“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Why would you think something’s wrong? I just want to talk to you. I brought dinner.”
He hesitated. “Okay. Come up.”
She came to his door with several Styrofoam containers of Indian food and immediately started dishing it out onto his nicest plates, which seemed too fancy for takeout. The only reason he had a nice set of dishes was because his parents had given them to him for Christmas a few years back. Since you probably won’t get nice plates as a wedding present. Because you won’t have a wedding.
His parents were always full of compliments.
He shouldn’t have let her in. This probably wouldn’t go well. But the surprise visit had thrown him off.
They sat down at the table with their plates, and Sidney started eating, waiting for his mother to say something. The people upstairs were thankfully quiet. Because the only thing that would make this more uncomfortable was loud sex noises.
Though maybe that would scare her away. And possibly make her think he lived in a sketchy building.
Mom stared at her food for a while, then said to her plate, “How is Allison?”
“She’s fine,” he said, ignoring the pain in his chest. He didn’t want to talk about Allison. He didn’t want to talk about anything with his mother.
“I like her.”
He dropped his fork and nearly spit out his food. “What?”
His mother wasn’t eating and she wasn’t really looking at him, but other than that she was composed.
“She’s…nice.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. She told you off, and you’re calling her nice?”
“She clearly cares a lot about you, and I like that she can appreciate you for who you are. I guess she can give you what we haven’t.” She waved her hand away from her. “Something like that. I don’t doubt that you two are really together.”
He didn’t feel like admitting the truth right now. He’d wait a few weeks, then tell her they’d split up.
“Yes,” he said. “Unlike my family, she doesn’t think I’m a big disappointment.”
“I’m sorry about some of the things we’ve said. I’ve been trying to see you how she does and…” Mom reached across the table and patted his hand. “You’ve done all right.”
Wow. She’d actually said that.
It didn’t make up for the past three decades, and it sure didn’t make his heart swell with happiness, but at least it was something.
Unsure how to respond, he said, “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s—We had a fight.”
Mom provided no details, but presumably it had been over Sidney and Saturday’s disastrous dinner.
“I would like to have dinner again,” she said. “Hopefully we can make it to the main course this time. You, me, and Allison. Whenever is convenient for you. You can pick the restaurant.”
Sidney didn’t know what to say. Agree, then cancel later on? He pictured this dinner with his mother and Allison, who was wearing…
Okay, he really shouldn’t think about what she was wearing. But he couldn’t help it. And he couldn’t help the fact that he wanted this dinner to happen, assuming it was with this new version of his mom who thought he’d “done all right.”
More than anything, though, it was about wanting Allison to be a part of his life. He’d told himself repeatedly that trying again would be a bad idea, yet he couldn’t get her out of his head.
“Two weeks from now?” he said. “Saturday? Is that okay?”
“That would be great.”
As soon as she said that, the thumping upstairs started again. A minute later, there was a scream.
Mom glanced at the ceiling.
“It just started this week,” Sidney said. “It’s horrible, I know. But at least they’re always done by eleven.”
She laughed in a way that wasn’t pretend and forced. A sound he recognized from his childhood but hadn’t heard in years.
And then it was over—the shrieking and the thumping and the laughing—and she said, “I better go.”
Sidney finished his dinner and cleaned up, nearly breaking one of the expensive plates in the process. His mind wasn’t on the dishes—all he could think about was Allison.
He’d seen her at Temptations—what an appropriate name—and decided he would screw her and move on, prove to himself he was over her. But the real reason he’d done it was probably that, somewhere deep inside, he’d had this foolish hope that it would lead to them getting back together. That must be why he’d agreed to the bet, too.
Maybe it wasn’t so foolish, though.
He was different now, and she was different. Yet there was still that indefinable chemistry between them. Sometimes it came out in dumb arguments where they pissed the crap out of each other, but they’d gotten along better as the weekend went by. And some of the fighting happened because he was still pissed at her for breaking his heart ten years ago.
He loved her. He still loved her.
She might not feel the same way—she hadn’t before. But she was the only woman he’d ever loved. He had to try.
Forget the screaming upstairs. He had more important things to do than stopping a loud sex marathon.
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, Sidney was nearly at Allison’s. In fact, he was right in front of the bakery where he’d seen her last week. He glanced in the window, just in case…
And there she was.
Eating chocolate cake like she’d been on a starvation diet for the past year. Looking as gorgeous as she always did, whether she was lying underneath him or telling him off. The woman he’d always wanted.
He took a deep breath, his heart thumping like the poor bed upstairs. And then he knocked on the window.
She startled and fell off her chair.
Well, that hadn’t gone as planned.
He hurried inside. She was still on the floor when he reached her, but she had one hand on the table, like she was about to pull herself up. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and brought her to her feet.
“You okay?” he asked.
She exhaled unsteadily. “I don’t like unexpected knocks. And I’ve had far too many of them lately.”
“I disagree.”
“Of course you do.”
“If your friends had actually buzzed, you could have gotten me out the door before they came up. And then we never would have had that stupid bet and—”
“You’re glad about the bet?”
“I am.”
He still had his arms around her. Although she seemed perfectly fine, and he was sure she could stand on her own, he didn’t want to let go. But he should. He couldn’t see her expression right now, and he had no idea what she thought of him being glad about the bet.
He stepped away from her and sat down. She brushed her hands over her ass, then her thighs—wiping off dirt, or just torturing him—and joined him at the table.
Well, here it was. He was going to do this.
But she spoke before he could open his mouth.
“You know why I was eating so fast? I wanted to leave so I could go talk to you.”
Then she smiled, and he knew it was going to be okay. It’s not all one-sided.
“What were you going to say to me?” he asked.
“First I want to know why you’re here, scaring the crap out of me.”
But they were both grinning stupidly. They both knew where this was going. They just had to say it.
“I was heading to your condo,” he said. “Then I saw you in the window, so I thought I’d say hi.”
“And what else were you going to say?”
He wasn’t as nervous now, but he still wasn’t used to saying these things to a woman. It had been years since he’d admitted to having any feelings for someone. Feelings for her.
“I shouldn’t have left on Sunday. We should have finished the weekend together, and then…we should have kept seeing each other. That’s what
I want now. To try again. Because I love you, and I think we could make it work this time. If you—”
“Yes.” She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I love you too.”
He’d wanted to hear her say those words for a very long time. When he was spending his days gambling on shady websites and being yelled at by his parents, this was the one thing he’d wanted. When he finally managed to turn his life around and vowed he was done with relationships, sometimes he still thought of her and wished she’d take him back. She’d receded to the back of his mind in recent years, but every now and then, he couldn’t help but think of her. And the thought of Allison was always accompanied by the dream of her changing her mind.
But in the past few days, she hadn’t been pushed to the back of his mind. No, in the past few days, Allison Wong had been all he could think about.
And now she really had changed her mind.
“That’s what I was coming over to tell you,” she said. “But you beat me to it.” She glanced down at her shirt; there was a smear of chocolate just below the collar. “I’ve been eating too much chocolate and barely sleeping all week because of you.”
“I always cause you so much trouble.”
“Yeah. You really do.” She laughed. “But I like it.”
“I’m glad.”
“Since I was getting sick of chocolate bars, I came here for chocolate cake. Quadruple chocolate cake. And Eliza told me you’d come in a few days ago.”
“I couldn’t help it.” He hadn’t expected to see her that day, but she’d been on his mind so damn much, and he’d felt this overwhelming urge to do something, to be close to her.
“Knowing that you were thinking about me—I don’t know. It made me happy. And I decided it was silly to wallow in heartbreak—I should at least tell you. Maybe you’d be a wimp and—”
“No,” he said. “We’re going to do this. Do it right this time.”
“We are.”
“I’m not the same now—”
“And neither am I. I don’t want to protect myself from what you might make me feel. I’m not afraid of being in love with you; I already am in love with you. When you’re not pissing me off, of course.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back, unlike the last time he’d kissed her in the bakery. And unlike last time, he wasn’t trying to convince her of anything with this kiss, because they already knew what was happening.
“So what was with the bet?” he asked, leaning back. He could kiss her more later, when they weren’t in public. “Why did Kristy make it?”
“Oh.” Allison laughed. “She thought some forced proximity would help get us back together.”
“She wants us together?”
“Apparently.”
“I feel like I should have figured that out,” he said.
“When she told me, I was surprised, but later…Yeah. I should have figured it out. I mean, why she else would she want us to spend a weekend in each other’s company? It seems obvious now.”
Allison looked down at her plate. She picked up her fork and ate the final bite of cake, closing her eyes and chewing slowly, as though it was the greatest thing she’d ever tasted. He stared at her mouth, like she’d told him not to do last time, and admired her lips, her face, all of her.
“You want to get out of here?” he asked.
“I’m not done yet.”
“You just had the last bite.”
“There’s icing on the plate that needs to be scraped off.”
She proceeded to torture him by running her finger over the plate, then sucking the icing off her finger. In slow motion.
“That’s it.” He grasped her arm and pulled her up. “We’re leaving.”
“Fine. Your place or mine?”
“Yours. It’s closer. And the people above me are having a loud sex marathon and shouting stuff that does not turn me on. I don’t want you to get any ideas.”
She laughed again.
He’d get to hear the sound of her laughter—and her moans and groans and gasps—over and over. And the thought thrilled him to the core.
“Saturday,” he said, “we’re going to have another indoor picnic, and I promise to be the sweetest guy you’ve ever been with.”
“I know you will.”
“Was that sarcastic? It sounded sarcastic to me.” No, it hadn’t. Not at all.
“You are so much trouble,” she muttered, reaching up to cup his cheek.
He wrapped his hand around hers and led her out the door.
Ready to start the life he’d always wanted.
The End
Publisher’s Note
Please help this author's career by posting an honest review wherever you purchased this book.
About Laura Jardine
Contemporary romance author Laura Jardine studied engineering and worked in mineral exploration, but always wanted to be a writer. She lives in Toronto with her boyfriend, and despite living in Canada her whole life, she hates winter.
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