She let out a slow exhale. “That’s . . .” She paused and cleared the rasp from her throat. “That’s good. I might be taking Katie to the doctor if she’s not better in the morning, but other than that, my schedule’s wide open.” That last part was said with a heaping dose of self-deprecation that brought a faint smile to Theo’s lips as he added liqueur.
“Other than tomorrow night’s hockey game, my schedule’s wide open, too.”
Then he was done preparing his cup of hot chocolate. There was nothing left to do except turn around and face her, perhaps sit at the table with her in companionable silence until it was time for her to go upstairs and go to bed and him to resume his restless night alone on Lanette.
Except that there was one more thing he needed to say. He drank deeply from his cup, then braced his hands on the edge of the counter. “I’m sorry Lowell ruined your life. You’ve been dealt a really shitty hand and I admire the way you’re handling it.”
There. He said it. And the world didn’t end and his heart didn’t explode from the effort. In fact, it was a relief to have gotten that off his chest.
He heard the scrape of her chair. So she was walking away. Okay. That was a fair response after all the grief he’d given her. His peace offering was still on the table whenever she was ready to deal with it—and with him.
Then she was standing next to him. Her hand was on his forearm. He watched her hand’s slow crawl down his sleeve toward his hand. His whole body was overcome with chills, more than a zing of pleasure, but rather the oddest sensation that her touching him was exactly right. Exactly how it was supposed to be between them.
Her hand reached his and covered it. Her fingers slipped between his and held on tight. Breathing hard, with those chills still coursing through him, he raised his focus to her face and locked eyes with her.
What he saw in her eyes floored him. Determination. Strength. Lust. Not one iota of gratitude. Just a stubbornly set jaw that told him You don’t scare me, eyes that said I get you and lips that added and I want you. She got him. It didn’t make sense because how could she? They’d known each other less than a month and ninety-nine percent of the time he’d been a jerk to her. But she got who he was and what made him tick, even if he hadn’t shared a single detail about why. Even though he hadn’t shared the extent of his disabilities.
She got him and she wanted him—and that combo was more potent than he could’ve imagined. He wrenched his hand out from under hers and wrapped it around her hip as he stepped in front of her. Her fingers curled around his upper arms, her nails biting into his flesh through his shirt as he caught her lips with his.
He kissed her, slow and closed-lipped, too dizzy with need to go fast. Her lips were sweet and soft. She tasted of chocolate—warm and luscious and so very exquisite. His heartbeat sped until the rush of blood through his ears rivaled that of a puck drop or penalty shot on goal. He wouldn’t have heard it if a semitrailer careered through the lobby, and he didn’t care.
They were kissing so slowly that they gradually stopped moving at all, just held their lips against each other and breathed ragged fits of air through their noses, eyes closed, bodies locked in place.
What could he say to her now? He couldn’t even figure out how to move, much less break the kiss and look at her.
She pulled her lips from his, though their noses still brushed. Then her lips were moving along with an accompanying garble of sound. He opened his eyes and willed his focus past the rush of blood through his bad ear. “I didn’t hear you. Say that again.”
She fingered the sleeve of his shirt, her eyes downcast. “I’m not ready for this.”
How could she be so sure what this was, when he had no idea? “This? You mean, kissing? Or hot chocolate?”
She ignored his lame attempt at humor. “No.” She rolled her eyes up his chest and met his gaze, her expression guarded. But behind that shield, he saw a desire that mirrored the intensity of his own. “For the way you make me feel.”
Neither was he. Not by a mile.
Then it hit him. He didn’t get to feel this, whatever it was. He had no right. She was Allison Whitley, scumbag Lowell Whitley’s ex-wife, not some friend of Harper’s or a woman he met at a bar. She was his boss.
His goddamn boss. What was he doing?
She searched his face for a response, but the storm swirling inside him was too disjointed to put into words or even settle on an expression. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he could think of only one possible response to Allison’s whispered confession and his subsequent epiphany.
He cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her again, harder this time. Her hands splaying over his chest, she surrendered her mouth to his will, meeting his tongue, melting into his touch, kissing him back. It was an intoxicating discovery that got him wondering about how sublime it would be if she surrendered the rest of her body to him, what he could do for her. How much more he could make her feel.
Not tonight, though. Maybe not ever. That would be the smarter choice by far. When he mustered the will to end the kiss, he disentangled his body from hers and backed up, relearning how to breathe, giving her space. Flushed cheeked, she blinked slowly, then passed her tongue over her lower lip as she eyed him with a wholly new expression—something in between confusion and wonderment. He couldn’t be sure, exactly, because he didn’t make a habit of trying to interpret women’s thoughts, but that was his guess.
He was experiencing his own bout of wonderment, at himself, and at the sheer, unexpected pleasure of kissing Allison. At a loss as to what to do next besides giving in to the growing urge to kiss her again, he looked around the kitchen, then zeroed in on the cup of hot chocolate he’d made her. He picked it up and set it in her hands, curling her fingers around it. It was barely warm, but the milk and liqueur would help her sleep.
“Drink this, then get some rest before Katie’s fever medicine wears off.”
“Then what?”
“Then, tomorrow, we’ll talk about the business.” He knew that wasn’t what she meant, not really, but that’s what needed to happen next for them. He downed the rest of his chocolate, then rinsed the mug in the sink and set it upside down on a towel. When he turned to dry his hands, he found her watching him over the rim of her mug, wonderment still dancing in her eyes. When she lowered the mug to the counter, a thin line of chocolate remained on her upper lip. He watched as she licked it off.
She walked with him to the back door. He took her hand somewhere along the way and when they reached the door, she turned in his arms.
“Good night, Theo.”
He blinked himself out of the trance and met her gaze. He meant to return the words, but he couldn’t get them out. He cleared his throat and tried again, but instead of bidding her good night, he kissed her again, as though he were powerless to prevent it. He kissed her closed mouth, concentrating on her lips, on the taste of chocolate and Allison’s skin. She touched his face and his neck, his ears and shoulders, exploring him.
He held her close after their kiss ended, stroking her hair and her back, breathing and being, and feeling absolutely right with the universe for the first time in a long time. It was while thinking in wonderment about that new discovery that he heard himself say, “Come to my hockey game tomorrow night.”
“I’ll be there. Are you going to make me a bet like Brandon and Harper have?”
So she knew about that screwed up game of cat and mouse those two were playing. He backed up so he could look into her eyes. “Should I?”
She pretended to consider the question, then a small smile lighted on her lips. “No. Not necessary.”
He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Go get some rest. Morning will be here before you know it.”
The memory of her soft curves and even softer lips on his, paired with the idea of kissing Allison again, kept Theo warm and full of wonderment all the way h
ome to Lanette and through the rest of the stormy night.
***
Rule number one for Allison, moving forward, was that she wasn’t going to show Theo any gratitude. For whatever reason she didn’t understand, he couldn’t deal with it. So even though he’d finally ceded the point that she wasn’t leaving Cloud Nine, and even though he’d set aside the day to go over financials with her and teach her how to run the business, she wouldn’t make a big deal about it. As a thank you, she wouldn’t thank him. That sounded royally screwed up, but then again, nothing about their relationship made any sense.
Especially after last night.
Her toes curled in her socks thinking about those kisses and the way his big, muscled, hot-as-sin body had felt crowded up against her. Better than she’d fantasized about, and she’d fantasized about him kissing her and making love to her a lot. Like, a lot.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this between them, or for her with anyone. Not yet. Her divorce had only been official for four months. Katie had only been weaned to a bottle for one. She knew she was in way over her head, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care anymore.
When he walked through Cloud Nine’s back door, her stomach turned fluttery. She smiled at him, but he didn’t return it. Instead, he seemed really serious and uncomfortable.
“Hi,” she ventured tentatively.
He rolled his hands together. “So, um, let me get this all out. I don’t really know how to tell you, because I’ve never said it like this, all at once to someone, but I’m just going to dive in and see how it comes out, okay?”
A thousand different thoughts ran through her head. He regretted last night. He wouldn’t help her. He was leaving. She folded her hands together, infinitely glad that Chelsea and Katie were out on a long walk so she could deal with whatever he was going to say in private. “Okay.”
“I have a traumatic brain injury, a TBI. I sustained it while I was in the army on deployment in Afghanistan. My unit was in the southern province, on a joint mission with British and American troops. One afternoon, we were on a routine patrol. I remember the stray dogs running alongside our vehicle. I told the soldier next to me that the dogs were thick today.
“The next thing I remember, I was in the back of a medical truck with a US medic kneeling over me. The vehicle I’d been riding in hit a roadside bomb. I was one of only two survivors, and the other one, Second Lieutenant Mike Enlow, lost both his arms and part of his face. I was the lucky one.”
Brows wrinkling, he looked at the floor, as though replaying the day in his mind.
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-two. As a result of my TBI, I have hearing loss in both ears, but it’s the worst in my right ear, and because of the damage to my left parietal lobe, I can’t read. Or write. My neurologists told me I’m lucky that I retained the ability to talk and hold numbers in my head. Really, I’m lucky I didn’t turn into a vegetable. When I was in the neuro wing at the hospital, I met soldiers who were drooling on themselves.”
The relief Allison had felt when he’d started talking, that he wasn’t leaving, but merely explaining the extent of his disabilities, exploded into a jumbled mess of shock and concern. He couldn’t read or write. Holy shit. “Oh, wow. That’s not what I thought you were going to say.”
“What did you think I was going to say?”
She shrugged. “That you were leaving or that you regretted last night.”
He blinked at her. “No. To both of those things.”
She tried on a smile, comforted by the speed of his reply. “Good. Me, neither.”
His face remaining a mask of stoicism, he nodded. “Good. Let me finish telling you all this. I’ve never laid it all out like this, the extent of my disabilities. Like I was saying, I can’t read. I mean, I can read, but I can’t . . .” He tapped his temple with two fingers. “My brain doesn’t process the words. It can’t string them together to make sense. I can write individual words, if I concentrate and use the tricks my occupational therapists taught me, but I can’t read back what I wrote to make sure it says what I meant to say.”
“That’s why you color coded the boat reservations on the calendar and use symbols. You can read colors and pictures.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“That’s ingenious.”
His shoulders seemed to relax, as though he’d been worried about her judgment of him. He moved closer to the desk. “I don’t think I’d call it ingenious. It sucks, to be honest.”
“Is the condition improving or did it plateau?”
He moved a little bit closer to the desk. “It plateaued a long time ago. It’s been almost thirteen years since it happened. I did my time in physical and occupational therapy, years of fighting to regain the brain functioning I’d lost, then years learning tricks to compensate when it became clear that I wasn’t going to get any better. I’ve perfected a system, and it works.”
He said that last part so defensively that she felt an immediate need to defend herself. “Look, I don’t know the first thing about business or finance. Until Lowell was arrested, I’d never paid a bill before, not really. I’ve been taken care of by one person or another my whole life, and I’m not proud of that. In fact, I’m pretty embarrassed about how far into the sand I had my head buried. I refuse to go back to being that person. I don’t want you to coddle me with the business and I don’t want you to do everything for me. I want to learn, and since you’re the one teaching me, show me how you want it done, and that’s what we’ll do.”
He studied her face as though he was seriously considering her argument. Then he opened a lower desk drawer and brought out a box Allison already knew was full of little cassette tapes because she’d run across them while scouring the drawers looking for paperwork and a calendar. Each cassette was labeled with a different image, symbol or color.
“I can read individual words, but my brain doesn’t connect them with a meaning, so I use two different types of recorders to compensate. This old-school cassette recorder for information I need to keep permanently, and I need them to be actual physical tapes so I can label them and find them later. I have a really hard time reading screens like computers or calculators at all, so I use the digital recorder for temporary things, like when I get something in the mail. I can read the words into the recorder, then listen back to understand what I read.”
He picked up the one cassette marked with the tiny image of a check. “When I make a reservation, I record the date, the person’s name and the amount on one tape. Then, when I get a check in the mail or a customer brings it in, I read it into a different tape recorder, then at the end of the month, I listen to both and cross-check them. Then, when I get the bank statement, I take it all to Duke and he helps me sort it out as one last double-check.”
That sounded like a whole lot of work to Allison and not a very secure system. It was astounding, all the systems he had in place to cope with his disabilities. She was impressed, if doubtful about her ability to fall into step with them. “That takes a long time.”
“Welcome to my normal. It’s not very fun, is it?”
“No. You’re right; it sucks. But I also bet you have an incredible memory.”
He shrugged, unfazed by her compliment. “It’s like holding your breath. Your lung capacity grows the more you practice.”
She couldn’t hold her breath very long, seeing as how she never went willingly into water and she’d long outgrown holding your breath contests.
“I’ve worked at Cloud Nine for ten years and not much has changed on a day-to-day operating level, which keeps things simple for me.”
No wonder he wanted to buy Cloud Nine. It was his best bet at supporting himself and guaranteeing himself an income for the rest of his working life. No wonder he’d been so threatened by her sudden ownership. In his mind, she was going to mess everything up—his system, his plans. He must
have been so scared, feeling that out of control.
She touched his hand. “You’ve worked for years developing your system. You had a plan and you thought I was going to screw it all up.”
“You did.”
The words were harsh, unexpected. Confused, she took her hand back. With what had happened between them the night before, she’d believed their relationship had changed in a fundamental way. Two people didn’t kiss that passionately, then go back to sniping at each other like enemies trapped together in a prison cell.
Shaking his head, he looked away, but whether he was frustrated with himself or her—or the situation—she couldn’t tell.
“That didn’t come out right,” he said with quiet reserve. “You did screw everything up for me, but I see now that Lowell did the same for you. But with Katie, your options are much more limited. I could get another job. It would be a lot of work setting up new adaptive reading systems, and I’m not qualified for much beyond construction or working on machines, but I only have myself to worry about. A baby changes everything.”
“You’re right. She did change everything for me. I don’t expect you to agree with me on this or know how I feel, but all I know is that she’s worth it. Her future and well-being are worth me fighting with you for this place. She’s worth your and my futures’ changing course.”
Her eyes stung with a welling of emotion. They both looked at Katie, who was in her activity station, chewing on the fish on the stick, drool dripping from her chin. Perfect, precious baby grossness.
She shook off the heaviness that had fallen over the room. For Katie, to make this business work, they needed to get back to the task at hand. “What about queries from the Internet? I also found a calendar on the computer, but it hasn’t been filled out since around the time Shawna quit. I’m assuming we have reservations since May is only two months away . . . I hope, right?”
His attention swung back her way. Clearing his throat, he reached to a drawer along the wall and pulled a spiral-bound calendar from it. Allison had seen it there in her rummaging around, but it didn’t have any writing on it, just different colored lines.
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