“That was perhaps one of the most gallant and least graceful rescues I’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Tilson noted. “Still, thank you. And Merry Christmas.”
“I didn’t know that you had one of those fireplace things,” he said, getting up and trying to retrieve his decorum.
“Did you have a nice day?”
“Yeah. For the most part.” He paused. Now that the immediate threat of fire had gone, he felt funny, like he was intruding. Still, she didn’t seem happy. “How about yourself?”
She smiled, but it never reached her eyes. “How would you kids put it?” she mused, then sighed. “It sucked, Sean. It well and truly sucked.”
If it had the prim-and-proper Mrs. T swearing, it had to be a bad time. “What happened?”
“It occurred to me today that all I’ve been doing is waiting to die,” she confided, staring at the fire. Her voice wasn’t dramatic, or low. It was practically without inflection. “My children have their own lives, and they seem intent on proving that I’m not competent to handle mine. All of my friends—and there are precious few of them—are either vapid, spiteful, complaining cows...or they’re dead. And frankly, I’m wondering what I’m hanging on for anymore.” She paused, then looked at him. “Merry Christmas, indeed.”
He sighed. “Well, I have to hand it to you. You’re making me feel a whole lot better about my problems.”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “And what would those problems be?”
He sat in the deck chair next to her. “Well,” he said, “my boss is selling the surf store I work in. The store I practically grew up in, which I love. The short story there is I’m losing my job. Which means I probably won’t be able to afford to stay here in my apartment much longer. Which means I won’t have a place to live because I won’t have any money really. And to top it all off, I’m falling hard for a girl who is completely out of my league and seems to see me as a form of human Prozac for her work stresses.”
Man. Just saying it out loud should have, in theory, made him feel better. Instead, it simply seemed to put the depths of his loserdom in sharper relief. “Yikes.”
She nodded. “I have to admit, you’re giving me a bit of a run for my money. At least you have your youth.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
She grinned, and for a second, she looked years younger. “I take it back. Your life sucks as badly as mine does.”
He laughed, then stood up. That trip on the stairs was going to leave some marks, he could tell. Just one more thing to add to his bitch list, he supposed.
“Well, I think it’s time for me to indulge in another tradition,” he said. “I have a gift from a friend waiting for me in my apartment.”
“And opening it on Christmas night is your tradition?”
“No, I know what it is,” Sean said. “I get the same thing from Mike and Ryan every year. They get me a case of Beers of the World. You know, beer from a bunch of different countries. The tradition I was mentioning was to get hammered like a railroad spike.”
She let out that papery dry laughter of hers. “You traditionally get drunk every Christmas?” she asked around chuckles.
“No, I traditionally get drunk when my life completely and utterly sucks,” Sean corrected, and she laughed some more. “However, the holiday is sort of conveniently coincidental this year.”
“Well, I’d hate to be the cause of a break in tradition,” she said. “Good night, Sean.”
“Night, Mrs. T,” he said.
She looked proud, sitting there in the firelight. Stoic. And so damn old, all of a sudden, in a weary way that had nothing to do with the eighty-four years she was wearing.
She looked alone.
He thought for a long minute, paused at the top of the stairs. Then he cleared his throat.
“You know,” he said speculatively, “you haven’t lived until you’ve had Nigerian beer with a Belgian-ale chaser.”
She simply looked at him for a moment, then a broad smile affixed itself on her face.
“Sounds disgusting,” she said.
“I’ll bring it right over,” Sean said with an answering grin.
“You do that.”
ALLISON FOUND HERSELF in Sean’s driveway, several hours after her very unmerry Christmas at the home front. He was home, from the looks of it...she’d just parked behind his pickup truck. She couldn’t see the light on in his living room, though, even though she felt pretty sure he’d still be up. It was only ten o’clock, after all.
Maybe you ’ll be waking him up. Maybe he’s busy. Maybe you should just start your car, head back to your town house and forget you ever had the idea of bothering him. She could always send him an e-mail, she reasoned. Well, maybe not an e-mail, since she didn’t have his address. Maybe a text. Hell, maybe a messenger hand-delivered letter, come to that.
Her idea to come over here and clear the air seemed more and more stupid by the minute.
She deliberately shut off her car and pulled the keys from the ignition. No. It had been two days and way too long since the Big Screwup, as she was calling it. He cared about her, and she cared about him. She’d handled it badly. And what had possessed her to actually consider Frank’s dating advice anyway? The guy was working on his fourth divorce!
You thought there was an easy way around this.
After all these years, you would’ve thought she’d remember there was no easy way.
Taking a deep breath, she got out of the car. The answer might not be easy, but at least it was straightforward. She was going to go up, admit she cared about Sean and ask his forgiveness. Then, and only then, would she see where they were going to go from there.
Considering she’d never seen him quite that angry before, she walked toward his apartment over the garage with a strong sense of foreboding.
As she started to head toward the steps to his apartment, she noticed something—voices, coming from Aunt Claire’s second-story deck. Low laughter, and from the looks of it, someone using the clay fire pit that Aunt Claire owned but, to Allison’s knowledge, never used. She could’ve sworn that Aunt Claire would be at her son’s house for Christmas. Who was up there?
Curious, and admittedly eager for a distraction, she headed up the stairs to the deck. As she got closer, she could make out the two voices.
It was Sean, she felt quite sure. And the other voice was way too low...and way too happy. And way too female.
Allison froze on the steps.
Oh, God.
Of course. Of course Sean would have a girl with him! He was only gorgeous. And yeah, he might “care” about her, but he’d also never said that he was exclusive. Maybe he’d found some nice surfer girl, with way fewer hang-ups, someone who was actually sane most of the time, someone who cared about him right back and wasn’t afraid of admitting it.
Suddenly, she was roiling in her own foolishness. Why couldn’t she just act like a normal person, keep her job tucked safely away in her office and enjoy life for a change, instead of overthinking every single damn thing!
She turned around quickly, almost tripping on her high heels (which she’d kept on to look good for him, her brain added with masochistic glee). She was almost to the bottom step when she heard Sean’s voice.
“Ally? Is that you?”
She winced. God. Just when she’d thought it couldn’t get any worse.
“Is that Allison?” the woman’s voice called out.
“Aunt Claire?” She quickly walked back up the steps, disbelief spurring her forward.
Sure enough, Aunt Claire was rolled up like a taquito in the antique quilt from the living room. She looked... Allison searched for a word.
Mellow?
“Well. This is a surprise,” Sean said slowly.
“I was just about to go to bed, dear,” Aunt Claire said, enunciating carefully. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry I’m coming so late,” Allison said, feeling immediately guilty.
> “No problem. No problem at all,” Aunt Claire said. “I’ve been having a fine time, talking with Sean, here. Perhaps you could sit with him and take over for me?”
Aunt Claire’s voice was smooth, clear...ever so slightly musical. And that’s when it hit her.
“Aunt Claire, have you been drinking?” Allison said, now officially floored.
Aunt Claire laughed as she slowly got up out of the chair with Sean’s help. “I’ve just been taking a bit of a...world tour, I suppose you might say.”
Allison watched as both Sean and her aunt laughed, finding that cryptic statement uproariously funny. “You’re supposed to be at Clarence’s,” Allison said, referring to Aunt Claire’s son.
“I was, but I insisted that they bring me home. I didn’t want to spend another painful holiday at that pompous ass’s house, pretending to like his wife’s dry turkey and pretending that I don’t notice that they hate having me there,” she said. “So I had beer with Sean instead, and I must say, it’s the happiest Christmas I’ve had in some time.”
Allison didn’t have any response to that, so she shut up and simply stared.
“I’ll leave the quilt out for you. The fire’s not that strong and it’s pretty chilly out,” Aunt Claire told them from the sliding glass door. “You keep Sean company, dear. After all, I don’t expect you to even pretend that you’re here to see me. Not this late at night.”
Allison stammered, but Aunt Claire had already closed the door, leaving only her ghostly chuckle behind.
“Is she going to be all right?” Allison asked instead, finally turning her attention to Sean now that her inebriated godmother had gone off to bed.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine. We really didn’t drink all that much, and I stopped her by the time we got to the Scandinavian countries,” Sean said.
He didn’t sound slurred, or impaired, or even as happy as he’d sounded when he was talking to Aunt Claire, she noticed worriedly. She felt her courage immediately fail her, and she swallowed hard.
He stared at her, the fight from the dying embers making his blue eyes glow almost red. “Want to have a seat?” he said politely, his voice low.
“Aunt Claire was right,” she admitted as she sat down next to him. “I did come here to talk to you.”
She paused as he leaned over and gently placed the quilt around her shoulders. Then he leaned back in his own chair, studying her, and waited.
He wasn’t going to make this easy on her, she realized. And honestly, she couldn’t blame him for that.
“I wanted to apologize. For the other night,” she said, the words all coming out in a rush.
He still said nothing.
“The thing is, I really do like you. And care about you. You’re maybe one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.”
She saw how he winced at the “nice” label, and realized she wasn’t helping matters. “Not just nice. I mean, it would make it easier if you were just nice. But the thing is, I can’t stop thinking about you. I thought that I must be losing my mind. With all of the other stressors in my fife right now, I thought maybe you were just another symptom. Something that I was focusing in on to try and get my mind off of all of my work.”
She paused, studying him. His expression gave away nothing. She swallowed, but kept going.”
“And you have to realize how incredibly, amazingly hot you are. I mean, I haven’t thought this much about sex in...” She paused, doing some quick mental calculations. “Well, ever, actually. Now that I think about it. And the fact of the matter is, I thought that maybe if I just gave in to it instead of fighting it all the time, I’d get some of my sanity back. But there wound up being another problem. I really like you, is the thing. I really care about you, so for you to say that I was just, well, to make it seem like I was just using you... well, I suppose that it was like I was just using you... Oh crap, I don’t know!” She felt tears spilling over onto her cheeks. “Why do I always cry when I’m around you, damn it?”
He just stared at her for a long minute, and she thought, Good idea, Allison. Go tell him how you feel, and see where you can go from there, huh? The only place that she was going was back to her car, back to her house, and back to her office, hoping that somehow she could get so engrossed in paperwork that she’d blot out the past week, and Sean Gilroy, entirely.
She was still working on that escape plan when he stood up, and she held her breath. If he just walked away...oh, she’d die. She’d just die on the spot.
Instead, he scooped her up, quilt and all, and sat down on the lounger, putting her on his lap like she weighed nothing. “Do you even breathe when you give monologues like that?” he asked, his voice mildly amused.
She sighed. “You’re telling me to relax again, aren’t you?”
He smiled that warm smile that never failed to soothe her... and stir her up. She let herself give in to resting her head against his shoulder.
She was both surprised and thrilled when he pressed a kiss against her temple and stroked the back of her hair.
“I have never known anyone quite so tightly wound as you, sweetie,” he said with a small sigh.
“I’d be angry, if I didn’t realize just how painfully true that probably is,” she said, snuggling against his chest.
“And yet,” he continued, “I find myself falling for you anyway.”
She didn’t say anything, simply savored the warm thrill the words shot through her. She wriggled, ignoring his low groan as she made sure she could look into his eyes. The pain was still there, she noticed, as well as the irritation...and a kind of defensiveness.
Slowly, deliberately, she kissed him. Not the full-frontal assault that had been her desperate attempt in her living room. The kiss was sensitive, and sweet, and thorough.
“I’ve never met anybody like you,” she whispered against his jawline. “And believe it or not, I’ve never quite felt like this. I screwed up. I seem to do that a lot with you.”
He laughed, some of the pain ebbing out of his expression, and he kissed her back, still keeping it light. Still keeping it tentative.
“So, since it’s obviously not just sex, what’s our next step? Because just speaking for myself—Sean, my life is so nuts right now. I don’t want to lose you,” she said gently.
And just like that, she handed the next step over to him, waiting nervously for what he would say. As a woman used to making all the plans, being the “point person” and the “go-to gal,” this was more nerve-racking than, say, skydiving naked.
He stared at her, and she doubted he realized just how much she trusted him, to just hand this over, and see what he’d do.
“My life’s pretty complicated, too,” he admitted. Then he continued kissing her. The sensations washed over her like a roaring high tide. She drowned in the taste of him, moving so she had better access. Feeling the delicious strength and heat of him.
“I don’t care how complicated my life is, I’m not walking away from this,” he finally said in a ragged voice.
She felt relief, acute and overpowering, hit her like a wave. “Good,” she said. “I don’t want to walk away, either.”
“When’s this big-deal presentation of yours?” he ground out, his hands stroking her back.
“In about a week,” she said, arching against him.
“Which is about the same time Oz closes the shop down,” he mused. “Listen, things are about to get crazy for me, too. But after then, they’ll calm down. I just need to focus on a few things. And it sounds like you do, too.”
She nodded.
“So for two weeks, let’s just take things slowly,” he said. “That way, we’ll be sure we’re doing things for the right reasons. I’m not going anywhere, Allison. I’ll be right here, whenever you need me.”
As comforting as that sounded—and it did sound comforting—she cleared her throat. “The thing is.. .I really want you, Sean.”
With that, he kissed her, nothing gentle about it. It was explosive, and she groane
d as she was crushed against him. This was more like it. This was what she wanted.
She realized it was the wrong place, the wrong time. She tore herself away. As much as she wanted him, she understood—this was bigger than she had anticipated, as well.
“So, where does that leave us?”
He sighed. “With the longest two weeks of my life.”
She kissed him, then smiled. “Think I can still have my surf lessons?”
He smiled back. “No way am I stopping those now. No matter what.”
CHAPTER TEN
“GABE, WE NEED TO TALK.”
Sean said the words like he was announcing that somebody had died, and in a way, he felt like it. He had the day off, but Oz was just going to keep the store open for another week or two anyway. He needed to get this sorted out.
Oh, who are you kidding?
Yes, he needed to get his life in order, and, yes, the shop was closing. But he never moved quickly in his life. He had savings. Ordinarily, he’d take at least another week or two, and draw out more of his options. He still felt a dull ache at the idea of losing the surf shop. But now, things needed to move just a bit more rapidly.
Because of her.
He sighed. As long as his life was up in the air, he didn’t feel as if he could get seriously involved with Allison. And when it came to Allison, his involvement was as serious as it came.
Gabe had agreed to meet him for lunch for this one. “I came over as soon as I could,” Gabe said.
Sean looked at him. “I know I said it was important, but I didn’t need you to dress up for it,” he tried to joke, to take the edge off of the desperation he was feeling.
Gabe laughed back ruefully as he loosened the tie he was wearing, pulling it over his head and tucking it in a pocket. He still wore a navy suit with a white shirt, and he still looked like a lawyer or a banker or something. “Had a big meeting with some distributors this morning. Can’t wear surf shorts to those, unfortunately, although I still lobby for it.”
The Surfer Solution Page 16