watching her withdraw behind those shutters. She was so short that once she stepped out of her high heels, her curly hair completely disappeared, and he had only her curvy calves to contemplate as she changed clothes.

  But it was enough. He caught a quick glimpse of pink netting when she lifted the hat from her head. Her voice lowered as he imagined her tucking her chin against her chest to undo the buttons on the suit jacket.

  When the pink skirt dropped to the floor of the dressing room, his blood started to pound
. She had him thinking of undergarments again. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head when a lacy-cupped bra fell on top of the skirt.

  Good.

  This dainty sex goddess was safe from him, and safe to him, as long as he only lusted after her. He just couldn't let himself like her.

  Or touch her.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he watched her step into the black dress. It even sounded naughty, its rustle like a woman's sexy, hoarse, whispering demands. Stroke me here. Yes. Just like that. Rory shifted on his feet, imagining Jilly's voice, the heat of Jilly's skin, the places she'd want him to stroke.

  She was sex, all right. He could feel the warmth of it, smell its scent. It slipped under the dressing room door and oozed out the tilted slats of the shutters.

  Rory let it wrap around him, sex and anticipation. Hot tentacles of soft, scented temptation. The dressing room doors slowly opened and he held his breath.

  Jilly stepped out. She'd said Audrey Hepburn, but to Rory's mind, the black dress was like something a ballerina might wear—tiny sleeves that fell off her shoulders, the top of the dress fitted like second skin to her waist, and then the full skirt a bell that ended just above her ankles.

  Christ. He tried to suck in some air, but his lungs wouldn't work, because when he'd wished for bare flesh, the devil must have been listening. Sweet, pale skin from her wrists to her shoulders. Then those nothing-to-speak-of sleeves, and then the wide, scooping neckline that somehow exposed and somehow lifted Jilly's nearly naked breasts.

  Rory didn't know whether to light a candle in appreciation or cross himself for protection.

  Then she turned, and his Adam's apple dropped from his throat to land at his feet. The dress was unzipped, leaving a vee of pale Jillyflesh from an inch or so below her waist to her shoulders. His gaze ran over the swath of her nakedness, bumping slowly down each vertebra of her spine from the ends of her curling hair to the hit of the curve of her ass.