More Than Friends (Kingsley #4)

by Brandi Kennedy

  “Well, I want the conversation more than the movie,” Renee murmured, shrugging. Her eyes had taken on a slight sparkle in the light over their table, and Michael prayed he was saying the right things, prayed he was expressing what he meant, prayed that she understood.

  “I know,” he said.“Maybe that’s why I want the future more than the past.”

  Her eyes widened with surprise and her mouth popped open, dinner-faded lipstick forming a little‘o’. Her chin trembled, but she firmed her expression quickly, blinking furiously as she looked away. Michael watched her struggle to regain control, watched her press her lips into a fine line, terrified that he would say something wrong, that he would go too far, that he would ruin everything.“Alright,” she said finally, taking a deep breath and bringing her eyes back to his face.“Go on.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “Like I said, I still look at you and see my best friend. But now, I see other things too. It’s like… I don’t even know how to describe what I’m feeling. When my mom got hurt and you stayed with me, and then you came home with me and stayed there too, I just–“ He broke off, sighing in frustration. He felt like he was tripping over his words, like she couldn’t possibly understand what he really wanted to say because no matter how many times he said it, he couldn’t seem to say it correctly. But her eyes had softened, and she was looking at him in a way he wasn’t sure she’d ever looked at him before, so he took the leap and carried on.“Something changed then– for me, at least. And I don’t know what it was, but I remember noticing you, really noticing you.” He watched her eyes narrow and broke into a grin.“As a woman, I mean, not just as a friend. Like I suddenly wanted to drag you over to me and bury my hands in your hair and just– I don’t even know. I felt like I’d been carrying a favorite rock around in my pocket for a long time, and only just realized that it was a diamond. And I know it creeped you out to see me when I first saw Nicolette in the mall the other day but… Renee, whatever changed between us before? I need you to know that seeing her didn’t change it back. She’s in the past now, okay?”

  Her eyes widened again, and her eyebrows shot upward as she stared at him. Michael watched her throat work as she swallowed, and she pulled her hand away from his to reach for her wine. Her eyes clouded with emotion, darkened with lust, and as she placed her wine glass back on the table, the tip of her tongue snaked out to dampen one corner of her mouth.“I’m sorry I overreacted,” she said.“I don’t even know what it was. Butit was stupid, and…” Renee’s voice trailed away as she watched a slow smile spread over Michael’s face; she arched her brows curiously and smiled back.“What?”

  “Apology accepted. I’m sorry I wasn’t more clear. And I’m sorry you were left hanging.” He spoke the words from the heart, looking directly into Renee’s face. Lowering her eyes to her plate, she chewed her lip and nodded silently; the embarrassed smile on her face made Michael want to sweep everything off the table and lay her down right there in the middle of the restaurant. He couldn’t do that though, so instead he sipped his wine and asked,“What do you remember about the morning after you stayed at the hospital with me?”

  Renee’s smile widened; she took Michael’s hand, shaking her head slightly.“You made fun of me for drooling,” she said, laughing.“And snoring.”

  “Had to,” Michael answered.“Afraid if I didn’t, I’d cross a line and do something stupid.” He swallowed nervously, cutting his eyes at the young server who had been approaching their table, a fresh bottle of wine in hand. In response to the subtle signal, the server faded into the background, close enough to be summoned but far enough away to respect their privacy.“Let me tell you what I remember.”

  “Alright.” Swirling the wine in the bottom of her glass, Renee took a small sip as she waited for Michael to speak, nibbling from the vegetable platter at the edge of their table.

  “I remember opening my eyes,” Michael said slowly,“and seeing you there next to me, and I had this almost overpowering urge to kiss you right then. And then you woke up and looked at me, all sleepy and– I think that was when everything really clicked for me, when I started to realize that as perfect as we are as friends… maybe there’s more between us than we thought. But even then, all I could think of was Harvey, and that you were seeing someone. You were… out of my reach, you know?”

  She was watching him silently, emotions flickering over her face; even after he looked away he could feel her eyes on him. Michael sighed, hoping the inhalation would ease the tightness that had settled in his chest; Renee shook her head, drinking the last of her wine as Michael chose a bite of steak and swished it through the fondue pot between them. Michael hoped she didn’t notice the tremble in his fingers, the tiny beads of sweat that had broken out on his brow. He hadn’t allowed himself to be this open with anyone in a long time, and it was difficult to take a chance he knew might not end well. But he watched her face, imagined letting it all go back to the way it was, felt the ache of loss in his chest, and hoped with all his heart that the risk would be worth it. “I spent the whole week after that just reliving that moment, the way you looked right there beside me, and it was almost painful for me to think of you seeing someone.” Michael looked away, uncomfortable with his own sense of vulnerability.“Because I finally saw you like that and by then it was a little too late, you know? You were all excited about your date, and then it didn’t matter if I saw things differently or not.”

  “Alright then,” she said finally, tipping her head at him as she reached for her discarded fondue fork.“So what made you decide to make a move? After my date, and after… um… you had company at your house? I’d think that was kind of a skeevy move if I didn’t know you better, you know.”

  Michael nodded, a flush of embarrassed heat warming his face as he steered a cherry tomato around the perimeter of his plate.“I know. And even with the best of intentions, I’ll admit that was horrible timing. I’m sorry for that, too,” he said.“I feel like it cheapens what happened with us, somehow, and I’m sorry for that.”

  Renee laughed, throwing her head back in amusement.“Don’t be sorry,” she said.“And anyway, I had just come running to you after a date gone wrong, remember?”

  “Fair enough. So I had spent a week or so by that point thinking about you with him– or with anyone, and I was trying to figure out why it was messing me up so bad and getting nowhere. But then it didn’t work out with Harvey, and there you were at my house. I was worried for you, of course, and I could tell how upset you were, but on top of everything, I was just relieved.”

  “Oh, relieved that my date bombed?” Renee asked, talking carefully around a bite of chicken.“Thanks for the good wishes, bestie.”

  “No, I’m serious though,” Michael said, laughing.“And then to realize that my seeing someone would mess youup too? That one threw me, seeing you get upset when you realized that I had had someone around.” Michael shrugged, leaving the tomato uneaten at the edge of his plate. He didn’t have words to express what that moment had felt like, when he’d stared at her across the kitchen in his house, fighting his need for her, angry over the thought of her in someone else’s arms, and slowly realizing that maybe she felt the same.“The idea that you felt what I was feeling about us? I just… couldn’t stay on my side of the line anymore, after that.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to notice that,” Renee said quietly.“I never made even a hint, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross that line either. I may have thought of it,” she confessed,“but I never intended to let on about it. I didn’t know you thought of me that way. But when I was standing there in your house, and realizing that someone else had been there…" She trailed away, shaking her head.

  “Never made a hint? You liar. You gave so many signs, whether you meant to or not. You more than made a hint," he said, using his fingers to mime air quotes as he playfully tossed her words back at her.

  "Oh yeah?" Brandishing her fondue fork as she speared a cube of steak and dipped it into
the fondue pot, Renee stared at Michael with an amused gleam in her eyes, made all the more lovely by the flush that crept up her neck. "Other than that night when I was understandably upset and less in control of my emotions, when did I make even the slightest hint?"

  "All the time, now that I’m not too stuck up my own ass to see it,” Michael answered, laughing.“Come on, you have to admit it was there. Even if neither of us were smart enough to actively notice it. If everyone else around us noticed it, then it has to have been there.” Renee snorted; Michael laughed again, thinking back over the length of their friendship. How had he been so blind?“I’m serious though. Look at every time either of us went above and beyond casual friendship. Me driving halfway across the state to pick you up when you broke down on the road trip with your friends. Fixing the sink at your house. Twice. When you called me at three in the morning to get a snake out of the bathroom.”

  She laughed, remembering.“Alright, but those are guy things. I couldn’t call any of my girlfriends to get a snake out of my house – that’s man stuff!And,” she went on smugly, “those are all things you did. Those things all suggest that you liked me. Try again, mister.”

  “Fine, fine,” Michael said, laughing with her.“What about when you made a point to be near me during Cass and Drew’s wedding reception? Right? Because even then, you could tell I was hurting and we had just met. We hardly knew each other, but you went out of your way to reach out to me and cheer me up.”

  “Well, I’m a nice girl,” Renee said primly, pressing her lips together.

  “Mmhmm,” Michael answered, smirking as the corners of her mouth trembled with repressed amusement.“And when I had to walk away from everything for a while at Cameron and Mac’s wedding, and you came to find me? To check on me?”

  “Of course I did. That’s what friends do,” she said, pretending to be casual.

  “Okay then,” he said, more confident than he’d felt all evening.“How about when you cared enough to stay at the hospital with me? Not one of my regular average normal friends would have thought to do that for me. Just you. And then when you came home with me and stayed to make sure I'd be alright? Again, just you."

  Rolling her eyes, Renee feigned exasperation and pushed her plate away. "Michael, I've slept at your house a thousand times," she said.“And I did that partially because I wanted to be kept in the loop about your mother. So I was using you for information, so there.” But she couldn’t meet his eyes and the color that had risen slowly up the length of her neck and flooded her cheeks with pink was now flaming at the tips of her ears.

  "Right. Okay,” he agreed, shrugging.“And all the times you’ve dropped by the shop to surprise me with lunch were just a humanitarian effort to see that I didn’t starve to death, right?Looking out for me for my mother’s sake?”

  “Exactly.” Her lips were quivering again, and when she looked up at him, her eyes sparkled with amusement.

  “The thing is, maybe if I hadn’t already been thinking of things differently, I wouldn’t have seen any of it as anything more than you being you, just being a good friend. Maybe it wouldn’t ever have clicked for me. Not even the little things I did for you when you needed something, even though if I think about it… you know, I’d have probablytold any other girl to call a plumber. Or animal control.” He met her eyes, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves before he went on.“But it wasn’t just friends, was it? Neither of us were just being friends to the other.”

  “That’s probably true enough. I guess we’re kind of stupid, huh?” She laughed again, shaking her head.“How the hell did everybody see it but us?”

  “I don’t know.” Michael watched her, enjoying the easy grace of her movements, the comfort of her presence. How could either of them not have noticed how perfectly well they fit together? “Ireally always thought we were just friends,” he said.“I mean, my brothers used to mess with me about us, but I just put it off as brother stuff and eventually they let it go.” He laughed, thinking of all the times he’d gotten annoyed with his brothers for being stupid and trying to see romance where there was none. It turned out he had been the stupid one all along, too blind to see the right girl even when she was right in front of him. Watching Renee glance at her empty wine glass and then turn to the water glass sweating near her elbow, Michael made eye contact with the bored-looking server still hovering on the edges of their privacy, now somehow empty-handed, and arched a beckoning eyebrow.

  The young man snapped suddenly to attention and made his way over to the table. "Would you like the next course now, sir?" he asked, his young voice still barely pretending to reach manly depth.

  Renee hid a smile as Michael wondered if the boy was even old enough to have been serving the wine he'd tried to deliver to their table; not chancing to ask out of respect for his father's lifelong friendship with the owner of the restaurant, Michael chose instead to nod simply, adding quietly as the boy turned away, "And tell Alfonso to stop with the special treatment, okay?"

  "Okay,” the boy answered with a quick grin, his shoulders slouching suddenly in relief. "Yeah, I can do that. And I'll just be right back with the food."

  "No hurry," Michael answered. Once the young man had gone, Michael turned his focus back on Renee. "I figure if we're going to hog this table all night," he said with a shrug, "at least we can eat well."

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The rest of dinner went well, and by the time Michael steered Renee back out to the restored Camaro in the parking lot of the restaurant, he was willing to bet that her veins had more wine in them than blood. Thinking of her riding in the passenger seat, he had discreetly stopped drinking wine and switched to water after the second course and now, as Michael drove, Renee sat back in her seat, quietly watching his hands as he shifted through the gears. Now and then he’d look over at her, reveling in the peaceful little smile that hinted at the corners of her mouth; finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What’chaover there smiling about?” he asked, pulling to a stop at a red light. The road around them was deserted, and it had rained while they stayed late in the restaurant; pools of light from the street lamps made the asphalt shine with wetness.

  In lieu of answer, Renee lifted one hand from her lap and dropped it lightly onto Michael’s thigh, the secret smile on her lips growing slightly wider even as her eyes fluttered closed. By the time he drove up the driveway at his house, she was sleeping peacefully in the seat beside him, her breath a quiet whisper against the quiet of his thoughts, her hand a welcome and comfortable weight on his leg.

  The next morning, she woke slowly, cautiously, one hand reaching out before her eyes opened to check the surroundings. From his place at the window, Michael watched her run one palm roughly over her face, watched her hesitate as she remembered where she was, watched her move her hand curiously to the other side of the bed. She frowned as she encountered the empty expanse of his pillow beside her head, and Michael braced his shoulder against the wall, enjoying the sight of the early morning sun on her skin.“I can feel you in here,” she said.“Watching me. How long have you been awake?”

  “You’re cute when you sleep,” Michael said quietly; his voice gave him away and she turned her head against the pillow, her eyes opening on his face. He shrugged, turning to pick up the covered coffee mug on the dresser beside him.“I’ve been awake for a little while. Had a shower.” He walked to the bed, offering the coffee to her as he approached.“Made coffee. Ran out for doughnuts.”

  “Mmm, donuts,” she murmured, sitting up in the bed to accept the coffee.

  “Well,” Michael answered, laughing.“It worked on Harmony once. Obviously I didn’t ask for all the details, but I know that one time when Xander stayed with her when she still had her place, he woke up early one morning and brought her breakfast. Thought I’d give it a shot.”

  Renee looked up from the coffee, pausing to inhale the scented steam that rose from the cup as she removed the lid.“You never brought breakfast to your
– to Nicolette?”

  Her face flushed as she glanced around, making Michael laugh, and he stretched out in the bed beside her.“Maybe a few times, but I don’t know why you’re looking for it. Geez, what kind of slob do you take me for? Besides, you’ve been in here before– you ever found a moldy pancake on the floor?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Renee answered, her eyebrows furrowing over her nose.“I don’t know why I’m just getting hit with this right now, because I mean, I obviously knew but…”

  “But what?” he asked, turning so that his head rested in her lap.