Without a word, she walks out into the crisp winter air, heading for the edge of the roof, and I follow leisurely, letting the heavy fire door thump shut behind me. She sets her bag down and leans it against the concrete wall, and I do the same with my briefcase.
All around us, the city spreads out as far as we can see, a blanket of twinkling lights. Hotels and skyscrapers shine the brightest, and with its dots of lights like an outstretched string of pearls, the Coronado bridge is easy to spot. I also recognize the Christmas decorations at Balboa Park, and I can pinpoint exactly the location of the Gaslamp Quarter. Because this is my city, the place where I grew up, and where I returned after college. Mostly to be close to my dad, which was why I was so relieved to get this coveted job at such a prestigious firm.
Casting a sideways look at me, Paige suddenly says, “I hope you haven't misjudged why I came up here with you. It was so that you’d show me what you think’s gonna happen…so that I can tell you that it's definitely not going to.”
My burst of laughter takes me by surprise. Neck prickling, I give her a sheepish smile. Is she trying to embarrass me by throwing my own words back in my face? Tough luck.
Should’ve known she agreed to come up here too easily, though. Considering I made her sift through files for hours longer than necessary.
Well, the only way to respond is to go on the offensive.
Moving in closer to her, my hand resting right next to her on the metal railing, I tell her in a low tone, “I feel like you think we’re on an even footing here. You don't seem to realize that when I want something, I get it.”
She sneers, her gaze ablaze. “Explain to me again why you got offended when I said you were too full of yourself?”
I turn so that I’m fully facing her, allowing me to eliminate almost all the space between us while still not quite touching her. “Telling you that you’ll be mine is only too cocky if it's not true.”
She opens her mouth to deliver what is no doubt meant to be a scathing reply, but she’s interrupted by a bright flare that lights up the sky, followed by an ear-splitting boom as a burst of color blooms, spitting sparks before it fades into the dark night. Another glowing firework explodes soon after, then another, and then a rapid series of luminous pyrotechnics, like a radiant and dazzling waterfall. As we watch, more fireworks start going off, brightening and coloring the cityscape.
Soon as there’s a lull, I take advantage of it, leaning nearer to her and murmuring, “Happy New Year, Paige Waters.”
Her head swivels toward me, her expression hard and merciless. “If you try to kiss me, I will slap you.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Smiling, I tilt my head and dip it down toward her. Her hand raises at once, flat palm aimed at my face, and my own hand shoots up like a reflex, catching her by the wrist.
Her teeth bared, she draws in an angry breath, and then her other hand flies at me, and I seize that one, too, locking my fingers around her small, delicate bones.
My pulse jumps and starts racing as we watch each other through narrow eyes, waiting, just waiting… But what comes next? She keeps her arms still, making no move to wrest free of my grip, and as the fireworks begin again, boom after boom reverberating through the chilly night air, I’m holding my breath as I wait for her to demand that I let her go.
If she does, I will. There’s no question there, no gray area. Yeah, I’ve been pushing her and pushing her, but only because the body signals she’s been broadcasting since the first moment we locked eyes, they contradict her words. The way she looks at me, even now, is not the look of someone who’s disinterested. From day one, her mouth has been spouting animosity while her eyes have been begging me to touch her.
But none of that matters if she says no now. I’m just not that kind of guy.
Those words, they never come, though. She doesn’t fight, doesn’t argue, just looks up at me with her eyes glittering, her cheeks flushed, and her lips slightly parted.
“Oh, shit,” I whisper slowly as realization curls through my gut. “You're enjoying this, aren't you?”
She flattens her mouth, nostrils flaring.
“Is this”—I tug on her wrists, yanking her up against myself—“turning you on?”
She releases a breath, harshly, but says nothing. Her body feels like a statue pressed up against mine. Goddamn. Paige, Paige… I’ve underestimated her again. A hot stab of arousal shoots into my groin, and my dick gets so hard so quickly it has blood rushing from my head, leaving me dizzy.
“No wonder guys are scared of you,” I grind out, lust turning my voice gravelly.
“Screw you,” she snaps, the popping fireworks the perfect accompaniment to the fury in her face.
I curve my lips. “Yeah, you will. Eventually. And it's gonna be fucking amazing.”
Then I jerk her arms down and behind her back, reveling in her sharp gasp as I wrap her flush up against me, bend down, and capture her mouth.
Finally. At last. At long last I’m kissing Paige Waters, and the first touch of her soft lips on mine sends a jolt straight to my toes. A moan-sigh comes from her chest, and that little sound, it’s like gasoline on the fire. Like a combustible mix of chemicals, blending and reacting. I'm going to burst.
She tastes so damned sweet, and when all the tension seeps out of her body and she kind of sinks against me and tilts her head back and releases a breathy moan, I almost lose my mind. I turn greedy, demanding, my tongue stroking hers, my teeth nipping at her bottom lip. And she doesn’t just kiss me back. She pushes herself into me, and I can feel her tits pressing softly on my chest through our clothes, her thighs against mine.
Grinding closer, she brings her knee up, shoving it against my erection and doing it just a tad too hard. Grunting with pleasure-pain, I break away from her mouth and pull her hands around to the front of her body, creating space between us. What the hell? What is she doing? What does she want?
Panting, we stare into each other’s eyes, and hers are alight and burning, scorching me while the fireworks go pop, pop, pop all over the city around us.
Jesus fuck. Never, not ever, could I’ve imagined this from her. Would never have thought she’d find force and loss of control anything but infuriating. Am I reading her wrong? I’m not, am I? I’m restraining her…and she fucking loves it.
“I take it back,” she finally forces out. “You do scare me.”
“Why?” I release her wrists as if stung. Did I misread her after all? Damn, it’s like getting whiplash. And the messed-up thing is, whatever the fuck she wants, I’ll do it. She’s brought me to my knees. I can be gentle. I can be rough. Whatever she wants.
Her chest heaves as she draws in a deep breath, as if her courage is inflatable. “You’re not part of the plan.”
“You have a plan?” I’m squinting at her, taken aback. “Like, in writing?”
She takes a step back, rubbing her wrists.
Shit.
“And which part applies to me?” I ask apprehensively.
She shrugs. “No serious relationships until I’m twenty-seven.”
Is she for real?
Of course she is. Gah. With the spark of disgust, I feel like I’m slipping back into myself. “Getting married at twenty-nine, two-point-two perfectly-spaced children by the time you’re thirty-five?” I ask sourly.
She shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut. The fireworks have stopped, and now the silence leaves us in a vacuum.
“I’m pretty sure I could fall in love with you,” she confesses in a near-whisper. “And I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
“Paige…” Her name and a harsh exhalation burst from my lips at the same time. My anger melts away, like an ice cube dropped into a hot tub. A breathless exhilaration slams into me, and I feel like my head is detaching itself from my body.
My insides are singing, squeezing, somersaulting.
She could fall in love?
I’m already halfway there.
“It is a good thing,”
I insist, moving up close to her again, bending down so that our foreheads and noses touch. “It’s the best thing. Don’t be scared, Good Girl.”
And then I kiss her again.
Because what else am I supposed to do?
Chapter 9
Paige
Present Day
“Is this fun?” my brother says, dropping his bucket with a clatter and spreading his arms wide. “Are we having fun yet?”
Crouched on the ground and in the middle of plucking a plump strawberry off the bush in front of me, I tilt my head back to look at him from beneath the brim of my baseball cap. “I don’t think that’s the point.”
“Oh, okay,” he replies. “Because I checked, and I’m pretty sure this sucks ass.”
Rolling my eyes and shaking my head, I grab another berry and dump it into my bucket. My kids and I drove up here the day before yesterday so we can spend the next week at my parents’ house in Green Hills, the San Francisco suburb where I grew up. More than just a family get-together, it’s a week to say goodbye to Mia and Jay, who are about to join Jay’s uncle in Africa to work with him for the humanitarian organization Relief International. They’ll be gone for at least a year, possibly longer, so it’s a pretty big deal.
“Quit whining. You’re a grown man,” my mom mutters from beside me, her oversize sun hat disguising her face.
Cameron scowls at her, hands on his hips. At twenty-four years old, my brother definitely should be a grown-up by now. He sure looks the part, with his six-foot-two gym body, his dirty-blond hair cut shorter than usual, and clothes in khaki and green rather than his standard brand-name athletic wear.
Plus he just got his master’s in Computer Science from Stanford and is supposed to finally be entering the job market—though right now he seems more focused on making a success of the mobile app he’s been developing with a friend for the past few years.
Thankfully, he’s not too busy to join the whole family this week, although since my mom announced today’s trip to this pick-your-own produce farm, he seems to be wishing he was. Of course the Honorable Gwendolyn Waters—Superior Court Judge and fearsome matriarch that she is—didn’t make participation optional.
We’re all here, with two exceptions. Without Grandma, my dad’s mom, the family feels incomplete. Even though it’s been almost two years since she passed away from pancreatic cancer, we’ll always be conscious of the gap she left behind. Family gatherings are less lively without her barking her often too-honest opinions at us.
The second person not here is Logan. A pang hits me at the thought, squeezing my chest, and I can’t decide why. Is he missed? Does this tableau feel incomplete without him?
I definitely still notice his absence. For over seven years, family gatherings always predictably included him exchanging teasing, sarcastic jokes with my siblings, my mom fawning over him, and my dad asking him how the keeping-criminals-out-of-prison business was going.
Someday it might not be remarkable anymore that he’s not here. Maybe this will be the new normal. To be honest, that’s not a cheerful thought. Would he be surprised to know that? I mean, he has to be aware that I preferred my life from before our marriage fell apart, that this is not the status quo I would choose if I felt I had that luxury.
I definitely do not miss the man he became during that last year before our separation, though. All that walking on eggshells, always on guard for the next verbal punch in the gut. The sudden and stark absence of any kind of connection between us, the devastating loss of trust.
He made me cry, all the time. I cried in the bathroom, where I had plenty of tissues and could let the hurt overtake me. I cried while doing the dishes, silently sobbing, the hurt wrenching through me with every angry jerk of the scrub brush. And I cried in the car while driving my kids to school, my sunglasses hiding the tears and the girls’ favorite music drowning out my sniffles.
All because my beloved Dr. Jekyll kept turning into Mr. Hyde.
“What’s wrong with just going to the farmer’s market?” my little brother grumbles as he kneels and starts yanking berries off the plants and tossing them into his bucket.
“This is cheaper, and it’s a bonding family activity. Besides, the kids are loving it.” Mom bends forward to look past me down the rows of strawberry bushes, where my kids are hanging out with the rest of the family—my dad, my sister, and her husband.
Following our gazes, Cam snorts. “The kids are having fun because all they have to do is eat berries and look cute in photos.”
“Whereas you’re having to look cute in photos and perform slave labor?” I ask dryly.
Pointing at me with both index fingers, he winks and clicks his tongue, grinning. Then he pushes to his feet and announces, “Porta-potty calls.”
As he walks off, I exchange an exasperated look with my mom. My brother definitely puts the “love someone for who they are” adage to the test.
I observe my kids some more. They do look like they’re having a blast. Doing his little toddler squat in his cute plaid shorts and Spider-Man shirt and tiny sandals, Elliott keeps stuffing strawberries into his mouth. Like usual, Freya has attached herself to my brother-in-law, Jay, and appears to be talking his head off while keeping her berry-picking effort to a minimum.
And Abigail is like an extension of the rays of sunshine that are beating down on us as she skips among the rows and nibbles on a strawberry, dancing and singing and twirling in her pretty yellow summer dress.
Dad, who is like me and never half-asses anything, has somehow managed to almost fill his bucket already while keeping up conversations with everyone around him, and Mia is flitting back and forth, snapping pictures with her phone.
She’s recording memories. With a twist of my lips and a wistful sigh, I watch as she points the device at Jay, who says something that makes her laugh and bend down and plant a lingering kiss on his lips—which causes my girls to cover their eyes and groan and moan with overly dramatic disgust.
Mia is a women’s health nurse practitioner who became a certified nurse midwife last year, and Jay is a physician who just finished his emergency medicine residency. The thought of not seeing them for several years is hard to wrap my mind around. We’re all going to miss them. And we’re so damn proud of them—even dad, who still gets a bilious expression on his face whenever the topic comes up. Probably because he suffers flashbacks to every headline he’s ever read that includes the words “aid workers killed.”
Me, I’ve managed not to dwell on that. For the most part.
I turn my attention back to picking strawberries. It’s the perfect temperature out today, neither hot nor chilly, and I find I don’t even mind that I’m basically crawling around in dirt. Sitting back on my haunches, I pop a small, dark red berry into my mouth, chewing and enjoying the burst of juicy sweetness on my tongue. The lady who greeted us when we arrived confirmed what my mom had assured us, that snacking on berries while we picked was okay. Bringing my kids to a place like this would be a nightmare otherwise.
“Elliott’s going to OD on those berries,” comes Mia’s amused voice as she approaches with her bucket and her phone.
“Yeah, he loves them. Always has.” I lean sideways, closer to my mom, smiling and posing as my sister takes a picture of us.
Getting down on her knees across from us, Mia starts on the berries on the other side of our row. When we got here, my parents each started at opposite ends so that we could work our way up and meet in the middle. Casting a glance down the field, I reassure myself that the men still have my kids under control, and then I casually tell my sister, “Jay and Dad look like they’re getting along better these days.”
“They’re trying.” Turning her head briefly in their direction, my little sister gives a quick shake of her head. “Shows how much they love me, right?”
“As long as they stick to talking about medicine?” I ask with a quiet snicker.
“Uh-huh.” She meets my gaze, her eyes dancing. “And baseball.”
My dad can be a little…confrontational. Instead of welcoming his sons-in-law into the family with open arms, he tends to act like they need to prove they’re worthy of his daughters.
Logan always took Dad in stride, just because that’s how he rolls, my unflappable husband. But with Jay the tension has been higher. Words were exchanged. People got pissed off. Then apologies were made, but I doubt they’ll ever be best buddies. My dad is loud, bossy, and pushy. Jay is quiet, restrained, and laid-back. Pretty sure they don't understand each other at all.
Realizing I’ve picked clean the bushes within reach, I get up and move down a ways, taking my bucket with me.
“These berries look so good,” Mia says. “I think I’ll make Grandma’s strawberry cheesecake tomorrow.”
While walking past me in search of more ripe berries, Mom comments, “She made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, too, that was amazing.”
“Makes me think of spending summer break at her house.” My little sister’s tone turns pensive.
“Grilled cheese and watermelon for lunch,” I supply with a smile. “Playing in the sprinklers on her lawn.”
Mia lets out a humming sigh, and then our reminiscing is interrupted by the return of Cameron.
“Seriously,” he says as he trudges up to us and picks up his bucket with an overly aggressive jerk. “Are we going to be done soon? I’ve got a party tonight.”
“I thought you were spending the whole week with us?” Mom speaks up sharply, sitting back on her heels and frowning at him.
“Bas and I are throwing a pre-pre-launch party for our app,” replies with a shrug. “We’ve had it planned since way before this ‘family week’ thing was announced.”
“A pre-pre-launch party?” I’m asking, squinting at him. He and Bastien Hunt have been inseparable since middle school, bonding over their mutual love of computers and music, Cam being a guitar player and Bas a drummer. When they both got into Stanford, ours as well as Bas’s parents worried they’d spend their time getting into trouble rather than actually studying.
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