by Elise Faber
“Babe.”
“We don’t know each other.”
“You’ve been sitting in my bar for six months now.”
“And probably exchanged less than a hundred words in that time.”
“Words are a waste of time.”
I gasped. That was blasphemy.
He cupped my cheek. “Not your words, babe. But the bullshit people spin for each other. Your words have value.”
My heart was pounding in my chest, those being some of the most romantic words I’d ever heard. “This doesn’t make any sense. You.” I shook my head, trying desperately to clear it. “Me.”
Blue eyes turned to ice. “Is this because of Tabitha?”
I frowned. “The girl from the hall?” A shake of my head. “No.” Well, yes, I supposed in a way, it was. She fit with Kace while I—
“I’ve kissed a lot of women in my life, but none of their mouths felt like yours.”
Was this man for real?
His hands cupped my elbows. “You ever had a kiss like that, babe?”
Wordlessly, I shook my head again.
“Then it’s settled.”
What? Nothing was settled. Nothing made sense. This was absolute insanity and—
“You’re with me.”
I had the distinct feeling that my jaw had dropped open and remained open. I never wrote stupid heroines who just went along with a man without questions and answers, without collaboration and a fair share of attitude, but I had the feeling in that moment I was acting like a complete ninny.
I couldn’t even force out anything else before Kace’s thumb was on my chin, gently closing it.
“Till we figure out what this thing between us is, you’re mine, babe.”
And total ninny that I was, I didn’t have a pithy or snarky response to that. Instead, I leaned into the contact, smiled, and nodded.
“Okay,” I whispered.
I was at my keyboard, typing away like I’d had ten espressos in the span of an hour, the words flying from my fingers and onto the screen almost more rapidly than my brain could process.
I had all the feelings.
ALL.
It was five in the morning, and Kace had kept me at the bar until he’d finished closing up. Brent left just after two, but not before giving me a quick hug, a knowing look, and a “Call me if you need me, darlin’.”
I hadn’t stayed because Kace had handcuffed me to the stool and kept me hostage—though I might as well have been. Instead, I’d stayed because he’d unleashed his smile, his teasing. Because he’d given me a glimpse of charm.
I’d liked him before—gentle, beautiful, but almost untouchable.
Now? All of that, except with a wicked sense of humor that had me bursting into laughter more than a few times, and that untouchable air was gone. Poof. Like so much smoke. He hadn’t kissed me again, but he’d touched.
A brush down my arm when he moved passed me to check the tables.
A tug on my ponytail when he came back.
A squeeze on my shoulder.
Fingers on the back of my neck.
On my jaw.
Down my nose.
I’d cataloged them all, tucked them safely into my brain to dish over later, because I was in deep.
I liked him.
Hence the feelings. Hence the typing. Hence the tactile and mental vomiting of thoughts onto my laptop.
My heroine suddenly became me—okay, lie, Lexy had already been me for a while. But she worked out her/my confusion as the pages added up. And though it took me a couple of chapters to work through it (with the hero/Kace telling her she was beautiful and had value—no clue where that came from. Snort.) I decided I needed to be done with the comparisons and putting myself down.
I had value.
The things I did had value.
I’d somehow forgotten that, but it was important that I remember.
My fingers slid to a stop, thinking about how Kace had walked me home the night before. It had started with him escorting me to my car, but his face had clouded when I told him that I didn’t drive to the bar.
“You walk home at one in the morning?” he asked, quietly, but there was a thread of steel laced through his question.
Considering it had been at least a decade since anyone had given two shits about where I went or how I got home, I hadn’t recognized that steel for what it was. That was what I got for dancing with trouble. “It’s not far,” I said, turning in the direction of my apartment.
“Not. Far.”
That had triggered me, or at least I’d finally done the sensible thing and recognized the warning in Kace’s tone.
“Well, I’ll just . . . call you then?”
Silence.
I gave a painfully awkward wave. “Well . . . okay, bye.”
One step. I got exactly one step before his fingers wrapped around my wrist and tugged me to a stop.
“Babe.”
A beat. “Yeah?”
His voice softened. “You walk home?”
And somehow when his tone went gentler, mine firmed up. “I’ve been on my own for more than ten years, Kace. I know how to be smart and aware, and I know when I can walk three blocks safely.”
He tugged my wrist, using the momentum to turn me so I was facing him again.
“There you are, gorgeous.”
I rolled my eyes, and though his expression darkened, he didn’t comment on the eye roll. Instead, he said, “Ten years.”
Two words that weren’t phrased as a question, but I knew he was asking one anyway, and it would be so easy to just blow him off, to give the standard non-answer that I always gave—small family, not close—and I didn’t completely understand why, in this case, I didn’t want to go that route.
I wanted Kace to know me. The real me.
“My parents died in a car accident when Hayden—my twin brother—and I were nineteen. I was at college, Hay, in the military.” His fingers convulsed, and he reached for my other hand. “It was hard, especially because our family had just been us four, and with Hay in Afghanistan. I knew how dangerous it was there, and they couldn’t get in contact with him after it happened. I thought . . .” My throat was so tight I could barely force the words out. “I thought I’d lost him, too.” I sucked in a breath. “Then, later, I really did lose him.”
Somehow, I found myself pressed into Kace’s chest, the steady thrum of his heartbeat against my ear. “I’m sorry, babe,” he murmured, the words vibrating against my cheek. “That’s a shit hand.”
I stiffened. “He tried,” I snapped, yanking myself out of Kace’s arms and fully aware that the only reason I was able to do so was because he’d let me. “He tried to get better—”
The heat left me when I saw his face.
Because it wasn’t pity in his expression, like I’d expected. Pity that I’d lost my parents and my brother had given up on me. Because it wasn’t like that. Hayden had been sick and hurting and . . . we couldn’t get him better.
Kace’s face told me he understood that.
“I know,” he murmured. “I know he tried to get better.” He took my hand again, started walking me in the direction I’d pointed earlier. “With you in his life, he must have fought for it really hard.”
If I’d thought my throat was tight before, now it had been burned to a crisp by a flamethrower, and I wasn’t even going to think about how much my eyes stung. Instead, I just started walking beside Kace, blinking rapidly, breathing carefully, and leading the way to my apartment.
No surprise, he walked me up to my door.
But he didn’t kiss me.
Instead, he cupped my cheek, touched his mouth to my forehead, and said, “Call me when you get up.”
Then he took the keys from my hand and opened my door.
I was still reeling from sharing so much, from his reaction, from the way he made me feel so fucking much, when he nudged me inside, closing the door and ordering me to lock up.
I’d still been reeling as I’d do
ne so then made my way to my laptop.
I hadn’t heard my neighbor snoring, hadn’t recognized the time passing by.
I’d sat my ass down and written and written and written.
I thought, I typed, I poured my soul into that computer.
And I did it until the sun came up.
I did it until I realized it was okay to share, that it was okay to not always be alone. I did it until I knew that somehow Kace was the one to make me feel that way, and I did it until I knew it wasn’t just Kace and all his wonderfulness, that it was me, too, that I was tired of being alone.
And I wanted to try being not alone with Kace.
Then I closed my laptop, dropped myself into my bed fully dressed, and was asleep before my eyelids fully slid shut.
Eleven
Kace
She hadn’t called.
Or texted.
Or Facebook friend requested me.
Fuck, I was old.
Also fuck, because I’d only made a profile on the site so I could stalk Brooke on her author page.
I’d given her my number so as not to pressure her, to go slowly and carefully, and for her to know the ball was in her court. That was totally fucking stupid. I knew that now. But I’d never expected her to let me in like she had the previous night, or earlier that same day, rather. If I’d known she would unlatch a piece of the armor she so diligently wore, I’d have gotten her number first thing.
I’d just expected that after six months of her barely making eye contact with me, it would take time to slip beneath that armor.
A whole lot of time.
And not to say that I was in all the way, but I’d gotten in a bit.
Which meant I’d expected a call within twenty-four hours. Or at least for Brooke to come into the bar during my shift that night. But she hadn’t, and now I had two days off and was acting like a pussy-whipped motherfucker who was moping around waiting for his girl to phone.
Weak ass shit.
Sighing, I tossed the rag I was using to wipe down glasses into the dirty laundry bin, snagged my cell, and left the back room. As was my usual, I walked through the front of the bar, checking to make sure everything was ready for the crew to open at lunchtime and ensuring the front door was locked. Then armed the alarm, walked back down the hall and out the back door.
I double-checked that lock because I never knew what crazies were around then headed for my car, still moping, still sad and pathetic.
My phone buzzed.
Heart skipping a beat, I pulled it out of my pocket, but instead of it being an unknown number—read: Brooke—as I hoped, it was Heather, my new partner extraordinaire.
“Hey,” I said, answering the call. “Still in Germany?”
“How’d you know?”
“Lunchtime.”
“What?” she asked.
“You seem to enjoy calling me over salads.”
A beat then, “Vegetables. Gross.”
“Don’t you know they make you strong?”
“I’m strong enough.”
I plunked my ass into the driver’s seat of the car. “I’m not saying I don’t enjoy these late-night calls, but I’ve been on for ten hours, it’s almost three am, and I haven’t eaten yet.”
“Right,” Heather said, just as my phone buzzed, probably warning the battery was going to die since it was almost out of juice. “I’ll get to the point. It’s been a week since you signed the contract, and my stress level about Bobby’s is a negative one million. Thanks.”
I sucked in a breath, having not expected praise. “Oh. Heather—”
“Numbers are up, drama is down. I should have done this years ago.” A beat. “You’re the shit. Keep it up, and we’ll talk new contract terms at the end of the year.”
That was in less than six months.
What? “Heath—”
“You’re kick ass. I knew it when I hired you, and I reward kick ass—”
“Heather.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re the one who’s the shit.”
She laughed. “I agree with you.”
I laughed, too. “Okay. We done here?”
I could sense her nodding, despite the fact that six thousand-ish miles separated us. “I’m done,” she said. “I’ll pop in to see you when I get back.”
“Can’t wait,” I said dryly.
“I promise, I’ll stick to the customer side of the bar.”
“Considering that you dumped a tray full of pints on a couple the last time you tried to chip in and help, I’d say that is a good idea.”
“One time,” she teased as my phone buzzed again. “One time, a girl drops one thing.”
“It was ten beers, if I recall correctly,” I said. “But my phone’s about to die, so I need to hang up and head home.”
“Got it. Got to eat this healthy salad Clay has forced on me.”
“Enjoy,” I said to her snort and then we exchanged goodbyes.
I chucked my cell onto the passenger’s seat, was starting to buckle in when I saw the screen flash on.
Not dying.
Two texts were on the screen.
Hey. I worked late last night and slept the day away. I can’t believe it, but I just woke up. Are you at the bar still?
Then
Oh. This is Brooke btw.
It buzzed again as I read the messages.
Oh shoot. I probably caught you on your night off. Hope I didn’t wake you. Talk to you another time.
Fuck that.
First thing I did was immediately save her number. The second thing I did was call that number. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been joking with Heather about my battery being low. The moment I clicked the button to make the call, my cell died.
Cursing, I fumbled for my cord—which if I’d been smart would have been the first thing I did after hanging up with Heather—it wasn’t there.
Which was when I remembered I’d taken it into my house the previous night.
“Idiot,” I muttered. “I’m a total idiot.”
Then I sighed and sat back into the seat. I should have—
Done a lot of things.
But tonight I had to be content with finally having Brooke’s number, with having inched underneath that armor just a little further.
Or did I?
Twelve
Brooke
I jumped when I heard it.
A soft tap-tap.
Immediately, my mind went full serial killer. I loved scary movies, so much so that I had a rotation of them on my streaming cue. A cue that was currently running in the background as I whipped up my favorite breakfast.
Three in the morning meant I was only a little early for bacon, eggs, and blueberry pancakes, right?
Right.
But then the tapping came again, and considering the tension was ramping up on my TV, the heroine and the murderer facing off and things about to go sideways, I nearly toppled my bowl of pancake batter.
Probably because the tap was more than a tap, and much closer to a pounding—hehe—my TV was set to loud, my neighbor was snoring blissfully away through it, and I had the kitchen fan running because the bacon was frying on the griddle pan.
I glanced toward the door just as another knock shook it in its panel.
Shit.
Had I woken someone?
I turned down the heat on the bacon, snagged the remote and paused the movie, then headed toward the door. Rising on tiptoe because I was a single girl, living alone, it was the middle of the night, and I wasn’t stupid, I glanced through the peephole and felt my jaw drop open.
Um, what?
There wasn’t an angry neighbor behind that wooden panel, or a police officer responding to a noise complaint as I’d half-expected.
It was . . . Kace.
Kace, whom I’d texted to no response (yes, I knew it was the middle of the night, no, that hadn’t meant the lack of reply didn’t hurt).
But still, it was gorgeous Kace, and I was . .
.
Fucking hell. In my rattiest pajamas with bedhead the size of Texas and no bra.
“Brooke?” he called. “It’s Kace.”
“Uh . . . just a second!”
Shit. Shit.
My eyes darted around the room, noting the mismatched furniture covered in blankets and throw pillows, the paperbacks everywhere, my e-reader on the coffee table along with at least four dirty tea mugs. I had a pile of dirty laundry next to my stacked washer-dryer unit, dishes in the sink, and my bathroom was . . . questionable.
And I wasn’t wearing a bra!
Another knock came. “Brooke? You okay? I smell something burning.”
Shit!
My bacon. Not my bacon!
I reached for the lock, unlatched it, and threw open the door, getting all of one glimpse of Kace’s gorgeous face before I spun in the opposite direction and ran to save my bacon, literally. A few pieces were nearing the edge of inedible, but I managed to salvage them and the rest, and by the time Kace made his way into my kitchen, I’d pulled all the strips off the griddle and set them to drain on a paper-towel-covered plate.
Then I flicked off the burner and turned to the man who’d invaded my apartment.
“Um, hi,” I murmured.
Smooth.
But that inner eye roll stopped midway when I caught a glimpse of his face. It had gone molten and I swear, I felt his eyes drifting up from my toes, pausing on the threadbare short shorts I slept in before trailing further up to hesitate on my slouchy-sweater-but-no-bra-encased breasts.
“Hi,” he whispered, eyes finally locking onto mine.
The look in them took my breath away.
“Kace?”
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
My lungs froze.
“What?”
“You’re in short shorts and not wearing a bra,” he said, voice going husky. “So, I’m going to kiss you.”
“Um . . .”
“Okay?”
Okay? Was he serious? I’d never been so attracted to a man, never fantasized about one so thoroughly for half a year, never touched one and felt sparks shoot down my fingertips. He was nice, thought I was pretty, was protective and a little possessive, and if I could hit pause on my feminist reel for a hot second in order to appreciate just how sexy that was—a man looking out for me, wanting me for me—because it was damned sexy. Plus, his kiss yesterday had blown my socks off. I wasn’t about to turn the opportunity for another one of those down, definitely wasn’t going to squander the kind of chemistry that was currently bubbling between us.