* * * * *
Wendy rolled over to stretch as she opened her eyes. It was dark, but she could see the clock numbers. A little past midnight.
“Mmm ...”
She reached out to Colin then jerked into a sitting position. “Colin?”
Wendy rolled to the bed table on her side of the bed and switched on the lamp. No Colin. Not in bed. Not anywhere in the room.
But … did she smell coffee? Past midnight? And … something cooking? The steaks they never had for dinner? Wendy eased out of bed, feeling all shy and tentative in Colin's room. She found her panties on the floor and slipped them on. Then she went to Colin's dresser and found a clean gray T-shirt and put it on. She looked down at it. Spider-Man.
“Hm,” she decided, and headed to the stairs.
Colin was turning over the sizzling steaks when he saw Wendy reflected in the gleaming silver of the tea kettle on the back burner. His heart skipped a beat and he bit down on a smile. “How do you like your steak?” he called over his shoulder.
“Ah!” Wendy yelped. “How did you know I was here?”
Colin turned around and looked at her. “For someone so petite, are you aware of how loud and clomping your footsteps are?”
“They are not!”
“They totally are! It's like you're a feather with cinderblock feet.”
Wendy's mouth dropped open. “My feet are bare! How can they be cinderblock feet? Take that back!”
Colin put down the fork and walked up to her. “I won't take it back,” he said, pulling her into his arms, “but I'll trade it for a kiss.”
And he leaned down and kissed her.
Wendy arched into him, sucking him under with all her soft voraciousness. They broke apart when they fell into the doorjamb.
“So,” Wendy said, “did you really hear me coming?”
He kept his fingers tangled in her hair. “No. I saw your reflection in the kettle.” He looked down at her. “But I didn't realize what you were wearing,” he said with a smile. “Nice.”
“Wish I could say the same,” she sighed, looking down at his shorts and white T. “But you, sir, are woefully overdressed.”
He laughed and kissed her nose before going back to the stove. “I came down here to make us something to eat. If you think I'm going to stand by the stove without wearing something, you're bonkers.”
“I like mine medium. You?”
“Medium rare.”
“Not that I have much of a preference,” she amends. “I don't eat steak all that often.”
“Not even in salad?”
“Sometimes in salad.”
He turned to face her. “Do you ever miss it? The things you can't eat to maintain that body?”
“Sure. But it gets easier.”
“Living without the things you want?”
“Yeah ...” A line of concentration creased the middle of her forehead. Then she shook her head, like a dog shaking off a flea. “But the diet isn't so bad, not when what I get in return nets me so much. So it's worth it.” Wendy went over to the coffee pot. “You made coffee? After midnight?”
Colin's eyes raked up Wendy and then back down. “Oh, yeah. I think we might be in for a long night.”
Wendy smiled and Colin noticed that she actually blushed. Damn, she was so adorable.
“So,” she said, “we eat then head back upstairs?”
Colin tipped his head, indicating two trays sitting on the opposite counter. “I figured we'd eat in bed. I mean, if that's okay with you. That way, we can get right to working off any extra calories you need to get rid of.”
Wendy looked over at the trays. The kind with legs that are specifically made for eating in bed. “You have breakfast-in-bed trays?” Wendy's eyes kept darting back and forth between the trays. “Two of them?”
Colin took one steak off the stove and set it on a plate as he turned down the heat. Wendy was freaked by the trays? She was thinking he brought women home regularly, seduced them, then made them breakfast in bed? Or dinner? Or whatever? And now she thought he was slipping her into some dating m.o. of his?
How could she think that? After everything he'd said to her, just a few hours ago, in this very kitchen?
But could he blame her that sex still left her skittish?
He tossed a dishtowel at her. “Wendy, I've used these trays before exactly once. When my parents were visiting me a few years ago for Mother's Day. I bought the trays so I could surprise them with breakfast in bed. That's all.”
She twisted the towel in her hands. “That's all?”
He switched off the heat under the burner. “That's all,” he said, smiling as he walked up to her. He ran a finger along her cheek. “When I woke up, I was starving. And I remembered these stupid trays. They just popped into my head. So, I figured I'd make us something to eat and bring it upstairs to surprise you.”
Wendy backed up and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, no! You were trying to surprise me and do something nice and I came blundering in here and ruined it! Sorry!” She turned around and ran out of the kitchen.
Colin heard her start up the stairs when he called out through a laugh, “Wait!”
He heard her racing feet stop.
“Since you're already here, you can help me carry everything up.”
“I can? It's okay?”
“I promise, Wendy. You haven't ruined anything.”
She appeared in the kitchen doorway. “You sure?”
“Yes. Think about it. What happens if you go upstairs and I come up with the first tray? You'll be back in bed and naked and looking at me … you think I'm ever gonna make it back down here for the second tray?”
“You can stack the trays.”
“Not with all the drinks. And I think we're both in need of some serious hydration.”
“Well, I don't have to be naked.”
“First of all, yes, you do. And second, seeing you in bed in my Spider-Man T-shirt is not going to be any better.”
Wendy did that smile-blush thing again.
“Okay,” she said. “You've convinced me. Now let's get the trays and get back upstairs.”
But she was so close to Colin, he snagged her by the front of the Spider-Man T and kissed her.
And back upstairs they went. But they forgot the trays.
* * * * *
Wendy felt something brush past her cheek, so she swiped at her face without opening her eyes and definitely without committing to waking up. She felt it again. She swatted it again. Then she heard a voice, soft and low, with a bit of a sing-song lilt.
“Weeeeendy ...”
She opened her eyes and smiled when she found herself looking right at Colin, who was pressed next to her, leaning over her.
“Colin,” she muttered, but with a shy smile.
“Come on. We have to get up and go running.”
Wendy's eyes opened all the way. “WHAT?”
“It's 4:30. Time to get up and go running.”
“Go running this morning? After last night? But we ate those cold steaks, like, two hours ago. We can't.”
“We totally can. I have complete faith in you. And if you get sick, I promise to hold back your hair as you puke.”
Wendy eased in closer to him, draping one leg across his thigh under the covers. She ran a hand up his arm. “Seriously, Colin. I mean, you're really good-looking and everything.” She let her fingers trail over the sculpted muscles of his shoulders. “Like, really good-looking.”
“Thanks?”
“No, I mean … okay, waking up with someone might be business as usual for you, but this is kind of a big deal for me. Can't you just let me enjoy it? Enjoy it with me?”
Colin rolled onto Wendy and managed to settle himself on top of her without crushing her. “Wendy,” he said quietly. “I wasn't a virgin when I met you at the wedding. But I'm also not the player you seem to think I am. This is a big deal for me, too.”
“Then how can you want to get out of this bed? How?�
�
“Come running with me this morning and I promise we'll get back in bed when we get home and I'll spend the entire day with you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Can we take a shower when we get back home, then get back in bed, and spend the whole day together. Doing whatever I want?”
He smiled. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“Do we have a deal?” she asked, even as she slid her fingernails up his back.
“We do. Now get up.”
“You have to get off me, first.”
“You couldn't maybe push me off?” he asked. “Give me some help?”
Wendy tossed him a deliciously evil smile and shook her head. “Uh-uh. This get-out-of-bed thing is your idea. So you take the lead.”
“Not fair.”
“Neither is this,” she said, twining her legs across his hips as she kissed him.
Colin groaned. “New deal. We have sex, go running, then the shower, then back in bed, then we do whatever you want all day.
Wendy grabbed a condom off the bed table. “Shhh, Colin. This deal's already in progress.”
* * * * *
Over an hour later, by the time they crested the hill, Wendy could hear every sinew in her every muscle screaming. It was one thing to go running at 5ish a.m. after the best darn night of your life. It was another to run up the biggest, longest, highest hill you could find. What the heck was Colin trying to do to her? Exhaust her right out of commission? But why? She hadn't even been screwing anything up lately. There was no need to burn her out so completely.
Finally, after running them all the way over to the far side of the hilltop, Colin stopped. He stretched, gulped in air, bent double, and put his hands on his knees.
Wendy jogged up next to him and did the same. “Colin,” she rasped. “This is killing you, too? Then why are we doing it?”
Colin turned his head to look at her, so they were eye to eye, knee to knee. “I wanted to show you something.”
“Really?” But Wendy could not imagine what there was to see that was so flippin' special that you had to run on no sleep to the top of a boring mountain at no-o'clock in the morning in order to see it. Unless it was an honest-to-God unicorn, the run was not going to have been worth it.
Colin finally stood up straight, stretching his back and shaking out his legs. Then he pulled his cell out of his shorts pocket.
“Hey!” Wendy sprang up and moved to stand next to him. “You brought your phone. It's supposed to be charging. You don't bring your phone running. Why today?”
“Wait and see,” he said, and Wendy watched as he tapped the camera app on his phone.
She felt a jolt of fear for an instant before he turned away from her and toward the expanse of city laid out at the foot of the huge hill. Colin took a picture, but he didn't show it to Wendy right away. Instead, he started tapping and swiping at his phone.
Wendy was kind of curious as to what he was doing, but she was too damn tired to care. So she flopped down and lay spread-eagle, as if she were about to make a snow angel in the dewey grass.
In a few minutes, Colin sat on the ground next to her, so she sat up. He showed her the screen of the phone. It was a zoomed-in picture of a street of the city. A ramshackle, industrial looking street. And Colin had drawn a red circle around one of the buildings.
Wendy took the phone. “What am I looking at?”
“You are looking at the project I've been working on for two years. The project that's coming to a head, make or break, at a city council meeting in three days.”
Wendy's heart kicked up. “Three days? This is the thing I landed right in the middle of? The thing I've put in danger?”
“Wendy, the first day you got here, you hid in the cellar. For over an hour. See anything unusual down there?”
Wendy nodded. “The room with the two beds. But I figured it out pretty quickly. You let kids stay with you sometimes.”
“No.” He was emphatically shaking his head, his nostrils flaring. “That would be so illegal. And God, the repercussions. The things people would think if they knew I let kids stay with me. It happened once, three years ago. That was IT. And everyone managed to keep quiet about it. So I never got in trouble and nobody ever found out about it and nobody ever tapped me for that kind of help ever again.”
“Who were they?”
“Darren and Shyrone Perry. No parents. Their brother had just been killed. They were scared for their lives. They had nowhere to go. I let them stay with me and I hid them until we finally found their family up north. I put them both on a train and last I heard, they're both doing okay.”
“When did you last hear?”
“We talk every few months. About 4 months ago.”
“But you kept the room set up.”
“In case of emergencies. But it got me working on The Dorm project. I'm setting up a safe house, ostensibly for runaways. But it's someplace for kids to go. It's been a long fight getting the right permits, raising all the money. And assembling a staff that I trust and that's been vetted to the sky and back. I raised enough money and this is the building that's going to become The Dorm. The final approval happens at the city council meeting on Thursday. It was supposed to have been a rubber stamp.”
“And my showing up has changed everything?”
“The linchpin in the whole thing is me. My investment in the project, my team, my staff. A fiancée from Hollywood turns up out of the blue and, like I said on the first day, it makes me a flight risk.”
“All those kids are depending on you.”
“Yes.”
“And I crash landed into the middle of it.”
“Yes.”
Wendy cleared her throat. “You told me you weren't going to tell me what I'd messed up until you figured out how I could fix it.”
Colin furrowed his brows. “I haven't figured that out yet.”
“Then why'd you tell me?”
Colin looked at her. “Because I wanted you to know.”
Wendy sat up straighter, pulling away from Colin. “Oh.”
But even as she was easing herself away, Colin reached out and pulled her closer.
“No, Wendy, that's not what I mean. I didn't tell you so you'd know exactly how much you've messed up my life. I'm telling you because I want you to know. I want ... I want someone in my corner.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
Wendy looked out over the cityscape. “I can break up with you,” she said quietly.
“That won't work.”
“Yes, it will. If I sail out of your life as easily as I crashed in.”
Colin turned to look at her. “Wendy, I don't want you to sail out of my life.” His breathing started hitching but he kept his gaze focused on her. “But is that what you want? To end it when you leave?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Colin raised his brows, looking more closely at her, almost as if he could scarcely believe her answer. “Really?”
“Really.”
Colin smiled, as if he just found out the injury was a stinger and not a torn ACL. “So you can't break up with me. The Dorm can't be launched on a lie like that. If anyone knew that I was still seeing you, the project would never get off the ground. God, breaking up with you is one lie I do not want to have to pull off.”
“Me neither.”
Colin looked at her. She looked at him. And they fell into each other's arms, holding on tight.
Chapter 35
LOLA
Nothing.
Still nothing from Wendy and Colin all day. A few reporters caught them going running this morning and posted the shots of them leaving the house and returning, but since getting back to the house at 6:30, nothing. I'm not an idiot. I read that book Lady by Tom Tryon when I was a kid. I know what it means when two people barricade themselves in the house for the day. Lord knows, Arlen and I barricaded ourselves into seclusion whenever we could get away with it before
the kids moved in.
So it seems that for Colin and Wendy, the pretending is drifting away like barbecue smoke and it's starting to get real. Whatever it is.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Ah!” I jolt back in my chair.
Matteo comes into the study and flops down on the couch. “Chill. You spying on Uncle Colin again?”
I snap shut the laptop. “What? I'm not spying on Colin!”
“You've been glued to the computer all day.”
“I'm a writer, Matteo. That's what I do.”
“I didn't hear any keys clicking away.”
“You know, I have to think the stuff up before I write it down.”
“So you wouldn't mind if I search through your browser history?”
I open the computer and turn it toward him. “Be my guest. All you're going to find is my research into how to fix a car that I needed for this episode.”
Matteo looks at me from where he's stretched out on the couch and he calls my bluff. “Don't mind if I do.” He gets up and comes right on over to the desk and pulls up the other chair.
“Okay,” I say, still trying to maintain my nonchalance. “Knock yourself out.”
Matteo starts tapping some keys. “Jeez Mom, you're so pathetic.”
“Hey!”
“I'm serious. You're not even checking out the best sites. You didn't even find the one with the video of them making out on the hill.”
“What?!”
“Okay, they weren't making out. Exactly.”
“So you're spying on them, too?”
“Yeah. We really should pool our resources.”
Pam walks in. “Can I get in on this? I bet I've got stuff neither of you have tumbled on to.”
“Pam?” I can hardly believe it. “You've been spying on Colin, too?”
She tips her head and considers. “Well … not exactly spying. More like investigating.”
“Investigating!”
She nods. “Charlotte's taught me a lot.”
“Charlotte!”
“Oh, yes. We've been in pretty close contact since the news of the engagement broke. Your mother is a wiz at finding things out, Lola.”
Catch a Falling Star (In Love in the Limelight Book 3) Page 16