About That Kiss Read Online Free Page A

out and brought a pizza back. However, Nick decided his inability to sleep had less to do with the food he’d eaten and more to do with the company he’d shared it with.
    Nick grinned and thought about Joy fast asleep and curled up in her bed. He wondered if she slept on her stomach. Or flat on her back the way she’d.been on the pile of leaves. Flat on her back brought a red-hot image to his mind.
    Slow it down, Tremain! How long ago was itfleeting though it may have been—that you thought you were in love with Diana?
    Knowing these thoughts would not help him sleep, he decided to go downstairs. He used the miniature pocket flashlight hanging from his key chain to find his way to the kitchen. Once in the cozy room he poured himself a glass of soda. His flashlight began blinking and he turned it off to conserve the battery. He drank his soda in the dark, something he’d often done out of occupational necessity.
    Suddenly the kitchen was flooded with light. A surprised Nick was confronted with a bleary-eyed Joy, dressed in colorful flannel pajamas.
    “What are you doing?” Joy asked as soon as she got over being startled at finding a very bare-chested man in her kitchen.
    “I was thirsty.” Nick held out his glass of soda. “What brought you downstairs?”
    “Thirsty…very thirsty.” She wasn’t making any move to do anything about it. The muscles of his chest and forearms had her mesmerized.
    “Must have been the pizza.” Nick grinned.
    “Uh-huh.” Uh-huh, she thought… uh-huh? Is that all you can think to say? Uh-huh! You’re a writer! You’re supposed to be good with words.
    “How about some cola?” Nick asked.
    “Okay,” Joy answered.
    Nick put his glass on the counter and poured her drink. He held out the glass, and Joy felt as if she were walking in a dream as she came up to him. The coldness of the glass in her hand came as something of ashock. She wasn’t conscious of having even accepted it.
    “Love your pajamas.” He gave her a full-wattage grin as she held the glass to her lips.
    Joy gulped and sputtered. She looked down at herself after wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She would hardly have picked to wear what she was wearing if she was conjuring this up as a dream.
    “They were a present.” Joy ran the tip of her tongue across her lips.
    Nick dragged his eyes off her mouth and studied the array of small iridescent red hearts against the background of cream-colored flannel. “Did some guy give them to you?”
    He knew she wasn’t seriously involved with anyone. He knew because he’d asked Kevin. Indirectly, of course.
    Joy shook her head. “A friend from work ga?? them to me for my birthday.”
    He liked that answer. “And when was your birthday?”
    “February fourteenth, Valentine’s Day.”
    “Cupid’s baby, huh?” Nick grinned.
    Joy nodded. Looking at his bare chest was causing her heart to flutter.
    His eyes moved over her face. “Your chin looks a little sticky.”
    “Cola,” Joy said.
    Nick took hold of the hand she started to raise and kept it down at her side. He brought his free hand up and touched the damp spot on her chin.
    Joy’s lips parted. She was breathing haltingly through her mouth as his hand lifted her chin higher.
    And then the kitchen door swung open.
    “What are the two of you doing?” Diana asked, clothed in one of her seductive nightgowns. The thin, pink silk just missed being see-through.
    “Drinking,” Nick muttered, bringing his hand back down.
    “We were both thirsty,” Joy added. “And I had cola on my chin.”
    Diana proceeded to the refrigerator for the platter of cold chicken. “It isn’t any wonder that you’d be thirsty. How the two of you can eat the food you eat is beyond me. Don’t either of you have any concern for your bodies?”
    Nick groaned to himself. He had a very definite interest in one of the bodies in the room. It wasn’t his. Nor was it Diana’s.
    “Well,” Joy said awkwardly. “I guess I’ve