“I was thinking about going there. Tomorrow.” No. She hadn’t been. But she wasn’t sure what else to do, what else to say. “Maybe you could meet me there.”
* * *
For the longest time, Zane thought maybe he’d forgotten how to breathe. He also thought maybe he was having an auditory hallucination. Brought on by lust, lack of sleep, lack of decent food—or maybe botulism. Had that ravioli been tainted and he was sick and just didn’t realize it? That would explain why he was hearing what he thought he’d just heard.
Easing in closer, he narrowed his eyes.
On the off chance he hadn’t made this up, he said, “So, this place. You want me to meet you there. For coffee.”
“Yeah.” She angled her chin up.
It made him want to bite her, kiss her, hug her, cuddle her. That cocky, almost brash exterior . . . what did it hide, he wondered? Sweeping his thumb across her mouth, he murmured, “And just why are we meeting for coffee? You just like caffeine?”
“If you’re going to be an asshole,” she started.
He cut the rest of her words off with his mouth.
She’d answered his question. He’d just wanted a chance. Now, taking advantage of her already parted lips, he slanted his head and licked the inside of her mouth, sliding one hand up to cup her cheek, angling her head back.
With his other hand, he cupped her hip. Only her hip, because it would be so very easy to try for more.
Everything inside him pushed for that.
But he wasn’t going to rush this.
Not this, of all things.
He slid his tongue along hers, growled when she caught him and sucked him just a little. Dark, dirty little thoughts raced through him as he imagined her doing that to his cock. His fingers tightened on her hip and she swayed, leaning closer.
The sound of her moan pierced the fog and he forced himself to end the kiss, bit by bit. His heart was racing when it was done and his muscles were tight with the urge to grab, take . . . keep.
Swallowing, he reached for some level of control. His voice was only the slightest bit rough when he said, “So. Coffee. What time?”
Personally, he wouldn’t be opposed to her just being there when he woke up. They could wake up together, go for coffee later . . . but that wasn’t the way to go and he knew it. Still, it was a sweet, sweet fantasy.
“I have to be in at noon. So I guess a quarter after eleven.” Her face was flushed. Her eyes glittered.
One day, he thought.
One day, he’d get her in front of a camera—and every last picture would be just for him. He wanted to capture this look on her face, that slow, sleepy hunger and that glint of lingering . . . temper? Frustration? He couldn’t quite name it, but it just added to everything that was her, everything that drove him crazy.
“Quarter after eleven.” He went to uncurl his hands, let her go. He’d walk her down to her car. Come back up here. Pace until the heat in his blood cooled.
But even as he tried to coax his hands into letting her go, she reached up, traced the rim of his glasses. “Just how well can you see without these?” she asked.
That glint in her eyes made him leery.
Sliding his hand from her cheek down, he gripped her narrow hips in both hands, studied her. “I can’t,” he finally said, shrugging.
“You can’t?” she asked, lifting a brow.
“Well, if whatever I’m looking at is about a foot in front my face, then yeah, I can see it. If I squint. Farther than that? It’s blurs, lights, blobs.” He shrugged. “So, basically . . . without them, I can’t see.”
A slow smiled tugged at her lips as she reached up, slid them off. “Guess it’s a good thing we’re in here, huh?”
Automatically, he squinted, barely managed to focus on her face. And then he didn’t even bother as her lips slid against his.
Warning . . . warning . . .
She kissed him, light and soft.
Then she made her way over to his ear.
* * *
She didn’t know what drove her.
Maybe it was the weight that still rested in her chest, that burn of rejection, or the knot in her throat.
Or maybe it was the look in his eyes when he’d seemed to think she was pushing him away.
She wasn’t good at this.
She’d spent too much of her life hiding . . . from everything. From people, from friends, from emotion. It was just easier not to really let herself feel. The perfect example was what had happened with Zach—she’d thought she felt something real there, and not only had she been wrong, she’d hurt him, and she’d hurt Abby.
Emotions were just too messy and she didn’t understand them.
But she needed to give him something.
At the same time, she wasn’t ready for anything else.
She rubbed her nose along the column of his throat, the scent of him flooding her head, making her knees feel just a little weak.
Rising up on her toes, she pressed her lips to his ear.
“The last time I had a quick fuck . . .” She drew the word out, felt him shudder against her as she traced her hand down his chest. “The last time I had what could even be called casual sex was . . .” She bit his ear, the way he’d done to her earlier, and then continued. “It was . . . well. Never.”
Then, before he could respond, she backed away, fast. She put his glasses down on the far end of the counter and headed off. “See you in the morning.”
She heard him mutter something behind her as she opened the door.
Then she heard him shout her name, a clatter, then a curse. Grimacing, she glanced back, but kept on going.
She was too nervous, too uncertain to handle anything else tonight.
If this was taking the coward’s way out?
Well, okay then.
She was a coward.
She hit the Down button, staring at the door, waiting for Zane to come out.
He didn’t and when she slid out of the building a minute later, she told herself the funny ache in her chest wasn’t disappointment. She really, really wasn’t up to handling any in-depth discussions, and her very limited sex life was one of those.
But still . . .
She heard her name coming from overhead.
Wincing, she glanced up.
* * *
The feel her of her hand on his chest, her breath ghosting along his neck, did a very good job of fuzzing his brain and making him forget that glint in her eyes.
Then she closed her teeth around his ear and Zane pretty much surrendered the idea of even trying to think.
Until she whispered in his ear.
The words bounced around.
The loss of her body pressed to his was a visceral one and he reached out, but she was already gone.
He saw the blur of movement, scowled, even those words finally connected in his brain.
The last time I had a quick fuck, the last time I had what could even be called casual sex was . . . It was . . . well. Never.
Son of a bitch. He lunged forward, determined to . . . to what?
He didn’t know the answer to that, but she wasn’t dropping that on him and then just disappearing.
But even as that thought processed, he crashed into a barstool, sent it slamming.
“Damn it!” He slid his hand blindly along the counter, searching for his glasses. Five seconds. If he didn’t find them in five seconds, he was grabbing his spare pair—bingo.
He jammed them on his face, mentally calculated the time. She was already out the door.
He hit the window in the bedroom and jerked it open.
There she was.
“Keelie!”
She glanced up at him. The loft was on the top floor, but the building wasn’t a tall one. He was only four floors up and could see her face just fine. A faint smile danced on her lips, but he couldn’t quite read that smile. “You are a brat,” he finally said, uncertain what to say besides that.
Now that sm
ile widened. “Please don’t tell me you’re just now figuring that out, Zane.”
Then she waved and opened the door of the car. “See you in the morning, Z.”
He clenched his hand on the window sill while hunger burned, his cock pulsed, and his mind raced.
And despite all of that, he found himself smiling.
It had taken three damn years, but tomorrow, he was having coffee with Keelie Jessup.
Chapter Five
Keelie fell into bed a little after one.
She was up by seven, went for a run, came back, and spent more than forty minutes in the postage stamp–sized box that was laughingly called a bathroom by her landlord.
She liked her landlord.
His name was Bob and unlike the previous owner of these squat, boxlike apartments, he actually listened when the tenants had complaints or problems, and he did what he could to fix things.
But he couldn’t do anything about the size of the bathroom.
The only thing she could do was move.
Keelie wasn’t moving.
She showered, scrubbed, plucked, waxed, and when all of that was done¸ she stood in front of the small square that served as a mirror. With a scowl on her face, she leaned in and studied herself.
“It’s coffee,” she said bluntly.
I want five minutes of your time . . .
The ghost of his voice, so soft and deep, stroked over her skin.
No. It was a lot more than coffee and she knew it. Which could explain why she’d spent forty-seven minutes in the bathroom primping. She hadn’t done any of that for the blind date with—gag—Hawk. And she wasn’t even done.
She’d hauled out her makeup. Not the everyday stuff that she put on just for work, but the kind she’d bought as an indulgence and rarely wore.
A bottle of perfume she’d picked up waited on the counter.
She was already mentally debating just what she should wear that would look good without coming across as too much, considering she had a day of work ahead of her.
“It’s coffee,” she muttered again, feeling stupid.
But it wasn’t just.
She was giving him five minutes—and then some, and she wasn’t going into it with her guard up and plans for the entire thing to go absolutely nowhere. She’d already dropped her guard, jumped on it with spiked boots until what remained lay in tiny little pieces on the floor—that had happened when she leaned in and whispered a soft, personal secret in his ear.
She’d let him in.
Keelie didn’t let anybody in.
She hadn’t ever opened those doors to anybody . . . not Anais, not Javi, not Zach.
She hadn’t let anybody in in so long, she wasn’t sure if she’d even remember how. Except she’d done it.
Blowing out a breath, she studied the solemn-eyed woman in the mirror and then, before she could change her mind, she reached for the makeup kit.
This was, after all, a little more than coffee.
Before she’d managed to unzip the metallic blue bag, the landline rang.
Frowning, she put the bag down and moved out into the narrow hallway, eying the phone on the end table.
That phone might ring once or twice a month, and more often than not, the calls were telemarketers. She ended those calls by putting the handset on top of the nearby radio and blasting the speakers. She was on a Do Not Call list for a reason.
She didn’t give out the landline number. Period. Everybody, and she meant everybody, had the cellphone.
The caller ID display read Private Caller.
She grabbed it, hit the Power button for her radio, already prepared to blast away the sales pitch.
“Yeah?”
There was no answer.
Scowling, she lowered it, eyed it, then put it back up to her ear. “Hello?”
With no response yet again, she disconnected.
She really would have preferred to hear a telemarketer over that dead air.
* * *
Two hours later, with the call shoved to the back of her mind, she left the house.
She’d donned a modified version of what she considered her ”work” uniform.
Zach and the other artists, all guys, wore short-sleeved T-shirts and jeans. Sometimes Javi mixed it up with bowling shirts worn open over a T-shirt.
At times Keelie went for the same, but more often than not, she veered toward a more punkish look. Yeah, she was conservative with it and it wasn’t particularly her personal style, especially outside of work, but it suited her when she was at the shop, especially when it came to highlighting her tattoos. And since tattoos were her bread and butter, it all worked out fine.
Plus, she liked the image she made when she pulled on a fishnet top over a skintight tank—or if she was really feeling moody, she’d just pair that fishnet with a bra and her jeans. The motorcycle boots were pretty much her ideal footwear, comfortable to walk in, easy to move in, and paired well with whatever else she decided to wear. All of that was part of the reason she’d agreed to let Anais do the piercing about two months back. She’d never really thought about it before, but Anais had told her it wouldn’t be a bad idea to showcase her work, and none of the guys had been open to it, so why not?
And she didn’t mind at all how the little hoop looked.
Today, she’d worn her boots with black-and-white striped tights and a denim mini. She wore skirts to work; it wasn’t a big deal. Instead of one of her fishnet tops, she’d pulled out a lacy one. The lace skimmed her curves, gloved her arms all the way to her wrists. The burnout pattern let her tattoos peek through and she’d pulled on a tank to wear under it. It wasn’t that different from what she usually wore, and perfectly fine to wear for . . . coffee.
“Coffee.” She licked her lips as she opened the door of her car, but even as she went to climb in, she heard a child’s wail. Her spine went stiff and then fury punched as that girl’s cry was drowned out by a woman’s bellow.
“Annie, shut the fuck up! I’m tired—”
Curling her hand into a fist, she turned her head, stared at the neighbor’s house.
A few months ago, a young married couple, Tara and Nolan, had moved in.
They had two little girls. Annie and Megan. Megan was barely over a year, toddling around on sturdy little legs, too often in dirty clothes with a diaper that needed changing desperately. Annie was two years older, with long, tangled curls and she was more prone to hide than anything else.
And right now, she was crying.
As another angry shout rose from the house, Keelie checked the driveway.
Then she breathed out a sigh of relief. The busted-up green Chevy truck was there. So Nolan was home.
A moment later, she heard him, his voice a low murmur compared to his wife’s angry shout.
“Don’t you tell me to shut up!” Tara raged.
More words from Nolan, too quiet to be heard, and then their door busted open. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Nolan? You think it’s so easy? Why don’t you stay here with them then?”
Tara came stumbling out in a pair of fleece pajama pants and a tank top, her feet bare. Her eyes shot to Keelie and then away as she headed off to the car.
She was inside a moment later, gone before Keelie could manage to loosen the fist she’d made.
She looked back at the apartment, saw Nolan standing there.
He held Annie in one arm, rocking her.
But he wouldn’t look at Keelie.
He’d stopped being able to look people in the face a long time ago.
* * *
It wasn’t really weird that Zane got to the coffee shop a good thirty minutes early. Not really. Not in his opinion.
He had things to do while he was in town, after all, and later this evening, he was meeting up with Zach to check out a few places. No reason why he couldn’t start scoping out some sites on his own, right?
Nope.
No reason at all.
Of course, all of that would be m
ore plausible if he actually spent a little more time bent over the classified ads instead of staring out the window toward Steel Ink.
He didn’t let any of that get in the way.
He had an obsession.
He knew it.
He worked with it.
He and this obsession, they’d settled into a comfortable fit. It had been three years, after all. He was more comfortable with his obsession over Keelie than Zach had been with Abby, after all. That was what he told himself.
He hadn’t even spent the past decade-plus dealing with it, letting a million chances slide by.
Never let it be said that the competitive thing was something that brothers outgrew.
As a truck drove by, cutting off his view of the tattoo studio, he blew out a breath and focused once more on the paper in front of him. He actually had managed to skim a column or two, nixing everything he saw with the exception of one.
He knew from experience how much room he was going to need and he’d already drawn up a business plan. Most of the ads were for properties either way too big, way too small, or way out of his price range. But there was one that had the right amount of floor space and the price wasn’t too bad. Now the question was how did it look and where was it?
He circled that one ad, moved to the next column, glanced up at the street.
Get a grip, he told himself, forcing his gaze back down to the paper.
Then he looked to his watch. Eight ’til. He still had twenty-three minutes. He needed more than a grip. He needed to punch himself.
It took every last bit of his mental focus, but he managed to plow through another column and he found a second location to check out. It was on the high end of what he could afford, but he’d look. Just in case.
The bell over the door jangled, but he set his jaw. He’d just checked his watch. It was only three minutes after. Still had a few more—
“You’re already drinking your coffee.”
He lowered the pen. Slowly, he looked up, and he managed not to swallow his tongue as his gaze caught, then hung, on a pair of striped tights that curved over endless legs. The skirt probably wasn’t indecent—not really. It was just those legs of hers, so damn long.
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