Just The Way You Are(48)

"Come on, give it a shot, describe her to me."

"You just spent the afternoon with her, and I saw you taking photographs of all of us, so I'm sure you can see her for yourself later on."

"You don't look at her, do you? Funny, she doesn't look at you either."

"We prefer it that way."

"Weren't you ever close?"

"Maybe a hundred years ago."

"What happened?"

"I told you."

"Besides Sam—what else broke you apart?"

"It wasn't any one thing."

"Come on, Tessa, talk to me."

She hesitated. "All right. The beauty pageants started the competition between us. My parents entered me first, because I was the oldest, and Alli, well, she wasn't the prettiest baby. I'm not saying that to be mean, she just wasn't. And she was cranky all the time. I knew to smile at the right moment. Alli usually picked that moment to pull down her socks or burst into tears. Pretty soon, my parents took me on my own and left Alli behind. But I never tried to make her feel bad."

"But she felt bad anyway."

"I suppose. We didn't talk about it back then. And when our parents died, we were really close for a while. We shared a bedroom at Grams's house, and we'd talk for hours into the night. We felt like we only had each other."

"Until Sam came along," Jimmy said somewhat dramatically.

She made a face at him. "Yes. Sam lived next door. He was my age, and we were instant friends. Alli couldn't stand it. She did everything she could to make trouble for us."

Tessa paused, lost in the memories.

"Do you blame her for feeling left out?"

"I guess not. But you can't make someone like you. Alli couldn't ever figure that out."

Jimmy smiled to himself. "That's a tough concept to accept when you want someone badly enough. For what it's worth, I don't think Alli is so horrible."

"You've only spent one day with her."

"Yeah, but I looked at her, you didn't. I bet if you ever did, you'd be surprised by what you saw. In fact, while you're at it, you might want to take a good look at Sam, too."

* * *

"You just can't stop yourself, can you?" Sam said to Alli as the Ford Explorer sped down the highway, his foot heavy on the gas pedal. "You had to goad Tessa. Or was it me you were trying to get a reaction from?"

Alli ran a brush through her hair, checking out her reflection in the mirror on the sun visor in front of her.

"I was having a little fun. It was no big deal."#p#分页标题#e#

"Just a little fun, yeah, right. You knew kissing Jimmy would hurt Tessa and you did it anyway." He glanced over at her and immediately wished he hadn't.

Her eyes were sparkling with mischief, her cheeks a rosy pink, her hair a glorious tangle of reds and golds that reminded him of incredible sunsets over the ocean. He'd always thought Alli was pretty, but today she looked spectacular.

He tried to regroup, to remember that he was mad at her. But he was so distracted he wanted to stop the car and run his hands through her hair, kiss her sunburned lips, unbutton the three pearls on the T-shirt that even now strained against her breasts and… Talk about straining, he adjusted his position, wishing he'd worn his looser jeans, because his body was at full alert.

"Jimmy is a flirt," Alli said, flipping back the visor and slipping the brush back into her purse. "I just played along. Tessa would have done the same thing if you hadn't been standing there. You were certainly cozy enough in the boat. What were you talking about?"

"Oysters," he said shortly, irritated that she didn't seem to be at all affected by their closeness or the number of oysters they'd both eaten that day. He felt like Jimmy, wanting to demand a kiss to appease his libido.

"Sure, oysters."

He looked over at her and shook his head. "You drive me crazy."

"Well, you'll be free soon enough." She turned her head toward the window, so he could no longer see her expression.

Free. The word seemed too simple for the complicated emotions running through him. He'd always thought of himself as a straightforward man. He didn't lie. He didn't play games. He didn't cheat. But here he was feeling lust for one woman, at the same time wondering whether or not he still had feelings for her sister.

A long time ago he'd thought of himself as a one-woman man, and Tessa had been that woman. Then Alli had come along and they'd married and shared so many days and nights together that she'd become a part of his existence. She had carved a place in his life, a place that now felt empty, more empty than he would have imagined.

"Do you want to see Tessa again?" Alli asked quietly.