Rumor Has It. Cindi Myers

and reached out to straighten his tie. “Then why don’t you meet me at my place in half an hour and we’ll get started?”

      3

      WAS THIS THE CRAZIEST thing he’d ever done—or the smartest? Dylan couldn’t decide as he followed the directions Taylor had given him to her house. He didn’t know how smart it was to agree to a no-strings-attached affair with a woman he hadn’t seen in ten years. Then again, he’d be crazy to turn down the chance to finally bed the woman he’d fantasized about for the past decade.

      He found the restored bungalow Taylor rented in the middle of the block in an older section of town. He drove to the end of the street and parked in front of a shuttered minimart, then walked back up to the house. This time of night, the neighborhood was dark and silent. The still-warm evening air smelled of grass clippings and late-blooming roses. But when he brought his hand to his nose, he could smell Taylor, her spicy cologne and musky arousal, and he felt himself grow hard again.

      He hurried along, his boot heels ringing on the sidewalk, echoing the rapid pounding of his heart. He felt the same edgy desire mingled with nervousness that he’d last experienced in high school, when he’d sometimes sneak into his girlfriend’s house after her parents had gone to bed.

      As he passed the house next to Taylor’s, a dog began to bark. Great. All he needed was to have someone call and report him to police as a prowler. It’s all right, Officer. I can explain. You see I was on my way to meet a woman to do all the things everyone thought we did in high school. Why? Uh, because we can?

      For some reason revisiting the past like this was important to Taylor and he was willing to go along with it. Maybe that made him crazy. Or very, very lucky.

      The porch light cast a golden glow over her front door. He walked up the steps and raised his hand to knock, but the door swung inward before his hand met wood. Taylor smiled up at him, relief in her eyes. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t show up.”

      “I stopped off for a few things.” He put his hand in his pocket and felt the packets of condoms.

      “Come on in.” She held the door open wider. She was still wearing the formfitting black dress, but she’d taken off her shoes. Barefoot, she looked more vulnerable. More like the girl he’d known in school.

      He moved past her and she switched off the porch light. “Can I get you something to drink?”

      “No thanks.” He stood in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, looking everywhere but at her. The furniture was elegant and feminine—dark wood tables and gold-brocade upholstery. Candles flickered on the coffee table and along the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. The lamp by the sofa gave the only other light, reflecting on a Degas print of ballerinas.

      “Why don’t you sit down?” She took a seat on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her.

      He sat, hands gripping his knees. Now that he was here, he was more nervous than ever. All his fantasies of making love with Taylor were mixed up with the conservative caution that was inbred in every boy who had been raised in the southernmost notch of the Bible belt. “So, um, how exactly do you want to do this?”

      “My idea was to re-create, as much as possible, all the wild stories people made up about us in high school. We can use this to refresh our memories.” She picked up a small blue book from the coffee table.

      “What’s that?”

      “It’s the diary I kept my senior year.” She opened it and began flipping through the pages. “Everything’s in here. Of course, it all started with that camping trip.”

      “The senior camping trip.” Taylor hadn’t even wanted to be part of that trip, but he’d convinced her to go, telling her it was a tradition and a great way for her to get to know her classmates better. What he’d really hoped was that sometime during the weekend, he’d be able to work up the courage to kiss her. And that she’d kiss him in return.

      Instead he’d never found the right opportunity to make his move. And then they’d ended up sharing a sleeping bag. True, they’d both had on so many clothes they’d have had a tough time doing much of anything, but still, he recalled it as one of the most miserable nights of his life. As soon as they’d thawed out, he’d had to lie there with Taylor asleep in his arms and a hard-on that wouldn’t quit.

      “It wouldn’t really be practical to start there,” Taylor said. “So I thought we’d just pick a different rumor each time, sort of as the mood hits.” She smiled. “We can take our time.”

      Oh, he planned to take his time, all right. He intended to devote himself to exploring every inch of her luscious body, but the sooner they got to it, the better. “Do you have something picked out for tonight?”

      She opened the diary and smoothed her hand down the page. “Listen to this.” She began to read. “At my locker this morning, Alyson asked me if I had a good weekend. I knew she wasn’t asking to be nice, because Alyson is never nice. But I’m determined to be a better person than she is, so I just told her I hadn’t done anything special.

      “‘That’s not what I heard,’ she said with that evil little smirk that makes her look like a roadkill possum. One of these days I’m going to get mad enough to tell her that, too!”

      Dylan laughed. “Alyson does sort of resemble a possum.”

      Taylor smiled. “I still have to fight the urge to tell her so sometimes. Now hush and let me finish.” She turned back to the diary. “I didn’t even want to know what she’d heard, so I turned away, but she followed me down the hall.

      “‘I heard that Dylan Gates’s parents went out of town this weekend to his uncle’s funeral and that you spent Saturday night at Dylan’s house doing the wild thing!’”

      “I remember that weekend,” he said. “I was pissed because I had to stay home all weekend and look after my kid sisters. The wildest thing we did was stay up late watching ‘Star Trek’ re-runs.”

      She closed the diary and set it aside. “Here’s your chance to make up for that. What would you have done if we had been lovers and we’d had your parents’ house to ourselves for the weekend?”

      He waited before he answered, savoring the tension humming between them. He let his eyes linger on the tops of her breasts, the dip of her waist and flare of her hips, his gaze drifting down to her long, smooth legs. Would she wrap those legs around him as he entered her? Would she scream when she came? He had so much to look forward to learning about her.

      “Come on, Dylan,” she prompted. “What would you do?”

      “I’d do this.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, a long, hungry kiss with none of the hesitation they’d experienced earlier. They kissed with open mouths, tongues exploring, lips seeking, nipping and sucking, speaking without words.

      Long minutes passed as they savored the sensation of lips and tongues entwined, until their breath came in desperate pants and passion mingled with giddy dizziness. He held her tightly, the hard points of her breasts pressed against his chest, one hand at the small of her back, the other fumbling with the hook of her bra.

      “Here, let me.” She reached back with one hand and popped the clasp, then slipped the straps down her arms and out the sleeve of her dress. She grinned at him. “I’d have thought at your age, you’d have had more practice with that.”

      “It doesn’t help that they’re all made different.” Freed of the bra, her breasts swayed gently as she leaned toward him again. He cupped her in his hands, savoring the weight and warmth of her. Her nipples brushed against his palms and he shifted to stroke them through the fabric of her dress, pinching them gently between his thumb and forefinger until she was panting, eyes half closed.

      He was breathing hard, too, as he eased her dress down to her waist and sat back to admire her. Her skin looked golden in the candlelight, her breasts full and round, the nipples dusky.