Read Between The Lines: Business of Love 6

by Parker, Ali

  Walker and I stepped out into the cold and I was thankful for my new indigo coat. It was much warmer than the denim jacket I’d been wearing like a second layer of skin since I got home. Our breath steamed in the air, and fresh salt on the sidewalk crunched under our heels as we walked back into town with our backs to the river to find his SUV, which would undoubtedly be frozen over and take forever to warm up.

  “I wish we could stay longer,” I said.

  Walker slid his hands in his coat pockets and glanced down at me. “Me too. There’s nothing stopping us from coming back sooner rather than later.”

  “That’s true. Let’s go back now.”

  He chuckled. “I want Grace to like me, not see me as the enemy. Something makes me feel like she wouldn’t take too kindly to me stealing you away and leaving her to play hostess to your folks.”

  “She’d get over it.”

  He grunted. “Sure she would.”

  “I just want to spend more time with you,” I said truthfully. It wasn’t about escaping my parents. Not entirely. I wanted every second I could cling to with Walker. After spending the last forty-eight hours together, how could I be expected to go the next several days without seeing him?

  “The time we spent together this weekend will get me through the next couple of days until I can see you again,” he said when we arrived at his SUV. I climbed in the passenger seat and he cranked the heat for me while he scraped the windows. When the glass was clear, he got behind the wheel and rubbed his hands together. “Ready to go home?”

  “If I have to be.”

  We left Hudson in the rearview mirror and traded its historic atmosphere for the snowy countryside. Walker distracted me from the sense of impending doom as we closed in on the city and got closer to seeing my parents with every passing second.

  Soon, the New York City traffic swallowed us up and our procession to my townhouse slowed to an inch-by-inch pace.

  I wrung my hands in my lap and gnawed on the inside of my cheek.

  Walker reached over and placed a hand over mine. “You’ll be fine, Nora. You traveled solo for a year and saw how many countries? You can handle a visit from your dentist parents.”

  I laughed but there was no humor in the sound or my heart. “They are not the same thing.”

  “Never said they were. But you have to give yourself a bit more credit here. Your parents are lucky to have you for a daughter. And if I ever meet them, I’ll be sure to tell them how incredible you are.”

  I stopped chewing on the inside of my cheek. “You’re just saying sweet things to make me feel better.”

  “I mean every word. If they can’t see how strong, independent, smart-mouthed, funny, and compassionate you are? Well, I guess it’s a good thing they’re dentists and not optometrists because that would make them blind.”

  This time, I laughed in earnest and rolled my eyes. “That was so cringy.”

  “It sounded better in my head.”

  Walker had me giggling the whole rest of the way home. He teased me mercilessly and kept my mind off things until he no longer could. Then he pulled over at the curb in front of my townhouse. Three cars ahead of us was a black Volkswagen station wagon with a never-used bike rack on the roof that had been thrown in as a deal to close the sale.

  “They’re already here,” I breathed, staring at their car. “Shit. Grace is gonna kill me.”

  “Tell her I had no part in this. You’re the one who took forever to eat your breakfast.”

  “Where did all the support go you were giving me for the last forty-eight hours?”

  “I’m all talk, Nora.”

  I laughed. “Well, I appreciated the talk. And this whole weekend. For the record, I think you’re pretty incredible, too.”

  “You’re just saying that to try to get me to drive away with you again.”

  “Maybe.”

  Walker smiled, leaned across the console, and pinched the front of my jacket in one hand to pull me into him for a kiss. When we pulled away, he looked deep in my eyes. “You can do this. If it gets to be too much, call me. I’ll come get you.”

  “My Prince Charming.”

  It took too much will to get out of the SUV. Walker came around to my side, opened the back door, and took out my bag with my denim jacket and a couple of odds and ends from the thrift stores packed away.

  “Can I help you to the door?” he asked, lifting the bag.

  I took it off his hands. “No thank you. If my parents know I’m seeing someone, they’ll try to pick every decision I’ve made apart and make sure I’m being smart. I just—today is going to be enough for me.”

  His eyes were full of understanding as he smiled at me. “Seeing someone?”

  Why was he so good at making me blush?

  I shouldered my bag. “Yes. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  He grinned like a high-school boy who was just told by the head cheerleader that she thinks he’s cute. “Good luck in there, Nora.”

  I nodded, stepped up onto the curb, and turned to face the townhouse. The stairs to the front door seemed to taunt me. I took a deep, steadying breath.

  You can handle this. You got lost in Rome and wandered the streets for six hours before you found your way. What could a couple of dentists throw at you that you couldn’t handle?

  I couldn’t make my feet go.

  A hand in the small of my back pushed me forward a step. It was all the momentum I needed, and I kept going one sure step at a time until I reached the top of the stairs. I turned back to find Walker leaning against his SUV, watching me.

  I mouthed the words thank you to him, and he merely nodded, a smile on his lips that tempted me to run back into his arms to steal just one more kiss.

  But if I did that, I’d never make it back up these stairs.

  Chapter 26

  Walker

  I made sure Nora got in her house okay before I pulled away from the curb. I didn’t see who answered the door. It seemed too much of a risk to be seen when Nora was very clear about wanting to do this visit by herself. Even though I wished I could be there for her to put a hand on her knee when she hit a wall, I knew she could handle this on her own.

  Still, I wondered how severe these parents of hers were if they made her this nervous.

  Nora was a headstrong young woman. It was hard to imagine she’d be intimidated by anyone, although there was nothing quite as confidence-unraveling as the criticism of a parent whose approval you’d been chasing all your life.

  They should just be proud she was able to get out from under their expectations and strive to meet her own standards instead of theirs.

  The SUV was empty and silent without my shotgun companion and I didn’t like it. To make up for the silence, I turned up my music and drummed my thumbs on the steering wheel to the beat. It wasn’t an equal replacement to Nora’s backhanded jokes or the way she hummed along to the songs she liked.

  Not even close.

  I didn’t want to return to my empty apartment straight away, so I found myself heading toward Wes and Briar’s neighborhood. I parked in their driveway, got out of my car, and walked up to the front door. The living-room light was on but I didn’t see any movement. I knocked and waited.

  Nothing.

  I knocked one more time, and after a minute or two passed, I turned to leave, assuming they weren’t home.

  The door swung open and revealed a messy-haired Briar. She was wearing a silk bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and held a coffee cup in one hand as she blinked blurrily up at me. “Walker?”

  “Morning,” I said, rocking back on my heels and looking her up and down. “Did I interrupt something?”

  “We’re having a slow start,” she said with a scowl as she stepped back. “Come in.”

  I stepped inside. The house smelled like citrus and cinnamon. As she led me into the kitchen, I spotted a candle flickering on the kitchen island and identified it as the source of the smell. Wes had his back to me as he worked away on t
he stove frying up some eggs while bacon sizzled in another pan.

  He looked over his shoulder. “Morning, Walker. What brings you here?”

  It was out of character for me to drop by unannounced like this. I felt a tad bad for interrupting what was clearly a lazy and indulgent start to their Sunday. But only a tad.

  I took a seat on one of the stools at the island. “I came to thank you.”

  Wes and Briar shared a look.

  Briar leaned on the island and put her chin in her hand. “Well, that’s very unlike you. Thank us for what?”

  I nodded pointedly at Wes. “For pushing me to ask a girl on a date.”

  “Things went well with Aayla, I take it?” Wes asked.

  “Not Aayla,” I said. “Nora.”

  Briar frowned. “The girl with the stormy attitude who told you your paintings were shit?”

  I grinned. “That’s her.”

  Briar frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  Wes turned from the stove. He looked me over until a sly smile tugged at his lips. “You’re smitten, aren’t you?”

  “I think I’m more than smitten,” I confessed. “She and I spent the entire weekend together. I just dropped her off at home, and as I drove away, all I wanted was to turn around and steal her away again. You know me. I’m a loner. I like to spend time by myself. It’s kind of my shtick. But with Nora? I could spend every minute of every day with her and not crave isolation.”

  “It’s easy to say that now,” Briar cautioned. “You hardly know her.”

  “On the contrary. I feel like I know her better than I know myself.”

  Briar narrowed her eyes at me. “You met her two weeks ago.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You can’t know someone that well in two weeks,” she said.

  “Says who?” I asked.

  “Says science,” she countered.

  Wes flipped the bacon in the pan. “Don’t rain on his parade, babe. Dude, if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you. It’s about time you let a girl close enough to catch feelings for her.”

  I’d gone further than catching feelings but I wasn’t going to say that out loud when Briar was looking at me like I had a screw loose.

  Wes took the bacon out of the pan and set it on a plate layered in paper towels. He wrapped the bacon to absorb the grease, finished the eggs, and put everything on plates. He turned to me. “Hungry?”

  I shook my head. “I already ate.”

  He and Briar sat down on the other barstools and ate while I told them all the details of my whirlwind weekend with Nora. Well, most of the details, not the after-hour ones. Those were for my and Nora’s memories alone.

  My enthusiasm began to rub off on Briar. She started nodding along to what I was saying, and when I told her about Nora’s little hobby of purchasing trinkets at thrift stores and leaving them in public places for people to find, she perked up and grinned.

  “That’s kind of charming, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “It’s more than charming,” I said. “I think I fell in love with her while I watched her hang necklaces from tree branches.”

  Wes sputtered into his coffee.

  Briar blinked rapidly at me. “Love?”

  “I know, I know, it sounds crazy.” I leaned back on my stool and held my hands up. “Believe me. I get that. But I don’t know. I can’t explain it any other way. She’s different in the best way. She makes me think. She makes me see things differently. And here I was thinking I already saw things differently because I come at it from an artist’s point of view.” I laughed and shook my head. “She’s shown me how much I still don’t know.”

  “You sound inspired,” Briar said softly as she crunched on a piece of bacon.

  “I am.”

  Briar rolled out of her stool and went to the coffeepot on the counter to top off her mug. She offered Wes and me some but we shook our heads. “This is great, Wes,” she said as she stirred in some milk and sugar. “You know what we should do? We should totally plan a double date. We could do dinner and drinks. Keep it low key. What do you think?”

  I considered it but only for half a second. “I don’t think I want to throw her in the deep end like that.” Although I was pretty sure Nora could tread water anywhere, I didn’t want to overwhelm her so quickly. Not only that, but I didn’t want to share the time we spent together. For now, I still wanted her to myself while we tried to figure out what we were. “Give us a bit more time and we’ll work our way up to that.”

  “Deal,” Briar said with an eager grin. “What’s the next step for you guys, then?”

  The words came to me before I knew I’d even thought them. “I want to go steady with her.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you say those words,” Wes said.

  “Tell me about it,” I agreed. “But I mean them. I just need to bide my time. She’s not the kind of woman I can rush and I definitely don’t want to scare her off. And there are other variables to consider.”

  “Variables?” Briar and Wes asked in unison.

  “She started exploring the world a year ago and I don’t think she has plans to stop anytime soon,” I explained.

  If I wanted to be with Nora, it would mean I had to get comfortable with the idea of not being here in New York as often as I was used to. Or on American soil, for that matter. I’d done a healthy amount of travel in my time but something told me seeing the world with Nora by my side would be a game-changer.

  “I’ll have to make changes,” I said. “A lot of them.”

  “All the best things are worth changing for,” Briar said. “Take Wes for example. He made changes to win me and look how happy he is now.”

  Wes looked up with a piece of bacon pinched between his teeth. “She’s not wrong.”

  “You have our support, Walker,” Briar said, nodding matter-of-factly. “There is so much more to life than what is here in New York City. Sure, we have a bit of everything, but if this girl is your girl? You have to go for it.”

  I intended to. I would throw myself into this with so much vigor Nora wouldn’t know what hit her.

  “How would you feel about taking on more responsibility at the gallery, Briar?” I asked.

  Briar gave me a knowing smile. “And more money?”

  “Obviously,” I said.

  She collected her and Wes’s plates, went to the kitchen sink, and looked over her shoulder at me. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”

  Chapter 27

  Nora

  Grace put her car in park two blocks away from the convention center. My mother, sitting in the passenger seat directly in front of me, turned to Grace with a pristine white smile.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in with us, Grace?” my mother asked. “I’m sure we could help you get your hands on some free products. Who doesn’t want a new electric toothbrush and teeth-whitening goodies?”

  Grace, who was always polite around my parents, caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

  “You should come,” I said, echoing my mother’s sentiments. It had nothing to do with my cousin getting free products, however. I just wanted backup. If Grace was there with us, that would take fifty percent of the attention off of me, and I was already up to my eyeballs in attention in the mere two hours I’d spent with my folks since Walker dropped me off.

  I’d have given my left foot to be back in his SUV with him. I didn’t even care where we were or what we were doing. If he wanted to take me to a stable to muck stalls for six hours, I’d have happily shoveled shit over making nice with dentists and pretending not to be bored out of my skull for the next four hours.

  “Thank you, but I want to get a head start on my week of work. I have some appointments to confirm in my calendar and dinner to get started.” Grace twisted in her seat so she could smile at my father sitting behind her. “How does everyone feel about lasagna and garlic bread?”

  My father rubbed his stomach in a circle. “Say no more. Lasagna sounds deli
cious.”

  My mother agreed wholeheartedly and looked expectantly at me to say something.

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Grace smiled. “Perfect. We’ll eat at six thirty. I hope you don’t mind if our other roommate, Julie, joins us?”

  My parents said they were looking forward to meeting Julie before the three of us extracted ourselves from Grace’s car. I walked around to the driver’s side window and tapped my knuckles on the glass.

  Grace rolled it down two inches. “What?”

  I leaned over to talk through the crack. “Please don’t leave me alone with them. Do you know how boring this is going to be? I don’t care about new denture technology or veneers.”

  “They’re your parents, Nora. They just want to spend time with you. You haven’t seen them in a freaking year. Give them an inch, will you?”

  I sighed. There was no arguing with that logic without coming out looking like an asshole. She was right. I hadn’t seen my folks in over a year. It was almost divine punishment that this was how we would spend our first day together after all that time.

  At a dentist convention.

  My mother looped her arm through mine and steered me away from Grace’s car. We waved over our shoulders and I heard her winter tires bite at the asphalt as she pulled away.

  My parents and I wandered the two city blocks until we rounded the corner and the convention center rose up before us. My mother let out a giddy squeal and gripped my arm, and my father started talking about the professionals inside that he was most looking forward to meeting.

  As we stood in line waiting for entry, my mother bumped my hip with hers. “Maybe after today you’ll remember just how important our work is, Nora. Oral hygiene is a crucial part of our overall health. It’s a profession to be proud of. After your time away, I know you must have had some time to do some serious thinking.”

  I held my tongue.

  No good could come from starting today off by telling my parents I still didn’t want to be a dentist. A back and forth would ensue about how I didn’t know what was best for me, and my parents only wanted me to be financially stable with a respectable career that would put me in circles with respectable people.