Rachel sat up and shrugged, lifting herself slowly out of bed, the sheets falling away to reveal her in all her glory. She grabbed my hand holding the comforter and twined her fingers with mine, the blanket falling to the floor once again. She pulled me towards the bathroom door. “Fine. If you insist, I suppose we can take a shower.”
“I didn’t mean together,” I said, my heart racing at seeing her body in the bright morning light. I had never seen anything so perfect in my entire life.
She looked over her shoulder at me, a mischievous smile on her face. “Don’t backpedal now, Colton. You know you had this planned all along.”
“I really didn’t,” I said, holding up my other hand in a pledge. “I swear. I’m not complaining, but this was not my intention.”
She smiled and shook her head. “You are so transparent.”
I maintained my innocence as the bathroom steamed up from the heat of the water, and I lathered the motel-supplied soap over every inch of her.
When we finished, Rachel stepped back into her black cocktail dress, and I slipped on my jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.
“This feels a little formal for breakfast,” she said, frowning at her reflection in the mirror.
I dug around in my duffel bag and pulled out a jean jacket. “You can wear this, if you want.”
She grabbed it out of my hands and draped it over her shoulders, turning from side to side in the mirror, looking at herself from every angle. “Does this mean we’re going steady now?”
“Is that still a thing people do?” I teased, surprised by how little I was freaking out. If any other woman had been asking me whether we were dating after one night together, I would have called the entire thing off and ran. But with Rachel, I didn’t mind. In fact, I liked the idea of us being together.
“It’s something we can do,” she said, hugging the denim around her tighter and turning her head to press her nose to the shoulder and inhale deeply.
I knew right then I would never get the jacket back, and honestly, I didn’t want it back. She looked much better in it than I did.
Much like the motel, the diner down the road was dated and dingy. The Americana décor had faded from time and sun exposure thanks to the long wall of windows at the front of the building, and every surface seemed to be slick with a layer of grease. But the waitress, Rhonda, was perfect. She kept our coffee mugs filled and didn’t linger longer than was necessary.
My eyes moved over the menu, growing wider as I went.
“I want to eat everything.”
“One of everything it is,” Rachel said, pretending to slam her menu down on the table and wave Rhonda over. “We’ll take a bite of every plate.”
“How are you supposed to choose between pancakes and waffles?” I asked.
“Easy. Pancakes,” Rachel said.
I raised an eyebrow. “You like pancakes better than waffles?”
She nodded.
“You like soft and fluffy better than golden and crunchy?”
She nodded again. “Pancakes have always been my favorite.”
I raised my eyebrows and shook my head, lips pursed together. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to ask for my jean jacket back.”
Rachel opened her mouth in mock surprise. “Are you dumping me because I like pancakes best? I thought you didn’t have a breakfast preference?”
“Exactly,” I said. “I don’t have a preference because waffles and pancakes are both perfect in their own ways. Anyone who can have a clear favorite is disturbed.”
She twisted her lips to the side in thought. “What if I actually prefer savory over sweet for breakfast foods? Does that make a difference?”
I thought about it and then nodded my head once. “It does. Because then, there will be more pancakes and waffles for me.”
Rachel’s hand slid across the table and grabbed mine. “Our first compromise.”
“Are you two ready to order?” Rhonda asked, topping off my coffee mug, smiling when she noticed our hands clasped on top of the table. She was a middle-aged woman with bright red hair and a beauty mark on her jawline.
Rachel ordered the special, which was a plate of scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon, buttered toast, and a tall glass of orange juice. I opted for a small stack of pancakes and a waffle. I’d get back to my workout and eating regimen once everything with Tony had been taken care of, and I was back in Jersey.
Back in Jersey. Everything with Rachel had happened so quickly that I hadn’t thought about what would happen when life went back to normal. When she was in Pineville or Chicago, and I was back in New Jersey.
I could move. There wasn’t anything tying me to Jersey aside from nostalgia and the comfort of being in the place I knew the best, but I couldn’t move to a new city to be with a woman I’d just met.
Could I? Even if I could, Rachel would have to invite me herself. We hadn’t had any discussions about our future aside from Rachel’s joke at the motel about “going steady,” which hardly counted as a commitment. Bringing up the idea myself would seem desperate, insane. Especially since this all started because I kidnapped her. It seemed as if she had forgiven me for that serious lapse of judgment, but what would it look like if I earned her trust and then turned around and became a stalker?
Yes, I liked spending time with her and talking to her, but our situation existed in a fragile bubble. Any pressure from the outside world or strain from the inside could pop it.
As if reading my mind, Rachel laughed to herself. “Do you realize we’ve only known each other for twelve hours?”
She tucked a strand of still damp hair behind her ear, curling her fist beneath her chin, and I wanted to photograph her and keep it forever. No matter what happened with us and Tony and the future, I wanted to remember the way she was looking at me. More than that, I wanted to remember the way I felt about her. It had been such a long time since I’d cared about anyone like this, and I wanted to remember it so I could recognize it if it ever happened again.
“It feels like a very long twelve hours,” I said, looking at the face that was already becoming familiar to me.
“I hope you mean that in a good way,” she said, biting her lower lip.
Just then, Rhonda returned with our food, and I winked at Rachel as she sat our steaming plates in front of us. I meant it in the best way.
We ate in silence for a few minutes, conversing only in head nods and hand gestures to our food, each trying to convey to the other that it was the best breakfast we’d ever had without having to stop eating. Rachel didn’t come up for air until she was finished with her eggs and halfway through her bacon and toast.
“Is this diner famous?” she asked, looking around at the group of elderly men drinking coffee in the back corner and the young couple trying to feed their wiggly toddler scrambled eggs and strawberries. “Because it should be. I’ve never eaten eggs this fluffy or bacon this crispy.”
“You should try this waffle,” I said, holding out my fork for her to eat a chunk.
Without hesitating, she leaned forward and wrapped her mouth around the bite. Her lips were shiny and pink, and I could make out the light brown freckles across the tips of her cheeks. Sometimes, as you got to know someone, you began to notice the irregularity in their features. But Rachel just got more perfect with time. It had only been twelve hours, of course, but still.
“Wow.” I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. “I’m feeling a very confusing mix of emotions right now.”
Rachel was still chewing the waffle, but she wrinkled her forehead and tilted her head to the side.
So, I explained. “On one hand, I now have one less bite of waffle, which is a bummer. On the other hand, you looked amazing taking a bite of it, which has me tempted to offer you another one.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, still chewing, and stifled a laugh. “You are beyond ridiculous.”
“You are beyond beautiful.” I hadn’t planned to say it, but it felt like the
only thing I could say. It was the only thing I could think most of the time. Rachel’s smile and soft hair blurred my brain. “Have I said that before?”
Her eyes lit up and her lips pursed in a tiny smile. “You may have mentioned it this morning.”
I nodded. “Good. Because I’ve been thinking it a lot. In fact, when I saw you in the bar, the first thing I thought was that you were way prettier in person than in the photo Tony handed me. It makes sense now, because the photo wasn’t even of you.”
“Boys always preferred Jenna,” Rachel said. “She had the boyfriends, and I was her sidekick.”
I tried to imagine a world in which Rachel was anyone’s sidekick, but I couldn’t. She was a leading lady if ever I’d seen one.
“Mobsters seem to prefer her, too,” I said drily.
“I would have gone for a mobster in high school,” she said, grinning. “I’m only half-serious, by the way.”
“Honestly, a mobster would have been better than most high school boys. I think you dodged a bullet there.”
“That’s easy to say for you,” Rachel said. “You probably had a girlfriend.”
I snorted. She wasn’t wrong. I’d dated most of the girls in my grade before my four years in high school were done. “I was one of the bullets you would have dodged. I had girlfriends, and I’m sure they would all tell you I’m a regret.”
Rachel leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table, hands folded beneath her chin. “Were you this handsome as a teenager?”
I opened my mouth to assure her I was just as awkward, pimply, and ill-dressed as any other teenager, but she cut me off.
“Don’t even answer that. We both know you were gorgeous. You were probably the guy all the girls wanted to date.”
Rather than argue with her, I pulled out my phone and pulled up my dad’s social media page. His memorial profile had photos of me on there from my high school football days.
I clicked on one of the pictures so it filled the screen. I was drenched in sweat but smiling, kneeling on the football field with my helmet tucked under my arm. My face looked mostly the same, except it was thinner and my chin was covered in red bumps. I slid the phone across the table and watched as Rachel’s face lit up. Her mouth was open and smiling, her eyes taking in every pixel of the photo.
“What do you say now?” I asked.
“I was right. You were a total heartthrob.”
“I was only seventeen in that photo,” I said. “I had acne.”
“So did I,” she said. Then, she held up fingers, counting off the many other things she’d been cursed with. “And frizzy hair and braces and baby fat.”
“I bet you were cute,” I said.
She snorted. “I was cute in a way only parents found endearing. Everyone else was repulsed.”
“What about Jenna? Weren’t you two like twins?” I asked. “She must have had an awkward phase, too.”
Rachel shrugged and smiled to herself, thinking about it. “Yeah, but she didn’t need braces. I got my bad teeth from my mom’s side of the family. And Jenna’s mom also invested in hair products, so she skipped most of the frizzy phase, too.”
“Let me see a picture of you,” I said, grabbing for my phone back.
Jenna yanked it away and began flipping through photos. Most of my dad’s uploaded photos were of me, so I could only imagine what she was looking at.
“No way, I got rid of all of my terrible photos. The only ones in existence are copies my mom kept somewhere, so you’d have to talk to her if you wanted to see them.”
Would I ever meet Rachel’s mom? Would our relationship reach that level? The way Rachel looked at me over the top of my phone and then darted back to the screen told me she was asking herself the same thing. Then, suddenly, her smile fell.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes pinned to the screen. Finally, she sat it down on the table and slid it to me. “Is this your dad?”
A picture we’d taken right when I got home from the Navy SEALs was on the screen. He was wearing his NAVY sweatshirt and had his arm draped over my shoulder. To anyone else, we both looked happy and healthy, but I could see the reality. The sweatshirt was twenty years old and hadn’t fit him in fifteen. It only began to fit after he got sick and started losing weight. And the hand resting on my shoulder was only there because he wouldn’t have been able to stand up without the support. He died thirteen days later.
“Yeah, that’s him.” I looked at the picture for a minute and then shoved my phone into my front pocket.
“You look like him,” Rachel said. “I don’t know what your mom looked like, but you definitely have your dad’s cheekbones. And his eyes.”
Anyone who knew my dad would mention that we had the same eyes when they saw me. I got so sick of hearing it as a kid, but now it didn’t happen as often, and I realized I’d kind of missed it.
I smiled. “His cheekbones?”
“Oh, yeah.” Rachel made an “OK” symbol and winked at me. “Like marble statues. Your cheekbones could cut glass.”
I sucked in my cheeks and gave her a mocking model pose until she rolled her eyes and threw a wadded-up napkin at me. I caught it and dunked it into my empty water glass, fake-cheering for myself right after.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling this comfortable with anyone. At least, not this fast. I still hadn’t talked about my dad’s death with most of my extended family, yet I’d told Rachel about him after only a few hours. I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought it would be possible to kidnap her, deliver her to Tony, and walk away. Who could walk away from this woman?
She laughed and then dropped her fork and clapped her hands together, breaking me out of my thoughts. “So, should we figure out where we go from here?”
“Back to the motel?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows suggestively.
Rachel glanced at the young couple next to us whose child was now throwing everything they handed to him on the floor to see if they were listening, but they were otherwise occupied. “I don’t know if we can afford to waste any more time.”
“You and I have very different definitions of a waste of time,” I said. She opened her mouth to argue, but I quickly cut her off. “But you’re right. We need to figure out our plan. There is a very real possibility that by tonight, enforcers from the Gambino family will be after us.”
“Do you think there’s any way we can explain this to Tony?” she asked. “Tell him there was no malicious intent?”
“I wish, but Tony isn’t much of a listener, and he doesn’t do anyone any favors if there’s nothing in it for him. We’re going to have to strike a deal with him.”
“What does that mean?” Rachel asked. “What kind of deal?”
I hadn’t figured that part out just yet. In all likelihood, it would mean I would have to do more work for the mob, which wasn’t ideal, but I didn’t see another way out. I had to prove to Tony that I was loyal, that I wouldn’t run to the police and rat him out. If I refused to kidnap Jenna, maybe I could convince him to put me on another job. One that carried just as much weight but didn’t require me to abduct an innocent woman.
Rachel raised her eyebrows and then pressed her palms into the table top, standing up. “You think about it while I use the restroom, yeah? When I get back, I’d like there to be a semblance of a plan.”
I held my hand to my forehead in a salute. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes but dragged her hand across my shoulder as she passed me, heading towards the back corner of the diner where the bathrooms were. I felt the warmth of her touch linger after she was gone.
Without Rachel sitting across from me and making me oblivious to everything else, I finally looked around the restaurant. A few more people had filed in for a late breakfast since we’d sat down. A middle-aged couple in almost matching flannel shirts were a few tables away, each quietly reading their newspapers. And three teenage girls were at a booth in the
corner, hunched over a cell phone in the middle of the table, gasping and giggling at whatever was on the screen. The quiet hum of conversation and activity from the kitchen was relaxing. It helped me remember that the world had carried on while the drama with Rachel and Jenna and Tony had unfolded, and it would continue to do so. Even though things seemed impossible to manage at the moment, it could get better. And with Rachel by my side, it seemed more and more likely that it would.
Partially steamed-over windows lined the whole front of the building. I was looking through them, watching cars whoosh by on the highway beyond, when a large black SUV pulled into the parking space furthest from the restaurant. At first, I pegged it as belonging to some car fanatic who didn’t want there to be any chance of their car being scratched or dinged by another diner patron.
But then, I noticed the license plate. It was a New Jersey tag.
Alarm bells went off in my head. The windows on the SUV were so tinted they were almost blacked out, and I only knew one person with a small fleet of cars like that. My worst fears were confirmed when the back passenger door opened and a man in black trousers and a black sweater stepped out. Then, in quick succession, the three other passengers got out, all large men dressed in what could have been called “funeral chic.”
I didn’t have time to think about how they’d found me or what they were there to do. I only had time to speed-walk across the diner and knock hard on the ladies’ bathroom door.
“Occupado,” Rachel sing-songed from the other side of the door.
“Rachel, it’s me. Let me in.”
The bolt inside the door clicked, and I pushed it open immediately. Rachel stumbled back, cursing under her breath, but I couldn’t worry about that. I grabbed her shoulders and looked in her eyes.
“They’re here.”
There was confusion followed closely by fear. Fear was good. Fear was what inspired people to survive.
The Wedding Steal - A SEAL Romance Page 12