Caroselli's Christmas Baby. Michelle Celmer

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СКАЧАТЬ gave her arm a gentle nudge. “You’ve never wondered what it might be like if you and I …”

      It took an awful lot to embarrass her, but there was a distinct red hue working its way across her cheekbones. That was a yes if he’d ever seen one, even if she didn’t want to admit it. And he couldn’t deny that he’d thought about it himself more than a time or two. She was funny and smart and beautiful, so who could blame him?

      “I’ve never told you this,” he said. “But there was a time when I had a pretty serious crush on you.”

      She blinked. “You did?”

      He nodded. “Yep.”

       “When?”

      “Our junior year of high school.”

      She looked genuinely stunned. “I—I had no idea.”

      That’s because he’d never said a word about it. Up until then, he’d never viewed her in a sexual way. Nor, it seemed, did many other boys. She had been a late bloomer, a typical tomboy, lanky and tall—taller than all the other girls and even a fair share of the boys—and as far from feminine as a girl could be. But she’d spent the entire summer after their sophomore year in Europe with her aunt and something intriguing had happened. She left Chicago a girl, and returned a woman.

      Boys in school began paying attention to her, talking about her in the locker room, and he wouldn’t deny that she became the subject of a few of his own teenage fantasies. Not that he would have acted on those feelings. They were, after all, only friends, though that fact did little to erase the jealousy he felt when he saw her with other boys, or would hear the rumors of the things she had done with them. And as much as he liked how she changed, he resented her for it. He wanted the old Terri back. But he got over it, of course. What choice did he have?

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

      “Aside from the fact that I thought it would probably freak you out?” He shrugged. “It was a crush. I had them all the time. And our friendship was too important to me to ruin over raging teenage hormones.”

      “But you would be willing to ruin it now?”

      “Maybe if we were sleeping together just for the sake of doing it, but this is different. We have a legitimate reason to have sex.”

      In his experience, romantic love and friendship occupied opposite sides of the playing field, and he would never let one interfere with the other. Which is why he was so sure that if they approached this situation logically, it would work. And when all was said and done, everyone would get exactly what they wanted.

      “It’s a means to an end,” he said. “It wouldn’t mean anything.”

      She shot him a look. “That’s just what every girl wants to hear when she’s considering sleeping with a man.”

      “You get my point. And yes, it could potentially change our relationship, but not necessarily for the worse. It might even bring us closer together.”

      She didn’t look convinced. Maybe she was opposed to the idea for an entirely different reason.

      “Do you have moral objections?” he asked. “Or is it just that you find the idea of sleeping with me revolting?”

      She rolled her eyes. “You are not revolting. And though it’s embarrassing to admit, I had kind of a crush on you once, too.”

      If that was true, she’d done one hell of a job hiding it. “When?”

      “It pretty much started the day I transferred into Thomas Academy school in fourth grade.”

      He recalled that day clearly, when she’d walked into his class, bitter, sullen and mad as hell. It was obvious to everyone in the elite private school that she was an outsider. And trouble. A fact she drove home that very first day when she had come up behind Nick on the playground and pushed him off his swing, knocking him face-first in the dirt. He wanted to shove her right back, but he’d had it drilled into him by his mother to respect girls, so he’d walked away instead. Which only seemed to fuel her lust for blood.

      For days he’d tolerated kicks in the shin, pinches on the arm, prods in the cafeteria line and endless ribbing from his buddies for not retaliating. With his parents in the middle of a nasty divorce, he’d had some anger issues of his own, and the unprovoked attacks started to grate on him. A week or so later she tripped him on his way to the lunch table, making him drop his tray and spill his spaghetti and creamed corn all over the cafeteria floor and himself. The other students laughed, and something inside Nick snapped. Before he realized what he was doing, he hauled off and popped her one right in the mouth.

      The entire cafeteria went dead silent, everyone watching to see what would happen next, and he’d felt instantly ashamed for hitting a weak, defenseless girl.

      He would never forget the way he’d stood watching her, waiting for the tears to start as blood oozed from the corner of her lip and down her chin. And how she balled her fist, took a swing right back at him, clipping him in the jaw. He was so stunned, he just stood there. But she wasn’t finished. She launched herself at him, knocking him to the floor, and there was nothing girly about it. No biting or scratching or hair-pulling. She fought like a boy, and her fists were lethal weapons. He had no choice but to fight back. To defend himself. Plus, he had his pride, because to a nine-year-old boy, being accepted meant everything.

      It had taken three teachers to pry them apart and haul them to the dean’s office, both of them bruised and bloody. They were given a fourteen-day in-school suspension, though that was mild compared to the tirade he’d endured from his father, and the disappointment from his mother, who he knew were miserable enough without any help from him.

      He spent the next two weeks holed up in a classroom alone with Terri, and as the black eyes faded and the split lips healed, something weird happened. To this day he wasn’t sure whether it was mutual admiration or two lost souls finding solace in each other, but they walked out of that room friends, and had been ever since.

      “So, you beat the snot out of me because you liked me?” he said.

      “It wasn’t even a conscious thing. Until I looked back at it years later did I realize why I was so mean to you. But once we became friends, I never thought about you in a romantic way.”

      “Never?”

      “Why would I?” she said, but a hot-pink blush crept up into her cheeks. She pushed herself off his desk and walked over to the window, looking out into the darkness, at the traffic crawling past on icy roads.

      If she hadn’t, why the embarrassment? Why was she running away from him?

      He knew he should probably let it go, but he couldn’t. “You never thought about what it might be like if I kissed you?”

      With her back to him, she shrugged. “You kiss me all the time.”

      “Not a real kiss.” But now that he’d gotten the idea into his head, he couldn’t seem to shake it off. He wanted to kiss her.

      He pushed off the desk, walked over to the window and stood behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and she jerked, sucking in a surprised breath. “Nick …”

      He СКАЧАТЬ