by Taryn Quinn
I put on my belt and started the car. For all of ten seconds, I contemplated going back home. I thought of my empty house, waiting in the dark for me. Lights burning to give me the illusion I wasn’t all alone.
“You hungry?”
She didn’t hesitate as she clicked on her belt. “Yeah.”
Already my mind was wheeling. “We could go to The Stadler House. It’s private and remote and—”
“How about Denny’s?”
I frowned. “I haven’t been to Denny’s since college.”
“Were you sober?”
“Definitely not. Does anyone eat at Denny’s when they are?”
“I do.” Her amusement came through loud and clear. “I can introduce you to a few things that will blow your mind.”
“Are we still talking about Denny’s?”
She laughed, low and rich. “Feed me and see.”
Fourteen
“What do you think?”
I didn’t set down my sandwich long enough to answer, just nodded.
“Good, right?”
I gave her a thumbs up and kept eating. Who knew toasted bread, cheese, scrambled eggs, and ham could be so delicious? This was definitely hitting the spot.
My dinner companion brightened the table considerably. Just sitting across from me in our corner booth, Ryan sparkled. More than once, I noticed a guy checking her out, usually after she laughed that sexy, throaty laugh of hers.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say I thought about maiming each and every one of those men.
I didn’t blame them. How could I? With her flowing jet black hair and armful of jingling bracelets and that smile that could kill a man dead, she drew the eye every bit as much as that bewitching crystal hanging between her breasts. Now that I knew what she looked like beneath her dress—at least above the waist—I found it even harder to keep my eyes where they should be.
“And you made fun of me for ordering this.” She popped a gooey piece of cheese in her mouth, chewing slowly. Then she tore off another piece and slipped it into the carrier at her side.
Smoky snatched it through the bars.
She’d told the server with all sincerity that the cat was her emotional support pet. I half expected her to go get that pussy papa contraption and put it on while she ate.
But no, that ensemble was evidently reserved for me.
“You’re setting him up to be miserable.” I finished my sandwich and wiped my greasy hands on my napkin.
Good thing I enjoyed the punishment of a ten mile run.
“Hmm, yeah, I probably shouldn’t be feeding him table scraps. You’re right. He’ll never leave you alone at the table.” She made a face and went back to her sandwich. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. See why I don’t have pets?”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean, he’s going to miss you when he’s stuck at home with me.” He wasn’t the only one who would miss her.
Who already dreaded taking her home.
My self-protective jokes about sex hexes aside, I just…liked her. It didn’t make sense. We didn’t line up on any level. She was pure sunshine with that witchy hint of pleasures I couldn’t even begin to dream about. Free in a way I wouldn’t ever be.
I didn’t like admitting it, but I was probably repressed.
Okay, I definitely was. By necessity. If I didn’t keep my urges on lockdown, who knew what would happen?
This would happen.
It was happening, and I couldn’t make myself stop it. Not anymore. Not that I’d put up much of a fight since the first obnoxious email she’d sent my way.
“We can FaceTime.” She was utterly serious, her big beautiful eyes trained on me as I poked at my hash browns.
“You and the cat?” My lips curved. “Are you sure he knows technology?”
“He can learn. Anyone can, if they want to bad enough. You have to want it, Preston.”
I glanced up, my throat going surprisingly tight. Her expression was so earnest that I knew she wasn’t talking in the abstract or making jokes.
Somehow she meant me. She got something about my situation I’d only begun to articulate and was opening a door.
I’d never even tried to look for a window. I’d just settled for the closed-in dark.
“I do want it.” My jaw locked. “But I don’t let myself just do—”
“Anything. Even getting a cat was a big decision for you.”
“Shouldn’t it be?”
“Sure, if you’re not in the place for one. But you are. You have a stable life. Too stable.”
“How can you be too stable?”
“When all the joy is gone.”
I poked at my potatoes. I didn’t want them. They had no flavor.
“You can’t live like that forever.” Her hand slid over mine around my fork and the warmth of her skin made me grip the cool metal that much tighter. “You keep pushing everything that makes you happy down, soon enough nothing will.”
“Dinner and therapy?” I asked lightly, but it took everything in me not to toss aside our plates and drag her up on the table.
That would spark some damn joy, in me if not in the other patrons.
“Dinner and friendship. Contrary to popular belief, being attracted to someone doesn’t mean you can’t be friends too.” She scraped her nail lightly over the back of my hand, tumbling me right back to our heated moments in the front seat of my car.
“Are we friends?” I frowned. “Do you actually like me?”
“No. I hate you. Why I climbed in your lap in the first place.” She rolled her eyes and would’ve pulled back if I hadn’t seized hold of her wrist.
“There’s never been anyone else like you for me.” Her lips trembled as our gazes connected. “You’ll never believe me but—”
“I believe you.”
“I’m not my father.” I let her go although I wanted to do anything but.
She rubbed her wrist and I regretted possibly hurting her—I didn’t want that either—but she lowered her arm into her lap before I could ask. “Do you think I’d be here if I thought you were?”
Silence fell over the table, the only sound the chirping meows of the cat who’d just realized our conversation was keeping him from getting more cheese.
“Do you have siblings?”
She blinked, her heavy fringe of dark lashes hiding her expression for an instant. “No. You just have the one?”
“One is plenty.” I tried the potatoes again before setting down my fork.
“You’re not eating them right. Watch and learn.” She grabbed the bottle of ketchup and saturated her potatoes. I could barely tell there were any under the puddle of red. Then she leaned over to do the same to mine.
“I don’t eat that much ketchup.” It was more ketchup with a side of potatoes than the other way around.
“Try it,” she insisted.
I stared at it dubiously before forking up some. It wasn’t the best thing I’d ever tasted but it was an improvement over the bland potatoes.
“Well?”
“Better.” I kept eating them.
“Why don’t you like your brother?”
I immediately started to correct her then went with the truth. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I don’t like that he doesn’t understand his obligations.”
“Why should he? You understand enough for both of you.”
“Do you make a habit of being unnaturally perceptive or do I bring out something unusual in you?”
She forked up her potatoes with gusto and smiled after she chewed and swallowed. “Little of both.”
“Did you go to college?”
“Did you see one on my resumé?”
“No. But maybe you didn’t graduate. Or didn’t have a good experience.”
“I didn’t go. I barely got out of high school.” She rested her chin on her palm. “I’m not qualified to work for you.”
“Says who?”
“You before you wanted in my panties.” She sounded teas
ing, but she looked down at her plate quickly.
Too quickly.
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t want in my panties?”
“I wish you never wore panties, ever.”
“Hmm, sounds like a lawyerly deflection.”
“Ryan.” I reached for her hand and circled my thumb over the center of her palm. She watched me touch her, saying nothing. “You were so good with Mrs. Franklin. You helped her in a way I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have had any clue how.”
“I just reacted. It’s not like—”
“And the records room. Already it’s so much better than it was before. Because of you. You have talents you don’t give yourself credit for.”
She sniffed. “Hardly. I know exactly what I’m worth.”
“You don’t know what you’re worth to me.” I pressed my thumb harder into her soft flesh, and she gasped before her fingers wrapped tight around my finger.
Neither of us spoke for a moment before I shifted my hold and laced our fingers together on the table. We were in Syracuse, not near Kensington Square, but I wouldn’t have cared if we were. I wanted to hold on to her.
Had to. And I wanted her to hold on to me.
“You mentioned art,” I said suddenly.
“I did?”
“In passing, I think. Tell me about it.”
“Why?” She seemed genuinely perplexed, but she didn’t try to draw away. She even started eating with her other hand in deference to our position.
“I want to get to know you. It’s not just about your panties.”
Her lips twitched as she shot me a glance. “The ones you wish I wasn’t wearing?”
“Tell me. Please.”
She jerked a shoulder. “I’ve just always drawn. It’s a hobby and an escape. A way to process my chaotic life.”
“What was chaotic about it?”
“You can’t possibly care.”
“I care, Ryan.” I went back to eating to give her the space to speak.
She frowned, an expression that almost seemed foreign on her face. Her relaxed features were meant to reflect happiness and pleasure and clever humor. “I was the odd kid. The weird goth chick. Kind of the opposite of my mom. Her name’s Rainbow.”
“Rainbow?” I cleared my throat. “Rainbow Moon.”
The corner of her mouth ticked up. “Yeah. She loved me, but she had a million and one things to keep her busy. Especially her rich men.”
It took effort for me not to tighten my grip. An emotion that felt disturbingly like shame made me take a deep breath. Right then, the last thing I wanted was to be wealthy.
“Where was your dad?”
“Absent. Classic story. We moved around a lot in our van, and things weren’t real stable financially. You know, lonely only kid growing up by her wits, doing what she could to get by.”
I rubbed my thumb against the side of her hand. “Were you safe?”
“No one hurt me.” She let out an unsteady laugh. “Nothing that lasted anyway. I did stupid stuff, but I didn’t land in jail. I didn’t get in serious trouble.”
I needed to do something to lighten the heaviness I’d invited into our meal. That was the last thing I wanted. I just craved to know more about her than the information in her resumé.
“So, you never got taken to the station for public lewdness?”
Her laughter rolled through me, loosening the muscles in my shoulders that had gone stiff. “Definitely not.” She smirked. “Though if I keep hanging around with my new crowd, it could happen.”
“Crowd of one?”
She inclined her chin toward the carrier. “Two.”
“How did you get into tarot?”
“Oh, boy, you’re really fishing, huh? Scared I was serious when I told your daddy I was a witch?”
“No. I find it fascinating. Witchcraft has so many different facets, and the connection to nature is—” I stopped when her fingers clamped down hard on mine, hard enough to hurt. “What?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do that. Don’t pretend to give a shit about things that matter to me to soothe your conscience about wanting me. It doesn’t have to be that deep.”
“So, I’m supposed to find my joy as long as I don’t get too close? Don’t step on your toes and dent your protective shield? Or are these therapy sessions supposed to be one-sided?”
“I don’t need therapy. And I don’t need a man to fill me up. I’m happy alone.”
“Do you think I want to change that?” I gentled my grip on her. “You intrigue me, not because you’re a curiosity, but because you’re brave. You live authentically.” Part of being brave was honesty. Another thing I wasn’t familiar with anymore. “And I don’t.”
“You can. Anytime you want to. You can make the choice.”
“I’m figuring that out. In the meantime, I want to do what feels good.”
She took another bite of her potatoes. They had to be cold by now. “You wouldn’t be a man if you didn’t.”
“I don’t mean just sex. I don’t see you like that. I wish you didn’t either.”
“Right.”
“Would I be sitting here with you if that was all I wanted?”
“You tell me.”
“There are hotels all over. Places we could stop and fuck and no one would be the wiser.”
“Your pinstriped soul would know. By the way, I’m surprised you haven’t shown up in a suit like that. Or a three-piece one. Vest included.” She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “All buttoned up so someone could imagine stripping off the layers to see what’s beneath.”
“I haven’t been intimate with a woman in more than two years.” Saying it felt like I was baring my soul. I wasn’t a virgin—far from it—but somehow even this admission to a woman as free and open as Ryan made me feel like the next thing to it. “Sex doesn’t rule me.”
“Maybe it should. Nothing wrong with needing a release valve.”
“No,” I agreed. “There isn’t. And maybe you shouldn’t think the worst when someone with a penis wants to hear about what you like. Not all men think with their dicks.”
“And not all women want to be peeled open like a banana to reveal all their secrets.”
“Tit for tat.” I cocked my head when Smoky let out a sound that sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “I won’t ask you for more than I’m willing to give. How’s that sound?”
“Like a lawyer’s negotiation.”
I shrugged and ate some of my own cold potatoes. They really were better with ketchup.
“Fine,” she said after a minute. “Have it your way. I got into tarot because I wanted to make friends in high school. People like to hear about themselves. Especially young women.”
“Not only young women,” I said drily. “I meet plenty of men who can’t get enough of talking about themselves.”
“Well, lawyers. You know how they are. Pompous windbags.” She waved a hand then rubbed her thumb over my hand to soften the joke.
“You should read my cards.”
Her laughter was loud, quick, and unprompted. “I know I have nice tits, but wow.”
“Not arguing there.”
“Imagine if you’d seen the rest of me?” she asked silkily, her thumb still on the move against my skin. “I’d probably have the keys to your house by now.”
“I’m serious. I’m curious what you’d see.”
“It’s not all fun and games. The cards intuit things we don’t always want known. Allowing someone to read your cards can be as intimate as sex.”
“Then I definitely want you to read mine.” It wasn’t like I was going to get lucky tonight. That barn door had closed.
Slammed shut might have been a more accurate description. But blue balls aside, I liked this new direction we were headed in.
Tomorrow, I’d wake up and think I was losing it. But right now? I liked holding her hand and watching her stunning eyes nar
row at me as she tried to figure me out.
Good luck there. I hadn’t managed to figure myself out yet, and I had more than thirty years practice.
“You think you do,” she said after a moment. “But if the cards see something you’re not ready to face…”
“I’ll take my chances. I’m making the choice to trust you,” I added. “You could try trusting me back.”
She didn’t answer. And she didn’t laugh again as we finished the meal and paid—separate checks of course, despite my disagreement—or on the ride back to her place. Smoky was thoroughly tired of the carrier and meowed the whole way, but he saved the loudest one for when Ryan climbed out of my car.
I exhaled as I waited while she went inside. “I don’t like it any better than you do, Smoky.”
Returning to my house seemed even more hollow after having Ryan’s energy around me for so much of the day.
“Energy,” I muttered as I drove up the long driveway and parked. “Now who’s going woo woo?”
I collected Smoky’s many, many items from the trunk and grabbed his carrier for the trek inside. His meowing had turned into full-blown yowls now.
Either he was hungry or he was disgusted I was his new owner instead of Ryan.
I couldn’t even say I blamed him on the second point.
It took two trips to gather everything we’d bought him. Rather than letting him loose inside my place when I wasn’t there to supervise, I set the carrier on the floor while I toted in the rest. Then I stalled a little more, setting out his new fountain along with a bowl of wet food and one with dry kibble, both high-end brands I’d seen workers using at the shelter.
After some debate, I put his litter box in the laundry room and filled it up with litter to the very brim. Okay, so I overflowed it, but that was what the handheld vacuum was for. After vacuuming up the mess, I went to set the cat free, only to find him plastered to the back of his carrier, his eyes the size of saucers.
I opened the door and he didn’t come out, just stayed adhered to the back. I frowned. Was he mad at being caged for so long? Going to dinner with Ryan instead of taking him home right away hadn’t been ideal.
“Already I’m a failure as a pet parent. And it’s been what, a few hours?” I glanced at my watch. “Good sign, Shaw.”