“What about you?”
“What about me?” he echoed, following her gaze.
“Do you ever wish you lived somewhere else? I mean, do you ever wonder how your life would be different if you weren’t in such a rural area?”
“Not really. I’ve spent my share of time in the city. This is where I belong.”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“You’ve been here, what? A week? Are you going stir crazy?”
She glanced up at him. She was going crazy alright, but it wasn’t because of the small town. It was because of Justin.
She shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve been kind of busy.”
“I suppose you have, at that,” he said, reaching down to take her hand in his. “Other than a sick kitty, any complaints?”
“None so far,” she said, meeting his gaze.
He pulled her to him and she could feel his heartbeat. She shivered.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
She shook her head against his chest.
“We should probably go back in case they call us, but I’m just enjoying being here with you.”
She nodded. “Me too.” Justin was having a strange effect on her. Sedating almost. She didn’t feel a need to fill the silence. She just needed to be next to him.
A family with two young children passed behind them. Alley turned to smile at the little girl who looked to be about seven years old. The little girl continued to stare as she was dragged away by her mother.
“She thinks you’re pretty,” Justin said.
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s probably just curious.”
“You’re too modest,” Justin said, taking her hand and pulling her with her him along the pier toward the noise and the crowd.
“Do you remember me?” Alley asked suddenly.
“Remember you? What do you mean?”
“When I was a child and used to play next door. Do you remember me?”
“Of course I do. How could I not? Do you remember me?”
She remembered him, but she wasn’t about to tell him that she had thought he was rather old. “A little. I remember a boy next door.”
“I remember you well. You were a beautiful little girl. I thought you were… sweet.”
“Really? Why didn’t you ever talk to me?”
“I did once, but you were so busy.”
“Hmm. I don’t remember that.”
“You had so many friends.”
“A few, I guess.” Had she? She had three cousins that she saw frequently as a child, but had lost touch with. She had Steven and Zena, and a couple of others in their group, but compared to her mother, she didn’t have all that many people she spent time with. “I don’t have so many now.”
“Hmm,” he murmured. “That happens when we get older, I guess.”
“I suppose.”
“Do you miss them?”
“No, not really.” She actually rarely thought about having a lot of friends. The ones she was close to were the ones that mattered.
Justin’s pocket buzzed. “We’re up,” he said, and they made their way to the front of the restaurant.
As they stepped inside, Alley’s stomach growled, belying her earlier statement that she wasn’t hungry. The hostess led them to a quiet corner in the back of the restaurant.
“We got lucky,” she said, sitting.
“Something like that,” he said, with a wink.
Justin didn’t seem like a mysterious kind of guy. However, tonight, he did appear to have an air of mystery about him.
“Do you like wine?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said.
“May I?”
“Sure,” she shrugged as the server approached.
“We’d each like a glass of Wild Horse Pinot noir,” he said. “Is that ok?”
She nodded. Taking a wine class was on her extremely long bucket list, somewhere in there with piano lessons and taking French. In the meantime, she usually followed the lead of others when it came to wine. If left to her own devices, she always went with a cosmopolitan.
After a quick perusal of the menu, she set it aside. He followed her lead. “What would you like?”
“The fried shrimp.”
The server returned with their drinks and Justin ordered for both of them – fried shrimp for her and swordfish for him. Alley smiled to herself. It was doubtless a small thing to him, routine, no doubt, to order for his date, but to Alley, it was a rare display of gallantry.
She sipped her drink, surprised at the smoothness of the wine and allowed the alcohol to warm her blood, relaxing her.
“Do you want to have children?”
She nearly bobbled the drink, barely avoiding wearing the light red color.
She looked up at him, startled. That was a question women usually asked men. Not the other way around.
He laughed. “Not right now. Just in general.”
“I guess I do. I don’t think about it very often.”
“Maybe you should.”
Her heart gave a little stutter. This had to be the oddest conversation she had ever had on a first date. “Why do you say that?’
“You never know when you might need to know.”
“Ok.” What exactly did he mean by that?
“If you want a family, it could make a difference in who you marry.”
“Marry?” Guys weren’t supposed to voluntarily talk about marriage.
“Well, sure. Don’t you plan to get married some day?”
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
“I thought girls always wanted to get married.”
“Some women choose not to.”
“Are you one of those women?”
“I suppose if I were to find the right guy, I’d want to get married.”
“So, you aren’t opposed to getting married?”
“No, I’m not opposed.”
“Good,” he said, and nodded toward a little family, two tables away. “I went to high school with him.”
Alley glanced over at the guy about Justin’s age, a brunette girl, doubtless his wife, and two children – one a girl about seven who seemed to be struggling to sit still in her chair and an infant, banging against the high chair. They had so easily blended into the background for Alley. When she walked into a restaurant in Dallas, she rarely looked at faces. When nothing was out of the ordinary, she allowed the public to blend into the scenery. Justin proceeded to tell a story about him and Justin and the local football team. She only half listened.
She was confused. Why was he asking her about marriage? Was he implying that he wanted to marry her? No, surely not. Guys didn’t do that. He was doubtless merely asking because his friend was there, married with family.
Halfway through their wine, their entrée arrived and Alley bit into the best fried shrimp she’d had in years – which was saying quite a bit since she considered herself something of a connoisseur of fried shrimp.
“Good?” Justin asked.
“Delightful,” Alley said, eliciting a satisfied smile from him.
As they ate, the noise in the restaurant increased, limiting their conversation. After they finished eating, Justin paid the check and they stepped into the relative quietness of the parking lot.
Alley was still trying to decide how to ask him why he had brought up the whole marriage question when they got into the car and they began talking about types of music. Flowing with the conversation, she decided to let it go for now.
By the time they pulled into Justin’s driveway, he had her laughing so hard she couldn’t stop. “Please tell me you’re making this up,” she said, taking a deep breathe.
“No, I really did it.”
“How does a seven year-old figure out how to record music on an answering machine?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you were just precocious.”
“I like to think I’m adventurous.”
“So, do you still have t
he tape?”
“I’m sure my mom has it somewhere. It was the talk of the town for weeks. My parents couldn’t figure out why people kept calling and hanging up when they answered. ”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“You’re just perverse.”
She laughed. “Maybe a little.”
“Wait here,” he said as he jumped out of the car.
He surprised her by opening her door and holding out his hand to help her out. “Thanks,” she said, giving him a smile. She’d read about guys who did that. Now he’d done it twice. Even her dad, whom she considered to be the ultimate modern-day gentleman, had never, to her knowledge, opened her mom’s car door for her. Getting in, yes, but getting out, not once.
He walked her to the back door and waited while she fished her keys out of her purse. She unlocked the door and turned back to him expecting to say goodnight.
He had one hand on the door casing. He reached up and held her chin with the other while his lips moved quickly to hers. “I’ve wanted to do that all night,” he said against her mouth.
She nodded. Speechless. Her eyes closed and she lifted her face to his. Her back was pressed against the door as his hands moved along her sides to her hips.
The kiss deepened and time stood still. Then, suddenly, he lightened the kiss and pulled back from her. She felt like someone had taken her air away.
“I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” he said.
She didn’t know what to say. Tomorrow? What about now? Speechless, she watched him walk from her door across the lawn to his own door. When she heard his door open, she turned and went inside. She didn’t see him watch her until she was safely inside her own house.
Chapter 9
Justin closed the refrigerator door and popped the top on a coke. It was his third one and it was only ten a.m. He’d barely slept all night, lying awake fighting the urge to go next door. He had to keep his distance from Alley or he would not be responsible for the consequences.
The more time he spent with her, the more he knew she was the right girl for him. He knew he had to tread carefully or he ran the possibility of scaring her away. He couldn’t risk it. He had to make her think it was her idea or else he would be just another guy falling at her feet.
He had nothing to base this theory on, of course. This was the most important project he had ever engaged in. No, he didn’t have everything figured out. It was an inexact science. There was one thing, however, that he was absolutely certain of.
He would marry Alley Alexander.
He couldn’t see her through the windows, and he was thankful. If he could see her from his own kitchen, he ran the risk of becoming some kind of pervert.
He sighed. That wouldn’t look good to one’s future wife. She probably wouldn’t be a future wife if she thought he was a perv.
He didn’t know what they would do tonight. He didn’t want to be predictable. They had already been to a nice dinner. Now he had to be creative and come up with something else to get her attention. With her being from the city, he had to stand out from the competition.
He’d almost taken her out to the training center last night. But she had been dressed much too well. Since she liked animals, she might find that interesting. And it would give her a better idea of what he did in his spare time. Since it hadn’t worked out, he would have to wait until another weekend.
He rinsed his hands and tossed the paper towel into the trashcan. There was no need to torture himself so much about this. He would show up and together they would come up with something. They could hang out and watch some TV, maybe get a movie, a pizza. There were so many things they would do eventually.
He merely had to bide his time.
Somehow Alley had slept peacefully. She had fallen asleep imagining that she was in Justin’s arms and she hadn’t waken until Charlie meowed repeatedly in her ear just after eight thirty.
She rolled over and scratched his ears. “Hungry, aren’t you boy? Why did you let me sleep so late then?”
Dragging herself out of bed, she stuffed her feet into a pair of slippers. Yawning, she went into the kitchen, Charlie meowing at her feet, and opened a can of cat food. Her gaze automatically went to the house next door and she didn’t bother to fight it. There was no activity. She filled Charlie’s food bowl and set it on the floor. He looked so content, she decided to cook herself some eggs.
After gathering everything up, she dumped two eggs and some milk into a skillet and stirred it up, added a dash of Bisquick. She flipped on the kitchen TV and caught the latest news on the Today Show. They were having a guest concert featuring Taylor Swift and she found herself humming the words to Begin Again.
Amused at herself, she dumped her eggs into a plate and sat at the kitchen table while the hosts of the program switched to an episode on how guys talk more than girls. Interesting. Until last night, she would have disagreed.
Last night Justin had talked a lot more than she had. That was unusual for her to talk less. She hadn’t noticed it until now as she thought back over the evening.
He had definitely talked more than she had. But she had been comfortable and had felt safe with him. Actually, to be honest, she was intrigued with him and wanted to spend more time with him.
She didn’t know where it would go. What she did know was that Justin was trouble.
She cleaned up her mess and went to sit at her desk. After studying yesterday’s work, she picked up a pencil and made a few changes. Then she turned to a new page and set out creating a rain storm.
Allora dropped to the ground in front of Winston, her vision blinded by the rain. The time for games had ended. It was time to tell him how she felt. But wait, he was hurt. There was blood on his cheek. He would be scared. She reached out and touched him. The blood disappeared. But something else was wrong. His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed at her feet.
It was mid-afternoon before she came out of her daze. There were papers scattered all over the table and a few on the floor. She glanced at her cell phone and realized that was what had jarred her out of her work. She checked the messages and read a text from her mom. Haven’t heard from you lately. Are you ok?
She laughed and sent a return message, I’m good. Been writing. Talk to you soon.
Then she looked outside and saw Justin sitting on the front porch next door. Her heart gave a little stutter. That was where she first had first seen him. The only difference was now she knew more about him. He wasn’t just an attractive guy next door. He was an attractive guy she had kissed. Kissed and wanted to kiss more.
She thought about going over to join him and maybe getting one of those kisses. Thought about it enough to get up and look around for her shoes. Then she realized she hadn’t even showered today and laughed at herself before a little ripple of panic shot through her. What if he came over early? He hadn’t said what time they would be getting together.
Feeling a sense of urgency, she took off toward the bathroom to run a bubble bath.
She loved days like today. Days when she could work all day and have something to look forward to in the evening. It was just perfect. In some ways, she thought it might have been nice to have gotten a phone call or a text message from Justin during the day, but if she were honest with herself, it was also nice to not be interrupted.
After her bath, which had been ever so peaceful and relaxing, she studied her clothes. Maybe she should make a run over to Dallas one day to pick up a new supply of clothes. She hadn’t brought everything she owned, but now she was kind of wishing she had. There were a few things she would have like to have worn for Justin.
With a sigh, she pulled out a pair of cropped jeans and a white t-shirt and matching white sweater in a light summer weave. She’d only worn it once, so it was practically new. She put on some pale brown eyeshadow and some light brown sneakers. After studying her appearance in the mirror, she decided to wear her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Satisfied, she straightened up th
e office area, picking up the papers from the floor. Justin was no longer sitting on the porch, but there was no sign of any activity next door. Maybe he had gone inside to get ready.
With nothing left to do, she called her mom back and caught her up on everything - well, almost everything. She didn’t mention her new neighbor friend.
Two hours later, Justin stood at Alley’s back door, his arm leaning against the door jamb. He didn’t feel the anxiety he had last night, but rather felt a sense of anticipation. Last night he had resisted her. Tonight… well, he didn’t know yet.
When Alley opened the door, he smiled. They were on the same wavelength. He had dressed casual and so had she.
“Hello,” he said when she stepped back to let him in.
“Hi,” she said, chewing her bottom lip.
He thought intently about helping her, and took a step forward. She must have seen something in his eyes, because, she looked at him with an odd expression and took another step back.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Much better now,” he answered, backing her up against the kitchen counter.
She didn’t seem to quite know what to think. It was almost as though he were picking up where they left off last night, and, in his mind, that was exactly what they were doing.
“I see,” she said, holding him back with one hand against his chest. Yet she was so much smaller than he was, something he found so sexy.
“You’re wondering why I left last night,” he said.
“Well… yes, actually, I was.”
“I don’t want to go too fast.”
“I see. What exactly do you call too fast?”
He laughed. “I don’t really know yet. I just know it when I see it.”
“And we were going too fast.”
“Maybe. Last night was a first date. It has different rules.”
“What kind of rules?”
“It all depends on how much you like the girl rules?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Tell me more.”
“If the guy doesn’t like her so much, he can just carry on and maybe get lucky. No harm, no foul. There’s no emotional stuff yet. But… if he really likes her, he’ll want to hold off and let her get used to him.”
Love Me Tomorrow Page 7