Free Daisy's Back in Town by Rachel Gibson Page A

dances," she said through the crack
    "I know."
    She brought the corsage to her nose and breathed deep. Her nose was clogged so it wasn't that deep. She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. And as she looked at him, standing in the hail of her house, wearing a suit he hated and asking her to a dance he loathed, she fell helplessly in love with Jack Parrish. It expanded her heart and flooded her chest and scared her to death. All those years of fighting it faded away to nothing.
    She'd fallen in love with Jack and there hadn't been anything she could do about it.
    That night Jack kissed her for the first time. Or rather, she'd kissed him. During the dance, while she'd been failing in love for the first time in her life, he treated her as he always had, as a friend. While he made her whole body feel hot and alive, he'd stayed cool. It had all been wonderful and awful, and after the prom, when he walked her to her front door, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
    At first he stood with his hands to his side. Then he grasped her shoulders through her coat and pushed her away, angry.
    "What are you doing?"
    "Kiss me, Jack." if he rejected her, she was sure she'd just die right there. On the porch.
    His grip tightened and he brought her forward and pressed his warm lips to her forehead.
    "No, don't treat me like a friend." She swallowed hard past the ache in her chest. 'Please," she whispered as she looked up at him. "I want you to kiss me like you do other girls. I want you to touch me like you do other girls, too."
    He pulled back and his green gaze slid to her mouth. "Don't tease me, Daisy. I don't like it."
    "I'm not teasing you." She ran her hand across the shoulder of his jacket to the side of his neck. "Please, Jack."
    Then as if he didn't want to kiss her, but he couldn't fight it any longer, he slowly lowered his mouth to her. This time the touch of his lips stole her breath. She tilted her head back and sank into his chest. Until that moment, she'd thought she knew what it was like to kiss a boy. Jack showed her she hadn't a clue. The kiss was hot and wet and filled with so much hunger that it changed her forever.
    Even now, after all these years, Daisy remembered standing on her mother's porch as Jack turned her world inside out. She'd clung to him as he'd fed her those liquid kisses that had made her breasts ache and her body tremble. His hands had never moved from her shoulders, but he'd made her crave his touch. She'd wanted him to touch her all over. Instead he'd walked away, leaving her stunned and wanting more.

Chapter Five

    The next day, Daisy called Jack but he didn't pick up. The longer she put off telling him about Nathan, the harder it was going to get. She knew that, having already put if off for fifteen years. But what she hadn't realized before she'd arrived was that the longer she put it off, the more memories of her life in this town would drag her back into the past. Before she'd arrived, the plan had been to tell Jack, give him Steven's letter, and deal with the fallout: if not easy, at least straightforward. Now, it didn't seem real straightforward either. But it had to be done. She was leaving in seven days.

    Before noon, she tried Jack's number two more times, but he didn't answer. She figured he was probably not answering on purpose. She went to church with her mother, and afterward, they had an early dinner with Lily and Pippen. Phillip "Pippen" Darlington was two and had a blond mullet because his mother couldn't bear to cut the curls at the nape of his neck. He had huge blue eyes like Lily, and he loved Thomas the Tank Engine. He also loved wearing his faux coonskin cap and shouting NO! loud enough to be heath into the next county He hated food with texture, spiders, and his Velcro Barney sneakers.
    Daisy looked at him sitting in his high chair at her mother's dinner table and tried not to frown as he poured grape Kool-Aid from his Tommy Tippy cup into his baked potato.