Then the buzz of the front doorbell reverberated though her flat, sending her pulse galloping. She backed out of the closet, ran a hand through her disheveled hair, and hurried to the door.
One floor below, Cade stood on the doorstep of the blue and gray Victorian, staring up at the ornate gingerbread trim. He was a little surprised to discover how much he was looking forward to seeing Ryan. The idea of carpooling to Manhattan had been as much a way to bait her as anything else. Yes, he still wanted her, but as he’d assured Patrick, he wasn’t about to let that get in the way of his common sense.
Flip-flops in her stomach were not the way to start out with the upper hand, Ryan thought as she looked at Cade. If only he’d been pallid and dough-faced instead of lean and purposeful, her life would have been a lot easier. A sheaf of black hair hung over his forehead, tossed there by the light breeze. The rolled up sleeves of his faded blue denim shirt showed tanned, sinewy forearms. His khakis looked like old friends. His eyes were vivid against his black eyelashes.
He gave her an amused look. “Are you going to invite me in or should I plan to just stand here until you’re done?”
“Huh?” She’d been staring, she realized with a flush. “Oh, of course.” She turned and led the way up the stairs to her flat.
There was an alarming sense of intimacy in having him in her space. He saw more than most people; in seeing where she lived, she had a feeling he’d learn more about her than she was ready for him to. She waved toward the couch. “Make yourself comfortable. I won’t be a minute.”
Ryan hurried to her bedroom and shut the door. She walked to the cheval glass in the corner, standing eye to eye with her reflection. If she was completely honest with herself, yes, she was attracted to him. She might find him infuriating, true, but something about him drew her. That much was chemistry. She could give into it, and him, or she could try to maintain some degree of control over the situation. Which was exactly what she intended to do.
Seconds later she stepped out into her living room to find Cade standing by her bookcase, flipping through the bound draft of the novel she’d just sent to Elaine. He looked up as she set down her garment bag.
“This you?” he asked, holding up the bound volume.
She crossed the room to him rapidly. “Time to go,” she said curtly, reaching to pluck the book from his hands.
Cade lifted it out of her reach. “Some pretty sexy dialogue, here. He’s got her stripped down to her Victoria’s Secret lace and he’s telling her he wants to kiss her on the—”
Face flaming, Ryan tried again for the draft and this time succeeded in snatching it from him. “I know where he wants to kiss her. I wrote the damned thing.”
“Very hot stuff. Doesn’t sound to me like you needed a gigolo for inspiration at all.”
She shoved the draft to the back of the shelf with a thump. “Are you finished? Because it’s getting late. I’d like to get started if you don’t mind.”
Cade gave her a speculative glance “They know about your sideline at Beckman Markham?”
“No.” She looked at him belligerently as she grabbed her purse. “Why should they? There’s no law against moonlighting.”
She’d twisted her hair up and pulled on a boxy jacket the color of fuchsias, he noticed. The picture of the professional woman.
How was it that she still made him think of sex? He’d assured Patrick that he wasn’t about to let desire get in the way of common sense, but somehow common sense was making less sense all the time.
“Well, I’ve got the directions, so we’re set.” He picked up her bag and turned toward the door. “After you.”
The hell with women’s liberation, Ryan thought as she stalked out the door of her flat and down the stairs ahead of him. The least he could do was carry her bag for her, especially when he irritated her as much as he did.
“My car’s over here,” he said as they started down the granite steps to the street. Sleek and black, a vintage Jaguar convertible sat by the curb.
“Well, I see you don’t believe in denying yourself any of the finer things,” Ryan said, brushing a hand over the graceful curving fender.
“I’m driving you to Manhattan and all you can do is insult me.” Cade wedged her bag into the tiny trunk.
“I wasn’t the one who had the bright idea of carpooling,” she shot back at him as he opened the door so she could slip into the low slung car. The buttery smooth leather seat curved around her like a glove and she stretched her legs out with a little sigh. It was more like lying than sitting, she thought as she leaned her head back. Ahead of her, the long, black nose of the car swooped forward. Above her, tree branches arched overhead, covered with new green leaves. She stretched her arms over her head lazily.
Then Cade got in and the car suddenly became alarmingly small. Immediately, she tensed. The breath backed up in her lungs. She’d expected to spend the day sitting in a car with him. She hadn’t expected to be nearly sitting in his lap.
He turned to her and they were practically lip to lip. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look like a spooked bunny.” She felt the throb of the engine as he started the car.
“I’m just thinking of all the stories I’ve heard about Jaguars breaking down,” she lied. His hand brushed hers as he reached for the stick shift and she flinched at the flare of heat. The hairs prickled on the nape of her neck.
“You mean, does she go all the way for me?” His glance at her was sidelong.
“Cute.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “All I’m asking is whether this thing will get us to Manhattan.”
“Oh sure. She’s a lady who’s easy to deal with, unlike some I know. Relax, we’ll get you there in a snap.” He pulled the car out into the street.
She sniffed at him, then leaned her head back to look up into a sky so blue it hurt the eyes. Everywhere there was the sense of life bursting out, as though if you looked closely enough you could see things grow. “No one who doesn’t live through northern winters can truly appreciate spring,” Ryan said, forgetting that she’d vowed to herself not to speak to him the rest of the drive. “It’s a perfect day for a convertible.”
“I figure I ought to get to enjoy it for once instead of driving around freezing my tail off. New England is not a place for convertibles.”
Ryan glanced at him curiously. “If that’s the way you feel, why do you have one?”
He shrugged. “My grandfather left her to me when he passed away about six years back. She was his baby—he got her new in 1954.” He turned onto Memorial Drive and headed toward the Pike. “I used to save her for sunny days until I sold my other car.”
“Life in the fast lane gets expensive.”
He shot her a hard look.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“We needed funding for eTrain, and it was too soon to go to the VCs. I probably should have sold her instead of the Beamer.” He pulled to a stop at a light, and Ryan noticed the guy in the car next to them staring at the Jag with naked lust. “Collectors drool over her, but I just couldn’t make myself do it.”
“Memories?”
“My granddad used to take me riding sometimes. He’d sit me on his lap and let me steer.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Go ahead, tell me what a sap I am.”
It hit her soft spot. “Not at all. Family’s important. I can see why you’d hold on to it.” She stroked the satiny smooth wood face of the leather-covered dashboard, a throwback to a more graceful time. “It’s a gorgeous car,” she said.
“She’s a gorgeous car,” Cade corrected. The light turned green and they rolled forward.
“Why is it that men always call cars and boats ‘she’?”
“I don’t know. I guess anything that demands so much of your time and care has to be female.”
“If I didn’t have to be in Manhattan tonight, I’d officially take exception to your sexist remark and storm out of the car,” Ryan said lazily. “But then I’d miss cruising through the countryside with the
top down and it’s way too gorgeous of a day to pass on that.”
“Well, then I guess it’s lucky for you that I’m not going to give you a chance,” Cade said, and accelerated onto the turnpike in a burst of speed that snapped her head back.
It was easy to get so caught up in city life that you forgot what it was like to get away from concrete and buildings, Ryan thought, watching the suburbs of Boston fall away behind them. The smooth stream of air flowed over the windshield and across her, teasing loose strands of hair.
A strain she wasn’t aware of carrying ebbed away, and a softness whispered into her bones. For once, the tension between them seemed to be gone. Nothing that they said here could matter too much on such a glorious day.
“Are you from the country?” Cade asked. The wind teased high color into her cheeks. It suited her, he thought.
“No. I grew up in Newton, actually. My parents still live there. I just know this road because we have relatives out in western Mass.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Stockbridge. Aunt Helen and Uncle Stanley. They have twenty acres of sugar maples. Syrup is their business.”
“No kidding?”
“Nope, they have a sugarhouse and everything. A little diner-style restaurant, too, but the big draw’s the maple sugar, especially in the fall.” On the side of the road, forsythia blazed gold against the new green leaves of the maples. “When I was a kid, it was my favorite thing to spend a holiday weekend with them. The country out there is so gorgeous. And at Christmas, they always had snow, whether we’d gotten any back in Boston or not.”
He relaxed back into his seat, resting an arm on the door. “So you’ve always lived around here?”
“Except when I was in college.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Syracuse. Brown for my grad degree. In English,” she said in response to his questioning glance. “I was going to teach tomorrow’s leaders at a prep school somewhere, but I found out the hard way that there are way more applicants than openings.”
“Hence Beckman Markham?”
She shrugged. “It’s a living.”
“You would have been some teacher. I could see it yesterday, watching you teach your class.”
She rolled her eyes but she couldn’t block the little flush of pleasure. “What I was doing yesterday was hardly teaching.”
“No? Let me tell you something. You had everybody in that room in the palm of your hand, even Mr. Personality and his buddy.” He remembered her, a vivid presence, pacing back and forth, playing the room like an entertainer. “It might not be what you had planned to do, but you shine when you’re up there.”
Ryan considered it. “I never thought about it before. I mostly do it because it’s my job. I try to be good at it just because that’s the way I am, but it’s never felt like anything more than going through the motions.”
“You ought to give yourself more credit.” He pulled the car into the left lane to zip around a truck. “So does that mean your heart lies with your writing?”
“Don’t even start with me on that. We’re actually having a civil conversation. Be nice to keep it going.”
“No, seriously, you’re a hell of a writer,” he said. “I read a couple of pages of your manuscript while you were getting ready. It’s good.”
“My dad keeps telling me I should write a cop thriller and make a million,” she said dryly. “In my dreams I’d be writing full-time, but for now it’s just a hobby.” At least until she heard differently from Helene, she thought. Uncomfortably aware that the news she was quitting to write full-time would hardly be welcome, she cast about to change the subject. “So what about you, where are you from?”
He moved his shoulders. “I grew up in the Southwest.”
“New Mexico? Arizona?” She thought of the bleached pastel hues of the desert.
“No. L.A., then Phoenix.”
“Is that where your granddad was from?”
“He was in Pasadena, just north of L.A.”
“The Rose Parade, right?”
He grinned. “You got it. A couple of times when I was little we spent New Year’s Eve with Granddad and watched the parade the next day.” At least he and his mother had. His father had usually cried off so he could be with one or another of his girlfriends.
“So is your family still there?” she asked, turning to look at him.
“My father’s in Malibu. My mother’s in Arizona. They split up when I was a kid.”
She thought of her parents, a comfortable unit so solid that she couldn’t for a moment imagine them any way but together. What would it have been like to grow up without that certainty, without that utterly solid underpinning to her life? Cold, she thought. And lonely. “I’m sorry. That must have been tough.”
The compassion in her voice arrowed into him. Cade adjusted his sunglasses restlessly. “It was a long time ago.”
“Don’t you miss being out where you can see them easily?”
He couldn’t quite suppress a snort. “We stay in touch as much as we need. I mean, how often do you see your family?”
“Me?” She thought for a minute. “I talk with my parents every couple of weeks. I mean, it’s not like I’m tied to their apron strings or anything. I just like them.” Thinking of her mother and father, she smiled. “It’s fun to pop by for dinner or just to say hello.” Her voice trailed off self-consciously. “It probably sounds silly to you.”
He shook his head. “No, it sounds good.” It sounded like family, Cade thought, like a real family. He felt the whisper of longing that hit him sometimes around Patrick’s people. A wistful wish to belong.
When he’d first met Alyssa, he’d mistaken her pride in her patrician roots for love of family. Then he got to know her and realized that it was just a sense of misplaced superiority. He’d only discovered his mistake when it was too late, then berated himself for thinking that he could get that family feeling off the shelf like a can of soup. Either you were born to it or not. He’d grown up with dysfunctional parents who taught him everything he knew of family; he couldn’t just toss that aside and suddenly develop skills he’d never had. He cut off that line of thought and turned back to the conversation. “So, is it just you and your parents?”
Ryan heard the wistful note and wondered. “Irish Catholics? Hardly. My sister Colleen runs a bed-and-breakfast in Maine with her husband. We don’t see her much except during holidays. My little sister’s in San Diego, at the Scripps Research Institute. I’ve also got twin brothers— Brendan is finishing his residency at Mass Eye and Ear and Matt is an engineer in Texas.” The thought of her siblings made her smile. They may have squabbled growing up, but each of them was an important part of her life. “Do you have any brothers or sisters? Did your parents remarry?”
How did he answer a question like that? How could he explain his father’s five marriages without sounding a California cliché? And the icy wasteland his mother had made from her life? He was like the poster child for the dysfunctional family.
The silence stretched out a beat too long.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Ryan said apologetically. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I ask too many questions. I don’t mean to pry.” She looked out of the car, watching the greening trees rush by.
Cade searched for words. “It’s not prying. My family’s just hard to explain. And no, there’s nobody else but me.” He’d wondered sometimes if it might have felt different growing up if he’d had a brother or sister near when his parents were screaming at each other and throwing things, or when he and his mother had moved to Phoenix, a place wholly alien with no one he knew, leaving his grandfather far behind in Pasadena.
“So, I guess it must have been quite a change to move out here from California,” Ryan said brightly. She’d said something wrong when they were talking about families, but she couldn’t figure out what. He’d gone so far away he was in a different time zone. She should have been happy to have silence, but she wanted the eas
y flow they’d had earlier. “What brought you all the way out here?”
“I came out to go to school.”
“That’s a long way to go at eighteen.” She thought of herself as adventurous, but she couldn’t quite imagine leaving everyone and everything familiar on the other side of the continent.
“Actually, I came out for prep school when I was fourteen.”
“You moved away from your parents at fourteen? How could they let you do that?” She blurted it out before she could stop herself. It shocked her, she couldn’t help it. What kind of parents would let their fourteen-year-old boy go three thousand miles away? There had to have been a good school closer to home.
Cade smiled humorlessly. “Are you kidding? They couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.” He wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out. They held too much of the truth. He shrugged and tried to soften it. “They had their own lives, and I just wanted to get out.” He glanced over his shoulder and flipped on his blinker to pass another truck.
Her heart broke a little for that young boy, lost and alone, knowing no one cared enough to keep him close.
“Prep school was fine,” he continued, shifting back over into the travel lane. He shrugged. “It helped me get into Harvard, and then I met Patrick and here we are today.” He reached over and turned up the volume on the stereo.
Something was still missing for him. She’d heard it in his voice. He’d shut down, though, as clearly as though he’d put up the Closed sign in a shop window. The topic was not open for discussion.
All she could do was look out the window and let the miles go by.
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