by Megan Hart
“You should stay.”
“If you want me to.”
“You have a better offer?”
She laughed. “No. No way.”
“Good.” He kissed her, yawning in the middle of it. “Shit, I’m wiped out. I’m going to jump in the shower. You want to shower?”
“Um...sure.”
“You want to go first?”
Considerate, she thought with something that tried to be nonchalant but was as squeeful as a giddy fangirl seeing her favorite crush up close. He was considerate. “No, you can go ahead. I’ll get my bag. I have some things I need.”
He nodded and turned on the water while Stella went to the front entry to get the bag she’d flung there while Matthew had been kissing her. She had pajamas—a pretty cotton babydoll set that wasn’t exactly a merry widow corset, but was comfortable and cute, if a little lightweight for January in Chicago. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth while he showered.
He sang in the shower, she discovered. Or rather hummed. A mishmash of classic rock and show tunes that somehow worked together. She washed her face while staring at her own reflection and sometimes at Matthew’s shadow in the shower, and couldn’t stop herself from being charmed.
Her stomach turned.
She should leave right now.
Find her dress, find her panties, get her coat. She should take her bag and get out right now, because this was not a one-night stand. This, she thought, was dangerous.
“All yours.” Matthew pulled a towel from the rack and wrapped it around his waist before heading for the sink. He caught her looking at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Just... You sure you’re okay with this?”
Matthew wiped at the water droplets trickling down his face. “Stella, I just went down on you on my couch and then fucked you hard enough to almost break my bed. What kind of asshole would I be if I didn’t let you stay overnight? And besides...don’t I owe you pancakes from the last time?”
She nodded, another burst of prickly emotion trying to choke her. She focused on brushing her teeth, watching him from the corner of her eye as he went about his bedtime routine as though they were longtime lovers instead of nearly strangers. Then she helped herself to his shower while he left her alone.
She knew the taste of him. How he kissed. How his face twisted when he came. She knew the length and girth of his cock. She knew the scent of his skin and now of his soap, that he used an electric razor and not a blade. She knew his brand of toothpaste.
But sleeping next to him on purpose, that was going to be something else altogether.
The lights were out when she came out of the bathroom, but there was enough of a glow coming in through the cracks in the curtains that she didn’t worry about tripping on her way to the bed. Matthew had left her the side closest to the bathroom, whether out of courtesy or because his usual side was the other one, it didn’t really matter. She slipped under the heavy comforter, grateful for its weight.
The pillow was soft. The sheets were luxurious. She waited to fall asleep, but though she turned on her side and curled into her normal sleeping position, though she counted backward three times from one hundred, Stella could not sleep.
“Are you sleeping?” Matthew’s drowsy, almost silent whisper drifted to her in the dark.
“No.”
He moved to her, spooning. His body fit hers as naturally as though it had been made to fit her. His mint-scented breath warmed the back of her neck, and his fingers curved to her belly.
It was what her body had been waiting for. That embrace, as unexpected as the one at the sink, but as needed. Stella relaxed into him. Her breathing slowed. Her eyes closed. She began to drift.
“I kept waiting for you to come back,” she heard him say, and his words ought to have startled her into wakefulness, but instead they eased Stella into dreams.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The scent of coffee and bacon woke her in the morning, and for some long moments Stella luxuriated in the big, warm bed without opening her eyes. Then, remembering where she was, her eyes shot open and she sat up. Scrubbing at her face, she looked around the room, still disoriented, looking for a clock. How long had she slept?
Swinging her legs out of bed, she fumbled in her bag for her phone, which she usually didn’t let out of her sight. Funny what an exemplary round of fucking could make you forget. No messages, thank God.
She took a few minutes in the bathroom to run her fingers through her hair, brush her teeth. She didn’t go so far as to put on makeup, but she did at least try to make it look as though she hadn’t...well...rolled right out of bed. She found an elastic in her bag and pulled her hair on top of her head, as well as a cardigan to keep herself warm, along with a pair of socks. His apartment was still so freaking chilly.
With her hand on the doorknob to the hall, Stella stopped. She heard voices. The distinct rise and fall of a woman’s voice, and then a few seconds later, of two childish voices. Also female. She did not go out into the hall, but she did keep the door cracked.
There was the clatter of silverware on porcelain. The scrape of the chairs on the tile floor. Domestic sounds, so normal and unremarkable, except that Stella was lurking in the bedroom like a dirty secret.
Maybe that’s what she was.
She listened hard at the door, too aware of what her mother had always said—if you don’t want to hear things you don’t like, don’t listen at doors. But she had no choice, really. She couldn’t exactly saunter out into the kitchen wearing her pj’s and help herself to a mug of coffee if Matthew had houseguests. And, she had to be honest, at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, who were those guests likely to be?
Oh. Fuck. Ex-wife. Kids.
What sort of man invited a woman back to his apartment and then insisted she stay the night when he expected his ex-wife to drop off his kids in the morning?
The kind who wasn’t expecting a visit from his ex-wife and kids, Matthew told her forty minutes later when the front door finally closed and he opened the bedroom door. “Louisa—she’s my oldest. She wanted to stop by and get something she left here. So Caroline brought them by.”
And had stayed for breakfast.
“They saw me making pancakes,” Matthew said after an awkward silence had grown between them. Stella didn’t say anything. What could she have said? “Beatrice, my little one, she wanted to stay. I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Not that you had company, apparently.” She understood, of course, on the surface. She was still essentially a stranger, and she wouldn’t have liked to be paraded out in front of his ex-wife and kids anyway. She respected the fact that he didn’t just shove strangers in front of his children. But that was the surface. Underneath, it still felt kind of shitty to be stuck in the bedroom for forty minutes while he entertained.
“I’m sorry,” he said after another awkward pause. “I should’ve at least come back to let you know, but she kept talking to me and she has a habit of following me if I walk away before she’s finished.”
Stella softened. It had taken her a while after her divorce to consider dating again, and in the brief time when she’d actually gone on actual dates before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort, she’d been careful about exposing Tristan to her new “friends.” Of course, she flew hundreds of miles from home to fuck men. That might’ve had something to do with how much easier it had been for her to keep them from meeting her son.
She smiled at him. “It’s okay. It’s hard to juggle an ex and kids and dating.... Not that we... Well.”
Matthew smiled slowly. “Yeah. Still, I should’ve checked on you.”
“So long as there are some pancakes left,” she began, half teasing, but stopped at his expression. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m sorry, they ate...”
“You—” Stella stood and poked him in the chest “—better get me some pancakes. And bacon. And coffee.”
Matthew pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Long, leisurely and sweet. It sent chills all through her. He looked into her eyes. “I will take you out. How about that?”
She pretended to give him the stink eye. “Where?”
“Diner. Best in Chicago. And the bonus of that is, they’ll serve us hash browns. I wasn’t going to make hash browns.”
“Are they greasy?”
“Greasiest I ever ate.”
She held out her hand for him to shake. “Deal.”
He shook it firmly, then pulled her close again. This time, his big hands cupped her rear. He ground his thickening cock against her. “How hungry are you?”
“Oh, no.” Laughing, Stella backed away from him. She’d taken the time while waiting for him to clean herself up and dress in case she needed to make an abrupt getaway. She shook her finger at him. “No way. Food first. You can’t expect me to fuck on an empty stomach.”
Matthew snorted softly, looking at her from the corner of his eye as though he couldn’t quite figure her out. She liked that look, Stella thought. That she kept him on his toes. She darted in for a quick kiss of his mouth and added a nice, firm squeeze of his ass.
“Move it,” she told him. “I’m starving.”
The diner turned out to be perfect. Stella ordered a thick stack of buttermilk pancakes oozing with butter and syrup, a side of bacon and sausage links too. A platter of hash browns arrived along with a pot of coffee. Matthew watched as she arranged the food and sighed happily at the sight of it.
“Breakfast is my favorite meal,” she told him. “I could eat breakfast all day long.”
Matthew had ordered only coffee—he’d already had his breakfast. That didn’t stop him from giving her sausage links a longing look, though, and she could’ve taken pity on him. Offered him one. Stella stabbed the sausage with her fork and lifted it to her lips, watching Matthew watch her eat it.
“What else do you like?” he asked.
She thought about that for a moment. “Birthdays.”
“Yours, or other people’s?”
“Both,” she said. “I love giving presents, and I love getting presents, and I like a party where everyone is trying to be nice to someone on their special day.”
“I hate my birthday. I never celebrate it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just one more day closer to death.”
Stella sat back to ponder this, uncertain if he was joking. “Wow.”
Matthew shrugged. “Also, I never buy anyone the right present, so I suck at that part of it too.”
“So...what do you like?”
“Breakfast,” he said. “Especially with a beautiful woman who gave me one of the best nights of my life. And I like that you like breakfast. I like to watch you eat.”
Stella pointed at him with her fork and gave him a raised brow. “That’s creepy.”
Matthew put a hand over his eyes for a moment. “You are...something else.”
“Something else that’s good, I hope.” She took her time chewing, washing down the delicious pancakes with swallows of perfectly brewed coffee. He had no way of knowing how much of this was bravado. An act she’d perfected during so many flights—she was Stella to him, but he didn’t necessarily know who Stella was.
“Definitely good.” He watched her dig into the pancakes again. “I meant that I like that you like to eat.”
“Instead of nibbling at a piece of dry toast, huh?”
He paused, an expression she couldn’t quite interpret flickering across his face. “Yes. Something like that.”
“I haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours,” she reminded him.
“Something about you tells me you’re not a dry toast sort of gal.”
Stella sipped at her coffee and sat back in her seat, mirroring him. They stared at each other in comfortable silence. He smiled. So did she.
“No,” she said after a minute. “I guess I’m not.”
“Good,” Matthew said, and signaled for the check. “How do you feel about museums?”
* * *
It was the nicest day Stella could remember having in a long time. As far as dates went, one of the best she’d had, ever. If you could consider it a date, and she wasn’t sure that’s what it had been.
Matthew had taken her to the Field Museum. Then for a walk along the riverfront. Then dinner at a restaurant nice enough to show he was making an effort, but not so fancy she felt out of place in her jeans and the T-shirt she’d borrowed from him that morning. In the cab he took her hand so nonchalantly that she let him hold it all the way back to his place. And once there, she let him take her inside his apartment without making so much as a peep about how she really needed to find herself a hotel.
The fact was, Stella didn’t want to find a hotel or an earlier flight home. She didn’t want to find another man either. She liked him.
Oh, shit.
She did have to ask, though. “Do you want me to go?”
Matthew looked up from the drinks he was mixing and frowned. “No. Do you want to?”
“No.” She moved closer, leaning on the counter to watch him shake and strain and pour. “But I had to ask. Didn’t want to just assume. Or wear out my welcome. I mean, especially since...”
He slid a fat tumbler full of greenish-tinged liquor toward her. The ice cubes clinked. “Since what?”
“Well, you weren’t expecting a weekend houseguest. And we just met.” Stella curled her fingers around the glass but didn’t drink from it.
“We met months ago,” Matthew pointed out. He lifted his glass. “Cheers.”
Stella lifted hers, though she wasn’t sure about drinking it. “What is it?”
“Gin rickey.”
She sipped it. It was good. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? It was all good. And if one was good, another would be better. And after that a third, until before she knew it, she’d be blotto if she wasn’t careful.
“Not a big drinker,” Matthew said in a low voice, watching her. “I keep forgetting.”
Stella turned the glass around and around on the countertop. She watched the liquor slosh over the ice cubes. She breathed in the scent of lime and the stinging, junipery smell of gin. “It’s not that I don’t like it. I guess if anything I like it too much.”
Matthew paused with his glass to his mouth. She watched his throat work as he swallowed. Studied the wetness left behind on his lips when he pulled the glass away. He licked them. “Oh?”
“I’m not an alcoholic,” Stella said.
“You just like to drink.”
“I like to be drunk,” she said. “I don’t have to be drunk, or feel any burning desire to be drunk. I never think about drinking when I’m upset. I’ve never used it to escape my feelings or anything like that.”
“Sounds like you’ve done a lot of research into what makes a person a drunk or not.” Matthew drained the glass and set the tumbler on the counter. He moved the bottle of gin closer to his glass as though considering pouring some more.
Stella wondered if he would.
When he didn’t, at least not immediately, she said, “I guess I did. And I know that someone who does have a drinking problem would be the first to say she doesn’t, it’s the truth. I just like to be drunk.”
“Most people do, which is why they drink.” Matthew smiled. Then he poured another shot into the shaker and uncapped the bottle of sweetened lime, adding a few shots of that too.
Stella laughed, rueful. “Yes. I guess so. It’s fun, you know? I mean, hangovers aren’t fun. And neither is being out of control.”
“Ah.” Matthew poured the contents of the shaker into his glass and topped it off with
club soda. “And that’s the part you don’t like.”
She looked up at him, into his eyes, trying to see if he could guess anything else about her.
“Is it because of the accident?” Matthew said.
She didn’t have to tell him. She could’ve made up any sort of excuse. He didn’t know her, even if he’d guessed she wasn’t the sort to suffer dry toast and he’d spent the day learning her mind and habits as well as he’d started learning her body the night before. She’d already told him the worst of her secrets. What was one more piece of the story?
“I wasn’t driving.”
“But you were drunk?”
She nodded. “I figured it was safe enough, you know? Christmas party, hanging out with friends. Jeff, my ex, was there to drive us all home. So I had a few drinks, just enjoying myself. Being a mom to small kids takes a lot out of you. I let loose a little. And Jeff drove us home.”
“Was the accident his fault?”
The question, so blunt and to the point, set her aback but didn’t offend her. “I blamed him for it.”
“But it wasn’t really his fault.” Matthew drank deeply.
Stella took another sip, relishing the crisp flavor of citrus and the sparkling carbonation. “The roads were icy. We rear-ended someone and were sideswiped by an eighteen-wheeler. There was nothing Jeff could’ve done. Or any of the other drivers, for that matter. Bad weather, bad roads. Bad luck.”
“But if you’d been sober and driving, you might’ve been able to stop it, right?”
Stella straightened and took a step back, still holding her drink. She moved so fast it sloshed over her hand. “There’s no way to know that. Maybe it would’ve been worse.”
“But that’s what you think, isn’t it?” Matthew said quietly. “If you’d been driving, it never would’ve happened. If you’d been in control, you could’ve changed things. That’s what you think. Right?”