One Taste

by Cari Quinn

  Ryleigh designed an application for Rated and they’d just gone live with Android and Apple. Everything was coming together. They’d branched off in Miracle Designs with the app features for websites. Everyone wanted to get in on the ground level with media marketing and social networking.

  In fact, she was interviewing for a new copyediting assistant and web designer because Ryleigh’s apps were an important expansion for them. Thanks to her former assistant, Miracle Designs was competing openly with Declan Thorne for clients.

  And winning.

  She dropped into her seat and swung back and forth, staring at the box. It wasn’t unheard of to have people mail her gadgets to entice her to rate them. She didn’t promise a review if it was sent, and she always stressed that free things wouldn’t make her rate them any less honestly.

  Instead of stopping the torrent of packages, now she got even more.

  But never by FedEx. Most people preferred the cheaper postal service when they were offering up free items. No, FedEx was her personal preference.

  “So, what do we have today?” Ryleigh slurped from her coffee over her shoulder.

  “Not sure.”

  Ryleigh nudged her. “Well, open it.”

  “I didn’t order it. I don’t recognize the manufacturer.”

  “It’s not like you don’t get freebies and bribes weekly, boss.” Ryleigh leaned around her, snagged her letter opener and set it on top of the box. “Open it.” When she hesitated, Ryleigh set her cup down and flicked open the tape. “It’s not a bomb.” She shook it until a box almost the same size came out with a thud.

  Recycled cardboard and impressively designed schematics slanted across the square box. The only color was a bright stamp of glossy green ink in the stylized shape of a thumbprint.

  It may as well have been a bomb. With shaking fingers she lifted the box and flipped it to see a star-shaped fold and the copyright symbol with a simple NCross behind it.

  “What is that?”

  “Something I’ve had on backorder for a long time.” Her voice was rough. “I’m going to take this upstairs.”

  “Miranda, are you okay?”

  She cleared her throat. “Of course.”

  “Now that I know how you lie, you kinda suck at it.”

  Miranda laughed. “I’ll tell you about it when I get back. I just need a minute.”

  She felt Ryleigh at her back as she headed to the stairway that went to the roof. Leo called her back, but she ignored him. She was grateful that Max had taken the morning off. The wrought iron stairs blurred at her feet. Somehow she managed the climb.

  The sun burned high in the empty sky. She stared hard at the horizon until the buildings shimmered back into straight lines as the box dug into her palm. Stella bumped the back of her knee with a whine.

  “I’m gonna be fine, Stel.”

  She sat down with the box at her large table. After cranking the umbrella to shade her from the full blast of the sun, she flipped open the top of the box. A professional-looking page was tucked around the cardboard housing of Nathan’s invention.

  Pride nudged aside the instant grief. He’d taken his invention to a manufacturer and not only got it into production, but he’d modified it for other uses. Safes, motorcycles, bikes, even jewelry boxes. It wasn’t as though fingerprinting technology was new, but the uses and the user-friendly way he’d gone about it created a new way to repurpose it.

  Gently she pulled the standard lock out of its casing. The one that she’d ordered months before she’d known what it was like to have someone like Nathan in her life.

  Max found her with the pieces splayed around the table and her print locked in the “memory bank” as it was named. It held up to three prints, but she didn’t have anyone else to share it with.

  “You all right, love?”

  “Of course.” She smiled winningly up at him. “I’ve got a new toy to rate.”

  “Honey, don’t play fake with me. I know that’s Nate’s invention.”

  She frowned. “How did you know?”

  “Considering I help out on the site now, I’ve read it. It was a pretty cool gadget.”

  “Right.” She swallowed the lump that threatened to choke her. Weariness and being strong for months crashed into a titanium casing with Nathan Cross’ patent on it and cracked. “I miss him, Max. I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes.”

  “Finally.”

  She wanted to laugh, but all she could do was put her tired head on her folded arms.

  “I’ve tried to let you do this on your own timetable, Miranda. But you have to know that locking Nate out wasn’t going to make him go away. You love him.”

  She hunched her shoulders up to her ears. “It doesn’t matter if I love him. I hurt him. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  “He sent you this, didn’t he?”

  She sat up, jamming her fingers into her hair. “I wish he did. I ordered this ages ago; his new manufacturing company is simply filling his backlogged orders.”

  “Even if that’s true, it’s a sign, Miranda. Just how long are you going to hide? Are you really going to let him go without even a little bit of a fight?”

  “What right do I have to even ask for a second chance?”

  He shook her, dragging her to face him. “You have every right. Why you think you have to be alone all the time will never make sense to me. Do you think this is some sort of self-imposed sentencing? Just because you had a misspent youth you have to pay for it for the rest of your life?”

  “It’s safer for everyone.”

  “Safer for you, don’t you mean?”

  “Is that so wrong?” Knowing he was right didn’t stop the bitchy from coming out in her voice.

  “No. It’s your choice to stay alone, Miranda. It’s your choice to let someone as great as Nate get snapped up by some girl who’s brave enough to take what you turned away from. He loves you. I could see it in his eyes every time he came here to pick you up. Hell, he adores you. Throwing that away is not only stupid, it’s asinine. Maybe you don’t deserve him.”

  Shards of glass had to be lodged in her chest. She sucked in another shallow breath. “Max!”

  “This girl I knew came out to a town she didn’t know and set up shop with only one other friend and built it into a really spectacular place to work and be proud of. But that girl is fading away into the job instead of flourishing with her success. You look like shit, Miranda.”

  Her supportive Max sat beside her stone-faced. The corrugated cardboard cut into her wrist as her fingers curled into a fist. “What if I let him in and he rips my heart out?”

  “Then at least you tried. Dammit, Miranda! What did that family do to you?”

  She stumbled away from the table. They left her to her own devices. They loved her if a camera was pointing in their direction. Her own mother vied for the attention of men in Miranda’s age bracket just to show up her daughters. Her father didn’t know how to have a monogamous moment in his life.

  How could she think she could hold on to a man as good as Nate?

  “No one’s loved me like Nathan does.”

  “And yet you’re willing to let that go?”

  She stood up straighter. Her gut roiled and her brain screamed. With her head tipped back and the sun blasting on her cheeks, she took a deep breath. “I need your help, Max.”

  “Oh thank God. I’m no good at this bad cop thing!”

  The laughter that escaped felt good and her heart that much stronger. “Oh Max.”

  “Ryleigh made me do it. I told her I wouldn’t be any good at it.”

  “Actually, it was Oscar-worthy.” She turned to him, linking her fingers with his.

  Nate slammed the lock on the back of his truck and parked his rig for the night. He had at least three hours of paperwork waiting for him at his apartment, not to mention three text messages on his phone that he’d yet to answer. Matt, Noah and hell…even his dad was checking up on him.

&nbs
p; He didn’t even know his dad knew how to text.

  A Cross family picnic was scheduled for that weekend and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Generally his family was his port in any storm, but the pitying looks were grating on his last nerve. He caught his reflection in his side mirror. Mottled purple and green swirled into the healing yellow skin around his eye.

  The current black eye he was sporting was thanks to a brawl the night before at the bar his brother worked at. He was pretty sure Matt had let the guy deck him so he wouldn’t get into trouble with their mother for doing it himself.

  He didn’t even remember the how or why of the fight. Only that it felt good to slam his fist into someone’s face, even if they hit back. Matt’s heavy bag had taken a lot of abuse in the last few months, and still he couldn’t get the rage out of his system.

  Nightly dreams of her sweet, soft body wrapped around him followed by motorcycle rides faster than was wise couldn’t outrun the memories of her. If he wasn’t dreaming about making love to her, he was chasing wisps of smoke. It didn’t take a genius or a psychologist to tell him he was hung up on Miranda.

  Every day he thumbed over her name in his phone. Months later and he still couldn’t take the number out. Before he could press the call button he saw the cool eyes and the utter stillness inside her when she told him that she’d have kept lying to him.

  He’d get over her. Love without honesty wasn’t the kind he was interested in. Everyone had their little white lies they kept to themselves, but MJ Lyons wasn’t a white lie. It was a whole part of the woman who had dug herself under his skin. Had he been in love with an illusion?

  The ghost of her cocoa butter scent that visited him every morning reminded him it wasn’t. The two women he’d tried to go on dates with sealed that deal. He’d managed to kiss one. She was a really nice girl, but she wasn’t Miranda. In fact, the moment he’d ended the kiss she’d told him to go after whomever he was thinking about the entire evening.

  He’d gotten his first black eye that night. Spoiling for a fight, Noah had obliged him with a fist plant to the face. The fact that his brother sported a matching one was the only thing that saved them both from the wrath of his mother. She didn’t know which one to blame.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. Home flashed on the screen, rumbling in his palm ring after ring. Taking a deep breath, he answered. “Hey, Ma.”

  “Don’t you, ‘Hey, Ma’ me. You’ve been avoiding me and your father for days, Nathan Patrick.”

  He winced and tucked his phone into his shoulder as he fished out his keys and signed out for the night.

  “No—”

  “If you lie to me on this phone I’ll show up at your sty of an apartment and start cleaning at four-thirty Monday morning.”

  “Effective threat,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m just not good company for anyone right now. I promise I’ll come to the picnic on Sunday.”

  “If you make your father come over there Sunday and drag you out of your house or that bar, I will never forgive you.”

  Shame hung on his shoulder like the Catholic cross his mother loved. “I promise I won’t let you down, Mom.”

  “Oh honey, you aren’t letting me down. I just worry about you. I could strangle that woman for making you so unhappy.”

  Leave it to his terrier of a mother to give him the first real smile of the day. “It was my decision, not Miranda’s.”

  “Actions speak louder than words, Nathan.”

  A flash of Miranda grinning up at him at the fresh market chased another memory of her pretty hazel eyes fading from wariness to pleasure during their lunches on her rooftop. He shook his head against the assault. Knowing she’d bloomed from a quiet, sad woman to someone who laughed and loved openly with him drove the spike deeper into his already brutalized heart.

  He climbed into Tin Can Annie and pulled into the light traffic. “I’ll come on Sunday and you can patch me up, okay?”

  “I wish all it took was triple antibiotic and a bandage this time, baby.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “No later than noon, Nathan.”

  He laughed. Mother Superior had nothing on his mom. “You got it.” He paused, grateful that he had so many people who worried about him, even if he didn’t want them closing ranks on him. What would he be like if he didn’t have them in his life? “I love you, Ma.”

  “I love you too, Nate.” His mom’s voice was thick with tears when she hung up.

  “Dammit,” he mumbled and jammed the phone back in his pocket, stopping for a red light. With his chin digging into his chest, he drilled his fingers into the tension knotting the back of his neck. Would he be like Miranda if he hadn’t had the support of his family every step of the way?

  Would he live with roadblocks and Do Not Enter signs posted all over his life? She worked a job that kept her behind a screen and in the shadows more than the sunshine. Her friends could be counted on one hand, and she rarely talked about them. Every woman he’d ever been with chattered about the small dramas that only those with the double X chromosome understood, but not Miranda.

  She was business and secrets. She was more than happy to talk about his life, but every time he tried to drag the conversation around she’d try to distract him, or just shut him down flat.

  Now that he knew why, he understood. And even with all the nights that he stared at his dark ceiling and thought about it, he couldn’t get past the one thing.

  She would have lied to him indefinitely. In fact, she had no plans ever to tell him who she was or why she got so wound up when the passion between them flared. God, he’d never been as connected and disconnected to a woman at the same time in his life.

  He’d been so hopeful that they’d finally been moving toward something.

  And in a blink, it had dissolved like spun sugar. Was it because there was no substance to begin with? Had he been holding on to an ocean breeze?

  Finding himself in front of his apartment, he parked and made a pit stop in the deli across the street from his place for a sandwich to go. With his hand on the railing, he looked around. It was second nature to look for a reporter. Every hack and wannabe entertainment reporter had staked out his place. As soon as he got used to walking into his building without a camera shoved in his face there was another supposed sighting and they were back to camping out.

  After he gave himself the all clear, he nodded to the doorman who had been hired soon after the first complaint from tenants. “Hey, Sam.”

  Sam waggled his eyebrows. “Mr. Cross.”

  Intent on his meatball grinder, he didn’t ask what the joke was. Sam always had one and Nate was actually hungry for the first time in days. Too impatient for the elevator, he punched open the door to the stairs and took them two at a time.

  Four floors later, his stomach was growling. Intent on his apartment, he nearly groaned aloud when Jonas peeked his head out.

  “Dude.”

  “Later, Jonas. Let me eat and we can watch the game in twenty minutes.”

  “Nate!”

  Seriously? He huffed and spun on his heel, walking backward to his apartment. “Unless you’ve got a naked celebrity in your apartment, I’m going to go eat and talk to you after. I’m ready to gnaw off my arm.”

  “First of all, I’m not sharing any naked celebrity chicks with you, son. And second…turn around. My warning isn’t going to do any good.”

  “What?” he turned around, expecting a reporter or a Jehovah’s Witness waiting for him.

  Anything but her.

  A flex cable was attached to his doorknob feeding through the loop of the cable’s reinforced end. Instead of a regular padlock, a pair of cuffs had been wound through with a suspiciously familiar lock dangling from the end. Attached to that was Miranda’s slim wrist. She sat in front of his door, legs crossed Indian style wearing some sort of stretchy pants that hugged her calves, tiny black shoes that resembled slippers and a dress that looked like a series of oversized tank tops i
n varying shades of blue.

  “Hi, Nate.”

  He looked over his shoulder. Jonas stood with his arms crossed. “I tried to tell you.”

  His gaze snapped back to Miranda, then to the lock and back to her.

  “I’d like to talk and as you can see, I’m not going anywhere until we do.”

  At a loss, he dug out his key.

  She got to her feet and all that beachy perfection rolled over him like a tsunami. Freckles and endless inches of soft skin tethered to his apartment. Her hair was gathered in a soft braid over her shoulder and her glasses were perched on top of her head, holding the rest at bay. Scrubbed clean and without any artifice, she stood in front of him.

  Was this the real Miranda?

  With teeth set, he unlocked the door and couldn’t escape the cocoa butter spice fast enough. She crowded in on him, the chain keeping her close. Too close. She peered up at him, light lashes framing her eyes and emphasizing the endless freckles that dotted her skin.

  Everything he’d been dreaming about and wanting, attached to his door.

  He ducked under her arm and slammed the door in her face.

  Three hours later, he still stared at the closed door. She didn’t plead, she didn’t even talk. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she unlocked herself and walked away again. But Jonas called him hourly and told him she was out there.

  The sauce and grease-laden wrapper of his sandwich lay discarded on his dining room table. All he could do was stare holes into the door. What the hell was she doing there?

  How had she made it past Sam? Or was that the knowing look he’d given him on the way in? What if it had been a reporter with a story? Could anyone get past the old man?

  Avoidance grabbed him by the neck and he picked up the phone. “Sam, did you let a young woman upstairs today?”

  “Yep.”

  “She was a reporter.”

  Sam didn’t speak for a beat. “Nope. She wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?” he asked incredulously.

  “Sixty years of working for Universal. I can spot a reporter or actress at ten paces. She’s just a girl in love. And since you’ve been moping around here like a kicked puppy I knew—”