That First Special Kiss

Rising more slowly, he reached out a hand, intending to give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Kelly...”

She flinched away as if he had threatened to strike her. Before he could ask what on

earth was wrong with her, she snatched his jacket from the coat rack and practically threw it at him. “Thanks again for fixing my VCR. Tell your parents and Molly I said hello.”

There was an odd edge to her babbling. In anyone else, Shane might have called it hysteria. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Avoiding his eyes, she reached for the doorknob. “I’m tired. And I have an early class tomorrow. I need to...”

“Kelly.” He covered her hand with his before she could open the door. “It was only a kiss.”

He felt a tremor go through her. “I know. It shouldn’t have happened.”

He frowned. He hadn’t planned to kiss her, it had just happened somehow. But she didn’t have to act like it was such a terrible thing. “It was only a kiss,” he repeated a bit lamely.

She shook his hand off hers and opened the door. “Don’t do it again,” she muttered, still without looking at him.

A minute later, he found himself outside her apartment, blinking at the door she had just closed between them. “That,” he said to the darkness around him, “was just weird.”

He thought about that kiss, and Kelly’s overreaction to it, during the entire drive home. Sure, the kiss had been unexpected. An impulse he couldn’t explain even if he were to try. They’d been having such a warm, pleasant evening and she had looked so sweet and pretty with her sentimental tears on her cheek, and she’d felt so good in his arms and...well, things had sort of gotten out of hand. But it hadn’t seemed so bad to him—in fact, it had been a great kiss while it had lasted.

Funny. Had he thought about kissing Kelly before, he might have imagined it would be something like kissing one of his cousins. Or one of the women in his circle of pals. He hadn’t thought it would make his blood pump faster or his head start spinning.

No matter how great a kiss it had been—or might have been had it lasted a bit longer—it wasn’t something he intended to repeat. For one thing, it was simply too awkward, considering their family connections. And Kelly had made it clear enough that she had no intention for it to happen again. She had made that very clear, he thought, frowning as he remembered the way she had practically kicked him out of her apartment.

He could take a hint. No more stolen kisses between him and Kelly. Definitely a sensible plan.

But damn, that had been a good kiss.

Kelly was so tired Monday afternoon that all she planned to do that evening was crash in front of the television and try to lose herself in totally mindless entertainment. She didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone or even think about anyone in particular. She just wanted to escape the tension that had gripped her ever since Shane kissed her.

She knew exactly what that tension was rooted in. Fear. She was terrified that something would change. Something that would threaten the happy contentment she’d found since moving to Dallas and making a home for herself here.

After a dinner of canned soup and a green salad, she had just settled onto her couch with a paperback romance and the TV remote when her doorbell chimed, disturbing her solitude. She groaned, and her chest clenched. She was afraid she would find Shane on the other side of her door. For the first time since she met him, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to see him.

But when she looked through the peephole, it wasn’t Shane she found on her doorstep. The relief she felt was tempered by a faint disappointment that made no sense to her at all.

“Amber,” she said, opening the door. “What are you—what’s wrong?”

Tears streaming down her face, Amber hiccuped on a sob. “Cameron...Cameron...”

Her voice broke.

Kelly knew immediately what had happened. She had been expecting this, she thought sadly. Her heart twisting in response to Amber’s obvious pain, she reached out to take her friend’s hands. “Come in,” she said, tugging gently. “Sit down. I’ll make us some tea. Then we’ll talk.

Shane was in the barn with Molly, both of them bent over a horse’s swollen fetlock. “It’s looking a lot better,” Shane assured his worried little sister. “He should be completely recovered in a couple of days.”

Her pretty young face creased with a frown beneath a wispy fringe of red bangs, Molly looked anxiously up at him. “You’re sure? He’s really going to be okay?”

“I’m sure.” He reached out to give her a bracing, one-armed hug. “He’s already a lot better than he was yesterday.”

Reassured, Molly beamed up at him. And, as always, Shane was warmed by the sight of her bright, beautiful smile. “I’m glad he’s going to be okay,” she said.

“So am I, Little Bit.” He brushed his lips across the upturned tip of her gold-dusted nose. “Now you’d better go in and get busy with your homework. I’ll finish up out—”

“Hey, Shane.”

Both Shane and Molly turned quickly toward the door. Shane lifted his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Cameron North standing in the doorway of the barn. “Hey, Cam. What’s up?”