by Lora Leigh
“Hardly anybody out? Now you’re talking.” He grinned at her and squeezed her hand a little. Her heart squeezed a little in response. “Maybe I need to run before bed instead of after I wake up.”
“Not much of a people person, huh?” They took a left turn down Massachusetts Avenue.
“Nah,” he replied, but didn’t elaborate. It was funny, almost, how comfortable it was to talk to someone who really didn’t say all that much.
“So what kind of music do you listen to while you’re running?” She knew it. She was getting clammy. Shit! If she didn’t wipe her palms on her jeans soon, he’d notice. But if she pulled her hand out of his, he would think she didn’t want to hold hands and she really wanted to hold hands.
Oh, thank God. They were walking past a ramen house. She yanked her hand away and opened the door. He looked surprised, but followed her in.
“I’m starving, do you mind?” She really was. The caramel crackers hadn’t been much of a dinner. They slid into a booth and checked out the laminated menus.
“When I run, I listen to hip-hop, to answer your question. What’s tonkatsu broth?” Was that his foot touching hers beneath the table? Or was it the table? Should she kick it to find out?
“Pork bones. It’s my favorite. I listen to punk when I run, but I’ve been doing audiobooks lately for just bumming around the house.” She kicked it. It reacted. Not the table, then.
“Ow!” Noah yelped. She smiled apologetically. She really was sorry. Sometimes she couldn’t control her impulses. But she did want to play footsie. Damn. This was why she had so few second dates, wasn’t it? Self-sabotage.
“Audiobooks. I haven’t really gotten into those. I’m old-fashioned about paper, I guess.”
She slunk her foot back over to his beneath the table. He didn’t recoil. Maybe she could salvage this after all. The charge she felt every time they touched said she sure had to try.
“It isn’t about paper or no. It’s about maximizing my lit time. I could happily read all day, but then I couldn’t walk down to grab groceries, or clean the bathroom, or grade tests. So I do audiobooks then.”
His foot slid up to her calf, and then back down. Jay tried to suppress her shiver.
Suddenly, he kicked her back. “We’re even now. That makes sense about the audiobooks. I’ll think on that. But I really enjoy music, so I probably won’t change.”
She was still blinking from the surprise. It took her a second to recover her wits, but luckily the server was there to take their orders.
“So what are you reading right now?” She mentally patted herself on the back. That was good. They’d bonded over books the first time they hung out.
“Just something for work. What are you reading?”
She grinned as his foot resumed twining around hers. The sensation of elation at this cute scruffy guy staring at her as if he couldn’t wait to hear her answer made her drop the impulse to press him on the work thing. What if he was unemployed? It would be embarrassing for both of them. And embarrassment was a real mood killer.
“Right now I’m reading a new literary fiction novel for my book club, a critique of modern feminism for fun, and I’m listening to this series of books following women of the Tudor era. Oh, and I have a graphic novel I read at night before bed.” She grinned again at the look on his face. She didn’t normally smile this often. Teaching teenagers tended to wear one’s sense of humor down. Her face was going to hurt tomorrow. She made a mental note to smile less.
“I thought you were going to say just a romance novel or something. Jeez.” He reached across the table to grab her hand again. Luckily, it was dry and ready again. As the heat spread from their clasped fingers up her arm, she decided she didn’t care anyway.
“I like a variety!” she said. “If I keep them in separate genres, I can keep multiple readings going on. But you won’t catch me dead with a romance novel.” She shivered again, but this time in mock-horror.
“What’s wrong with romance novels?” He looked genuinely puzzled.
What the hell? It wasn’t obvious?
“They’re completely ridiculous. Hot alpha male with broken past and massive bank account is healed by the golden vagina of a naive girl he meets under completely contrived circumstances. No thank you. That’s just a smutty fairy tale for the Basic Bitch. It’s demeaning, and unrealistic. Besides, the sex in those books is always weirdly dominant and controlling.”
He was staring hard at her now, those gorgeous brown eyes blazing into hers. Shit, was she going too alpha femme herself? Oh well. If he didn’t like it, she didn’t like him. Hmph.
Though that was a total lie—she liked him and liked him bad. But despite her attraction, she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her ideals for a pretty face. This time.
Noah’s pretty face blinked its eyes. Twice. “Um. Wow. So what’s a Basic Bitch, for starters?”
“You know the type. Girls who are aggressively average. The kind who make duck-faces on their Instagram pics at an eighties dance party while ignoring everyone who is actually at said party. They aren’t very smart, they aren’t good at socializing, and they require a lot of attention.”
“That sounds pretty judgey for someone who describes herself as a feminist.”
That one sentence rocked Jaylene like a 9.5 Richter earthquake, knocking down her entire self-image. It was so devastatingly accurate.
If the waiter hadn’t arrived with steaming bowls of ramen just then, she might have just crawled under the table.
* * *
Well, maybe that was a bit too much honesty for their first formal date. But if she wasn’t ready to hear it, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what she wanted to say. Smutty fairy tales! Okay, she might have been right. It wasn’t like Noah had actually read the last few erotic chart-toppers, but from what he had gathered, her description was pretty dead on.
Just. Just. Judgment wasn’t cool.
But.
Neither was alienating someone you liked.
God, this noodle stuff was awesome. Way better than the cups you microwaved that produced a soup-like product but required one to pick the peas out. Dry-frozen peas did not rehydrate well. They were like little pea zombies. Nasty. This, though, this was like real food.
As he gazed delightedly into his bowl, he realized Jay was half done with hers already. He picked up his chopsticks and brought a load of ramen to his lips. There was an egg in here, too! Would wonders never cease? Well, whatever her rants, the girl knew food.
And books. The girl knew books. That was hot. Almost as hot as she was. ’Cause she was definitely smoking. He dished up a piece of pork before she noticed he couldn’t stop staring. Because despite that little moment of hatefulness, she was a girl with a big heart. And luscious red lips. And adorable hair that made it really, really hard to keep his hands from raking through it.
The pork went a little dry in his mouth as he contemplated. Was she too clever for him? Then he realized he wasn’t actually chewing. Once that resumed, everything got better. No. She was perfect for him. He just needed to convince her of that.
“Are you almost done?” Her eyes widened over the bowl she was slurping from genteelly. Who slurped genteelly? She was awesome. He quickly slurped as well. Really, he wanted to stay in that spot with their weird kicky footsie, but they weren’t going to make out in this plastic booth. And Noah definitely wanted to kiss her. Ideally, as soon as possible.
He tossed some bills on the laminate table and pulled her up by her hand. She was a little damp, which was goddamn adorable. For that whole femme front, she was totally getting nervous around him. Him, Noah Harrison. That was ridiculous. And sexy.
He wasn’t going to bite. Not until he had her tied to his bed, anyway. And they weren’t remotely there yet. But once they were … Well. He’d bet his entire next paycheck that that feisty little feminist would love the way he was going to tell her what to do.
In the meantime he had absolutely no idea how to get home.
She did. It was pretty clear she loved to be in charge. He’d let her, for now. He didn’t even say anything when she grabbed the rooster sauce and the chopsticks and stuck them in her jeans. He did slap a few more bucks on the table, though.
She steered him down a few streets quietly.
“Noah?” It surprised him, once he’d grown used to the sounds of their flats slapping the ground in rhythm.
It only took a few beats for him to answer. “Yeah?”
“This was nice.”
It took a few more beats, but this time because he was wondering, was she ready for the night to be over? Was this the last time he’d see her? This was pretty early to be summing up the evening. He needed to make a grand gesture.
What sort of a grand gesture would a girl like her require?
“It was nice. It is nice. Can we spend some more time talking books? I haven’t met that many well-read women.” Nice one. Books were what they’d bonded over in the first place. Books might keep them going.
“Is that a female thing? Are you being chauvinistic?” No, nothing was going to be easy with this woman.
“No, Jay. I think I just don’t meet many girls like you.” He spun her around so she could see his eyes. They were sincere, and he wanted her to see that.
Lies. He wanted to look at her amazing eyes. But, he’d pretend it was the opposite.
“Huh.” What was that supposed to mean? “What’s your favorite style?”
“What?” The conversation had lost him and he was the one who had been doing the talking. He was blaming it on her eyes.
“Like, I love the South Americans. Márquez, Saramago. My best teacher friend is into the Japanese—Marakumi and such.” She elbowed him.
He guessed it was meant to be a prod, but every time they touched it gave him shocks. He tried to ignore the path they traced up his arm and down his spine.
At least their dialogue was back to something he could handle. “Classic American. Salinger. Steinbeck. Fitzgerald. I like sparse prose, and definitive themes.”
“Male themes.” She elbowed him again. He elbowed her back. She had no idea how bad she was going to get it once he finally had her.
“American themes. Money. Power. Class. That isn’t male or female.” To keep her from more elbowing, he wrapped his arm around hers, their fingers interlocked. He was overpowering her, even though he bet she had no idea. Any move she made could have him on top of her in two seconds flat. The thought was arousing.
“You don’t think that any of those are gender-based? Black men had the vote before women. We were the last marginalized people to become real citizens. What kind of money, or power, or class, was a woman without a voice going to command?”
“Is that why yours is so loud?” he teased her. He couldn’t help it. Girls that riled easily were fun. Although he wasn’t looking to end this in an argument. Squeezing her hand to let her know he wasn’t serious, he turned them back onto their street. Finally. He knew where they were.
As they neared Jaylene’s stoop, he could hear music wafting down from the building next door. “That’s pretty,” he commented.
“That’s Lacy,” she responded. “I didn’t think she was playing these days.” He tugged her up the concrete stones to the flat landing. As the notes of a lonely, heartbroken guitar (for it couldn’t be anything but, in that minor key, with that slow tempo) drifted down, Noah pulled Jaylene into him.
Suddenly, he was no longer worried about the distraction she would pose. He was happy she’d come out of her apartment and met him. He was sorry he’d become so taken with a girl he couldn’t possibly be honest with. Yet this girl made him want to be honest. He wanted to show her everything. As they swayed gently together to the tunes Lacy played, Noah tipped Jaylene’s face up.
When their lips met, time stood still. So did his breath. And he could almost swear hers did as well. The shape, and taste, of her changed absolutely everything. The gentle humidity of the Boston evening wrapped around them as he lost himself in the gentle pressure of her lips. His tongue met hers, and he stopped thinking.
CHAPTER 4
Jaylene strolled down Boylston Street, enjoying the exhilarating release that came with the last day of school. The students had finished on Wednesday, and after two days of administrative work and classroom cleanup, her summer had officially begun. It always amused her to see the students so jazzed to leave—they had no idea how even better the break was for the teachers. Now she was celebrating her blessed freedom with one of her all-time favorite pastimes—window shopping.
As she walked, lightly swinging a bag of sticky buns she’d picked up from her favorite bakery along with five of the Friday Free cookies that were supposedly one with purchase (no one would miss the extra … several), Jay’s thoughts wandered to the scrumptious neighbor. She hadn’t seen him since the kiss on the door stoop. She’d wanted to, but with her Sunday meeting with Total Equality Now and her hectic end-of-school week, she hadn’t even caught him in passing. He was on her mind, though, and she knew she was on his as evidenced by the brand-new copy of the latest Man Booker Prize–winning novel she’d found in front of her door when she returned from her morning run on Tuesday. It was a simple gesture, but she clung to it.
Even having just met him, Jay was already quite taken with Noah Harrison. Any man who was willing to buy hardcover was clearly the right kind.
She was so taken with him, in fact, that he permeated into the rest of her life. While she gathered the ballots for the T.E.N. vote, she remembered that blissful kiss, the way his lips had moved with hers in perfect unison. Grading the final papers on A Separate Peace, she saw his face on the athletic, charismatic Finny. No, not Finny. Finny dies.
But then, as she had signed her picture in her students’ yearbooks, it was his face that she saw again, his bright eyes taunting her with their come-hither sexiness. She saw him everywhere—or imagined that she did—in the line at the bank, in the crowd at graduation, at the bar with the Dawsons the night before. Even now as she approached Desires, a women’s high-end lingerie boutique, she could swear he was walking out the door.
Jaylene froze mid-step and lowered her sunglasses. She wasn’t imagining it—Noah actually was walking out of Desires. Well, wasn’t that interesting. A man didn’t usually visit lingerie stores unless he was shopping for a woman. Unless he was a perv. Or transvestite. And since their relationship was nowhere near the underwear-shopping phase, she knew he wasn’t shopping for her. Or she guessed he could be shopping for her, but that would be weird.
Anyway, the sight was unnerving.
It was also thrilling.
She hadn’t seen the man in nearly a week and just looking at him caused her heart to dance erratically. He was simply breathtaking.
Noah noticed her at about the same time that she remembered how to put one foot in front of another. They walked to each other, his smile matching the one she was sure she wore herself.
“Noah? I thought that was you.” She perched her sunglasses on her head and realized she should have thoroughly checked him out before she did so. Now she’d missed her opportunity to do it incognito. Oh, well. She could wait until he wasn’t looking to slide her focus down his firm body. Maybe.
“Jay.” Even the way he said her name made her stomach flip. He reached to squeeze her free hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Just out for a walk.” Don’t peek down, don’t peek down. “What are you doing here is the more intriguing question.”
His gaze followed as her eyes darted from his stunning face to the door of Desires. He dropped her hand, his neck turning a light shade of red. “Same here. Just out for a walk.”
“And your walk took you through a lingerie store?” She looked down, her attention pausing on his trim hips. What a man could do with those kind of hips … She might have moaned out loud at the thought.
At
least her scan also told her that his hands were empty. That was good. It meant he hadn’t purchased anything for anyone. But if he wasn’t buying, that meant he was browsing, and that seemed awfully pervy, or, at the very least, pro-objectification of women. Not that Jaylene didn’t like a nice pair of girly undies, but she wore them to make herself feel good, and certainly not for a man’s benefit. As soon as she thought that, she was already picturing the look in Noah’s eyes if he saw her in something as sexy as the window display. She could practically hear his intake of breath—but no, because that was a silly, girly thought. Why should she start being silly and girly with him, when he’d never once objected to her being a strong woman?
Of course she had just busted him walking out of a lingerie store. Solo. Total perv move.
But Noah didn’t seem the perv type. He’d been nothing but a gentleman with her. She was sure he’d checked out her ass a few times the other night and just now he’d glanced at her legs in the short shorts she was wearing, but every time had been flirty, not disrespectful. There had to be another explanation for his visit.
She couldn’t wait to hear it.
“Um.” He wiped his hands on his jeans then let out an awkward laugh. “Well, yeah.” His face lit up. “Hey, while we’re here—” He put his arm around her waist—God, the tingles that sent down her spine—and gestured toward the bookstore a few doors down. “Join me for a little perusal?”
It was an obvious deflection, but it was also an invitation—an invitation that Jay was more than happy to accept. “I’ll never turn down a little perusal.” She winked. “I’m even interested in looking at some books.”
Overtly flirtatious? Maybe. But it earned her a fantastic grin.
Noah escorted her to the doors of Book Nook, his hand on her lower back burning through the material of her clothing to warm her skin. Inside, he started toward the fiction section when she stopped him.