The Guy Most Likely To...: Underneath It All / Can't Get You Out of My Head / A Moment Like This

1

Present Day

STANDING AT THE BACK of the A–E line at the registration desk, her dark sunglasses shielding her eyes and her stiff posture discouraging communication, Lauren Desantos came to a sudden realization. The Marquis de Sade had invented the high school reunion. Him, or that Torquemada guy from the Spanish Inquisition.

It made perfect sense; there could be no other explanation. Only someone who enjoyed seeing others squirm in discomfort, who got off on inflicting pain, who thrived on reducing mature adults back to their overemotional, whiny, bitchy, competitive, miserable adolescent selves, would have thought this reunion thing was a good idea.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, along with the fear and discomfort came other remnants of high school days—nervous twitches, weak, fake-sounding laughter. Heck, even long-left-behind acne seemed to show up. It was probably brought about by the stress of wondering who you were going to run into first, who looked better than you did, who would notice the extra ten pounds you’d put on since graduation, who would remember you had once slipped on mashed potatoes in the cafeteria. And, more important, who would ask if you ever fulfilled your dream of becoming a magazine editor and what they would say if they found out you worked in marketing for a grocery store chain.

Yeah. Pure hell. Straight evil. Really, only a masochistic idiot would ever agree to attend one of these reunions.

So what on earth am I doing here?

There were a thousand ways she could be spending this lovely summer weekend, including staying with her family during this all-too-rare visit back to the Chicago area. Instead, she’d driven outside the city to this sprawling, dubiously themed hot spot called Celebrations, which catered to the let’s-relive-past-glory-days-and-pretend-we-aren’t-bitterly-crushed-by-the-reality-of-our-adult-lives crowd. In other words, a reunion resort.

Blech. Next thing you knew, they’d be opening a spot for post-hemorrhoidal-surgery patients to get together and shake their recently-operated-upon backsides.

So get out. Go before anybody sees you.

She considered it, but knew she wouldn’t. Lauren couldn’t disappoint her oldest friend, Maggie, who had been there for her during some rough times. Now, when her friend was so unhappy and lonely after her recent divorce, how could Lauren let her down? She wasn’t a coward, or a quitter, so she just had to suck it up and get through this weekend no matter what.

She inched closer to the front of the line, staying quiet, hoping not to be seen by any of the former classmates ahead of her. Some de Sade descendant had decided nobody could get their room key until they checked in at the reunion registration desk. She had fully planned to go to her room and get cleaned up before risking running into anyone, but instead, she got stuck standing here with her suitcase and her messy hair, trying to remain invisible.

The odds weren’t good that she’d stay unnoticed. Every minute somebody recognized somebody else and the squealing commenced. Watching air kisses between girls who had ripped each other to gossipy shreds ten years ago, and man hugs between former jocks whose beer guts now got in the way of a good old-fashioned chest bump, she could only hope the first person to ID her wasn’t kissy or bumpy.

“Hello, Lauren.”

Or him.

Oh, God, she would take kissy, bumpy, fake, shrill, sexist, knowing, biting, sarcastic or slobbering over the voice she’d just heard from directly behind her.

Seth’s voice.

How can this be happening?

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, still staring straight ahead, not turning her head so much as an inch. Surprisingly, she didn’t stammer, sounding in control. She couldn’t imagine how that was possible, considering her throat felt filled with a huge, anger-flavored lump.

“Was that why you decided to come?”

“Yes.” The one condition she’d imposed on Maggie was that Seth not be attending. As of yesterday, his name hadn’t been on the list of attendees. Obviously he’d decided at the last minute to crash. “Still have a problem with that RSVP thing, huh?” Showing up when he wasn’t supposed to, bailing out when he was.

“Honest as ever, huh?”

His voice was still smooth, easy, sexy and masculine. Just like it had been when he was joking, flirting, whispering sweet words in her ear…and breaking her heart.

Hopefully the rest of him had changed and he had become one of those overweight, prematurely balding, red-nosed-from-too-much-beer guys. Because if he got to keep the delicious voice, he ought to at least have been forced to give up his damn good looks. And maybe a few teeth. And all his hair. A limb might not be stretching it, either. Or his peni…Don’t even go there. She wouldn’t even allow herself to think about certain body parts and Seth in the same brain wave. Allowing them to come together would be like crossing the beams and disrupting the whole space-time continuum or something.

Needing to know either way, she swung around to face him.

“Oh, hell, you would be gorgeous.”

Had she said that out loud? Yikes, the way his brow shot up told her she had. “So you were hoping I’d be a total dog?”

“It would only have been fair for your looks to match your character.”

He winced. “Score one for Desantos.”

“I’m not keeping score,” she insisted.

She didn’t want to keep score with him, or to exchange zingers. She wanted to go on believing she was completely over him… Which was easier to do when she didn’t have to look at his unfairly handsome face.

The eighteen-year-old Seth had been super cute in the way young, lean guys are. The twenty-eight-year-old one ought to have one of those hazard labels, like the kind on the side of cigarette packages. Warning: Guys This Hot Are Dangerous To Your Heart and Your Underwear.

Because he was so very, very hot. He’d break hearts and melt panties. Seth was a veritable perfect storm of good looks and sexuality, designed to sink a woman’s resistance and drown her in her own physical hunger.

His hair was thick and dark, shorter now, but he had a few of those tiny finger-tempting curls at his nape. The dark green eyes were deep-set, heavily lashed, punctuated by light laugh lines on either side, and they still twinkled. Ugh.

His face was a little scruffy, unshaven. No more smooth-cheeked youth, he had the kind of rough jaw a woman would want rubbing against her skin, leaving deliciously wicked red marks.

And his body…wow, the body had definitely matured. Seth had played football in high school, but he’d been the quarterback, so he’d been fast and lean, not bulky. Now he had muscles on top of his muscles. Every inch of him looked powerful, from the broad shoulders clad in a tight black T-shirt down to the massive chest, the rippled stomach with hair.

Stop it. You can’t see his stomach or any hair.

Only, she could. In her mind’s eye.

She suddenly realized he’d caught her staring. Heat rushed into her cheeks. Jeez, she hadn’t blushed since she was a teenager.

“So, do I pass inspection?”

“Not even close.”

“Why do I get the feeling you were wishing I’d be bald and covered with scars from a virulent case of shingles?”

“You’re too young for shingles. Chicken pox would have suited me fine,” she said with a smirk. “I bet you’d be a scratcher.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you were always ready to scratch your itch the minute it started to bug you,” she replied, remembering his rep as a player from when she’d first started school with him in their junior year.

“As I recall, I was kept unscratched and uncomfortable for a pretty long stretch there before graduation.”

She ignored the implication. “What would you know about graduation?” He hadn’t shown up there, either.

“Touché. By the way, it’s nice to see you, too,” he said, his grin widening, fully aware she was angry about finding him every bit as sexy as she’d hoped, as hot as she’d prayed he wouldn’t be.

“Nice isn’t exactly the word I’d use.”

Ignoring her, he took a long second of his own to look her over, from top to bottom, and Lauren sent up a mental curse against the person who’d designed airplane seats to be tiny and clothes-rumpling, and their processed air to be hair-flattening and makeup-melting. Of course it hadn’t helped that a harried mommy and her way-too-big-to-be-a-lap-baby demon spawn had been seated beside her. The kid kept throwing tantrums and lollipops, one of which had landed in Lauren’s hair, which now probably had a sticky streak of red mixed in with the golden brown. And the little brute had been a kicker, so she had a bruise on the side of her arm.