by Cari Quinn
But Michael was setting off too many bells in her brain. What if he was scarily young? Like barely twenty-one? Mid-twenties was one thing. Barely done with college another.
“I’m thirty,” he said smoothly, almost too smoothly to her practiced eye. He flashed her his disarming grin, causing her fingers to flex around the handle of her mug. “What about you? Or should a gentleman never ask a lady such personal details?”
“Perhaps not, but I’m not a lady. Are you a gentleman?”
He flicked his tongue over the corner of his mouth and caught a stray drop of soda. He’d probably taste like a juicy lemon, all tart and sweet. “I always make sure I take care of a woman in my company, so…maybe.”
Kim didn’t reply as the waitress reappeared to take their order. They both chose bowls of the turkey and wild rice soup with thick slabs of sourdough bread. The instant the waitress left, Kim lifted her eyebrows at Michael. “I’m thirty-nine.”
He didn’t jerk back in horror, which had to be a positive sign. “If I’d had to guess, I would’ve guessed upper twenties.”
“I’m not susceptible to flattery.” She reached for a packet of sugar then added two more. After splashing in a healthy dollop of cream, she glanced up to find him watching her. “What?”
“Are you susceptible to the truth? Because you’re gorgeous and honestly, I couldn’t give a fig how old you are.”
Only the fact that he seemed as surprised as she did at what came out of his mouth kept her from tossing back some smart remark. Instead she went with stupid. “Uh, thanks. I guess.”
Now who was the one who sounded inexperienced? That would be her, and that never happened.
She couldn’t figure this guy out. First he played the part of the confident nude model, happily waving his penis around like a pole without a flag. Then he went shy on her. Now he’d bolstered himself enough to toss out compliments accompanied by that panty-abandoning smile.
If she wore panties.
Okay, so she did. But usually only during the work week.
“Come on. Other men must tell you that on the regular.”
She cocked her head. “On the regular? Really? No one who’s thirty talks like that. Actually no one talks like that, period.” She crossed her arms on the edge of the table, her wrist full of bangle bracelets clanging noisily. “Level with me, model man. You’re really about to head off to Cancun for spring break, aren’t you?”
Michael’s jaw locked before he visibly released it. “Did you actually accuse me of being a senior in high school? As in eighteen?”
“I meant college, but if the varsity letter fits…” She shook her head. “Next you’ll tell me you’re a virgin.”
He didn’t laugh or blush, merely studied her for so long that her skin seemed to shrink in direct proportion to the warmth of his stare. “Nope, not going to tell you that.”
The waitress picked that less-than-ideal moment to return with their soups and a basket of hot, yeasty bread. Normally Kim would’ve dug in before the plates even hit the table. Now she couldn’t seem to get her arms to unclamp from the edge of the table. In a second, her muscles would be quivering.
“Just FYI, virginity isn’t a curse,” he said once the waitress left. He picked up a piece of bread and buttered it, then shocked the heck out of her by setting it next to the soup she hadn’t touched. “Surely you were a virgin once?”
“I guess. I can’t remember anymore.”
He surprised her by laughing, and the tension between them ebbed away. He’d been yanking her chain, that was all there was to it. “I’ve heard born-agains are pretty popular.”
“I’m not a born-again anything. The first time was plenty, thanks.”
“New question. Are you single?”
“Dude, I’m so single my vagina thinks I’ve abandoned it for wetter pastures.” At his wide eyes, her laughter turned into a snort. She picked up her piece of bread and took a bite. The moan that escaped was purely accidental.
The look he gave her, however? Incendiary, with a side of oh shit.
Before she had a chance to take another bite, he started buttering the next slice. She had to laugh as he set the second on her plate. “What’re you doing?”
“If keeping you in bread will get you to moan like that again, you’re going into a carb coma tonight.”
She shook her head, smiling. “Are you really single?”
“Yes, I’m single,” Michael said finally, drawing her attention to how long it had taken him to reply. That probably wasn’t a good sign.
So far he was potentially coupled up, could be underage despite his assertions to the contrary and potentially inexperienced if his defense of virgins meant anything. A trifecta of drama if she’d ever encountered one. Which begged the question: why was she still leaning toward him across the table, unintentionally revealing her cleavage thanks to her snug V-neck sweater?
“Sure about that?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” After swallowing another mouthful of soup, he set down his spoon and reached for his untouched bread. He pulled off the crust in a neat ring, unaware that she’d stopped nibbling hers to watch him. “I’ve been single for more than a year. Before, the person I was with…it was complicated.”
“How?”
For a moment, she didn’t think he would answer. “Rochelle and I had an unusual relationship.”
“She was into freaky shit?” Kim nodded sympathetically and lifted her soup-laden spoon.
Narrowly, she managed to resist moaning again as the spices, tender meat and warm broth flowed over her tongue. It was a chilly November night, and man, did the soup hit the spot. One of them anyway. With the low lights of the diner glowing against the windows and chasing the rain away, she almost felt cozy.
Now if she could find her way to being comfortable with her dinner guest, she’d count the evening a success.
“No. Not at all.” He laughed and tilted his head, sending a hank of his unruly hair into his eyes. “But it sounds like you’ve been there yourself.”
“Oh you have no idea.”
“Like what?” Clearly fascinated, he leaned forward. “Tell me.”
She waved her free hand without letting go of her spoon. The soup was going to be gone in thirty seconds or less with the way she was sucking it down. “If you can imagine it, some guy has suggested it.” She grinned. “Or I have.”
“Tease.”
“It’s not teasing if you intend to put out.” His eyes lit. “Eventually,” she added, laughing as he pulled off a hunk of bread and shoved it toward her lips. She bit down, deliberately dragging her lips and teeth over his forefinger.
His eyes narrowed, thick lashes framing irises rimmed with gold. They were black. “I may hold you to that.”
“I meant verbally, shy guy. I wasn’t referring to physical affection with a near stranger. What kind of girl do you think I am?” She flung a bit of her own bread at him. It landed in his soup with a plop.
“An intriguing one,” he said quietly, bypassing all of the usual flattery in favor of something that sounded an awful lot like the truth.
Just like that, she melted. Rain dripped down the pane of glass at her side, and her good intentions puddled beneath her feet. She’d believed she had irreversible immunity to any game he threw at her—other than the game she chose to respond to—but she hadn’t expected honesty or anything real to transpire between them. The steadfast expression on his face put a lie to that assumption.
“I’m not that fascinating.” Partially to distract herself, she trapped a chunk of carrot against the side of her bowl and flipped it over the edge onto her napkin, then wrapped it up and tucked it next to her unused fork.
When she looked up, he was grinning. He seemed to get a charge out of watching her, which should’ve been creepy instead of charming. Maybe she’d mellowed.
Maybe she should ask for the check and get the hell out of there.
“Yes, you are.” He inched forward on his bench seat a
nd reached across the table to grab a feather off her shoulder. “Like this. What’s this all about? Do you own a bird?”
“Actually I sort of own twenty of them.”
She enjoyed the way his normally sultry eyes bugged out. “Seriously?”
A laugh escaped before she could stop it. “I work at Fairdale Bird Sanctuary.”
“No fuckin’ way. That’s so cool. You get to work with all the rare and exotic birds?”
“I’m actually the gift-shop manager, so that means I mostly get to play with stuffed ones and soothe the ruffled feathers of the annoyed patrons who wanted a blue-footed booby toy rather than a pelican. My best friend is one of the sanctuary’s zoologists.”
For the next half hour he questioned her thoroughly about the sanctuary, even going so far as to ask how he could donate. Which made her antennae wiggle. He worked at least two jobs, so how much discretionary income could he have? The modeling position was probably only infrequent at best.
Not that it mattered. Even a small donation helped in this difficult financial climate.
“Do you model often?” she asked once they’d dug into large wedges of cake for dessert. His carrot, hers molten chocolate lava. He’d probably taste like cream cheese frosting and the vegetable she couldn’t stand. Damn carrots.
Still, she had to appreciate the unintended deterrent to dueling tongue action. Too bad it didn’t offset the smoldering eyes, razor-blade cheekbones and suckable lips.
And suckable other parts.
“Here and there.” He dragged the tines of his fork over the plate as he chased an errant walnut. “I’ve worked for Rand a few years now, since shortly after he moved into my neighborhood. Occasionally I pick up jobs for other art studios.”
“Naked jobs?”
His lips quirked right before he pushed that sneaky walnut between them. “No. That’s only for Rand.”
“Hmm.” Something about the way he said that made her wonder if there was more to that story. Probably just wishful dirty thinking on her part. “Is that so?”
He cocked his head. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”
Yeah, clearly wishful dirty thinking. He looked as wide-eyed as Bambi newly out from under his mama’s legs. She shoveled a bite of cake into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “In any situation, I think the most lewd thing possible. It’s in my DNA. So I immediately wondered if you and Rand were lovers because, well, I’m me.”
“We’re not but that’s fascinating. You have atypical reactions.”
“You have no clue, buddy. I’m outside the norm in lots of ways.”
“Such as?” If glee had a facial expression, it would’ve been Michael’s as he made an impatient gesture with his fingers. “Let’s get to the main event. Stop with the previews already.”
What would it hurt? It was seeming more and more likely that nothing would happen between them. Not because of his age, but because messing around with an earnest guy like him could only lead to problems. With her tendency to bruise hearts and egos even when it wasn’t intended, she didn’t want to risk hurting someone so genuinely nice.
“I don’t want children, for one.” She held up a hand before he started to object. “In case you were about to ask if that was even an option for me anymore, I’ll have you know my reproductive organs are all still functioning normally, thank you very much. I’m not too old to have children, it’s just not what I see in my future.”
“Why?”
She pushed her cake around her plate. Talk about a heavy topic for a diner and dicking-around excursion. “I had a couple of miscarriages early on, when I was married. Way back in the dark ages. My husband wanted to keep trying. I didn’t. That was one of many reasons we divorced. After the papers were signed, I got my tubes tied. No kids for me from here on out.”
“I’m sorry.” He covered the hand she’d set beside her plate with his own. She stared at his big palm cradling hers as if he’d produced a live snake from his pocket. “If you’re in such different places emotionally, it doesn’t make sense to stay together. I don’t blame you for walking away.”
Kim dragged her gaze from their linked hands to the compassionate dark eyes trained on hers. “What, no token encouragement for me to put my heart on the line? To stop running from love and offer my viable eggs as proof that I’m a real woman?”
He didn’t smile. Didn’t look away. “You feel pretty real to me, Kim. Eggs optional.”
Proving it, he curled his fingers around hers and she let out a shuddering breath she couldn’t hold back. Her lungs ached. Just inhaling and exhaling seemed like a Herculean task all of a sudden.
“I don’t want children either,” he said in that same conversational tone, picking up his fork with his other hand without releasing her. “They’re not in the cards for me.”
“Why?” She tossed his own question back at him, expecting him to evade it. Perhaps he donned his straightforward demeanor only when it suited him.
He ate a couple of bites of cake then let go of her long enough to lift the napkin from his lap and wipe his mouth. The blunt tips of his fingers snagged her focus an instant before those same fingers were sliding over the back of her hand to loosely grasp her wrist. For how intimate the gesture felt, he might’ve slipped into her panties instead. “I’m one of nine kids.”
“Nine?” Holy shit, he was stroking the inside of her wrist. Slowly. The pads of his fingers were rough with calluses and immediately brought to mind all the other places he could touch that would appreciate his thoroughness even more. “Where…” Breathe. “Where were you in the mix?”
“The second. My older sister didn’t stick around long after she turned eighteen, so I was the one left with the kids most of the time while my parents worked. My dad died when I was twelve. Congenital heart defect that he found out about right before he passed.”
“Oh no. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” Not the most articulate of responses, but his wonder fingers were still circling her skin and those seven words strained her addled brain to the max.
“Yeah. It was worse on my mom. She couldn’t work and be home with the kids at the same time. And she couldn’t afford daycare on a waitress’s salary, so a neighbor helped during the day and I took care of them as best as I could after school. Until I stopped going to class. Then I could take care of the younger ones during the day too.”
“How old were you when you dropped out?”
“Sixteen. I hated school. It bored me senseless and the counselor kept wanting to get me on drugs for ADHD or ADD or some three-letter diagnosis that wasn’t reason enough for me to lose the only thing I had going for me.”
“Which was?” His hand had finally stilled on hers while he ate the last of his cake. In its place, his jumpy knee beat a staccato rhythm under the table, making it shake. She doubted he even noticed.
“My ability to think my way out, for me and my family. I couldn’t take the chance the meds would slow me down in any way.” He toyed with the edge of his fork, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Eventually the crappy gas-station job I worked a few hours a week led me to Roch, and it turned out I didn’t need to think about anything except what I could give her. And what she gave me.”
Nerves sprung to life in Kim’s belly, and this time they weren’t for her. These were all for Michael. “So you accuse me of teasing you with the main event and you bury a lead-in like that?”
“Sorry.” He shook himself and dazzled her with a full smile. “Roch was older, wealthy, sophisticated. She was looking for a relationship. I grew to care for her quite deeply and she…provided for me.” The pinkening of the tips of his ears snatched her focus until his words sank in.
She provided for me. What the hell?
“You kids need some more drinks?” Their waitress gestured with her coffeepot and Kim glanced down at her nearly full cup. She must be out of her element if she wasn’t inhaling caffeine by the jug.
“Do we?” Michael asked softly.
Thoug
h she would’ve been happy to talk to him for a few more days, a glance at her watch told her they’d already been occupying this booth for an hour. It wasn’t a bustling place, but he’d mentioned an early day tomorrow and she wanted to finesse her sketch of him before she turned it in at her next class. Her drawing of Michael would be her final project and despite the class being non-credit, she hoped to get at least a B.
Unlike Michael, she’d always been a hopeless school nerd.
She shook her head and smiled at the waitress. “No, thanks. Check, please.”
Her smile faded as she caught Michael’s obviously dismayed expression. Did he think she was in a hurry to split? Worse, did he think his subject matter had put her off?
Her cell rang before she could inform him how wrong he was. So wrong that she wouldn’t mind another quasi-date at this very diner or maybe somewhere a little more upscale. She definitely wanted to see him again, even if alone time with her teacher’s young, clearly complicated model wasn’t the best way to secure her loosely cinched chastity belt.
Pretending she could convince herself not to be interested in Michael—and his intriguing, slightly disquieting past—was basically a sucker’s bet. And she was no sucker.
Okay, that was a lie. But only if the dude believed in reciprocation. Michael would, she was almost sure.
Irrelevant information, O’Halloran.
Seeing her brother’s name on the Caller ID made her grin. “’Sup?” she said into the phone, noting Michael’s quick smile in response. That smile could become addictive if she didn’t watch herself.
“Hey. You staying out tonight?”
There could be no mistaking the hopeful tone in Brad’s voice, which meant he probably intended on romancing his girlfriend in every room of the house. “Lemme guess. Sara bought a new teddy?”
His rich laughter made her relax into the seat. She loved her stupid lug of a little brother and knowing he was blissfully happy with her best friend did wonders for her own equilibrium.
At least until he asked her if she could “stay scarce” that night.
“Yeah, and where exactly am I supposed to go?” She supposed she could always sneak back in the house like Brad and Sara had done the last time she’d asked them to get gone, but she really didn’t want to see anything she couldn’t unsee without bleach and surgical implements. “The library’s not open twenty-four hours, last I checked.”