by Paige Tyler
Lacey finished setting the table, then brought the salad and dressing over before going back to drain the pasta while Alex took the veal scallopini out of the oven where it’d been warming. Everything looked and smelled amazing, and she suddenly decided that maybe Wendy was onto something. A guy as great as Alex who was not only gorgeous, built like Adonis, loved dogs, and was easy to talk to, but could cook too? That just might be a man too good to pass up.
She served the salad and put the pasta on the plates while Alex took care of the scallopini and added freshly grated Romano cheese. Then he poured each of them white wine.
Lacey tried really hard not to moan after the first bite, but she was pretty sure she failed. It was absolutely delicious, not to mention so tender she didn’t even have to use a knife. Oh yeah, Alex was definitely a keeper. The only thing that concerned her now was why a guy like this hadn’t been snatched up already. He seemed as close to perfect as a man could get.
“So to answer your question, I don’t have any brothers,” Alex said as he twirled pasta around his fork. “I’m the only child to a mother and father who had a kid because that’s what all their friends in Rochester were doing at the time. It’s also likely that I was conceived as a way to save a marriage that was about to fall apart.”
Lacey took a bite of her garlic bread. She had a good idea where this was going. She supposed she and Kelsey weren’t the only ones who’d had a crappy home life.
“I guess it worked to some degree, since my parents kept it together until I was about five years old, but in the end, they got divorced anyway.”
She didn’t like the picture she had in her head of a five-year-old Alex being told by his parents that they were separating. That was one thing she and Kelsey had never had to go through at least. “Who got custody?”
“It started out as joint custody.” He paused to eat his salad. “It didn’t stay that way for long, though. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my parents were fiercely competitive people, and I was the prize each of them wanted to win. I spent a good portion of my early years in court as my mom and dad both fought to get full custody, saying the nastiest crap about each other to do it. They spent a decade fighting for custody, then ignored me on those occasions when they actually had me around.”
She reached across the table and took his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
He squeezed her hand in return and shrugged. “I left to join the Corps the day I turned eighteen and never looked back. I haven’t talked to either of my parents since, and I don’t plan to. It sucks, but I got over it.”
Lacey doubted that. She knew firsthand that you didn’t just get over having crappy parents. Even though she’d just met him, there were certain qualities about Alex—the attention he put into being the best paramedic he could be, his willingness to throw himself into danger to help complete strangers, the trust he had in his SWAT teammates—that could all be traced back to the things that had happened to him when he was young. Considering how much her own family life had affected her, it was almost funny the way they’d found each other. Like fate had taken a hand in bringing two screwed-up people together.
“How about you?” He picked up his wineglass. “You mentioned that your dad took off, then your mom left. Did you ever have an urge to find either of them and reconnect?”
Now she was sorry she hadn’t been completely honest with him about her parents the first time they’d talked about it. The way she’d avoided the truth just made it harder to talk about now. She was tempted to fudge the details again and skip over the painful parts. But that didn’t feel right, not after Alex had opened up about his background.
Lacey chased her food around on the plate for a while before finally answering. “I don’t know where my dad is and don’t care. As for my mom, I can’t. She committed suicide.”
Alex paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. He slowly lowered it to his plate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
She nodded. The funny thing was, sharing that with Alex made it feel like a weight had suddenly been lifted from her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s just not something I talk about very much.” She made a face. “Okay, actually, I never talk about it. But it feels good to put it out there, if that makes any sense?”
“Yeah, it does. I’ve seen what it’s like on someone who tries to carry a heavy burden around all by themselves—and how much better they feel when they finally get that weight off their chest.” He regarded her sadly. “Did your dad leaving have anything to do with your mom’s suicide?”
She swallowed hard. “Mom was insanely in love with my dad, even though he was nothing but a womanizing jerk. When he ran off and left us, she fell apart. It was like she didn’t know who she was without him.”
“That’s when you started taking care of Kelsey, right?” he asked, spearing a piece of veal.
“Yeah. I had to. Mom simply couldn’t.” Lacey sipped her wine. “She spent weeks on end sitting on the couch in the living room, smoking cigarettes and waiting for Dad to come home. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she started drinking and going out with a lot of guys—none of whom were worth a crap.”
Lacey remembered that time in her life like it was yesterday. Remembered watching her mom throw herself at guys who she normally would never have otherwise looked twice at. Drunks, druggies, bums—anyone who would give her the time of day. It was like she was desperate for a guy to take care of her, and she didn’t care who.
The muscle in Alex’s jaw flexed. “None of them ever messed with you or Kelsey, did they?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I made sure we left when Mom brought them around. And I would always leave Kelsey at a friend’s house whenever I went home to see if they were gone.” Tears burned her eyes, and she ducked her head to look down at her plate while she blinked them back so Alex wouldn’t see. “That actually turned out to be a good thing, because if Kelsey had been with me when I went home to check, she would have seen Mom kill herself.”
“Oh God.” Alex drew in a sharp breath. “You were there when it happened?”
Lacey nodded, still not looking at him. Now that the story was coming out, she couldn’t seem to stop. Maybe because Alex was so easy to talk to.
“We lived in a tiny fifth-floor apartment,” she continued quietly. “I came home around midnight like I usually did when Mom had a guy over. I’d get her off the couch and into bed, then clean up the empty bottles, air out the cigarette smoke before I brought Kelsey home—stuff like that. But this time was different. When I came in, Mom was sober enough to be upright. She was standing by the sliding door to the little balcony.”
Lacey paused, replaying the last time she’d seen her mother alive over and over in her head. Alex didn’t rush her.
“When I walked in, she didn’t say anything. She just looked at me like she’d been waiting for me to show up. I asked her if she was okay, but she ignored me.” Lacey looked at him. “Then she walked out onto the balcony, and threw herself off.”
“Damn.” Alex reached out to take her hand, gently squeezing it like she’d done to his minutes before. The gesture was more comforting than she expected.
“I never told Kelsey what happened,” she added. “She thinks Mom fell off the balcony by accident. The police knew, of course, but no one felt it necessary to tell a ten-year-old that kind of news.”
She and Alex sat there for a long time, holding hands. He asked her about things that brought up feelings and doubts she purposely hadn’t thought about for a long time. Like whether she hated her mom for killing herself, what she’d say to her dad if she ever saw him again, and most important, whether she ever blamed herself for what her mom had done.
Lacey told herself that Alex wasn’t her shrink, he was a guy she was dating, but even though she tried to filter what she said, she found herself opening up and telling him everything. She hated lo
oking weak and needy in front of him, like some damaged chick who couldn’t afford therapy. By the time they finished dinner, however, she felt more relaxed and at peace with her past than she’d ever been in her life. Alex was better than any therapist, even if she could have afforded one. Ten years was a long time to keep things bottled up inside, she supposed.
“Sorry if the night took a depressing turn,” he said as they loaded the dishwasher. “If you want to put the movie on hold until another night, I’m okay with that.”
Lacey shook her head. “Definitely not. You promised me dinner and a movie. We’re only halfway done.”
He grinned. “All right. If you insist.”
She smiled back. “I insist.”
Grabbing a dish rag, she wiped down the table while he finished with the dishwasher. If she’d thought Alex was a keeper before, now she was convinced she needed to kidnap him and keep him locked in her apartment. He was simply too perfect to let get away.
Chapter 8
Lacey browsed the selection of Blu-ray discs that Alex had set out on the coffee table, trying to imagine him picking them out at a Redbox kiosk. Romantic comedies and chick flicks predominated. To say they seemed like movies a man like Alex wouldn’t be caught dead watching, much less paying for, was an understatement.
She glanced at him. “You chose these yourself?”
“I admit, I had to get help, but yeah. I talked to Everly, Jayna, Mac, and Khaki for some suggestions.”
“And they suggested these?”
He gave her a sheepish look. “Actually, they suggested I ask you what movie you wanted to watch. But that would have ruined the surprise, so I went with their best guesses as to what you might like. Anything here catch your fancy?”
She almost picked one at random just to be nice, but then decided against it. After this evening, she had the feeling she didn’t have to play games with Alex.
It was her turn to look a little embarrassed. “Truthfully, I’m not much for rom-coms and chick flicks. Do you have any action or horror movies? They’re more my thing.”
Alex looked surprised but chuckled. “I guess I should have just asked you. I have a lot of those kind of movies.”
He led her over to the big entertainment unit underneath the TV and pulled out the two top drawers. They were filled to the brim with DVDs and Blu-rays, and all of them were action movies, thrillers, and horror flicks. In fact, he had one whole drawer filled with werewolf movies.
She slanted him a look. “Have a thing for werewolves, do we?”
“You noticed that, huh?” His mouth twitched. “I kind of collect them. For whatever reason, I find stories about werewolves intriguing.”
Lacey ran her fingers over the spines, picking up a few and reading the blurbs on the back. In the end, she picked out one of the werewolf titles she recognized—An American Werewolf in London—without even checking to see what it was about.
She turned to Alex. “Is this one any good?”
“It’s a classic,” he said. “A little scary, though.”
She handed it to him, deciding she liked the sound of that. Nothing better than cuddling on the couch with a hot guy and burying her face against his shoulder at all the scary parts.
Alex refilled their wine and grabbed a big bag of Hershey’s Kisses from the kitchen, then turned down the lights and got the movie started before joining her on the couch.
“I’ve seen this movie about twenty times,” he said as the first scene opened up with two guys walking across a fog-shrouded landscape. “If you have any questions—or just feel the need to blurt out a random meaningless observation about the feasibility of a werewolf running around the streets of London without being seen—feel free.”
Lacey laughed and wiggled closer to Alex. She was glad he wasn’t one of those guys who demanded total silence during a movie, because that wasn’t the way she rolled.
Alex put his bare feet up on the coffee table, dropped a big pile of Hershey’s Kisses on his T-shirt-covered abs, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders to pull her even closer. Now this was the way to watch a scary movie.
Lacey tried to pay attention to the film—at first anyway. The action started right from the beginning, and there were people screaming and blood flying within the first ten minutes. It also helped that the acting was way better than she’d expected for a monster movie. She could see why Alex liked this one.
But lying in the dark, with her body pressed close to Alex, eating chocolates off his rock-hard abs was a bit distracting. By the time the hero’s dead friend showed up on screen attempting to convince the hero that he was a monster and should kill himself, Lacey was far more interested in tracing the lines of Alex’s abs through his T-shirt than in watching the movie. It felt like he had a seriously nice six-pack under the thin material, and her imagination filled in all the details her curious fingers couldn’t provide. Alex certainly didn’t seem to mind her playful roaming. In fact, if the bulge growing in his jeans was any indication, he was definitely enjoying himself.
Lacey had never been very aggressive with guys, but there was something about Alex that made the idea of being shy around him seem silly. A moment later, she decided there wasn’t any good reason to resist the temptation any longer. Knocking aside the remaining chocolates, she tugged the bottom of his shirt up until it came out of the waist of his jeans. That gave her a perfect view of all the lean muscles of his stomach, his yummy-looking belly button, and a faint, happy trail of hair that made her groan with delight. Yup, this was exactly the six-pack she’d been seeing in her mind.
Without a word, she traced her fingers over the hills and valleys of his abs, enjoying the way Alex’s muscles flexed and twitched under her touch, especially when she ventured close to his belt. It almost felt like there were sparks dancing along her skin when she touched him.
She was having so much fun exploring, she didn’t even realize Alex was watching her until his hand suddenly came down on her hers, stopping her cold. Had she been wrong about how much he’d liked her teasing?
She tipped her head back to look at him, but when she saw the fire in his eyes, she knew he hadn’t stopped her because he didn’t like what she was doing. No, definitely not that.
Gaze locked with hers, he got a firm grip on her hip and dragged her astride his lap like she was as light as a feather. The bulge in his jeans pressed nicely against the juncture of her thighs, and she wiggled so that he was hitting the perfect spot.
“What about the movie?” she teased.
“What about it?” he growled, his mouth possessing hers and taking her breath away.
One hand came up and tangled in her hair, holding her captive as his tongue slipped into her mouth. His other hand moved down to her ass, getting a firm grip and slowly rocking her back and forth on his hard-on. All Lacey could do was clutch his shoulders, twist her fingers into his T-shirt, and hold on as his taste flooded her mouth and made her dizzy. It was a tantalizing mix of wine, chocolate, and that magical something that Alex alone seemed to possess.
Arousal rushed through her body, tightening her nipples and engulfing her pussy with heat. She’d never been turned on so fast or so completely from a kiss. Then again, she’d never been kissed with a hunger so complete, it felt like she was being consumed.
Lacey wasn’t sure who broke away first. All she knew was that she was trying to get Alex’s T-shirt off at the same time he tugged hers up. She won—but only because he let her—and was rewarded with the sight of a truly magnificent chest, complete with broad muscles and a wolf head tattoo.
Her shirt came off next, flying across the room in a way that was far more arousing than she would ever have thought possible. When her bra hit the floor a moment later, she had the feeling the clasp on it wasn’t going to work again. She’d never been one to enjoy rough play, so she was surprised at how turned on that forceful act made her. Mayb
e Alex was bringing out something in her that she’d never known was there.
Alex bent his head, closing his mouth on the tip of her breast, drawing the nipple into her mouth and nibbling on it in a way that drove her crazy. It wasn’t just that warm, wet tongue of his—though that was really hot—that had her writhing on his lap. It was the way he occasionally nipped at her with those sharp teeth of his. No guy had ever done that to her before, and she liked it more than she ever would have imagined.
As he suckled, he moved his hands up to cup her breasts, holding them firmly so he could move from one to the other, teasing back and forth until she felt like she was on fire. She tangled her fingers in his hair, not trying to control his movements but instead urging him to keep going.
She was so caught up in what he was doing to her breasts that she barely noticed when he slipped one hand under her ass and effortlessly got to his feet. He didn’t even stop nibbling on her breast as he walked down the hall toward his bedroom.
The doubts she’d shared with Wendy earlier, not to mention the even greater doubts she’d harbored in the corners of her own mind, didn’t seem to matter now. Being with Alex like this felt completely right.
Halfway to the bedroom, however, reality intruded. “Wait. I need my purse!”
He lifted his head to look at her in confusion. “What?”
“I need my purse,” she said softly. “I have condoms in it.”
Sticking condoms in her purse had seemed like a smart thing to do. Even though she rarely needed them, she always kept some. Kind of like extra batteries for the flashlight.
He continued to stare at her for a moment, his eyes widening as realization dawned on him. Turning around, he carried her back into the living room. Holding on to her with one arm, he snagged her purse from the end of the couch with the other, then headed for the bedroom again.