by Box Set
Because thanks to my vengeance-driven donation, there’s now a Madagascar hissing cockroach at the Bronx Zoo graced with the name Phil Stoddart.
It might be a placebo, but damn, it feels fantastic.
That task hasn’t wasted enough time, so I pop under the barely cooler shade of one of the pin oaks lining the street and enter today’s tasks in my app. It’s my last day for errands before I start work with my new medical practice. Ha—look at me being all casual. My new medical practice.
Try first. Yesterday, seeing the nameplate next to my door—Dr. Rodgers—had brought goose bumps along my arms, making everything terrifyingly and excitingly real. I’m finally starting my career as a sports medicine doc. See, it’s that life I can’t wait to start after twelve grueling years of schooling, but instead, I’m five minutes early for a coffee date I’d rather not go on, much less be early to. So yeah, I’m stalling.
My high school best friend set me up with a colleague at her law firm. A lawyer? No, thanks—got enough of them growing up. (Read: my parents.) But since she’s the only old friend I still want to hang with here, I succumbed. What’s one morning?
All right. That’s as much as I can reasonably stall. Now to face Rick the Lawyer, make small talk, and sip overpriced coffee. Maybe he’ll surprise me. With the fresh reminder of Phil’s opinion of me, maybe it’ll be good to swim in the dating pool again. Live a little.
I dodge the sidewalk amblers and push through the door of the Mocha Cabana exactly one minute early. The rich scent of coffee and sweet pastries envelops me. Customers of all ages are bunched around the café-style tables. The population has definitely skewed younger since childhood. When I moved away, the realization that not everyone was seventy-plus years old was an eye-opener.
I do a quick scan—all I have to go on is that he’s my age, he’s got dark hair, and his name is Rick. And he’s a lawyer.
I paste on a smile.
My gaze latches onto the man by the corner window, whose unnervingly masculine face is bisected by the fluctuating shadow of a nodding palm frond outside. The table in front of him is practically Lilliputian, he’s so huge. He’s the only man in the place matching Rick’s description, though, and my heart does a tee-hee dance of its own. And I can tell, in that odd way that happens sometimes, that he knows I’ve arrived and is aware of me viscerally. That he’s watching without watching, because the air between us has that crackly, weighty anticipation that triggers my sixth sense. This guy will have significance in my life, it says.
Combined with a rush of attraction? Not the reaction I want for a lawyer—or for anyone right now. Shit.
But Lordy, he must work out in his off hours. He’s fit in a way you rarely see outside of movies and comic books. His hair is midnight black, and if it wasn’t just past his ears, I’d totally peg him for active military—but not in the way you might think. He doesn’t have those all-American good looks honed into sharp cheekbones and jaw like you associate with Marines. No. It’s in the posture, the confidence, the strength. He owns—dominates—the space around him.
He has sharp cheekbones, but they’re not part of an overall shiny, do-gooder package. Instead, they’re combined with an olive skin tone, shadowed eyes, and a commanding nose that all adds up to Devastating.
Yipes, this easily-six-foot-two stack of hunky muscle is a lawyer and—I swallow—my blind date.
Pulse stupidly racing and that weighty awareness tingling up my back, I shuffle into line to order my café mocha. Deep breath. Live a little, I remind myself.
Swim in the dating pool? Now I want to splash in it, and I can’t tell if it’s because I want to cause a distraction or revel in the sheer fun.
One thing I do know—this reaction is so not like me.
Luke
Yeah, I saw her come in. Yeah, it’s now forty-two seconds past my self-allotted time for staying in this frou-frou place. But can you blame a guy? The curvy brunette in the red dress snagged my attention as soon as she strolled in. The space around her seems less…murky.
That’s not quite right. As a Navy SEAL, details are always dialed in, so it’s not that my surroundings shifted from fuzzy to sharp. The clouds didn’t part and reveal her in full sunshine or any of that crap. No. But the details are usually flat. Now it’s as if she makes the space more…vibrant. 3D.
She doesn’t see me at first, so I steal a moment and let my gaze linger. My hands flex—her trim but lush figure makes me want to trace all those curves. Grip her hips. Such a contrast to her glossy hair pulled into a reserved bun at the nape of her neck, which screams take me seriously. The red liquid of her dress hugs those grippable curves, teasing, promising. The Florida sun bathes her gorgeous face in warm light.
Shit. I’m getting downright poetic.
I press two fingers to my pulse. Cuz this shit isn’t normal.
I still, my instincts fully engaged, because something about her is familiar, but I can’t zero in on what. And now it’s ninety seconds past my time, and I should be dumping this joke of a coffee and getting on with my day, but, yeah, the brunette. Maybe she’s getting her order to-go, and I can see her on the way out. Okay, see her fine ass, cuz she’s gotta have one, right?
And that’s why I’m thrown off guard. Something else that’s not normal. A swath of red fills my peripheral vision, scant inches from my face, and I know without looking up it’s her. A coconut scent wafts over me. Wafts? Did I just use the word waft?
A delicate throat clears, and an intriguing voice says tentatively, “Rick?”
I look up, ready to correct her. Lucky Rick.
But I pause. And go very, very still.
Holy. Shit. It’s Pepper Rodgers from high school. Pepper of the hormone-fueled teenage fantasies. Pepper the ever-optimistic. Pepper whom I totally humiliated at the science fair senior year. I’d call her the one who got away, but I never had her.
Her brown eyes don’t flash with recognition.
Can’t fault her. I’m not the shuffling beanpole with braces and acne she knew in high school.
Suddenly, I don’t want to correct her and lose my opportunity to be around her for the next few minutes she might grant me. Cuz she wouldn’t want to talk to Luke Haas—or Haashole as she dubbed me—but she obviously wants to talk to this Rick person.
And doesn’t know who he is.
Chapter Two
Luke
I survey the busy café. Completely unnecessary—no one has come in around my age and hair color. While I don’t know any of the customers, most are familiar by sight. Sarasota’s a small town when it gets right down to it. And during the summer? Most are local. In the winter, it’s different—our population swells twenty percent with all the tin can tourists and snowbirds burrowing down here to escape the cold.
All the while, Pepper’s puzzled gaze is a subtle pressure, waiting for me to make a decision and speak.
I lock eyes with her and, God help me, smile. No affirmation or denial, but a gesture that could be misinterpreted. Not proud of it, but…fuck. My gut whispers that this is a stolen moment, and I want to be that thief. Badly.
Besides, she doesn’t live here anymore. Hasn’t since we graduated twelve years ago. Normally, my life operates within that dangerous slice defined by the phrase “margin for error,” and I do my damnedest to keep that margin slim. Keeping it slim and trim is the only way I’ve gotten anywhere in life.
This here? It’s outside the parameters of slim margin for error, but that’s how bad I want this.
I can be Rick for a morning. Be someone other than an expensively well-trained shell posing as human. Alleviate the monotony of my life. For a brief moment. Until she recognizes me. The odds are damn high it’ll only be a moment—the subterfuge will be over quickly if this is a business meeting.
So, yeah, I curve my lips, and am rewarded by the most stunning, hits-me-in-the-solar-plexus smile. I’ve never received any of her smiles, and damn if I don’t want it to be the first of many I’d catalog. Note t
he time and date. The cause and effect. Because this smile achieves what little else does—penetrates through the gray and lights me up with color. Because this smile transforms her face from a put-together, beautiful brunette, to a gorgeous but personable woman. And fuck, there’s the beauty mark on her right temple that I remember vividly. Vividly because it drove me crazy. Makes no sense, but the vision of a lick on that spot as step one in the exploration of her whole body was my teenage wank material.
Aaaand apparently it still does it for me. Huh.
She sticks out her hand, and the move, while confident-looking, has an overlay of nervous bravado. “Hi, so nice to meet you! I’m Pepper, but I guess you figured that out.”
Her voice has changed since high school—more confident and mature. No nonsense, yet its tones seep into me, warming me. Her outstretched hand beckons, and—still floored I’m going with this new plan—I stand and slide my palm against hers, completely engulfing her small hand. Her skin sears mine, warm and silky, a one-two lust combo. A jolt of arousal spikes through me. Another surprise for the day. I’m racking the fuckers up like kill points ever since she walked in. Before I look like a complete ape-man, I grasp her hand and shake, a firm one that signals she has my respect.
Her laugh has an edge—another indicator she’s nervous. She slips into the opposite seat in a graceful twist, and I follow suit. She’s all curves, right in front of me. Vibrant. Anxious. Pepper.
That anxious-vibrant combo punches me—I’m not worth that much mental anxiety. I stop myself from reaching out to clasp her hand in some kind of primitive protective gesture. I want to soothe her. No doubt exists that I’ve affected her. Good. Sucks to be the only one.
I need more background intel, so I sit back and risk keeping quiet. Occupy my stolen moment for as long as I can. She doesn’t disappoint.
“Can you believe Tricia?” She sets down her red coffee mug and straightens her spoon on the saucer, the rattle and clink barely audible in the noise of the café. Did I mention that everything is red here? Dealing with all this relentless red is one of the reasons I come here. I’m waiting for the sheer solid front of it to penetrate and normalize everything, but it hasn’t yet.
“Unbelievable,” I answer. A safe reaction to whatever Tricia’s done.
She angles forward, her head tilting almost in apology. “This is my first blind date, so you’ll have to forgive me.”
Ah. A blind date. Now that I know the situation, I adjust to the new intel, but then her thumb rubs up and down the handle of her mug. Of course, I transfer the action to someplace my mind has no business going.
I clear my throat and shift in my seat, leaning forward. “Mine too. We’re both blind date virgins then.” Jesus, that sounded cheesy. But she takes it in stride. “How much did Tricia tell you?”
The odds are looking better that I can stretch the moment. Be Rick.
“Nothing except, you know”—she waves a hand at me—“how you look. I know you’re a partner in her law firm.” At that, her eyes flare with panic—odd. It’s gone just as fast. Since I know fuck all about law, I’ll need to keep our conversation away from work. If I don’t ask her about her job, maybe she won’t ask about mine.
She bites her lip. Which acts like a fucking missile, shooting another bolt of lust through me. Down, boy.
I absolutely cannot go there. Not with her.
But the space between us is sexually charged, as if it has a weight of its own and is simultaneously pushing against us and pulling us toward each other. The sensation’s a new one.
Wait. No. It’s exactly how it was in high school. When that sensation penetrated and confused my puny adolescent, hormone-addled brain into being a dipshit to her. As if I knew it meant something, and I needed to take action, but I had no fucking clue and just, yeah, did stupid shit.
So. My plan is clear. Be a new person. Be this Rick the Lawyer. And talk to the only woman who’s ever made me feel any kind of spark outside of combat for the space of this coffee date. Best case scenario, I get to be outside my skin—free to be whatever the hell I want. Worst case—she recognizes me as we chat. She’ll be pissed, call me an asshole, but it won’t be anything she hasn’t called me in the past, so… Win/Win?
Pepper
Holy yummy presence, Batman. I have no words, which is unusual for me, to be honest. I don’t want him to shatter the gorgeous-man illusion with law talk, so the blip in my brain is me scrambling for another conversational topic. I’d planned to coast through this date by asking him about his job and letting him rattle on, because that’s what guys seem to do best—talk about themselves. Especially on first dates. So I’ve heard.
I wrap my hands around my mug, letting the warmth ground me. I blow into it to stall. My brain isn’t helped out by the zing I feel being this close to him. He’s the definition of sex on a stick. Normally, I don’t even say stuff like that, but I heard it on some show and it pops, all unwelcome, into my brain. And that’s a little too overwhelming for me, so…
“Um, are you new in town?”
No judging. I’ve gotta start somewhere, and it’s obvious he’s not going to take the plunge. My voice comes out a little thready, but I put on a brave face.
He leans back, and the movement sends a scent my way. His scent. And of course it’s intoxicating. Manly. Sex-on-a-stupid-stick manly. No doubt he received more than his share of pheromones when he was made. I do not lean forward to keep it in range.
Okay, I do.
To cover my action, I prop my chin on my hand and wait for his response like I’m all calm, but really I’m like a dog whose rump hits the floor in record speed, tail thumping madly, waiting for my treat—his voice. I’ve only gotten four sentences out of him so far, but those four sentences?
Sexy. Well, not the sentences themselves, but the voice that carries them. Deep, rumbling, self-assured.
Sexy.
Jeez, my brain is stuck on that word. I do my best to feign polite interest instead of oh-my-God-can-you-just-sit-there-and-be-any-more-sexy?
All right. That word’s now banned from my vocabulary. I’d like to get through this blind date with dignity, thank you very much. Especially since this type of over-the-top reaction is new, like a feverish infection.
“Moved here from Virginia Beach about two years ago.” His voice prickles over my skin, fills me. Burrows into some lonely part of me I didn’t know was there. And then kicks my heart rate into a greater pace, because I absolutely do not know how to handle the attraction I’m feeling for this stranger. This can’t be normal, can it?
I bite off a piece of chocolate croissant and lick the crumbs from my lips.
“And you?” He takes a sip of coffee and looks at me over the rim, his eyes carrying a knowing kind of weight to them. God. He can tell I have the hots for him.
I stop myself. Normally, I’d feel like the potato salad caught thinking it was a fancy amuse-bouche to have a chance with someone like him. But now I’m like, screw it. So I think he’s hot and he knows it. Is that a crime?
I moved back to my hometown because I want to start fresh. Be the new me I put on hold for twelve mind-numbing, sleep-deprived years. And the new me is totally fine with a hot guy knowing I find him attractive. Might be good to see where this goes. New town. New fling. New not-cold me.
Take that, Phil.
But I’m bungling it already, because that was a stupid-long pause. God—it’s as if I have little dating experience. Haha. That’s me being sarcastic, because that’s exactly what this is. I’m twenty-nine, but I might as well be eighteen.
The sad truth is—I poured all of my twenties into school. Phil was my first and only real relationship, and that came about because it unfolded with little effort on my part—he was a patient—and because I thought that finally reaching the fellowship stage of my schooling meant I could create time for a relationship. Boy, had that been an epic miscalculation.
And now, I’ve paused even loooonger.
As if to punct
uate the ridiculous silence, the frothing machine behind me chooses now to scroooosh overloud and overlong. I wait until it’s done and say, “I grew up here.” I take a sip of my café mocha, grateful to have something to do with my hands—they’re like fluttery, alien things with no direction.
His gaze hasn’t left mine, and I resist shifting in my seat. “Must’ve been nice, growing up near such beautiful beaches.”
“Sure,” I say, because that’s what everyone expects, but honestly, it wasn’t. I hated the whole smearing down with lotion and baking in the sun thing. Classmates filled my yearbooks with snide remarks about my pale state. Get a tan, girl was my fave of the lot. “But tell me about Virginia Beach. I’ve never been.”
He leans forward, takes the bait—thank God—and regales me with stories about his buddies there, their pranks, his favorite spots, but all the while I’m thinking our conversation is really about something else.
I do get a vivid picture of the Virginia Beach he knows, and I want to visit. See these places. With him.
This is nuts.
It’s just…he’s so deliciously self-assured, as if he’s in complete control of himself and whatever situation befalls him, and the thought sends a thrill through me. He’s so out of my league, but a girl can pretend. It’s not that I think I’m pond scum or something, but I’m average in the looks department and my limited dating experience places him in the unattainable sphere.
Unease worms its way into my newfound resolve to live a little. Seeing his control—his ease and charm—highlights how different we are. We might both be self-assured business professionals, but only for him does it carry over into his dating life. I lack that. And I’m surprised to find this bothers me. Not about him. God no. But about me.
I polish off my chocolate croissant, trying to enjoy its sweet buttery flavor as I listen to him and struggle with what to think. What to do.
His words and my words and our breaths are combining across this café table in this corner coffee shop, and I feel as if there are other presences here with us: my nerves, for one; a weighty, breathless expectation; potential.