Paper Kisses Read online

  Evernight Publishing

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2014 Beth D. Carter

  ISBN: 978-1-77130-811-3

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: JC Chute

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  I wrote the first version of this story almost twenty years ago, and back then it was called “The Love Dance”. This book is dedicated to the spirit of never giving up. Many thanks to everyone at Evernight and a special shout out to Vette, Amy & Julie.

  PAPER KISSES

  Beth D. Carter

  Copyright © 2014

  Prologue

  The odious noise of a passing bus echoed through the half-empty apartment. No pictures adorned the walls, and no furniture existed except a dinette table, upon which miscellaneous crap was piled high. Various boxes sat stacked in the corner. It was dark except for the tiny kitchen light illuminating the rooms.

  Alannah sat on the floor with her back propped up against the wall, a half-empty bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon beside her. The dry, bitter wine served as a perfect complement to the atmosphere that engulfed her. She didn’t drink with reckless abandon. Rather, her eyes carefully examined every nook and corner as she took precise sip after sip. A sweeper sat in the center of the floor, next to the table, surrounded by bits of trash and dirt covering the matted beige carpet. The movers had tracked streaks as they hauled out Bryce’s stuff, and she just didn’t feel up to trying to clean the ugly-ass carpet any more. That had been a battle she’d been waging for seven years now, and another white flag she’d tossed into the ring.

  The scoreboard was definitely stacked against her.

  Her red-rimmed brown eyes held no more tears––at least, not the kind that could fall. For a week straight she had cried herself to sleep every night and now she was just plain worn out. Instead she sat in the semi-darkness and tried to piece together in her mind what was left of her life. While she hadn’t been overwhelmingly happy with her marriage, she had at least been content.

  Wanting it to survive, she had worked hard at masking minor issues that seemed worthless and petty. So what if she had worked just as hard as he did every day, plus cooked the dinner and cleaned up, washed his clothes, done the grocery shopping and stayed on top of the bills? It was what a wife was supposed to do, right? He came home tired and stressed out from his computer day job, so who was she to nag at him to relax with her? She had her own entertainments, and her own involvements, so their life together ran smoothly. And if she wanted to go to the movies, or go out to eat, then she simply went.

  Alannah had thought they were so in tune with each other, but now, in hindsight, a marriage together yet apart didn’t seem to thrive very well at all. Still, Bryce’s words when he had decided to end their union had broken her heart.

  “I watched an episode of The Tudors,” he started late one night, coming in from his little computer room to where she sat in the living room watching television. “Have you seen it?”

  “No,” she said. “Is it good? Should I Netflix it?”

  He had crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door jam, just looking at her. “It was…sexy.”

  “Oh,” she replied. “Sexy is good.”

  “I watched and then started to think about you, and how you never look like those girls on that show anymore,” he had stated, as if he were talking about the local traffic or the weather. “You used to be sexy, skinny, and now you just sit on the couch all the time. I miss that girl you used to be. I miss the sex we used to have. I don’t find you attractive anymore, Alannah. It’s like…frigidity now when I hold you.”

  Alannah’s mouth had fallen open, and a buzzing sound had entered her brain, as if a thousand tiny flies now competed for attention. “W-What did you just say?”

  He sighed then, and ran a hand through his tawny locks. “I’m sorry, Alannah. It’s just gotten so boring. I don’t think I want to be married to you anymore.”

  The buzzing turned into a roaring crescendo that had obliterated every other sound, light and thought pattern. Alannah just sat there, staring, her mouth gaping open like she was a fish, lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. And then Bryce had straightened from the door and turned to go back into his little computer room, shutting the door with a soft click.

  That had been two weeks ago. Two weeks of begging, pleading, muttering self-sacrificing promises in the hopes of changing his mind. Where had her sweet, levelheaded husband gone? He had started packing the next day. Two days after that he told her he’d met someone and was moving in with her. Two weeks later now, and here she sat in a darkened, nearly empty apartment with a bottle of shitty wine almost gone.

  She felt just as empty inside, and just as broken.

  Chapter One

  Six months later

  Her flight landed ten minutes ahead of schedule, so Alannah didn’t rush out toward baggage claim since she had a few minutes to spare. She’d never been in the St. Louis airport, despite having grown up in Missouri. Years ago she’d driven away, not flown, so the experience was new.

  She grabbed her suitcase on the turnstile and headed over to the car rental company. Luckily, only one person was in front of her, so she didn’t have to wait long.

  “Next, please,” the clerk called out and Alannah wheeled her overly large suitcase up to the counter.

  “Hello,” she said. “I have a reservation.”

  “Your name?”

  “Alannah Burns…I mean, Atwood. Now. It’s Alannah Atwood.” She grimaced and avoided looking at the clerk by grabbing her new driver’s license and credit card.

  “Yes, Ms. Atwood,” the clerk said, looking at her computer screen. “How long will you be needing the car?”

  “A week.”

  “All right,” the clerk said, smiling at her. “Midsize sedan, correct?”

  Alannah held out her cards and the clerk checked them. “Fine,” she replied.

  But as the clerk started typing up the invoice, Alannah’s stare focused outside where she saw a sports car moving past the airport pick-up area.

  “Wait,” she said. “Sorry. Do you have a sportier model available?”

  “Let me check,” the clerk murmured. “Yes. We do have several upgrades at a slightly higher cost per day. We have a Chevrolet Camaro, a Mazda RX-8, and let’s see, an Audi R8––”

  “Perfect,” Alannah said, interrupting her. “Let’s go with that one.”

  “Very good,” the clerk said.

  Alannah smiled to herself, feeling pleased. “In red, please.”

  ****

  Oh, yeah.

  The Audi roared down the highway like it was flying on air. Alannah glanced down at the speedometer and grinned when she saw she was nearing ninety. For one brief moment she felt wild and free, like the girl she used to be, and it was glorious. This was why she’d come back home, to find out where she went wrong, and so far, it was fantastic getting in touch with her inner teenager again. Then again, it was also nice having the wisdom of sane, sensible years so she gently applied the brakes, bringing the car down to a nice cruising speed of seventy.

  She flipped through the radio and grimaced when country song after country song came on. She’d forgotten about the choice of music this far into nowhere land, although to be fair, she’d b
een a down-home country girl in her youth. Twelve years in Los Angeles, however, had changed her tastes somewhat and luckily, she stumbled across the one rock station in the tri-county area. Alannah turned up the volume and settled into the leather seat comfortably.

  It didn’t take her long to reach the outskirts of her hometown of Dexter and she gave a whoop as the city limit sign flashed by. But almost immediately her joy crashed and burned when the sudden lights of a police car filled her rearview mirror.

  “Shit!” she cried. She let off the gas and flipped her turning light on, indicating she was moving over. What a way to start her vacation. With a frustrated sigh, she leaned her head back and waited for the cop to arrive.

  It took a few minutes, of course. She knew the cop was running the plates, and finding out the car was a rental. She kept an eye on the side mirror and saw the door open. A pair of brown uniform-clad legs got out and headed toward her. She rolled down the windows.

  “Hello, ma’am,” the police officer greeted in a deep baritone, and Alannah frowned a little. She couldn’t see his face properly since he towered over the car roof, but his square jaw and broad chest had her interest sitting up and saying hello. “I’ll need your license and car rental registration papers, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” she muttered. She opened her purse and pulled out the rental papers before digging for her license again, not quite sure where she’d stuck it earlier. Finally, she located it at the bottom of her purse, and handed it to him through the window.

  “Damn it, Alannah! When are you going to start letting off with that brick foot?”

  Alannah whipped her head as far out of the window as her seat belt would allow, just as the police officer leaned down. The scowling, but very handsome face of her old best friend, Skylar Randall, peered down at her.

  “Oh my god!” she cried and scrambled to unbuckle herself. As soon as it released she opened the door and climbed out, flinging her arms around him whether he wanted to hug her or not. It took her a moment to realize just how big, and strong, and…oh my, big…he was. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to hug her back, his muscular arms snaked around her and held her tightly in return, almost lifting her off her feet. She was able to feel all of him against all of her, and holy crap, he felt nice. Did she mention how big he was? Being in his arms brought a gazillion memories rushing back and each one hammered home just how desperately she needed this connection. She hadn’t known Sky was back in Dexter, but now that he was with her she really didn’t want to let go of him. But eventually she had to release him, and when she looked up into his blue eyes she felt like everything going wrong in her life suddenly disappeared. Sky had always been able to make her world a little brighter, a little saner, and suddenly she was embarrassed about her reasons for coming home.

  She was a failure.

  “Oh, thank heavens it’s you!” she gushed, trying desperately to cover her wayward emotions. “I thought I was going to get a ticket.”

  “Alannah, you are going to get a ticket.”

  Her nose curled up. “Seriously? Come on, Sky.”

  A devilish smile hit his face. “Probably someday,” he continued, chuckling. “But right now I’ll settle for your promise to ease up on the accelerator.”

  “Oh, of course, Officer!” she promised with a laugh. “Wow, what are the chances I’d be this lucky?”

  “Lucky I’m not giving you a ticket, or lucky I was the one who stopped you?” He rubbed his chin as he thought. “Well, let’s see, how many times was I there to bail you out of finishing the homework you forgot to do the night before? How many times was I there to give you the answer to a test question? So damn lucky that this doesn’t surprise me.”

  She punched him in his very firm bicep. Oh, yum. The punch turned into a mini caress. How she liked the little bolts of electricity running up her fingers.

  He raised his eyebrow at her and she felt herself blush as she yanked her hand away and stuck it behind her back.

  Bad hand…

  “Sheriff, huh?” she said, trying to quickly move past the embarrassing moment. “I’m impressed. The little hooligan turned lawman. Old man Farley finally quit?”

  “Yeah,” Sky replied slowly, his light eyes studying her questioningly. Probably trying to figure out if she was a loon or not, or had missed her last dose of medication. Why the hell had she caressed him? “I was his deputy for a couple of years when I got home from college. When he decided to retire he asked me to run and with his backing, I ran on the ticket unopposed.”

  “I didn’t even realize you were back in Dexter,” she said.

  His eyebrows went up and she saw something cloud his pretty eyes, something cool and distant that made her feel stupid for saying what she did. Way to go on showing how much he meant to you, idiot.

  “Cee never told you?” he asked, confirming what she was thinking.

  “Um, no,” Alannah muttered. “No, communication over the years with her has been sporadic. I guess it slipped her mind.”

  “Hers? Or yours? It seemed like all of us dropped off the planet to you, Alannah. Were we that hard to remember?”

  She didn’t know if he was looking for an answer or not, but she took a step back and folded her arms in front of her, feeling defensive.

  “That’s not fair, Sky,” she said. “You knew where to find me. My phone wasn’t ringing either.”

  He put his hands on his hips and stared at her for a long, long time. She held his gaze, although she did shuffle back and forth from foot to foot. Finally, he dropped his arms and shrugged.

  “If that’s the way you want to play it, fine,” he replied coolly. “I guess I’m still a little sore you didn’t invite me to the wedding.”

  She flinched. Great. He just had to bring that up, didn’t he?

  “There were reasons why I didn’t invite you, Sky, but suffice to say that’s the past. That chapter of my life is over.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, when the sudden honking of a truck driving by had them both turning to watch a black pick-up go zooming by with Alannah’s other old best friend, CeeCee Jones, leaning out of the window waving. She raced down the road toward a turn-around, the tires squealing as she made the turn. The truck weaved with her precarious driving.

  Alannah jerked her thumb toward the truck. “And you were going to give me a ticket just for speeding?”

  Sky shrugged as he frowned at the approaching truck. “She always manages to talk me out of the reckless endangerment charges.”

  It had always been Sky, CeeCee, their other friend Kevin, and Alannah together in high school, although they’d all grown up together through their school years. Somehow they’d found one another in ninth grade and stuck together like glue. It now made Alannah slightly angry with herself that she’d turned her back on them.

  CeeCee’s truck came to a skidding halt behind Sky’s police car as she bound out of the cab with a screech of pleasure, running to hug Alannah tightly. Her friend hadn’t changed all that much in twelve years. CeeCee always had a bohemian air about her and she lived life like it was one big party. Alannah had always been envious of how easy life came to her friend.

  “You’re here, you’re here…you’re here!” CeeCee squealed, smiling widely. “I can’t believe you pulled her over, Skylar.”

  “How’d you know I stopped her?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

  CeeCee pulled back from the hug to smile benignly at him. “My police scanner, silly. When I heard you confirm the car was a rental, I just knew. And I was right!”

  “Damn it, Cee, quit eavesdropping,” he growled, clearly annoyed.

  CeeCee waved him off dismissively, centering her attention on Alannah. “As if,” she said with a giggle, “I’d never learn anything exciting if I didn’t listen in.”

  Alannah nodded wisely. “Life would be boring.”

  “You two were always impossible,” Sky said as he shook his head. “How about I take your scanner in the name of police interf
erence?”

  CeeCee cocked her head at him. “That’s about as silly a charge as reckless endangerment, Skylar Randall.”

  Giving up, like he always did whenever he tried talking to CeeCee, he turned away and marched back to his police cruiser, muttering to himself. Although Alannah couldn’t make out all of what he said she definitely heard “stubborn females” one or two times.

  “Yada, yada, yada,” CeeCee called after him. “You’re still coming to the party tomorrow, aren’t you, Skylar?”

  He waved his hand in the air as confirmation. A few seconds later, he drove away from them and Alannah had the strongest urge to go after him. Now that she’d found him again, she didn’t really want to let him go. Which was foolish, of course. Her brain kept trying to remind her that Sky was her friend and therefore off the relationship market. Christ, the ink was barely dry on her divorce. The last thing she wanted was to jump back into the dating pool.

  But the sex pool, well, she’d just had a wake-up call. Sky was…attractive. She was attracted to her old best friend. And if she were completely honest with herself she’d admit that she wouldn’t mind discovering what lay hidden beneath the drab police uniform that fit him like a second skin. Oh yes, she’d seen the sausage in his pants. Had it been that big in high school? Had she known he was so well endowed, maybe she wouldn’t have been such a prude back then. Maybe she wouldn’t be wondering if her mouth could swallow him down, which was surprising since she didn’t like giving head all that much. Or, at least, she hadn’t liked giving head to Bryce.

  Just thinking his name brought back all her insecurities and had her sexual fantasy with Sky crashing and burning. She blinked, suddenly realizing CeeCee was watching her with a questioning look on her face. Oh no. Alannah did not want to go there.