by Anna Cruise
THIRTY SEVEN
“Did you get your errand run?” Stuart asked. He was propped up in my bed, his book in his lap.
I dropped my purse on my desk and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Yes.”
He reached for me, hauling me into his lap. “I missed you,” he said, his lips on my hair. His hands ran up and down my arms. “I didn't like waking up to a note.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But you were sleeping. I didn't want to wake you.”
“I like when you wake me up.” He nuzzled my ear, his teeth running along the soft flesh. I shivered.
“Did you hear anything about flights?” I asked.
His mouth stilled. “Yeah.”
I pulled out of his arms and looked at him. “Today?”
He nodded. “There's a flight back to New York this afternoon.”
I felt a knot form in my stomach. “Okay. Do we need to get moving?”
His hands drifted over my back. “Not yet.”
“When?”
He glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It was almost nine o'clock.
“I should probably get to the airport around noon. Flight's at two.”
The knot grew. “Okay,” I said, nodding. “That gives you enough time to shower and eat breakfast, at least.”
“What if I want something else?” he murmured, his hungry eyes raking over me.
I took a deep breath. “I think we should...I think we should be done. With that.”
“With what?”
“Sex.”
I was not going to call it making love. We'd done that last night. Made love. Id let him. He'd been slow, deliberate. Tender. And suddenly, what happened in Mexico—the poverty and the books and the kids—had nothing on me. New emotions sprouted overnight, like the heads of some wicked, uncontrollable monster. And all I wanted to do was get rid of them.
“Okay,” he said, chuckling. “Why is that?”
Because I need to start separating, I thought. Detaching.
“Because I might try to monopolize you,” I said, forcing a smile. “What if I don't let you out of bed? What if I make you miss your flight? I can be very persuasive, you know...”
His eyes locked on mine and he stared at me for a minute, trying to read me. I shifted uncomfortably but met his gaze.
“Okay,” he said relenting. His voice was soft and I knew he didn't want to fight. I knew he could tell what I was wrestling with, despite my best effort to keep it hidden. And I hated that. “Can I at least treat you to breakfast?”
“Of course,” I said, my fake smile widening.
He set the book on the nightstand and pulled back the covers and it took every ounce of willpower I had to keep my eyes on his face. I knew he was naked underneath the sheets, knew what I'd had and what I'd be missing and what I was giving up.
I knew something else, too.
It was the best thing I'd ever had.
THIRTY EIGHT
“You can cook.”
Stuart gave me a wry smile. “You think?”
I speared another piece of omelet. We were sitting at the breakfast bar in the sorority kitchen, sharing a massive ham and cheese omelet. Stuart had rooted around in the refrigerator, pulling out eggs and cheese. He'd found a package of lunch meat and diced it up and, ten minutes later, a pan-sized omelet was sizzling on the stove. He slid it on to the plate I'd given him and set it down on the counter. I'd contributed coffee.
I chewed and swallowed. “Yeah. This is good.”
“I make crepes, too. And breakfast burritos. And a mean French toast.”
I picked up my mug and smiled at him over it, trying not to think about the fact that I would never taste those breakfasts. “I make coffee.”
“Good coffee,” he clarified.
I took a sip and set my mug down and cut off another piece of omelet and wondered how the hell I could feel so comfortable and so uneasy at the same time.
There was something ridiculously easy about being with Stuart. There were no expectations. We simply...were. He was Stuart and I was Annika and we just existed. Not once over the last few days had I tried to impress him or try to be something I wasn't. It was foreign territory for me.
And it scared the shit out of me.
“So,” I said. “Where to now?”
“The airport,” he said and his voice sounded flat.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, where are you headed? When you leave.”
His expression cleared. “Oh. I don't know yet.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You don't know? How is that even possible?” I didn't ask the other question that was on the tip of my tongue. If you don't know where you're going, why can't you stay?
“No. no. I'm just waiting on a couple of details. I had to change things up a bit and I'm waiting to hear if it's gonna work out.”
“Oh.” I sipped more coffee. It was lukewarm now and I frowned. I hated lukewarm coffee. “Any word from Brynn?”
She'd hugged him when we'd left her at the border. I'd worried we would need to drive her home but someone had met her to give her a ride. Stuart had thanked her for helping and she'd promised she'd be in touch the next day to follow up on volunteering—or working for him—on a more permanent basis. I'd rolled my eyes and refrained from pushing her into oncoming traffic when she darted across the street to meet her ride.
“Not yet.” He smiled. “I'm sure I'll be hearing from her soon.”
“I bet.”
“I'm not interested in her.”
I glanced at him. “I didn't ask if you were.”
“She came on to me last night. In the tent.”
I set my mug down.
He stroked his chin, his fingers playing with the short whiskers. I couldn't believe I'd ever equated his facial hair with yeti-like qualities. At its current length, it was sexy as hell.
“I turned her down.” He grinned. “Gently, of course.”
“I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
I rolled my eyes. “Knew she was hot for you. Despite what she said.”
He grinned. “Jealous?”
“No.”
“What did she say about me?” he asked curiously.
I pressed my lips together.
He chuckled. “That bad?”
He speared the last bite of omelet and held it out to me. I shook my head. I grabbed the empty plate and walked it over to the dishwasher.
“You're not going to tell me?” He let out a soft whistle. “Must have been pretty bad. Let me guess. She said I'm a manwhore.”
I reached for the coffee pot and refilled my cup. “Are you?”
It shouldn't have mattered. A week ago, I wouldn't have given a shit. I would have smiled and thought, Nice. Like minds.
But now? I hated that it had the potential to bother me.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I leaned against the counter and looked at him. His hair was tousled, his beard thicker, his eyes still sleepy. He didn't have a shirt on, just a pair of shorts. The hours spent in the sun had darkened his tan and he looked bronzed and beautiful and sexy as hell.
I thought about how he'd behaved with Brynn and how he'd acted with me. He'd been polite and friendly with both of us, the epitome of professionalism. I'd been the aggressor, the pursuer. I'd come on to him so many times that it was almost like I'd just worn him down. But then I thought back to that first night in bed. The shower and the bathroom floor, and then later in the bed at the pier. He'd been dominating and in charge, making me submit, making me beg. He'd turned the tables on me and, for the first time, I hadn't been in control.
I flashed forward to the night I'd just spent with him. There had been nothing aggressive in the way he'd behaved, the way he'd touched me.
He was like a chameleon.
“I don't know,” I finally said.
“No?” A small smile formed on his lips. “I thought you might claim to know everything.”
“Well, I was r
ight about Grape Eyes.”
“What?”
“Brynn. Grape Eyes.”
He burst out laughing.
“What?” I said, a little defensively. “Her eyeballs were massive. And that pukey green color. Gross.”
Stuart nodded, still chuckling. “I guess I can see that.”
“You'd have to be blind not to.” I took another sip of coffee. “Anyway, I knew she was hot for you.”
“Yeah, all this is pretty hard to resist,” he said, motioning to his bear and messed up hair.
He had no idea.
“So what did she do?” I asked. “How did she put the moves on you?”
“I'd rather hear what she said about me.”
I held my mug out toward him. “You first.”
“Fine.” He paused for a minute. “She stood up in the tent and did a full on strip tease.”
My eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”
He tried to keep a straight face.
“Bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. “There's no way that little prude would have done that. None.”
Stuart grinned. “She put her head on my shoulder. Told me she was going to miss working with me.”
“That's it?” I asked, making a face. “That was coming on to you? Sounds more like she was saying goodbye to her eighty year old grandpa.”
“Well, then she grabbed my dick...”
My mouth dropped. “No way.”
“Grabbed might be too strong of a word,” he conceded. “Stroked. Fondled.”
I felt something flare up inside of me. Not just jealousy. Pure, unadulterated hatred. “You're lying,” I said.
“Nope. Said she wanted to say goodbye.” He smiled. “I told her thanks, but a hug would do just fine.”
I didn't bother biting back the grin that was forming on my lips. “Good. Bitch.”
“Your turn.”
I took one last sip of coffee and dumped the rest. I put the mug in the dishwasher. “My turn what?”
“Tell me.”
“Oh. Right.” I spun back around so I was facing him. I tried to keep my voice light, my expression neutral. “Let me see if I can remember her exact words.”
He waited.
I closed my eyes. “Something about you having slept with half of the women in the developing world. Or was it developed world? I can't really remember.”
He didn't say anything and I reopened my eyes. He was staring at me, an amused expression on his face. “And you believed her?”
I shrugged. “Why wouldn't I?”
“Maybe because she was trying to make you jealous?”
“Well, I didn't exactly expect you to be a virgin.”
“Oh, good. I was hoping you didn't think that first night was my first time...”
An image flashed in my head—me on the bathroom floor, his body pressed into mine, his fingers pressing down gently on my throat. “Uh. No.”
“I haven't slept with three billion people.”
“Whew. Good.”
“Not even close.” He picked up his mug and walked it over to me. “There was an article a while back. Some...inaccuracies were reported.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”
He set his coffee cup on the counter. “Yeah.”
“What kind of inaccuracies?”
“Let's just say there were some misunderstandings about what I...fed.”
“Vaginas?” I smirked. “People thought you fed vaginas, didn't they? Instead of minds and souls.”
He grabbed me, more of a tackle than a hug. “You are so fantastically inappropriate,” he said, his lips on my cheek.
“Inappropriate but correct.”
“Yeah,” he said, his lips moving to my neck. “People thought I fed vaginas.”
“And it isn't true?” I whispered, leaning in to his touch. “Because you did a damn good job of feeding mine...”
“There might have been a few,” he said. “But I wasn't the McDonald's of sex. Nowhere close. I promise.”
I pressed my ear to his chest. I couldn't remember the last time it had felt good to be held. I was usually doing anything I could to avoid awkward hugs. But I wanted his arms around me. And I was relieved to hear that he hadn't served over a billion in bed.
I closed my eyes and the seesaw of emotions rocked me again. It wasn't just what he'd told me about Brynn and the women he'd supposedly been with. It wasn't just the fact that he'd shaken me up the night before with his tender touch and sweet words.
No. It was more than that. Much, much more.
I didn't want to admit it. Not to myself and definitely not to him.
I was a mess of emotions for one reason. One reason only.
I didn't want him to leave.
THIRTY NINE
Six days.
It had been six days since I'd last been in the airport. Six days since I'd first picked up Stuart Woodcock. Six days since I'd had my world rocked. In all kinds of ways.
Stuart was standing at the reservation counter, his backpack on his back, his duffel bag looped over his shoulder. He had on khaki shorts and a dark brown t-shirt, leather sandals strapped to his feet. He'd taken a quick shower before we left the house and his hair was still damp. His beard was gone, his face smooth and tan, and the girl behind the counter made no attempt to hide the fact that she was flirting with him. I swallowed my irritation and looked away.
I had no reason to be upset. No reason to feel jealous. Stuart Woodcock was leaving. And he sure as hell didn't belong to me.
I glanced back at them. He leaned against the counter, motioning with his hands as he talked to the pretty girl in front of him. She was in a dark blue uniform, her black hair pinned up in a neat little bun, her complexion flawless. She nodded and listened, her eyes flitting from him to the computer screen in front of her, the smile never leaving her face. I wondered what he was telling her. Was he talking about his work and where he was headed? Or was he just making random, casual remarks, putting her at ease, talking to her like she was a friend and not someone he'd just met. It was what he had done with me that first night I'd picked him up. And even though I'd wanted to jump his bones immediately, even I wasn't that big of a fool to think I'd only been attracted to his looks. His personality was just as attractive as his gorgeous eyes and killer body. Maybe even more so.
I bit my lip. I needed to stop thinking about him. Chalk it up to what it was—a week of great, unexpected sex. And, yes, it had been different than what I was used to. Maybe I'd connected with him a little more. Maybe? I shook my head. There was no maybe about it. I sighed. Maybe I'd felt a little vulnerable and a little more receptive to more than sex because of the situation in Mexico. I could convince myself of that.
But I knew me and I knew I would be alright. He was leaving and I knew my next fling was just around the corner. All I had to do was look for it. No, I thought. I needed to do more than that. I needed to be open to it. And the only way I could do that was to put Stuart Woodcock firmly out of my mind.
Stuart turned away from the counter and headed toward me, a thin envelope in his hand. By the looks of it, it was his boarding pass. We hadn't talked any more about where he was headed. Part of me didn't want to know. If I didn't have a visual, something to picture in my head, maybe he would simply disappear altogether. Not just in reality, but from my memory, too.
“You all set?” I asked. I shifted my purse higher on my shoulder, tugging at the strap. I'd showered and changed, too, and was wearing a blue camisole that was doing its best to get in a fight with the strap on my purse.
He nodded. “Yep. Plane leaves in a couple of hours.”
“Did we get here too early?”
“No.” He scanned the terminal. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday and, although there were people milling about, it didn't seem terribly busy. “I need to get through security and there might be some additional screening since it's an international flight. We'll see.”
“Why would they do that?”
&nbs
p; “Mexico City,” he said. “Not a hotbed for terrorist activity or anything but they have their fair share of issues. Drugs and stuff.”
“You're headed back to Mexico?”
His sunglasses were nestled in his hair and he pulled them off, tucking them in one of the pocketed sections of his backpack. “Just a layover,” he said. “I'm headed to Costa Rica.”
Costa Rica. The only thing I knew about Costa Rica was that they had jungles and leaf cutter ants. A few years ago, my parents had helped a professor find a home near UCSD. He'd just returned from some field work in Costa Rica and, when he found out Abby and I were freshman in high school, had told our parents about a summer experience for high school students that he offered every summer. Some extended field trip thing where high school students lived in the rain forest and studied the habits of the leaf cutter ant. It sounded about as exciting as watching paint dry. It was one of the few times my sister and I had been in agreement about something: we both had answered with a hell no.
“First time?” I asked.
“No.” He smiled. “Maybe my fifth? I've lost track. Which is a horrible thing to say.”
I didn't think it was horrible. I'd barely left California, much less the country, and he'd traveled to so many places, he couldn't remember.
“So,” he said. “What are your plans? Now that you're getting rid of me.”
I forced a smile.“Beach. Definitely the beach.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I didn't get to spend as much time checking them out as I would have liked.”
“You should have stayed longer.” And then, hoping he wouldn't read into what I was really trying to say, “To check out more of them, I mean.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “I could always come back, you know.”
“Absolutely.”
He shifted on his feet, readjusting the bag again. “Not just for the beaches.”
My heart hammered. “Oh? You liked the Mexican food that much?”
“That was good, too,” he admitted. “But something else.”
I glanced up at the ceiling, pretending to think. Mostly, it was so I could get my racing heart under control. “The roller coaster,” I said. “You're finally ready to conquer your fear.”