And then Neil tried to give her a bite of his cake. Off the plastic fork covered with all his old-man germs. To her credit, Serena recoiled a little.
“I can’t.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be too forward,” Neil said, and Eddie, no fool to the dynamic, laughed.
“On top of which I have better things to do today than go to the ER,” Serena snapped, moving away—at last—from Neil.
“ER?” Janice asked, then looked from her plate to Serena. “Oh, Toots, I forgot! I should have gotten him a different cake. It’s just—he said that’s what he always has.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine without cake. Do we need to all be staring at me at this moment?” Serena asked, glancing around the room and blushing.
“What’s the problem?” Eddie asked.
“It is not a big deal. Relax, everyone. I’m just allergic to strawberries.”
And then everyone was looking from Serena to Dillon's strawberry shortcake and back at Serena. And asking questions, the same questions Dillon wasn’t quite articulating: since when, how do you mean, allergic, what happens if she eats a strawberry? Dillon set his own cake down, untouched, and wiped once again at his sticky fingers.
“It’s not that big a deal, seriously,” Serena protested again. “I just get hives and my throat swells closed if I eat one, so I don’t eat them. There are plenty of delicious things in the world besides strawberries, it’s not the end of the world that I can’t eat them.”
“But—hospital?” Neil asked.
“Well, a whole strawberry would send me into anaphylactic shock. I would need an ephedrine injection. But I keep an epi-pen in my car, actually, so I wouldn’t have to go to the ER. I was exaggerating.”
“Unless we didn’t know what was happening and then we’d call an ambulance,” Dillon said. How had they’d hung out and gone to the farmers market without covering this basic ground?
“Janice knows.”
“She double-checks every dang time that I didn’t give her the wrong smoothie,” Janice said. “Liza over at the Smoothie Shack got a special ‘no strawberries’ stamp to put on her cup but I still have to taste-test hers each time to be sure.”
“See, it’s not a problem. I’ve been living with this my whole life, I know how to avoid the things, no matter how sneaky chefs get.” Serena nodded at what was left of the strawberry shortcake on the conference table. “And that’s easy to stay away from.”
“So you’re not watching your weight?” Johnnie asked before Emily from HR could stop him.
“Of course she’s not,” Neil said. Dillon didn’t like the appraising look the old guy gave Serena’s body. She didn’t object, though, so what did he know.
“So, are you allergic to anything else? What happens if you eat cherries?” Johnnie raised an eyebrow behind his steel-rimmed glasses. “Bananas?”
Serena chose not to give him the cold shoulder. She just traded a glance with Janice and said, “No, I’m not allergic to other foods. Just strawberries.”
“And cats,” Janice added.
“Well, I could probably eat cats. If I wanted,” Serena laughed. “I just can’t be in the same room as one.”
Philip shared some story about his wife and bees, and Anica complained about pollen counts, and Johnnie mentioned pussies before Emily from HR could drag him out of the room, but Dillon heeded very little of it. His focus had narrowed entirely upon Serena. Serena, who was allergic to cats. Serena, who’d held his hand on the street but run away shortly after entering the same house as Maisy. Serena, who’d said—he thought back, and yes, she had—something about panic and breathing along with that ‘let’s be friends’ line that had been such a low blow. Serena was allergic to cats.
Well, if that didn’t just beat all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Serena beat a hasty retreat from the Strawberry Interrogation Room and packed up her notes on the website revamp for a small hotel in Galveston. What was the point of decent weather and the ability to work with pens and paper if she couldn’t run from all her problems and sit on her patio once in a while?
A fresh pitcher of iced tea and a few deep cleansing breaths later, she curled up on her comfy new deck chair and sketched a while, singing along to her favorite work time playlist. She’d invited Rachel and little Hannah over for dinner, so the crock pot spaghetti sauce had been bubbling away all day and her whole world felt homey and comforting. As long as she ignored any parts of that world that had to do with her love life. Damn Dillon and his birthday and his eyes and his stares and his lips and his judgments and his strawberries!
Just like that, her patio peace was shattered, and she stalked into the kitchen to stare at the veggies she was going to toss into a salad when Rachel arrived. And thought of Dillon teasing her at the farmers market. She moved to her living area and noticed the shipping envelope containing The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Barkley, which she’d ordered after Dillon’d confessed his young hero-worship for the player that night at Frijoles. It had been waiting for her when she’d gone to hand over her scummy-butt apartment keys to her landlady. She hadn’t known what to do with it, so she’d left it on one of her new shelves. It refused to just fade into the background and leave her unplagued with thoughts of Dillon.
Was no part of her home safe? She threw herself onto her bed and glanced at the clock. Still an hour until her guests arrived. She could use it to toddler-proof the place—impossible task though that seemed to be around the energetic Hannah—or she could do something different.
Serena did have the fleeting thought, as she closed her eyes and ran her palm slowly across her breast, that writhing in her bed while remembering every electric contact Dillon had made with her skin was just going to spread his presence to every room in her little house. It was too late though. Her nipples had contracted, and she felt his tongue circling them. Her other hand traced her stomach and remembered tracing his lightly muscled abs both through his shirt, and again over his skin once she’d ripped his shirt out of his waistband. Waistband. Oh, yes, the waistband, and what waited beneath his. Straddling those long basketball player’s legs of his. Serena reached. She circled. She tensed, and tensed, and tensed. And tensed. Remembering, reliving. Reliving but with a different result—not rash and closed throat, no, but skin flushed with passion, breathing short in ecstatic pants. The right conclusion to that electric air between them. Tension, such gorgeous tension, and finally, yes, finally and finally release.
Damn.
Serena sank into her pillow, relieved of only part of her frustration. The air had sung between them. Just looking at him had turned her on beyond all reason. And it still did. But she couldn’t touch him. And she couldn’t just deal with it by touching herself. What the hell was she going to do?
Over dinner Rachel repeated her secret murderer theory while Serena wondered how she’d forgotten about those once cute images of babies covered in spaghetti, sauce flung everywhere, that were all over card shops and the internet.
“Okay, but that’s not helping, Rachel. Because he’s just not dangerous. There’s something going on, but it’s, like, psychosomatic, okay? All about me and some, I don’t know, repression I have from my parents’ divorces or whatever.”
“So now you’re afraid of intimacy? Even though you were practically living with Joey a year ago?”
“I thought we had a pact never to mention him again!”
“No, just his ratty hair. I’m allowed to say he existed.”
“Hmph.”
“Well, he did. And a lot of the time, the two of you existed under the same roof.”
“But there was never any danger of my spending the rest of my life with Joey.”
Rachel stopped plucking spaghetti off of Hannah’s portable baby chair. “The rest of your life? Serena, you can’t spend the rest of your life with Dillon. He has a sex dungeon!”
“Aren’t you afraid your innocent daughter will start repeating some of the shit you say?”
&
nbsp; “Oh, if she says ‘sex dungeon’ it’ll just sound like ‘six dozen’ and we’ll claim we were buying lots of eggs.”
“Best mom in the world award.”
“Damn straight. But when did Dillon turn into a forever guy?” Rachel looked at her steadily, then grinned. “Of course, the rest of your life will be awfully short, what with him planning to murder you and dump your body in the bayou and all.”
“Rachel!” Serena laughed, but she was relieved. It was the first time Rachel had really backed off on the fear thing. And it wasn’t that she hadn’t given it some serious thought, but Serena’d eventually discounted her friend’s theory. She did have gut feelings that she trusted, but until recently, nothing she’d felt from Dillon had been at all uneasy or threatening. And she didn’t think he’d suddenly gone from being a likable sci-fi geek with no dancing skills to being scary. It was something wrong with her.
“You know what Natalie thinks, right?”
Serena handed Hannah a frozen fruit bar and shook her head.
“I can’t believe she hasn’t called you about it. She has this super-elaborate theory about how often you had to move as a kid, bouncing between your mom and dad and all their houses.” Serena had counted once; she’d had a dozen different bedrooms growing up. “I guess she knew you thought Dillon was a forever guy, cause her theory is that now that you have your own home, your own space, you are protective of it. So you’re allergic to letting him in to your space.”
“Trust a realtor to think like that.” And little did Natalie know how thoroughly Dillon had already invaded her home, even though he’d never been there.
“Well, sure, but she could be on to something, right? Face it, Serena, you breaking out into hives when he’s around is a pretty effective way to create some distance between you two.”
“Oh, I’d noticed that,” Serena said wryly. “Trust me, I’d noticed. He has, too, as a matter of fact, though I don’t think he knows about the hives.”
“What do you mean he doesn’t know? What have you told him?”
Serena looked away and mumbled, “Nothing.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t just say ‘nothing,’ Serena Colby. You work together every day. Haven’t you talked about what happened yet?”
Serena focused on Hannah’s babble, indulging in a quick session of peek-a-boo, before admitting that she’d laid into Dillon about uttering the word ‘relationship’ and never explained about her physical reaction to their physical interaction. Rachel was a tad too relentless in pointing out that she’d handled it badly—as if Serena was unaware of that!—and to cap it off, said, “Well, I don’t blame him if he’s pissed at you now. If you’re going to get into his pants again like you so clearly want, you’d better figure out how to make this right.”
All in all, Serena decided she liked it better when Rachel’d thought Dillon was into bondage.
Dillon handed Janice the coffee pot to wash out and bit back each and every question he kept not asking about Serena and her allergies. Justin had told him to consider everything he knew about Serena, not just her one reaction. But had Justin ever considered that how someone acted in a crisis showed their true selves? Not that he knew what was so 911 about making out against his front door, but clearly Serena had felt some urgency surrounding it. And not the same urgency he had, because if she had been on the same page as him, they’d have ended up naked together and happy. Yes, sure, the allergy to Maisy. Maybe that had propelled her out the door in the first place. But what had made her keep going? What had made her ignore his advances, yell at him about marriage, and give him the ‘let’s be friends’ brushoff?
If she’d told him she was allergic to cats, he would have been happy to move the party to her place instead. Or anywhere, really. He wasn’t picky. Just unbelievably frustrated and far too unsure of his footing.
“What’s the deal with Serena and cats?”
Janice grinned her Puck grin, and Dillon wondered just how red the tips of his ears were and just how abrupt his blurted question sounded.
“You got a cat, do you, Toots?”
“No.” But he slid over to the fridge to dig out his lunch. He wasn’t hungry, but he also wasn’t about to meet Janice’s eyes.
“Sounds to me like there’re some queries burning holes in your gullet.”
“Nope.”
“Well, since you’ve no need to know, I won’t bother telling you about how she was hospitalized a couple times as a kid with her allergies, or how it took her parents months to figure it all out, since they were divorced already, just passing her back and forth without bothering to share any information about her attacks. Or how one stepmother had cats and refused to get rid of them so Serena had to get her dad to meet in a neutral location if she was going to see him. One time she tried to spend the night there, all doped up on antihistamines—that accounted for another hospital visit. But you don’t want to know anything about what that would mean to a kid whose parents were constantly negotiating over whose turn it was to take her off the other’s hands. So I won’t tell you any little bit about it.”
Dillon had edged closer as Janice rambled on, drawn by her story and the images it evoked. Poor Serena. Damn. He sighed. “Thanks, Toots.”
Janice refilled her mug, raised an eyebrow at Dillon, and said, “Don’t call me Toots,” as she headed out the door.
Bad enough allergies to mean the hospital, Dillon mused again as he sat at his desk eating a late and solitary lunch later that afternoon. That ought to make him a little more secure. Although he was frankly sick of himself, thanks to the number of times he’d replayed the lunchroom scene and parsed out its meaning.
Fact: Serena had debilitating allergies.
Fact: She still ran off and wouldn’t talk to him about it.
Fact: She didn’t know about Maisy.
Fact: She also went around feeling allergic but never mentioned a problem to him.
Fact: Janice made sure he knew that the allergies were emotional and not just physical problems for Serena.
Theory: That was probably her way of warning him. Janice knew something was up between Dillon and Serena. Or suspected it. She was a good enough friend that she wouldn’t have told Dillon any of Serena’s secrets if she thought he was a failure of a date. So....
Fact: Janice didn’t know about the grope-and-run.
Scary theory: Serena had run shortly after what he had thought was positive skin-on-skin contact with his cock. Had she run because she’d thought something had been wrong there? But, no. Maisy. He was reduced to being comforted about his manhood thanks to a two pound kitten. Depressing.
Fact: The grope-and-run was not because he didn’t have a damn fine cock. But Janice still didn’t know about it.
Fact: Janice and Serena were good friends.
Fact: Good friends would tell if there was important news on the dating scene. Size of erection information optional. Hopefully.
Fact, reasserted: Serena didn’t know about Maisy.
Theory: Having her breath cut off mid-grope without knowing why had freaked Serena out, so she’d run, and since she was freaked out she didn’t tell Janice. Even though it was important news on Serena’s dating scene. But Janice had picked up on enough to make her take shots across Dillon's bows in hopes of riling him up.
Fact: It had worked. Damnit.
Dillon rubbed his hands down his face and tried to clear his head. Belatedly, he remembered the mustard on his sandwich and grabbed a couple of tissues to swipe at his nose, glancing at the door to make sure no one had seen.
“Idiot,” he mumbled, then balled up all of his trash and shot it into the can across the room. “Two points.” At least he had this one skill to give him a petty amount of pleasure in life.
When it came down to it, he was thinking about Serena all the damn time, and not resolving a thing. He needed to tell her about the cat. Basically, he was shooting himself in the foot by holding on to her two-word text and friends speech instead of explai
ning about cat-sitting and making her face the tension between them.
He opened the birthday email from his sister and smiled. He had an idea that would put the ball—and the facts—in her court.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Spring had given way entirely to the middle of March, and a muggy hot morning blasted Serena in the face as she stepped onto her patio the next morning. Her mint stood up valiantly to the weather, but the basil and parsley were complaining, so she took a few extra moments to water them, humming along to the eighties hits coming through her sound system. Getting the herbs happy and pausing for a little dance break had eaten into her prep time, and she almost skipped her habitual morning check of her email.
Rachel with a picture of Hannah in the latest monstrosity from Yia Yia Depy. The usual spam. A schedule update from her yoga gym, she could deal with that later. And one from Dillon, send late the evening before.
It was a group message—Jorge, Eddie, Magnolia, Janice, and Serena. Subject: “Birthday Cuteness.” Well, that would be about his nephew. Serena doubted Dillon had used the word ‘cute’ more than twice in his life before Toby was born, but it popped up frequently about the infant. She admonished herself for scratching. The hives only showed up when they were in the same room—she’d tested herself back before Eddie’s cookout. Voice and text messages from Dillon couldn’t cause her reaction, so this itching was purely psychosomatic. Still, it was annoying, and she was late, so she was a little surprised to realize her mouse had opened the message before her mind told it to.
“Thanks all for the celebration yesterday. Sis put off our family meal until the weekend to fit the baby schedule, but she couldn’t let the day pass without a memento, so she posed Toby and Maisy for me. Cute, right? It seems Maisy is settling in well to life with a baby, and doesn’t miss hanging out with me at all. I guess my cat-sitting days are over. Good news for my jackets, though my place is awfully quiet now that she’s gone.”
Rocket Man Page 17