One Night

The first time Colleen Johnson found herself in a strange bed, she’d been eighteen, the victim of a bad breakup and too many Jell-O shots. Her high school sweetheart had dumped her for a blond cheerleader with an impressive rack, and Colleen had spent the night at Dustin Elliot’s post-graduation party, holding down the makeshift bar and nursing her broken heart.

The next morning, she woke up in bed smelling of alcohol and staring up at a slew of band posters, the guy snoring beside her drowning out the pounding in her head. She hadn’t known either where she was or the snoring guy’s name. She hadn’t stuck around to long enough to find out.

Instead, she’d grabbed as many clothes as she could find and bolted. She hadn’t gotten very far, however. There were others in this strange house—awake and determined to give Colleen the walk of shame she desperately wanted to avoid. Catcalls and whistles were the least of her worries. The voice that rose above them all, a familiarity that caused Colleen to close her eyes tightly against the lecture she felt coming.

“Colleen?” the familiar voice called out as she all but ran from the house into the blaring sun, blinding her and reeking havoc on her hangover. The voice caught up to Colleen before she could manage the key of her VW Bug into the ignition. “You came to the party?” the voice questioned as the owner slipped into her passenger seat.

She finally got the key in, turned, and listened to her car purr to life. Though she would rather not have company on her long ride home, she reserved herself to the fact that she would not be able to get rid of her best friend. “Yeah, John. I came to the party,” she muttered hoarsely, her mouth as dry as the moment the dentist pulls cotton balls from your mouth. She fumbled for her designer sunglasses that lay in the center consol and hastily put them between her eyes and the blaring sun.

“You drank?” her friend continued to question, oblivious to her sour mood. “And what were you doing upstairs? And are you not wearing a bra?”

She rolled her eyes beneath her sunglasses where he couldn’t see and looked in his direction until she saw it click in his mind. His mouth hung open as he thought of how Colleen had made it upstairs at the party. She saw the wheels turning in his mind as he contemplated who she could have made it upstairs with. She watched his eyes widen more and then narrow as he thought of how she’d lost her bra. And she could feel him judging her.

She told herself there were worse things in life than random sexual encounters. Bad things like flunking out of high school or getting caught having sex in her parents’ house. Yeah, those were bad. Still, a one-night stand wasn’t for her. It had left her feeling disgusting and disturbed. But by the time she reached her parents’ house, she’d chalked the whole thing up to a learning experience. Something a lot of young women did. Something to learn from, and something that was good to know for the future. Something she vowed never to happen again.

Colleen had been raised to be a proper lady. Proper ladies didn’t reach for a shot glass and a warm body to make herself feel better. No, she’d been raised to curb her impulses and contain her feelings. Johnsons did not drink too much, talk too loud, or wear their heart on their sleeves. And they most certainly did not jump into bed with strangers.

No matter how she’d been raised, Colleen was a romantic. She believed in love at first sight and instant attraction had a bad track record of train wreck relationships due to jumping at the first guy to call her pretty, sweet talk her, or show an interest in the slightest.

By the time she’d turned twenty-three she thought that was all behind her. She had found the perfect guy. Doug was beautiful and romantic and not the least bit like any of her previous boyfriends. He remembered her birthday and always surprised her on holidays. Her parents loved Doug because he came from a wealthy family like her own. He knew which fork was which at the dinner table and was polite almost to a fault.

They dated for almost a year before he asked her to move in. She believed he was ‘the one.’ Right up to the moment she’d rushed home to set up his surprise birthday party and found him in bed with another woman. It had taken her several stunned moments to process what was happening in her bedroom. She’d stood there, too shocked to move, while the nameless woman rode her boyfriend like a cowgirl. And none of it seemed quite real until Doug glanced up and his shocked blue gaze found hers.

She fled the home she had shared with Doug for over six months, not sure of her destination as she sped down side streets and through traffic lights that she couldn’t be sure were all green. Eventually she found herself in a bar in a town she couldn’t name, at least fifty miles from home.

She told herself to remember not to get toasted but one drink surely wouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like knocking back shots, after all. She observed all stages of intoxication taking place around her and didn’t notice when the bartender refilled her drink several times without asking if she wanted another round. And eventually she came to like her seemingly bottomless drink of choice.

Before she opened her eyes the next morning, a feeling of déjà vu crept into her pounding head. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in years. Colleen peeked through scratchy eyelids at the morning light falling through a wide gap in the broken blinds onto the not-so-white comforter across her body. She quickly sat up, panic gripping her throat.

She surveyed the room, from the dingy comforter to the yellow-tinged walls to the two chairs by the door to the rickety TV stand at the foot of the bed to the empty space beside her and finally to the phone that buzzed in that empty space. But the sound of running water was what assured her that she was not alone.

She pushed the comforter aside, touching it as little as possible, suspicious of its cleanliness. To her dismay, she was stark naked and searched for her clothing. She found a shoe kicked under the bedside table, her panties hanging off the side of it. The red cocktail dress she had purchased to wear to Doug’s birthday party the night before was wrinkled on the floor. Quickly, and quietly, she gathered her belongings, slipping her panties on first then pulling the dress over her head. She fumbled with the side zipper in her haste and ended up leaving it have zipped in favor of finding her keys and leaving the hotel room before whoever was in the bathroom surfaced.

She was busy on her hands and knees searching beneath one of the chairs when the water shut off and Colleen’s attention flew to the bathroom door. She spotted her key ring on the bedside table between her and the bathroom and raced across the room. There were worse things than waking up in a strange hotel room, she told herself.

“Leaving so soon, Collie?” a raspy male voice said from only a few feet away.

Colleen came to an abrupt halt, her back ramrod straight. No one called her Collie but her once teenage best friend. Her head whipped around to face the owner of the voice, her keys and shoe falling from her grip, clattering to the floor. Her zipper slipped a fraction of an inch causing her to clutch the fabric to her chest before it fell to the floor as her gaze landed on a thin towel wrapped below a very male happy trail where a drop of water disappeared beneath the cloth.

Colleen lifted her gaze from the towel to a V tattooed on the man’s hip then up the defined muscles of his abdomen to the script scrawled across his chest. He was using a second towel to dry hair that looked as if it needed a little bit of attention, and she looked into sea foam green eyes. She knew those eyes.

He smiled lazily as he tossed the towel in his hand to the hotel room floor. “Good morning.”

His voice was different from the last time she heard it. Older, more mature, gravelly, changed from a boy to a man. She hadn’t seen that smile in years, but she’d never deny remembering that too. It was the same smile he wore when they used to hang out in her bedroom, against her mother’s wishes. It was the same one he sported when she was scared of getting caught doing something her mother wouldn’t approve of. A smile that egged her on, dared her to step out of the pristine box she lived in. “John O’Callaghan.”

His smile grew, meeting his eyes. “You look good falling out of that dress.”

She clutched said dress tighter to her body as she backed into the wall at her back. She pushed her dark, unruly hair behind her ear and tried to smile. She had to dig into years of practice and lessons at the hand of her mother for her manners and composure. “How are you?”

“Good.”

“Great.” She licked her dry lips and nibbled on her lower lip. “What brings you out here?”

“We covered that last night,” he said and he reached to pick a pair of jeans from the floor.

They had obviously covered a lot of things she couldn’t remember. “I heard your brother left for California—USC?”

“We covered that too.” He dropped the jeans on the bed and a hand found his hip.

Oh. “Are you headed home?” The last time she’d seen John was two years ago at a party. They’d barely had time to say two words to each other. When she returned home from college, she had been busy opening her own boutique, leaving no time to see friends, even if they had been in town.

His brows lowered and he looked at her closely. “You don’t remember last night. Do you?”

She shrugged one bare shoulder.

“I knew you were hammered, but I didn’t you were that far gone.”

“I was not hammered,” she proclaimed. She raised her chin defiantly as she often did under her mother’s scrutiny.

“Yeah, you were.”

She frowned, her chin falling an inch. “I had my reasons.”

“You told me.” She hoped to high heavens she didn’t tell him everything, though there was a time she would have done just that—like, say, high school. “Come here.”

“What?”

He motioned her forward with two fingers. “Come here so I can zip your dress.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. If my father found out I let you run out of here with your dress half off, he’d kill me. And if were going to have a conversation, I’d rather not stand here wondering if you’re going to fall the rest of the way out of that thing.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, for several moments. Did she want him to help her out?

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m in only a towel. In about two seconds it’s going to become painfully obvious to the both of us I’m hoping to see you naked.” He smiled wickedly, a smile that had had Colleen wishing John had thoughts like this in high school. “Again.”

Her cheeks scalded, burning beneath her skin as she caught his meaning. In haste, she closed the distance between them and held the fabric of her dress in place as he reached for the zipper. “I guess I drank more than I intended,” she admitted solemnly, thinking of Doug.

“You had reason enough to. Finding your boyfriend engaged in extracurricular activities would drive anyone to drink.” He chuckled lightly, his breath brushing her shoulder as he fastened the clasp above her zipper. “Though, I wouldn’t have minded being him.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Maybe not.” He tucked her hair behind her ear before dropping his hands to his sides. “But you really shouldn’t take it so hard.”

She let out a breath of air as she forced the image of Doug and the porn star from her mind.

“It’s not like it’s your fault, Collie,” he added as an afterthought.

Yes, there were worse things than waking up in a hotel room with a stranger. One was catching your boyfriend cheating in the bedroom you shared. The other had just zipped her dress. She sniffled and bit her bottom lip to keep from crying.

“You’re not going to cry are you?”

She shook her head. She did not show mass amounts of emotion in public. John knew this. He had never once seen Colleen cry, even when there were times it seemed as if she should. But if she’d ever had a reason to cry, this was it. She’d lost her live-in boyfriend and slept with John O’Callaghan, all in one fell swoop. “I can’t believe I slept with you,” she moaned.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of sleeping going on,” he teased. His smirk returned.

“I was drunk. I never would have had sex with you if I hadn’t been drunk.” She looked at him through her eyelashes. “You took advantage of me.”

His gaze narrowed. “Is that what you think?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

John threw a hand into his drying sun-kissed hair. “You really think I would take advantage of you, Collie?” A hint of hurt flashed in his bright eyes.

“It’s the logical conclusion. I was drunk. I woke up naked. You just got out of the shower. You aren’t exactly known as a saint. What am I supposed to think?”

He laughed bitterly. “I guess I deserve that.” He definitely was not anything close to a saint. A reputation that had formed in high school and was reinforced when he decided to tour the world as the lead singer in a band. Self-control was something that did not come easy to him. But he had never once taken advantage of a girl—let alone his best friend. “But we didn’t have sex last night.”

“Don’t spare my feelings, John. I’d rather know the truth. And get over it.”

John shook his head. “That is the truth. Though not for lack of trying on your part.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that? That I wanted to jump your bones, and you resisted. Nice one.” She bent to retrieve her dropped shoe and keys. Standing, she looked John in the eye. “At the very least, I would have expected you to be honest with me. Friend.”

A rumble sounded from John’s throat before he moved to stop Colleen from leaving. He grasped each of her elbows in his calloused hands. “I have never, and will never, lie to you. I know it may not seem like it, but I still like you as a friend, I still respect you, and I would never hurt you. Believe what you want to believe. But know that I would never take advantage of you.” He loosened his grip and trailed his fingers down her arms, toying with her fingers before letting her go completely. He turned away from her, his hands jetting into his now dry hair. He let out a sigh of frustration.

“I believe you.” She hadn’t meant to say it. But it was true. She had always been able to read John. She knew his emotions. She knew when he was being dishonest. And right now, he was not.

She placed a reassuring hand on his raised arm, just noticing yet another tattoo. He relaxed under her touch, his arm falling as he turned. A motion that caused the towel hung low on his hips to loosen and fall to the floor. “Oh, God!” She covered her eyes, a new blush rising to her cheeks as she looked away. “I’m so sorry.”

John laughed. “If you wanted to try to convince me to sleep with you again, you should have just said so,” he teased. He picked up the towel from the floor.

Colleen lowered her hand from her face and looked at John, who was still exposed to the room. “Wouldn’t you just love that?” she asked sarcastically, a hint of a smile warming her face.

“Actually, yes.”

“I wasn’t serious!”

“I was.” John’s wicked grin was back. “You’re not drunk. We're in this crappy hotel room. And I’m already halfway there. Why not?”

“Because you’re you. That’s why not.”

John laughed. He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I get it.” He reached for the jeans on the bed beside him. “But you should definitely stay. And catch up.”

Colleen smiled. “I would love that John.”