by Cari Quinn
“Just for lunch,” he added, as if they were on Skype and he could see her dubious look down at her breasts, currently showcased in a tight raspberry sweater. “It’d be nice to get out for a while.”
Had he been stuck inside all this time, imprisoned by his grief? Maybe she would be his only contact with the outside world all week. And maybe she was reaching, but she didn’t know what to make of any of this.
Probably the guy just wanted some lunch. Why not have it with an emoticon-free, reasonably friendly woman? One who would have to change out of her pink sweater, because that was hardly what someone wore when lunching with a man in mourning. Even someone as emotionally clueless as she was knew that.
“Rory?”
“Yes, sorry. I’m still here.” Would he please stop saying her name? She’d do just fine if he didn’t. “Lunch sounds lovely. Where would you like to go?”
Not Loki’s. That wouldn’t be appropriate. Not when he was grieving. People cheering and yelling and throwing around popcorn definitely would not fit the mood.
“Where do you usually like to eat?”
She dismissed most of her usual restaurants. Most of them were sports bars, and those were out. Then there were her standby fast-food joints, which also wouldn’t work. Didn’t she eat anywhere classy?
“Carmen’s,” she blurted, relief washing over her. Carmen’s wouldn’t offend his delicate sensibilities. Not only was it dimly lit, they only played piped-in string music, nothing raucous or jarring. Sam could grieve properly there, and she could spend much of the meal hiding behind the extensive wine menu if she had to. Win-win all around.
“You like Carmen’s?”
“It’s my favorite place. Great food.” She should get him off the phone before she said something wrong. Plus she needed to plow through that morning’s work so she could take an extra-long lunch, one that would give her enough time to head home to change her sweater.
She glanced down at herself. Her skirt wasn’t much of an improvement. It barely reached midthigh. Maybe a pantsuit would be better? Her boss certainly wouldn’t complain. Her Aunt Pam had asked her repeatedly to dress a little more professionally, but she hadn’t listened. Since she hid behind a desk most of the day, she’d gotten away with most of her clothing transgressions.
But it was odd, wasn’t it, that the only person who’d convinced her to adjust her wardrobe was one who hadn’t asked? Who had never even laid eyes on her?
“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, but he didn’t argue. “What time?”
Rory looked at the clock on her computer. “Two?”
“All right. How will I know it’s you?”
“I’m average height, spiky dark hair. Big earrings.” She felt around for the gigantic silver triangles at her ears. The earrings would stay.
“What color clothes are you wearing?”
“Black. All black.” The tickle in the back of her throat made her gulp more putrid coffee. “What about you?”
“I’ve got on jeans and a shirt. Blue.”
Jeez, buddy, could ya be a little more descriptive? Light blue? Navy? And what did he look like? Long hair? Short? What color? Did he wear glasses or have facial hair?
Before she could ask any of her burning questions, he muttered something that might have been goodbye—or go to hell, for all she knew. She frowned at the buzz of the dial tone.
Charming.
“Hey, Ror, you going to get through that correspondence today?”
Rory glanced up at her Aunt Pam, who’d camped out in her doorway with her usual scowl. “Of course I will.” As always, she counteracted her aunt’s irritation with sunshine. “I’ll have it done before I have lunch with one of our clients.”
Pamela’s pencil-thin brows rose. “Which client would that be?”
“Sam Miller. He does the romantic billboards every quarter.”
“By the highway.” The closest thing to a dreamy expression Rory had ever seen from her boss flitted over Pam’s face. “Such a beautiful love story.”
“His wife died.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Me too.” Rory fumbled for her sand dollar necklace and tried to channel the sun and fun of Ibiza. Anything to avoid the tightness in her throat.
“So you invited him to lunch?” Suspicion crept into Pamela’s tone.
“Actually, he invited me. I think maybe he wants to get out of the house.”
She didn’t have a clue why he’d invited her, truthfully, but that reason made as much sense as any other. Surely he couldn’t just want to get her into bed, didn’t assume because she liked to flirt that she was easy. He’d never seen the way she dressed but if he had, he wouldn’t know that she’d lost a ton of weight a few years ago and loved to show off all the sexy clothes she hadn’t felt comfortable wearing before. He also didn’t get that she watched sports and hung out with guys because she genuinely enjoyed them and liked male company.
“Do you really think that’s what he wants from you, Rory?” Her boss shook her head as if Rory was as dumb as the painted rock adorning one corner of her desk.
Aunt Pam didn’t give her time to respond before stalking back to her own cubicle. That was probably a good thing. She really didn’t need to get fired before lunchtime, and if Pamela had stayed, there would’ve been no guarantees.
How dare she insinuate something so horrible? Sam didn’t just want to sleep with someone—anyone—to forget about his wife. He’d been deeply in love with Dani, and a person didn’t move on from something that special in a matter of months.
Did they? It wasn’t as though she had much long-term relationship experience to draw from.
Swallowing hard, Rory picked up the apple and squeezed out her frustration. Only when juice spurted out around the indents she’d made did she realize what she’d done. Great. There went breakfast. At least she had lunch to look forward to.
And dread.
Chapter Two
Dani,
Loving you is all I know. All I want to know. You own my heart as surely as if it beat in your chest. Despite what we’ve been through, I still breathe for you.
~ Sam
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam pulled at the collar of his T-shirt and flicked his gaze up at the rearview mirror. The guy behind him was still riding his bumper. If the clown got so much as a scratch on Bertha, he’d pay for her new paint job.
Sam hissed out a breath and tightened his fingers around the steering wheel as he counted backward from twenty as he’d been taught in his anger management classes. Long enough to calm down and let his brain engage. Then he saw the guy hadn’t backed off and his annoyance level shot back up to the red zone.
Today’s jumpiness aside, he had to admit his anger had lessened lately. Writing helped. He did the journaling thing now and then, and he still wrote the occasional letter. And the billboards.
Doing those had become routine. Every three months, it was time to do another one. Just because Dani had died didn’t make her any less his wife. Even if she’d been dating other men before her death.
He didn’t begrudge her the life she’d worked so hard to rebuild. The undiagnosed heart condition that had led to her passing had been a cruel twist of fate but at least she’d been living again.
Something he still hadn’t quite managed.
The next time he glanced back, the guy playing chicken with his bumper made a right turn. Both Sam and Bertha—all right, not really, though his car definitely had a personality—breathed sighs of relief.
Sam rubbed his jaw and focused on the traffic ahead. He took car maintenance seriously under normal circumstances, but it had become an obsession the last few months. Blowing out a breath, he fought to unkink the muscles in his lower back. He needed to relax. Getting out was a positive thing. Progress. He spent way too much time cooped up in his musty apartment with his punching bag, his free weights and his memories. He knew he needed to try to expand his world beyond the s
hop and his place, but he didn’t feel ready.
Would he ever be ready?
Perhaps his ex-shrink Dr. Curtis was right. Maybe he needed to get a pet. At least his apartment wouldn’t be so damn lonely.
Even his friends had stopped coming around. They didn’t know what to say to him. A couple of his buddies had settled down and were thinking of getting married, but none of them had yet taken the plunge. Friday nights still meant a couple pizzas, beer pong and wrestling on cable, not composing words for a woman who would never read them.
The long, quiet nights were definitely getting old. Getting a pet sounded like a plan.
After he had lunch with Rory.
Rory. What a weird name for a girl. He still couldn’t fully believe she was a girl, after thinking she possessed XY chromosomes, not XX, all this time. Their email exchanges had never been anything other than friendly and businesslike. But hearing that husky voice pour over his phone line this morning had given him one heck of a jolt. It wasn’t just that she was female. He’d hooked in to that voice and to the woman behind it.
Did lust at first talk exist? Probably not. More fodder for the weird file.
A wry smile curved his lips as he swung his gaze to the rearview mirror again. He knew all about weird, as he’d felt disconnected from life for months. Six, to be precise. And then two years before that. Not quite two, but awfully close.
Today was a start. Like a damn shut-in, here he was taking his first wobbly steps back into the real world. He’d made an impulsive decision while talking to Rory, so now he would follow through.
There was someone new on his ass now. He glanced at the road, then back at the mirror. Yep, she hadn’t given him any space in the interim.
Though he’d always tended to critique other people’s driving, he’d never been this edgy before. The sunny day had brought out all the speeders and the college kids. But this chick behind him wasn’t a kid, from what he could see of her. Not only was she about a hairsbreadth away from smashing his fender, she was also putting on lipstick. Mouth open wide, hand moving in wide swings.
“Fuck.” Sam slammed on the brakes as the car in front of him stopped suddenly. Only by the grace of God did he manage to stop—served him right for being so occupied by the pretty girl behind him—but said pretty girl wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t hit the back of his Chevelle as fast as he’d expected, somehow managing to whip the wheel so that she barely glanced off the bumper and also avoided the line of cars parked at the curb beside them. She had quick reflexes, he’d give her that.
Carmen’s stood on the corner, three storefronts away. So close. So far.
He forgot to count. Instead he slapped a hand on the wheel and slammed out of the car. The brunette was already doing the same, the offending lipstick still clutched in her fist.
In the old days, he might’ve given her the benefit of the doubt. He’d been responsible too. Though even that was her fault, for looking so damn sexy while putting on her makeup. One of the curses of having a convertible was that the other cars seemed inches away, making it too easy to people-watch.
Or in this case, get a raging fucking hard-on from the blaze of gray eyes under her fringe of dark spiky hair.
The woman rushed toward him on her high, high heels, her face aghast. She seemed like a little thing but she probably wasn’t that small. Everyone seemed little to him. Still, gray eyes. Hard-on. Didn’t compute.
For chrissakes, he didn’t get random woods anymore. Dani used to hate his flirting, and eventually he’d just stopped. With everything he’d done, conceding that much hadn’t felt like that big of a sacrifice.
So what the hell was this? Some sort of leftover energy hit from the crash? A pseudo-sexual break?
Staring at her only increased the sense of urgency. It scrambled his brain and sped up his heart. His lungs cramped as if he’d run a mile. And still she stood in front of him, not trembling in the slightest though he would’ve sworn every one of his muscles quivered with anticipation.
He hadn’t bumped his head. But damn if he didn’t like the way his nerve endings had jumped to life. He hadn’t been breathless and hungry like this in eons. So long that the sensation unnerved him almost as much as he wanted to see where it went.
“Sorry I hit you.” Her voice comforted him, like warm milk and a bedtime story. Emphasis on bed. Distinct even in the cacophony of horns and rattling mufflers. “I was rushing. Wasn’t paying attention. Stupid.” With a pained laugh, she dropped the lipstick in purse and swung her attention to his car. “Sweet hell, it’s a Chevelle!”
Before he could reply, she dashed forward and buffed her hand over the fender, worship apparent in every reverent stroke. “Early seventies, right? With the classic black stripes.” She whistled between her teeth. “Shit, must’ve set you back a brick.”
The only brick he could think about at the moment was the one wedged in his jeans. Her coming closer hadn’t helped with his erection. She smelled good, but not because of something that came out of a bottle. Her scent was much more organic. The smoke of a campfire on a summer breeze. Toasted marshmallows. Making love on a windswept beach, with firelight dancing in her eyes and the ocean lapping at their feet.
Their feet. Right. Fine time to interject himself into the movie she’d inspired behind his eyes.
His self-imposed exile must’ve taken a toll. Six months since Dani had died, almost two years before that since he’d touched or taken a woman. His wife. She’d been that in name only for the end of their marriage but he’d remained faithful. That, too, was another small concession. Not very much in the scheme of things. He’d been proud that he rarely looked at another. His love and devotion were strong enough to overcome even basic biology.
But they weren’t enough to overcome death.
He’d had faith Dani would forgive him. That one day she would wake up and see they’d had too much good to throw away. It had never happened. Now she was gone.
Sam sucked in a breath that burned. It didn’t make sense. None of this did. First his impulse this morning, then this crazy whirl of emotions on the verge of taking him out with one blow. She didn’t smell like a campfire or marshmallows. The sun wasn’t setting behind her, tipping her rich black hair with flames. But when she turned to grin at him, he could see the scene so vividly that he had to reach out to grip his car door.
What the hell was happening to him?
“I should give you my insurance card,” she said into the silence, drawing her full lower lip between her teeth. “I’m covered. I know these things cost a mint to fix, but it doesn’t look like the scratches are too bad. There’s only a couple and they’re pretty shallow.” She traced her fingers over Bertha’s wounds and Sam’s cock hardened to steel. “I’m really sorry.”
The last thing he cared about at the moment was damages or insurance. For the first time in forever, his skin was on fire, and it wasn’t from the beaming September sun. This was all her. This nameless woman who’d sparked something inside him and set it ablaze without even knowing his goddamn name.
Nor did he know hers. It didn’t matter. He’d know what her lush, giving body felt like beneath him and how she stretched around his length when he slid deep. That was enough.
Adrenaline buzzed through his system, a heady drug he hadn’t experienced in so long. He’d be damned if the feeling escaped before he’d made good use of it. Whether it was the rush from the minor fender bender or simply her, he didn’t care. He would ride this wave until it bottomed out.
“If you want to exchange information, I live eight blocks from here, at 16 Kimchee Road,” he said, his gaze trained on her face. Any hesitation and he’d back away. Get in his car, drive back to his apartment and take out his frustration on his punching bag.
But there was only interest. Only fascination turning those remarkable eyes from mist gray to the ashen color of the smoke that pumped out from the exhaust when an engine was burning oil.
“You free?” he finished, hoping he so
unded less idiotic than he felt.
Free. What an insane question. He’d never be free again, not completely. And here he was asking a total stranger if she happened to be something that sounded so impossibly wonderful that his breath stumbled. What he wouldn’t give for freedom. Or to forget, just for a little while. Maybe, just maybe, she could give him that.
Small price to pay for some scratches.
“Yes.” She grabbed the flat disk around her throat and flipped it between her fingers. “I’m free.”
Unthinkingly, he dropped his gaze to her license plate. Fowl ’Er.
To anyone else, that would probably seem like an odd chicken joke or something. But after all the sports emails he’d exchanged with Rory, he knew exactly what it meant.
“I’m average height, spiky dark hair. Big earrings.”
Sam checked her earrings, decided the giant silver triangles definitely qualified. The spiky dark hair was a given. She’d left out that her eyes were the color of storm clouds and that her cheeks had the rosy glow of a skin care commercial.
So he’d finally met Rory Fowler. Somehow his crazy reaction fit. She’d sucker-punched him twice now. First with her voice. Now with her everything.
He wrenched open his car door without sparing her another glance. “Follow me.”
* * * * *
“Follow me.”
Rory stared straight ahead and wrapped her shaking fingers around her steering wheel. Traffic inched at a crawl, cars moving like sluggish beetles through the congested streets. Haven, Pennsylvania had been her home all her life but she might as well have been dropped down by the mother ship in a strange new land.
Normally she’d be bouncing on the seat, eager to start a new adventure. The girl who’d once hugged every sideline known to man had blossomed, as clichéd as it was, once she’d started to lose some weight. Though she still questioned how she looked on a daily basis, she didn’t let it stop her. So she still had a few extra pounds. She had a cute wardrobe and she knew how to work what she’d been given. With that confidence had come anticipation for whatever lay ahead.