by A. R. Hadley
Nope, her news wasn't going to go over well.
She wouldn't cave. Couldn’t. She needed to muscle up every shred of strength she could muster.
"You should lock your door." She bumped his hip, then began to take items out of the bag, one by one, while whispering the chorus of the famous Ben E. King song.
After nibbling the corner of her sexy, lyric-spouting lips, Cal stepped back, slapped her ass, and then he went to the table and sat in front of his laptop.
“I bought some local shrimp.”
“It looks like you bought a whole hell of a lot more than shrimp." Cal typed while eyeing the assortment of items now on the countertop.
“And it looks like you’re working.”
Their eyes met as he glanced up — his charged with defiance, annoyance, and sex.
Funny... Annie shook her head while he continued typing.
After she’d taken out a cutting board and knife and folded up the bag, she made her way, hips bouncing, lyrics still spouting, to the sink to wash the vegetables.
“Do you want some help?” Cal asked over the noise of the running water while continuing to finger the keys.
“No.” Annie paused. “I'm cooking you this dinner, Mr. Prescott. You just sit and keep … working.” She grinned, fluttered her eyelashes at him, then turned off the faucet.
He smiled too, minus the eyelash bit. “I'm returning emails.” Cal was intently focused on the screen, his brow crinkled. “These people don't wait.”
Making sure the smile on her face reached her tone, Annie said, “I don’t wait," and then tapped her foot to the song as she began to chop an onion. Her eyes started to water as she tucked her hot-pink bra strap under her green sundress. “Did your meeting go well yesterday?”
“I thought we were going to close, but they weren't ready. So that's what I'm doing, Annie. Answering questions, more questions, always fucking questions."
"Damn it!" She held her hand in the air, grimacing. The knife lay on the floor near her feet.
Cal jumped up and met her at the sink. Tears streamed down Annie’s cheeks as the cool water washed over the deep cut on her index finger, but she wasn’t making a sound. She avoided eye contact with the gash, tilting her head to the left, away from the pain as Cal wiped drops from her cheeks.
Seconds later, he reached over, grabbed a few paper towels, and turned off the water, all while watching Annie pensively, never breaking his gaze.
His quiet strength overwhelmed her.
He was looking into her guts with those eyes of his, not speaking, conveying with his stare what he wouldn’t say out loud.
Annie loved his quiet. His smell. Loved how every moment between them felt like coming home. Or what she imagined coming home should feel like.
"Hold this against your finger and don't let go," he said, smelling sweet-sweet-sweet, like the wine he’d been drinking.
Nudging Annie along, he walked her to the kitchen table and sat her down. He filled his glass and stroked her chin, and then he pushed the wine toward her. "Drink, baby."
Wincing, she shifted her eyes in embarrassment, but the stupid things filled with more tears. Was that all her eyes were good for? Manufacturing salt?
Cal knelt and looked at her sad face. “Don’t worry about dinner." He rubbed a hand over her knee and stood. “I’ll be right back. Don't move."
Annie pushed the paper-towel-covered wound against the cold wine glass, wiped tears from her face, and took a big drink. She took several sips, almost finishing it as the blood oozed from her finger and the alcohol coated her veins. She pressed it harder against the glass, trying not to cry over the ridiculous cut, over the dinner, or over the days leading up to her trip to Seattle, but her thoughts continued suffocating her. Everything she’d tried to bury those last few weeks — love love love love love — tingled in her cheeks.
My God. She tingled.
A fire spread around her jaw akin to hives. The physical hurt opened wounds. Because one hurt, of course, had the ability to open all hurt. Every one of her vulnerabilities would be on display. She was the one who couldn't risk heartbreak all along.
Her.
Supplies in hand, Cal returned and sat next to Annie. Their knees touched. He glanced into Annie's eyes. They were red around the edges, but it only made the green in the middles explode like lollipops. He stared into her Blow-Pop eyes, all damn pensive again, and then he turned his attention to her finger.
Jesus ... his eyes, she thought.
The color ate her alive. The marine green shined keenly through his lenses. In the fervor, he seemed to have forgotten to remove his glasses.
She watched him carefully. He was so strong and masculine even when doing the simplest of tasks. And she didn't just watch, she studied every move he made.
Removing the towel.
Beginning to clean the cut.
Cleaning, preparing, while she tried to hang on to the emotions the wine forced to the surface.
Reaching up, Annie took off Cal’s glasses with her good hand, set them aside, and peered deeper into his busy, working eyes.
Music played, a song she didn't know now. It seemed far away. Thousands of miles.
But Cal was close.
Time expired on his face.
Ran out.
Stopped.
They shared breath the way they shared everything.
Annie’s throat swelled beyond explanation at his expression, a quite readable one now: vulnerability. His glasses were off, yes, but what she saw was more than just his naked eyes. It was far more than an appearance of Superman behind Clark Kent.
He cares for me.
He loves me.
Wait.
What?
Of course she was going to acknowledge it now. Now. After weeks of denial. She’d known it for how long?
She could see love all over him. Love. She couldn't continue to deny it. The way he cared for her, gentle and strong, and what she meant to him — it was all over him.
Love?
His feelings spilled out onto the kitchen table the way the blood flowed from her cut. It was uncontrollable, real. And the only thing that could stop it was too much pressure … or time or the end of the summer or a million other material things.
“You changed my album." Cal held the cleaned-up knife and chopped away at the peppers, green and red.
Annie made her way down the stairs, the green skirt of her dress bouncing with her walk, faint strands of hair outside the clip framing her face. She stopped, picked up her wine — his wine — then emptied the bottle into the glass. “I wanted something different."
“That is different.”
“It's yours. Don't you listen to it?”
“Not in a million years,” he replied, popping a red pepper into his mouth.
“I saw them in concert a couple years ago. They were freaking awesome." Annie placed the wine glass on the counter near the stove. She watched his back, his shoulders. Everything about him moved gracefully with each chop-chop-chop. Graceful and sexy.
“I saw them at Lollapalooza.”
“You went to Lollapalooza?” she asked, knowing he had to have heard the choke of surprise in her throat.
“Yes.” He peered over his shoulder at her.
“I'm sorry." She laughed and moved toward him. "I'm just having a hard time imagining you there.
“I went in '92.”
“1992!”
Cal glanced at Annie again, scolding her with his eyes. "Yes. Not 1892." He threw a pepper at her chest.
"Hey." She pushed his knee from behind with hers, causing him to buckle.
“I'm having a hard time imagining you at all in 1992. Were you even walk—”
“Stop it." Her chest at his back, she covered his mouth, silencing his tongue, and wrapped her other arm around his waist.
“Do we need to open a new bottle of wine?” Cal asked, his voice muzzled through Annie’s hand.
“What? What was that?” Annie asked
near his ear as she removed her hand from his lips. She pressed her body into him to make the perfect indentation against his skin — the place meant to hold her form. A perfect Wilton cake pan.
“Did you like it?” Inching away, she stood at his side, arms folded, watching his profile.
“Like what?”
“Cal…”
He smirked. “My girlfriend wanted to go.”
“Ahh.” Not surprising.
“There were too many damn bodies everywhere for my taste.”
“I'm sure there were."
“The music was good. I've never forgotten it or the experience.”
“How old were you when you went?” Annie calculated his age in her mind.
“Mmmm, I think I was about twenty-three.”
“That's how old I was,” she said, marvel in her voice.
“What are you talking about?”
“When I went to the concert in 2012. I was twenty-three," she said, full of nostalgia and coincidence.
“Holy shit, Annie.” He laughed. “Are you trying to make me feel old?”
“No, I'm trying to make you see how special it was that we were the same—”
“We went twenty years apart," he said, attempting immunity to her serendipitous suggestion.
“So. It's a moment we both experienced at the same age, with the same..."
“The same what?” he pressed.
“I don't know. With the same wanderlust. The same — don't you remember what it felt like to be twenty-three?" She squeezed his butt cheek.
Cal gave her the sexy I-am-so-spanking-your-ass-tonight eye as he walked the vegetables to the stove and slid them into the waiting skillet. They popped in the pan, and the savory aroma filled the air in an instant. Wiping his hands on the towel hanging below him, he then pushed the sizzling mixture around with a wooden spoon.
"I didn't know you could cook." Annie handed him the wine glass, and he took a generous sip. "Is it going to be edible?"
"I cook well." He met her eyes, his indicator blinker on. "But if you're worried about my ability in the kitchen, we could just skip dinner and go straight to bed."
"I've seen your ability in the kitchen," Annie said with a seductive lilt, arching a brow. "I'm not worried."
Cal smiled as he tossed mushrooms into the pan with the onions and peppers.
“And, yeah right, we’re skipping dinner. I was excited about this all week. Maggie has been giving me pointers. I couldn't wait to make—” Annie stopped short, her voice cracking.
Damn it. Stop.
She placed a palm over her damp upper lip. Her injured finger protruded out. It was a stupid football-game souvenir finger, large and pointy.
“It's okay, Annie." He stirred the vegetables. "We’ll make it together." He kissed her temple.
A wicked smile spread across her face. “What can we make together? Dinner or it?” Her eyebrows danced.
Cal smiled, this time showing teeth. His dimples manifested too. "I can arrange it right now."
How did he do that? Ooze sex while stirring vegetables. Controlling what was inside him perfectly. She needed lessons.
He handed her the wine glass, insisting she drink using only the look in his eyes. Then they both were silent for several seconds. She liked the quiet. The rumble of contentment.
“Thank you for taking care of me." Annie placed her hand on his collar, grazed her fingers over his neck, and felt him tense. "And thank you for cleaning up my mess … and for cooking."
Cal continued to watch the stuff in the pan. Why? He didn't know. Or maybe that was a lie. Because he was well aware of the look in Annie’s eyes as she stood close to his face, breathing near him and on him. Her damn skin, smelling like cool, crisp wine mixing with citrus. A solid lump formed in his throat. Sure, you know, the same lump he’d experienced from the first time they’d met — the one he couldn't swallow or suppress no matter how loud the voice became inside his head, the one reminding him — it's only a summer, asshole.
Honesty poured from Annie’s greens. Comfort. A constancy, sincerity, and truth he’d only seen in one other woman. It was near, over him like … steam.
What the fuck?
It had to be the rise of heat from the skillet making Cal’s eyes water, but he knew it was Annie.
She made his eyes wet with sheen.
He turned the burner down and looked at her with a perceptiveness he could feel in his bones, speaking to her — always speaking his sentiment without words — silently telling her how much she meant.
His silence always stifling.
His presence never dull.
After taking the glass from Annie and placing it on the counter, Cal took the clip from her hair and watched as the beautiful pieces fell around her face. He touched it, put his fingers into it, and ran his nose into the strands, breathing in tangerines until they reached his hippocampus.
Pressing his body against her, careful not to touch her bandaged finger, he cradled her face and looked at every inch of her — her soft features, her freckles, her shoulders, belly, thighs, back to her magnificent eyes, and then he began to kiss her mouth as though he hadn't already done it hundreds of times over June, July, and August.
She tasted like the first time.
The only one.
She made all other women, everything, obsolete.
"I do want to eat first," Annie whispered against his lips. "I'm hungry."
Ignoring her, he wet her cheeks, her eyelids, her jaw. He rubbed his face over her skin, moving his lips toward her chest. His body maintained its hold over hers, immobilizing her hunger for food, making her forget.
A flash of fire smothered Annie, running through her from head to toe. The stove. The wine. Him. All heat. All overwhelming.
He picked her up, set her on the counter, and said, “I want you now,” as she wrapped her legs around his waist and mussed his hair.
He rested his head against her breasts and allowed her lungs to move him slowly up and down. Turning his head from side to side, he nuzzled her bosom with barely a five o'clock shadow. Still, the scrape of his skin awakened every nerve ending on her chest and in her body.
Squeezing the nape of his neck, she pushed his face and barely-there scruff deeper into her breasts as she began to move her hips and upper body to the crashing beat of the drum break in the Chili Peppers' song.
The sounds were like nothing ever synthesized. Phenomenal and recorded using a variety of items — pans, pipes, a wide-mouthed barrel — that were timed just right. Perfection. Harnessing raw emotion out of inanimate objects until the sound bled out of the speakers, out of the musicians’ carefully placed hands, and here, now, in the kitchen through hips and muscles. It all impeccably wound through the two of them, bringing them closer together, mind and body, in an amazing sensual rhythm.
The tribal, naturalistic, and infectious sound ascended the earth. It lifted Cal and Annie off the planet.
And then … the doorbell rang.
The break in the song ended.
But Cal continued his exploration, still kissing Annie as if nothing else existed but the two of them.
“Are you expecting someone?” Annie broke the kiss for a mere second, lost her breath as she slid her hands under Cal’s shirt, rubbing her fingers up his chest.
Cal didn’t answer. He kept worshipping her body without stopping, insisting, pushing his nose into her breasts, sliding his face toward her shoulder and kissing her all over, wetting her neck, ear, knocking the shoulder strap of her dress off as he thrust his clothed body against her pelvis.
The damn bell rang a second time.
“Go see who it is,” Annie moaned, grabbed his wrist, and held it, stopping his fingers from inching farther up her dress.
He kissed her cheek and put her on the floor. Her skirt fell as she bit a thumbnail and shook her hair, trying to gather herself together.
“Breaking the Girl” came to an epic conclusion as Cal opened the front door and attempted to
hide his rather epic erection from the delivery driver.
Annie picked up the white, paper-covered package on the counter and unwrapped the large, freshly caught Florida shrimp in front of the sink. Adrenaline high, she began rinsing handfuls of them, a little wobbly on her feet.
Sitting at the table, Cal opened the legal-size envelope he’d just signed for containing what looked like important documents. Annie wondered if they’d been overnighted as she glanced over her shoulder at him. He was distracted, reading.
“What is it?” she asked, shaking the hair out of her face, trying to remember where she’d left her damn clip. Ah. The countertop. He’d removed it. Right. Imagining the look that had been in his eyes when he’d taken it out caused a chill to skirt up her spine.
Cal glanced over the papers in his hand, glasses on his face. “Annie, turn the water off. I'm going to do that.”
“I can do it.” She flicked the sheet of hair again, not wanting to touch it with her shrimp-soaked hands.
With reluctance, Cal put his papers and laptop aside and removed his glasses. “You're going to make it worse.” He came up behind her, tucked those annoying strands of hair behind her ear, and kissed her temple.
“It's fine.” After rinsing her hands, careful not to wet the wound, she dried them just as carefully.
He took over. “It's not fine. If you bump it or wet it, it’s going to keep bleeding.”
“I wanted to be the one to make you dinner.”
Cal readied the plump shrimp for the pan, seasoning them. “We’ll do it together. Don’t be so stubborn,” he said over the sound of Annie’s phone ringing.
"Me?" She smacked his bum, then made her way toward her purse. She grabbed the phone but missed the call. “It's my mother." Annie returned to the kitchen, the phone in hand. “Again.”
“Take a picture of that almighty finger and send it to her. I’m sure she would tell you you’re being stubborn.”
“God, Cal, then you know she’ll just start asking me all kinds of questions.” Annie blurted the words without thinking, and then she avoided looking at him.
Heat crawled up her cheeks. She could feel Cal glaring at her face as she typed a text to her mom — her ankles crossed, biting her lower lip, knowing what his stare meant — hoping he couldn’t see her trepidation, denying he’d seen it many times before.