Page 31 of Take Me Tender

There was no Rosalynn, but there was Emily.

Fern closed her eyes, trying not to think of her best friend. Normally, she’d never take such a step like this without her best buddy’s full and serious consideration, but nothing about Em was ever going to be normal again.

Fern’s mom said that wasn’t true, but her mom hadn’t seen Em’s lank hair or the weird fortress of books she’d built on the tables on each side of the bed in her room. Fairy tales, Harry Potter, a slew of Nancy Drew mysteries that had once been her mother’s. The rest of Em’s summer, apparently, was going to be spent rereading all her favorite children’s books.

While maybe the rest of Fern’s summer was going to be spent finding out what it was to be a woman.

She looked up at Marie. “Didn’t we become women when we got our periods? Didn’t they tell us that?”

“They should have told us not to buy any more white jeans,” Marie grumbled. She was close to finishing half the pan of brownies. “Hey! Maybe that’s why I have the munchies. I’m expecting a visit from my ‘little friend.’”

They both started laughing. “No one calls it that anymore, do they?” Fern asked.

“My mom does.” Marie made a face. “But only in front of my dad. And now that you’re horribly cruel enough to make me remember, that is exactly what she said when I had my first magic moment of cramps. She told my dad I was a woman now. Where was that hole in the floor when I needed it?”

“So, was she right? Or is it having sex that makes you a woman?”

And what about Em? At home with her unicorns and witches and Nancy’s mysteries: Was she a woman now?

“I’d rather have sex than my period, that’s for sure.”

“But you’d rather have brownies than sex,” Fern pointed out.

Marie stilled, going silent for a moment. “It’s true. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

Fern laughed at Marie’s aghast expression. “I don’t think so. Maybe there was something wrong with your old boyfriend.”

Maybe he hadn’t awakened Marie, and then continued to keep her from sleeping night after night with thoughts of what could be. Jenner had done that to Fern. One of the four Two Shoes had come to Malibu for the summer, ashamed that she was almost happy to get away from Em, but not expecting any more than lazy days and nights at the beach. At home, she’d dated on occasion. Been kissed more than once and felt that wild rush of blood around her body when a boy hesitantly stroked her breasts.

But nothing before had ever lit her up like Jenner’s touch. Everything about him was rough—his hands, calloused from beach volleyball, scraping along her sunburned shoulders; the metal grommets in his boardshorts poking into her belly when he rolled on top of her on the sand; those biting kisses he hid beneath her hair.

It should have been something she backed away from. Good-girl Fern had been born with warning flags that shot up whenever necessary. But Em was good, too, and she’d possessed those exact same warning flags, and they hadn’t saved her from danger. Maybe this time Fern needed to fling herself toward her fears as a test—a test to make sure she could save herself if it came to that.

But right now, Jenner’s kisses didn’t feel like something she needed to be saved from—that was the most amazing thing to her. All those tepid touches from high school boys who smelled like cheap cologne and clean scent deodorant couldn’t compare to one moment in Jenner’s arms. What happened there was indescribable, when their skin was hot, their swimsuits cold and wet, his mouth burning like a beach bonfire on hers.

He could make her crazy with wanting more: kisses, touches, everything. He could slide a finger up her knee toward her thigh and her legs would turn to rubber. He could press her hand over the hard length of him beneath his pants and she didn’t think it was gross—instead she wanted to know what happened next.

The fact was, he wanted what happened next, and Marie was right, she’d probably lose him and all that he represented if she didn’t soon say “yes.”

She glanced over at her friend, who looked about twelve with her hair in those silly braids and chocolate on her mouth. “Will you cover for me if I go out to meet Jenner?”

“You wouldn’t rather make another pan of brownies?”

He’d been angry when she’d told him she didn’t know if she could sneak out to meet him tonight, and that passionate display only made her heart pound harder. She didn’t know exactly why.

When they were kids, she and her cousins would sit at the table after a family dinner was over and see who could hold their palms the longest over the candle flames. Fern had run to her mother way before the others were finished with the game.

She wasn’t running anymore.

Jay woke, in one instant aware of the sunshine on the other side of his eyelids and the empty spot on the other side of his bed. His hand groped over the barren sheets anyway.

None of Nikki’s body warmth lingered, and at the discovery, some emotion rushed into his chest. It should have been relief—he preferred waking up alone, even after spectacular sex. It couldn’t be alarm—Nikki wouldn’t have gone far…would she?

But then whatever you wanted to label that weird emotion leached away as the blessed aroma of brewing coffee reached him. If she’d run, it was only to his kitchen. He smiled to himself and stretched his toes toward the end of the bed, and let his mind wander.

It didn’t go far either. It stayed right where he was and imagined Nikki returning to the bedroom, carrying a cup of his favorite java and naked as the day she’d come into the world. His hand slid down to his morning erection and he rubbed over his hot skin, envisioning the imminent possibility of A.M. sex.

Then he laughed out loud. When had Nikki ever fallen in with his plans? He’d bet a hundred bucks she’d gotten up and made coffee as his chef, not his lover, and would expect him to get his lazy ass out of bed to sample it.

Still, she had to be looking forward to that moment as much as he was. She’d taste like coffee and toothpaste—his, and he oddly liked the idea of that—when he kissed her. Would she melt against him or try to keep her cool? He couldn’t guess, and that made him grin wider.

Unpredictable, prickly, sexy as hell. That was Nikki. Last night he’d half-carried her to his bed and she’d fallen back to sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. He’d walk over leftover barbecue coals before he’d admit it out loud, but even as horny as he’d been again, he’d let her stay in dream-land, merely putting his nose against her shoulder to breathe in the scent of her skin.

Christ, even to himself that sounded dangerously sappy.

And only made him want to breathe in her scent once again.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to rush out to the kitchen though, he decided, opening his eyes and casting a look at his bedside clock. He’d lie in bed at least another fifteen minutes, follow that up with a leisurely shower, and then he’d venture outside the bedroom to take a gander at Nikki’s morning-after attitude.

In seven minutes he was in jeans and a T-shirt. He didn’t waste time locating shoes before he bare-footed it out of the bedroom and started down the hallway. The coffee smelled just that enticing.

Yeah. The coffee.

Okay, fine. He was curious about Nikki’s reaction to their intimacy of the night before. Concerned even, now that his brain was becoming more alert. That was only natural, right? Every time he went to bed with a woman there was that possibility he’d made a big mistake—no matter how hot the mambo had been.

Look at Shanna.

Nikki was nothing like Shanna.

The drunken debacle that was his single stupid interlude with Shanna was nothing like what he’d had with Nikki last night.

Shit! He halted, sudden airlessness forcing him to lean against the wall. That unfamiliar, unnameable feeling was filling his chest again, making it hard for his lungs to move. Alarm?

It felt more like freakin’ panic.

With a wet-dog shake of his head, he got his feet moving again. Coffee and a clue about how Nikki was reacting would surely get his equilibrium back.

Voices from the kitchen had him pausing once more. Nikki. Nikki and Cassandra. He moved again, and then hesitated at the far end of the living room, close enough to see and hear the women, but far enough away that he escaped their notice.

Nikki was at the cutting board, giving him a side view. She must keep an extra set of clothes somewhere in his house or maybe her car, he thought. He took in her cropped jeans and the plain white T-shirt that clung tightly enough for him to appreciate that sweet little sway in her back that he’d—damn it all—left untouched the night before. He could only see the profile of her face, but she seemed cheerful enough.

That whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it loosened its vicious grip on his breathing as he continued to study her. Her wavy hair was contained in a cotton bandanna she’d tied beneath the sun-and-brown mass at the base of her neck. The ocean-green color contrasted with the warm pink of her cheek. It would match, he knew, the unforgettable color of her left eye.

“So you grew up knowing you were the product of artificial insemination?” Nikki asked, her attention still on the mango—his favorite—she was slicing.

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