by Betina Krahn
He threw back his head and laughed…until he saw that she wasn’t smiling. Instead, her eyes held a hint of moisture and her bottom lip quivered. The tough girl actually looked vulnerable. Hurt.
Mentally kicking himself, he got up and joined her on the bed, pulling her into his arms. She burrowed into his chest, sniffing a tiny bit, and he suddenly had the urge to hunt down the pricks who’d formed the mean little club and made her cry.
Talk about ridiculous—holding on to some bullshit college gripes and sharing them with the world years later, no matter who you wounded. It was one way in which the Internet age definitely had not improved life.
Amanda let herself relax against him for a minute or two, then she began to tense, shifting uncomfortably. He recognized the signs and knew what she was thinking: too much emotion, too much talking, too personal, too dangerous.
He released her, forcing a smile. “It’s almost midnight.”
She didn’t smile back, her beautiful face still wearing that same sad, stricken expression. Amanda stared at him for a long moment, her green eyes revealing her every thought as her gaze traveled over his face, as if to memorize him for the not-too-distant future when she wouldn’t see him anymore.
“He wasn’t the last one,” she admitted.
“You don’t have to do this.…”
She ignored him. “The last guy I dated decided if I wouldn’t just give him my undivided attention and devotion, he’d take it from me.”
He didn’t like the sound of this, not one bit.
“We had a fight, I broke it off, then he called in the middle of one night saying he’d just swallowed a bottle of pills.”
Oh, God. Whether she wanted it or not, he had to hold her, tightly, giving her the support and tenderness she never asked for. He kissed her hair, whispering, “It wasn’t your fault.…”
She immediately shook her head. “No, he didn’t die or anything.”
Thank God.
“Because he was lying. The whole thing had been a setup, just to play on my emotions.”
“What’s his name?” he snarled, ready to kill a guy he’d just been thankful hadn’t died.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all over, all in the past. The point is…” She hesitated, then, with a voice as shaky as her slowly indrawn breath, whispered, “Don’t love me, Reese.”
His heart broke a little. For the pain of her past affairs, for the heartbreaks, and for the cold family life she’d endured. They’d combined to create a beautiful, extremely lovable woman who didn’t think she was capable of returning the emotion.
She was wrong. She wouldn’t admit it, not now, maybe not for a long time. But he knew Amanda Bauer had feelings for him, deep ones. Just as he did for her.
Reese was no fool, however. So he said nothing, merely nodded slowly, as if agreeing to her command.
The bedside clock glowed red, catching his eye as the numbers shifted from 11:59 to 12:00. And suddenly it was a whole new year. A new future had opened up and the mistakes of the past seemed destined to be washed away, with only good things coming toward them.
“Happy New Year, Manda,” he whispered, leaning close to brush his lips against hers. “I hope this upcoming year is one neither of us will ever forget.”
Her soft lips parted and she kissed him back, sweetly, tenderly. In that kiss she said all the things she would not say out loud—that she wanted more, but was afraid to let herself ask for it.
She’d changed a lot in the two months he’d known her. The hard shell had started to crack, whether she liked it or not. One day, sooner or later, Amanda was going to realize she was capable of a lot more than she gave herself credit for. She was capable of loving, and of being loved.
He only hoped she let him stick around until that day came.
8
Groundhog Day
“HONEY, WHY DON’T YOU just fly to Pittsburgh and see him?”
Amanda averted her eyes, not wanting to hear another lecture from Ginny, their administrative assistant, who stared at her from across her paper-laden desk. The older woman had figured out months ago that Amanda was involved with someone. She had finally gotten her to talk about Reese after the holidays. Probably because Amanda had walked around with a constant frown on her face since she’d arrived home.
As she’d flown back to Chicago on January 2, she’d wondered if it was time to end the affair. The intimate conversation she’d shared with Reese, and the way he’d made such sweet, tender love to her afterward, had convinced her she had to at least call a time-out, if not quit the game altogether.
Damn the man for slipping past her defenses, breaching her outer walls. Somehow, he’d worked his way into her previously brittle heart. That could be the only explanation for why she’d opened up to him the way she never had to anyone else before.
She’d told him such dark, ugly things about herself, it was a wonder he hadn’t run screaming into the night.
It wasn’t that she minded so much that she cared for him. The problem was, caring for him meant she wanted to be with him, to keep going with this thing that had sprung up between them. And that, she greatly feared, would not be good in the long run…for Reese. Having feelings for the man meant she didn’t want to see him hurt. And she especially didn’t want to be the one doing the hurting.
But it was inevitable, wasn’t it? Just a foregone conclusion? When the going got tough, Amanda hit the skies.
“Would you talk some sense into her?” another voice said.
Jazz had come into the office, wearing a pair of her mechanic’s overalls. A smear of grease on her cheek and the sweat on her brow made her hard labor obvious, but didn’t diminish her earthy beauty one bit. “I swear to God, Manda, if you don’t call the dude, I’m gonna leave a wrench in your aft engine and just let you fall out of the sky and put us all out of your misery.”
Amanda rolled her eyes, feeling very much ganged-up on. “I saw him on Martin Luther King day, and I talk to him every few days.”
The government holiday had been a busy one, and a weekday. She hadn’t been able to take time off for any out-of-town tryst. But she had arranged for a three-hour layover at the Philadelphia airport. Reese had driven all the way there…and spent those three hours doing incredible things to her in the cockpit of her plane.
She thrust away the warm, gooey feeling those memories inspired. “It’s not like I’ve ended it.”
“Uh-huh. But you’re planning to,” Jazz said knowingly. Ginny nodded in agreement. “Definitely.”
She glared at both of them. “It was never meant to be serious. My God, we live in two different states.”
“And you fly a plane for a living,” Jazz retorted. “An air trip from Pittsburgh to Chicago would probably take less time than commuting in from the suburbs on the El every day.”
That was crazy talk. Jazz almost made it sound like she thought Amanda could actually move to Pittsburgh and live with Reese. Make something permanent out of what was just a holiday fling.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Her, Amanda Bauer, the heartbreak queen of Chicago living a couple of blocks away from Reese’s perfect, all-American family with a house full of siblings who adored him and would absolutely hate her guts.
I don’t think so.
She stood abruptly, silently telling them the conversation was over. Jazz and Ginny exchanged a frustrated look, but they didn’t say anything else, knowing her well enough to know she was already mentally halfway out the door.
Glancing at the clock, she said, “It’s late. Time for all of us to call it a day, right?” Forcing a laugh, she added, “Wish that stupid groundhog hadn’t seen his shadow this morning. I don’t know if I can stand another six weeks of winter.”
Jazz muttered something under her breath. Something that sounded like ice-queen, but Amanda ignored her.
Ginny, a little less blunt, walked over and put her hand on Amanda’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. “We love you, honey. We just want you to be happy.”
Not true. Not entirely, anyway. She did love. She loved Jazz and Ginny and her uncle Frank. She loved her sister, if in a somewhat pitying way. She supposed she even loved her parents, because for all their inattention and coldness, they were still her mother and father, after all.
How crazy was it to imagine she might widen that circle and actually let herself love a man? One man?
Maybe it bore consideration.
“I know,” she finally replied, giving Ginny a brief hug. Normally not demonstrative, she knew the impulsive act had probably taken the older woman by surprise. Jazz’s wide eyes said she felt the same.
“I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
Grabbing her keys and her bag, she left them and walked through the quiet office wing of the airport where Clear-Blue Air was housed. As always, it took a while to make her way to the car, and even longer to drive to the city and park in the garage by her building. The entire time, she tried to pull her thoughts into order, to focus and make sense of everything that was going on and how she felt about it.
Feelings and all that stuff so weren’t her thing. She just didn’t know what to do with them.
“Hell,” she muttered as she got out of her car, stepping into the frigid Chicago night. It was very dark out, and even inside the parking garage, the wind whipped wildly off the nearby lake. Its gusts made eerie whistles through the openings of the structure, making her freeze for a second before locking up and heading toward the elevator.
As she punched the button and waited for it, an unnerving sensation began on the back of her neck. She glanced side to side, then turned to look behind her. Nobody was around, not a single car moving. She’d gotten home after most commuters but before the club crowd started hitting downtown.
“Okay, cool it,” she told herself, knowing she was imagining things. Still, she didn’t drop her key chain into her bag, keeping it in her hand with long, sharp keys protruding between her fingers. Just in case.
The elevator arrived and she quickly scanned it to make sure it was empty before stepping inside. She remained close to the control panel, ready to jab the “open” button if somebody she didn’t like the look of suddenly came out of nowhere and joined her. But nothing happened, not a sound, not a soul.
She breathed a sigh of relief, laughing at her own foolishness as the doors began to slide closed.
That’s when she saw him. A man stood a few yards away, not far from her own car. Fully visible beneath an overhead light, he must have intentionally moved toward it because he had not been there a few seconds ago.
She caught a good look at his face right before her door shut, blocking the view. That glimpse was enough to capture a few quick impressions. Short, compact body clothed in black. Longish, stringy blond hair. Dark-eyed glare.
And suddenly, she remembered him.
“No way,” she muttered, her hand tightening on the keys.
But she knew it was true. She’d just seen the thief, the guy who’d mown her down back in Las Vegas.
“You rotten bastard,” she added, wishing the door hadn’t closed before she’d identified him. Because her first impulse was to go after him and punch his lights out for shoving her into the street.
Then, of course, the wiser head that had kept Reese from doing that very same thing back in Vegas whispered wisdom in her brain. He could be armed, and he’d already proven himself dangerous.
Within seconds, the door reopened on the ground level of the garage. There was no way he could have beaten her here, not unless he’d sprouted wings and flown. He’d been far away from the stairs and the other elevator was clear on the opposite side of the deck. So she wasn’t nervous as she stepped outside. Merely very curious. And worried.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. The guy had tracked her down, come all the way to Chicago for some reason. But instead of confronting her, he’d played a sneaky game of hide-and-seek, trying to scare her. But why?
Right outside the garage, people passed by, a nearby bar already swelling with regulars. She put her keys away, though she kept very focused, constantly looking around as she walked the few yards to her building. The doorman offered her a pleasant nod, and once she was inside, she breathed a small sigh of relief.
Not that she was truly frightened. Creeped out, that was a much better way to put it.
“Thanks, Bud,” she said to the doorman as she headed toward the elevator. Before she’d reached it, however, she heard a distinct ring. Her cell phone. Grabbing it, she answered with a distracted, “Hello?”
“Is this Amanda Bauer?”
The voice was unfamiliar and throaty, as if the person were trying to disguise it. “Yes, who is this?”
“Long time, no see. You look a little different without the wig.”
It was him. The guy from Vegas…the one from the garage. Tense, she stepped into a corner, not wanting to be distracted by the voices of people coming in behind her. “What do you want?”
“I want what’s mine. That night when I bumped into you, I dropped a bag of my stuff. The police report says they didn’t recover it, which means only one thing. You kept it.”
“Bullshit,” she said with a snort.
He hesitated, as if surprised she wasn’t quivering with fright. Which only made her more convinced he was nothing to be afraid of. If he’d had any kind of a weapon, and had the guts to use it, he would have grabbed her in the parking deck and forced her to take him to his so-called loot.
“I’m calling the cops.”
She could almost hear his sneer. “What are you going to tell them? That the guy you stole the jewelry from is after you?”
“Oh, I stole your merchandise, huh?”
“Yeah, you did. And I want it. More important, the people I work for want it.”
People he worked for? What was there some ring of thieves in Vegas led by a modern-day Fagin and the Artful Dodger? Ludicrous.
“Look, you’re crazy. I don’t have any jewelry and you’ve just wasted a trip to Chicago,” she said, feeling more annoyed than fearful. “Maybe you should go back and check all the storm drains or something. It probably fell down one when you tried to kill me.”
“Drama queen.”
“Psycho asshole.”
He hesitated, as if at last realizing he wasn’t scaring her one little bit. “Then your boyfriend has it.”
She stiffened, suddenly wary. If he’d tracked her down, he might have done the same thing with Reese. “No, he doesn’t.”
Her tone must have betrayed her tension, because Mr. Robber’s voice got a tad more confident. “Oh, he has it, all right. I think I’ll have to make a trip to Pittsburgh now.”
Damn it. “How did find out who we are?”
“You’re famous, lady, don’t you know that?”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Plus, the people I work for have a few friends in the LVPD. Your names and contact information were right on the police report.”
That didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Las Vegas Police Department. She suddenly had the urge to call Parker and tell him to stop worrying about his wife’s footwear and start looking for dirty cops.
“I guess I’ll be seeing ya,” he muttered with a laugh.
“Wait, he doesn’t have them, I swear to…”
But she was talking to dead air. The creep had hung up on her.
She quickly flipped back to her caller ID, not surprised that the last incoming call had been from an unavailable number.
Nine-one-one? Officer Parker? Who to call first?
Of course, the answer was neither of those. Without hesitation, she thumbed to her address book, highlighting Reese’s contact information on the tiny screen.
She started with his cell number. “Come on,” she said when it ra
ng and rang. When his voice mail came on, she didn’t bother leaving a message, just moved on to the next one on the list, his house. Again, she got the same result.
“Damn it, where are you?”
The elevator had come and gone a couple of times, and it returned again with a loud ding, letting off a couple who lived on her floor. She smiled impersonally, bringing the phone up to her face to avoid any conversation.
The elevator door remained open and she stared at it. She was in the lobby of her own building, a few floors down from her apartment. But she suddenly found herself unable to walk through the open door and take the short ride upstairs.
An entire evening of trying to track Reese down, to warn him about the crazy thug from Vegas, sounded unbearable. And Jazz’s claim about how quick the commute was between Chicago and Pittsburgh kept repeating itself in her head.
She gave it about ten seconds’ thought. Then she turned and strode toward the exit. “Bud, would you flag me a cab?” she asked, knowing she couldn’t go back for her own car. El Creepo could still be lurking around, and she didn’t want him knowing she was heading to the airport, going to warn Reese.
“Sure, Ms. Bauer,” the doorman said.
A few minutes later, as she got into the taxi, Amanda had to smile. Because, as usual, when in crisis mode, she was taking off, hitting the skies. This time, though, instead of running away, she intended to fly toward the very person who’d been filling her head with confusion and her heart with turmoil.
Trouble could be heading Reese’s way. But she fully intended to get to him first.
WHEN SOMEONE knocked on his front door at ten o’clock that night, Reese immediately tensed. The reaction was instinctive. Even now, two years later, the ring of a phone awakening him out of a sound sleep, or an unexpected knock on the door this late brought him back to the moment when his whole world had changed.
He’d been the one who’d answered the door when the uniformed police officer had come to inform his mother of his dad’s accident.
He thrust the dark thoughts away. His family was just fine. He’d left them a half hour ago, happily eating birthday cake at Aunt Jean’s mansion, where they’d been celebrating her seventy-whatever’th birthday. Nobody was entirely sure how old she was since she’d lied about the number for so many years.