The Last First Kiss (Harlequin Special Edition) Read online

  Dialing the phone quickly, she was connected to Dave’s office in less than a minute. And then she got to listen to an answering machine. He wasn’t in, which only made sense since she’d just seen him at the clinic. His message said his office was closed today.

  “Better than nothing,” she murmured under her breath with far less enthusiasm than usual as she waited for the outgoing message to end.

  If Dave didn’t call her back by tonight, she was fairly sure she could find his private number using some creative methods on her laptop at home.

  The beep sounded in her ear and she started talking. “Hi, Dave, it’s Kara. Remember I said that I’d take that favor out in trade? Well, trading time just arrived. We need to talk. Call me.” She rattled off both her cell phone number and the number to her landline in her apartment.

  Hanging up, Kara smiled to herself, relishing her plan. Once it got rolling, it would be just what the doctor ordered, she thought, feeling very confident about the outcome. This was going to teach her mother—and possibly Dave’s—never to even think about matchmaking again.

  Dave was more than a little surprised, when he picked up his messages that evening, to find Kara’s among them. Not only was it the only phone message that didn’t describe some symptom in depth, but he and she hadn’t had any contact in—what, eighteen?—years, and now twice in one day?

  Exactly what was up and why did he feel so uneasy about it?

  Dropping his mail onto the coffee table, Dave made his way over to the phone on the kitchen wall.

  “Only one way to find out,” he said aloud. But even so, he didn’t begin dialing immediately.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to renege on the unofficial agreement to reciprocate when she asked. After all, Kara had produced the much sought after game. Then again, how hard could it be for her? She did work for the company that put it out.

  Still, she didn’t have to deliver it herself—or even give him the game in the first place. Once upon a time, he would have bet his last dime that she wouldn’t have given him the time of day, much less gone out of her way, to bring him something he needed.

  He also wouldn’t have thought that there was a kind bone in her excessively skinny little body. But her treatment of Gary in the waiting room showed him he’d been wrong in his assessment of her. Or at least the “new” her.

  No, none of that was holding him back from immediately keeping his word. What was stopping him was the hour. He’d just walked in and it was after eleven. Added to that, he was bone tired.

  He had no one to blame for that but himself, he thought. Himself and the endless line of sick people who just kept on coming. Clarice had finally closed the doors two hours later than the clinic’s official closing time. And he’d gone on treating patients until there was no one left in the stale-smelling waiting room.

  Now, two steps beyond dead tired, he was too exhausted to even get anything to eat out of the refrigerator. One way to lose weight, he mused. That sandwich Kara had pulled out of her magic bag was practically the only solid thing he had to eat all day until Clarice had called her grandson to bring some food from the Thai takeout place in her neighborhood. He hadn’t really recognized what he’d eaten, but whatever it was had substance to it and ultimately had helped to keep him going, which was what counted.

  His mind came back full circle to Kara. Okay, she’d given him a game and her sandwich. If nothing else, that meant he needed to return her phone call.

  And if, God willing, she didn’t answer, well, at least he was on record for trying. Recorded record. He punched out her numbers on the keypad and crossed his fingers that she didn’t answer, but he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Kara picked up her phone on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice sounded a bit sleepy, he thought. An image of Kara in bed, wearing nothing but the moonlight breaking through her window, suddenly popped up in his head.

  He really needed that social life he was sorely missing out on.

  “Hello?” he heard her say again.

  He dove in. “Kara, it’s Dave. You called.”

  At the sound of his voice, Kara dragged herself up into a sitting position. She’d fallen asleep on her sofa, playing a portable version of the game that was bedeviling her and the staff she supervised. She struggled to clear the fog from her brain. She didn’t even remember shutting her eyes.

  Squinting, she tried to make out the time on the cable box across the room. The numbers swam around, and she gave up.

  “Right. I called,” she murmured, dragging her hand through her hair, trying to figuratively drag her thoughts together at the same time.

  “About anything in particular?” Dave pressed. She sounded sluggish. He thought back and couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t going ninety miles an hour. “Because if this can wait, or you just called to yank my chain, it’s been a really long day and I’ve got an early call tomorrow in the hospital—”

  She wasn’t about to give him a chance to hang up. From the sound of it, she was going to have to make an appointment to talk to him on the phone if she didn’t speak up quickly. So she did. “Our mothers are trying to set us up.”

  “What? With who?” he asked incredulously.

  Was he kidding? “What do you mean, with who? With each other. At least,” she amended, backtracking just a step, “I know mine is, and whatever mine does, yours usually does, too.”

  When did this happen? It wasn’t making any sense. She must have made a mistake. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  She took a breath and explained how she’d come to this conclusion. “After I came back from your clinic, my mother called me at work to see if I’d given you the game.”

  “She obviously knows how dependable you are,” he observed dryly.

  Her back instantly went up. “I’ll have you know that I am— Never mind.”

  This wasn’t the time to allow herself to get into an argument with him. They were both tired. Things could be said that couldn’t be retracted. The best way to prevent that was not to start anything at all. Besides, she had a far more important point to get to. She couldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked.

  “Anyway, she wanted to know how you looked. More accurately, she wanted to know what I thought of the way you looked.”

  So far, he wasn’t hearing anything that should have set off any whirling red lights for her. “Natural question,” he commented. “We haven’t seen each other in almost two decades.”

  She stopped her narrative, struggling with her temper. Was he for real? Or was he just baiting her? If it was the latter, maybe he’d learned a thing or two since they’d last seen each other. But somehow, she doubted that. He’d always been too upstanding to stoop to anything.

  “Were you always this naive, or did you just suddenly decide to go back to your childhood?”

  He really wasn’t in the mood for this. “If you’re going to insult me—”

  “Tempting, but I’ll save that for some other time. Right now, hard as it is for me, I need to ask you for your help.”

  Dave interpreted her question the only way he knew how. “You have a medical question?”

  “No, I have a mother question. Or rather, a solution to a meddling-mother situation.” He was very quiet on the other end. Was that a good sign, or had he fallen asleep? “Our mothers want to get us together. I never told you,” she segued quickly, “but I once overheard them talking about how terrific it would be if, when you and I grew up, we’d get married.”

  His voice was stripped of all emotion as he said, “No, you never told me that.”

  “At the time I heard it, I thought it was too gross to repeat,” she explained. “But it obviously has never stopped being on their minds.”

  He was tryi
ng to follow her logic and found that there were gaping holes in it. “And you think that your mother calling you to see if you delivered the game to me is actually some kind of a confession on her part that she’s trying to get us to the altar?”

  She knew he was mocking her and forced herself to swallow a few choice words. “Her asking me what I think of your looks is pretty transparent.”

  Where was all this going, anyway? “So you called to warn me?”

  She shifted the phone to her other ear. “No, I called to get you to cooperate with an idea I have.”

  He really didn’t like the sound of that. “This never turned out well for any of the characters in those sitcoms you always liked so much,” Dave pointed out.

  That he remembered she used to watch them astonished her. She told herself it meant nothing and kept talking. “What if you and I pretend to go out together? Pretend to, you know, like each other.”

  It sounded as if she were forcing herself to endure a fate worse than death. “Assuming I’ve had my rabies shots,” he said sarcastically, “how is this going to teach our mothers a lesson? This is what they want—according to you.”

  Kara sighed. “You really don’t have an imagination, do you?”

  “I have one,” he told her. “I just don’t let it go off on wild tangents.”

  She took offense and shot back through gritted teeth, “Okay, Davy, let me spell it out for you. We go out. We pretend to fall in love, and then we have one hell of an argument, making sure that we have this fight where our mothers can hear us. After the argument, we go through the throes of an agonizing ‘breakup.’ A devastating breakup,” she specified, really throwing herself into the role, “where we both act as if there’s no tomorrow—”

  “Being just a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” he interjected.

  He really was spoiling for a fight, wasn’t he? Not that she was intimidated, but she wanted this to get under way quickly. The sooner the better.

  “Maybe. We’ll have to play it by ear. But they’ll be so upset that we’re upset, I guarantee that it’ll cure them once and for all from trying to play matchmaker with us on any level—separately or together.” She paused to take a breath. “What do you think? You game?”

  If he said no, he had a feeling she’d keep calling and badgering him until he agreed. Still, throwing his lot in with Kara made him uneasy.

  “Why do I get the feeling that I’m about to sign my own death warrant?”

  What was it about him that set her off like this? Eighteen years and nothing had changed. Except that he was better looking, but that had no bearing here.

  “Because you’re running on next to no sleep, you have no imagination and you don’t know a good plan when you hear one. Shall I go on?”

  He laughed shortly. “Not that I have the slightest doubt that you could, but please don’t.”

  She was still waiting for an answer. “Does that mean no?”

  This was the moment of truth. He could still walk away. But he had a feeling that she had a point. Though he loved his mother dearly, he could think of nothing he wanted less than to have her playing matchmaker on his behalf.

  “That means that I’m probably going to really regret this, but you do have a point.”

  Yes! “Glad you recognize that.”

  He wanted to move this along while he still had a prayer of getting some sleep. “All right, mastermind, so what’s our next move?” he asked her.

  She would have thought that was self-evident. “We pretend to go out.”

  “And what, notify the press first? How are our mothers going to know we’re going out? I think they’d be suspicious if either one of us just picked up the phone and called to tell them.”

  She smiled. He was almost cute when he tried to be flippant. The key word here was almost.

  “Ah, there is more than just space between those manly ears. You’re absolutely right. How about that birthday for your cousin’s son?” she asked. “The one I got you the video game for.”

  “Ryan,” he supplied.

  “Ryan,” she repeated. “Ryan’s going to have a birthday party, right?”

  “Yes—” He got no further.

  Kara pounced on the next question. “Is your mother going to be there?”

  Okay, so now it was all crystal clear to him. Not bad, he acknowledged, albeit silently. Saying it out loud would just give her a bigger head. “Yes.”

  “Okay, then we will be, too. All we need is one eyewitnessing mother to spread the news to the other.”

  “Eyewitnessing,” he echoed. “Is that even a word?”

  “It is for this purpose,” she said glibly. “Anyway, they’ll think their plan is working—until we show them otherwise. So, are you in?”

  “I’m in,” he answered even as part of him had the sinking feeling that by agreeing, life as he knew it would never be the same again. This very well could be a huge mistake.

  Joining forces with Kara was always dangerous. It was a known fact that she possessed a golden tongue. It was also a known fact that she could abruptly leave him holding the bag if it suited her purposes.

  He had no reason to believe that eighteen years had changed anything, her greatly improved figure notwithstanding.

  Chapter Four

  The phone rang just as Paulette walked past it. On her way out, she debated just letting the answering machine pick it up. But there was something about a ringing phone that always captured her attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was irresistible.

  Pausing, she lifted the receiver from the cradle and brought it to her ear. “Hello?”

  “I thought you’d want to be the first to know—well, not really first, but close,” the voice on the other end said.

  Lisa. Paulette dropped her purse to the floor, kicked off the high heels she’d just slipped on and deposited her body into the overstuffed chair in her living room. There was no such thing as a quick exchange of words between her and Lisa.

  “Almost the first to know what?” Paulette asked. Even as she did so, she mentally crossed her fingers, hoping that her little plan had succeeded in its next stage.

  “That Dave called Melissa and asked her if she’d mind if he brought someone to Ryan’s birthday party.”

  Paulette could hear the smile in her friend’s voice. It mirrored the one on her own face. “And this friend wouldn’t be Kara, by any chance, would it?”

  At this point, it was a rhetorical question. She sincerely doubted that Lisa would be calling her to say that her son was bringing someone else to the little boy’s party.

  And then Lisa confirmed all her hopes by saying, “Yes, it would.”

  Paulette would have clapped her hands together with glee if both of them had been free. “See, I told you so. All it took was for the two of them to be in the same place at the same time.” And just like that, she was flying high on confidence. “The rest will soon be history.”

  “Don’t start sending out the wedding invitations just yet,” Lisa cautioned. “I mean, it’s not like Dave hasn’t dated before. And you’ve told me that Kara has gone out with a few guys from time to time. Wasn’t there that guy, Alex something-or-other, she was seeing pretty regularly a while back?”

  The name instantly brought a wave of anger. “You mean the bigamist?”

  “He was married?” Lisa asked, horrified.

  “Well, not exactly,” Paulette backtracked. “But he was seeing several women at the same time, including a live-in girlfriend who just happened to be the mother of his little boy. Kara was devastated when she accidentally found out—devastated and furious. He’s the one who made her swear off having anything to do with men.”

  At the time that it happened, she’d kept the news to h
erself in deference to Kara’s wishes. But in her opinion enough time had passed for the truth to finally come out. Besides, she wanted Lisa to know that her daughter wasn’t a wallflower because no one was interested. She was one by choice.

  “I don’t think you realize what this actually means,” Paulette continued.

  “Enlighten me,” Lisa urged.

  “If Kara actually agreed to go out with Dave, it means she’s ready to get back into life. This is a really big deal,” Paulette enthused. “Why don’t we get together at the end of this week and celebrate?”

  As ever, Paulette was getting ahead of herself, Lisa thought. “A family gathering for a child’s birthday doesn’t exactly fall into the same parameters as a date,” Lisa pointed out.

  “Walking down the block holding hands is a date,” Paulette insisted. “Anything involving two consenting people is considered a date. C’mon, Lis, don’t rain on my parade.”

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t as hopeful about the outcome of all this as Paulette was, it was just that she was a little more grounded than her friend. And yes, a little more pessimistic.

  “I’m not raining on it, Paulette, I just want you to have an umbrella handy—just in case,” Lisa explained. “By the way, about Ryan’s party… There’s always room for one more. Would you like to come?”

  “You know I would, but…”

  Lisa thought that Paulette would have jumped at the chance to be there to watch over her daughter interacting with Dave. “But?” she questioned.

  “If I’m there, Kara might feel self-conscious and not be herself.” Her daughter also might think she was being spied on, Paulette thought.

  Lisa sighed, considering Paulette’s reasoning. “I suppose you have a point.”

  Paulette paused, chewing on her lower lip. “On the other hand, I also have an insatiable desire to see them finally come together.” She weighed the two sides for a moment, thinking. Desire won out over sensibility. “Oh, what the hell? Count me in.”