by Stewart, JM
“You’re not working at the Diamond anymore, and you’re eating for three now.” He looked back at her and winked. “Indulge, Ang.”
She followed after him, setting the bag beside the coffee cups, then reached in and pulled out a plastic wrapped bagel. The inside contained a thick slab of cream cheese. Unable to resist, she unwrapped a corner and took a quick bite.
She rolled her eyes in pleasure as the flavors melted on her tongue, the chewy-softness of the bread, the creamy cheese and spicy toppings. “Oh how I missed bagels.”
A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he handed her a coffee cup. “Decaf,” he said, picking up the other cup and taking a sip.
She sighed, staring down at her cup. “I miss caffeine too.”
He laughed softly, reached into the bag, and pulled out the other bagel. “So, what do you want to do today?”
She shrugged, took another bite of her bagel, chewed, and swallowed before answering. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.” She paused, bit her lower lip in indecision, then looked up at him and admitted, “Despite what I said yesterday, I didn’t come out here to tour the city.”
Alex’s expression sobered. The amusement of the moment faded, replaced by something much more intense, more achy and needy. “Why did you come?”
Somehow she knew he meant more than just the fact that it was his birthday. For a moment, she could only stare at him. How did she explain that she had no idea why she’d come, only that she’d had to? That she’d come out of a need she didn’t quite understand, one that terrified her?
She glanced down at the floor, watched her toes as she dug them into the soft tan carpeting and tried to get her thoughts in order, to decide what on earth to tell him. Then finally chose to be honest. “I came to see you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper and trembling with the nervousness rising in her belly. She looked up and shook her head in misery. “The thought of you, all the way out here, alone and hurting, was more than I could bear, Alex. I had to come. Even if you closed the door in my face, I had to try.”
He set his coffee cup and bagel down on the desk, reached up and cupped her face in his palms. His thumb swept across her lower lip before he slid his hands around to cup the back of her head, burrowing them into her hair at the base of her skull.
Unable to help herself, Angela leaned into him, into the soft warmth of his body, into that inexplicable pull that had been between them from the very first night. His heart hammered against her chest in time with her own. She yearned to press her mouth to his.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “You don’t have to cook for me, you know.”
“I’m here because I want to be, Alex,” she admitted quietly.
His fingers paused in their torturous stroke of her skin as he stared down at her. Something passed between them that made her ache with its intensity—mutual need.
“So long as you know you don’t have to. You being here is more than enough.” Effectively breaking the spell, he released her and turned to the desk. There he picked up the bagel he’d set down and moved to an overstuffed chair situated between the bed and the window. As he took a seat on the ottoman, he peered up at her. “Well, if you don’t have any plans, I thought we’d take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. It goes by the Statue of Liberty. It’s quite a sight.”
She moved to the bed and sat down on the edge. “Sounds like fun. I’ve always wanted to see the statue. I also need to visit a market sometime this morning. The woman at the front desk said there was one around here?”
Alex nodded as he unwrapped his bagel. “Union Square.”
She turned her gaze to his and offered a soft smile in return. “Good. Then it’s settled. We’ll take the ferry, then make a trip around the market.”
****
Several hours later, Angela turned away from the stove in Alex’s kitchen to find him staring out the French doors that led out onto the terrace, his arms folded across his chest. The kitchen itself was beautiful. Hardwood floors and marble countertops, a professional stove. She’d kill to have a kitchen like this. The doors he stood in front of flooded the room with light. But it was quiet. Too much so. Alex hadn’t said a word since they’d entered the house half an hour ago.
They’d had a wonderful morning. The tour around the harbor had been as promised—beautiful. The Statue was a sight to behold up close and personal. While standing at the railing with his arms wrapped around her, Alex had shared a bit of his history with her. Apparently he’d had a great grandmother come through Ellis Island.
The trip to the market to gather the ingredients for dinner and dessert had been simple and domestic. Considering his quiet admission this morning, she hadn’t known what to expect from him, but whatever tension had held him bound seemed to have released him. He’d been more relaxed than she’d seen him in a while.
The trouble had started when they’d arrived back at his condo. His mood had changed drastically as they’d unloaded the groceries and she’d begun the task of making the marinara sauce for the lasagna she planned to cook for dinner. He’d stood in the entrance, silent and brooding, watching her work. Eventually he’d pushed away from the doorway and moved to the windows, where he’d been for a few minutes now.
Watching him, she could feel the weight of his thoughts in the stiff set of his shoulders. Tension emanated from him. She wanted so much to go to him, to ease whatever wound lay on his mind, but was afraid to intrude.
Needing to keep busy, she moved to the stove and picked up the box of noodles, opening the top and gently setting them into the large pot of boiling water. “It bothers you that I’m here,” she offered quietly.
When Alex didn’t move or answer, Angela’s heart grew heavy. He had a wound she couldn’t fix. Obviously, he was in a place he didn’t intend to let her into. It left her feeling like a stranger, out of place in his world. The sentiment contradicted the intimacy they’d shared that morning.
It filled her with doubts, made her wonder if insinuating herself into this day had been the right thing to do. If maybe she should have heeded Brock’s warning and left Alex to himself.
“This was the last place I saw her,” he said finally. “We argued.”
Angela glanced back, but he hadn’t moved. When he didn’t elaborate, she opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he continued before the words left her tongue.
“I should have been in that car.” He drew in a deep breath and released it in a heavy, serrated stream of air. “It was supposed to be a family weekend. After her father went to prison, she went to live with her grandmother, upstate. Couple times a year we’d go visit. But I had a breakthrough in one of the cases I’d been working on. Had some last minute details to gather before the trial started Monday morning. So I stayed home, and Karen took Hailey on her own.”
His voice was quiet and etched with a raw pain that made her long to go to him, to wrap her arms around him, to somehow take some of it from him. She found her feet moving of their own accord, carrying her to him. She hesitated, but the overwhelming need to offer something won out. Giving in, she laid a hand against his back. “What’d you argue about?”
“Promises. She worked as a curator in the Museum of Modern Art. She worked business hours. I’m a lawyer, I work for the county. Long hours come with the territory, but she hated it. Always had. So on our last anniversary she made me promise I’d make more time for family. That morning, she accused me of going back on a promise, told me I needed to get my priorities straight, and stormed out of the house.” He raked a hand through his hair, disheveling it, then turned to face her.
The weight of the pain in his eyes stabbed at Angela’s heart. That he chose to share it with her, rather than running or hiding the way David had always been prone to do, spoke volumes.
As she watched him, a mixture of emotions, of wants and needs, warred within her. Sirens blared a red alert in her head, told her she played in dangerous t
erritory. She was precariously close to falling in love with a man whose heart was still tied to his dead wife. Whose heart would never fully be hers, because she wasn’t that other woman.
His obvious torment caught and held her. The warning unheeded, she stepped forward anyway. She pressed herself against him, insinuating herself into his arms. “Stop. Stop torturing yourself. She knows you loved her.”
His arms closed around her, holding her tightly against him. He leaned his head against hers. “I don’t deserve you. You deserve so much more than what I can give you right now, Ang.”
He’d told her something similar three times now since she’d arrived last night, which told her more than words could how much it bothered him.
It also told her he put her needs ahead of his own, worried about how this would affect her. Yet another fact that only seemed to solidify her reason for coming all the way out here in the first place.
She leaned back, peering into his face. “That isn’t your decision to make, Alex.”
“You should go,” he said quietly.
The longing in his eyes told her he wanted the opposite. “Do you want me to?”
“No. I don’t.” He shook his head, stroked his fingers along her cheek, so tender tears pricked behind her eyelids. “But I don’t have a right to ask you to stay, either. The way I want you right now is completely selfish. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
She covered his hand with hers, holding it against her skin. “Ask me anyway.”
“Stay with me,” he said, his voice low and hoarse.
She nodded, then laid her head into the crook of his shoulder, her forehead nestled against his neck, and wrapped her arms tightly around him. Tonight—this weekend—she would be what he needed, simply because he needed it. She’d deal with the consequences when she got home.
When his arms tightened to hold her firmly against him, Angela lifted her head. Their gazes met and held, so much silently moving between them. Longing, tenderness. He leaned down, touched his mouth to hers, his kiss light, lingering, yet so full of raw need it wound its way inside her soul. She leaned into him, opening herself up to his seeking lips, to him.
Heaven help her, she was falling for this man and couldn’t seem to stop. Wasn’t sure she wanted to. The very fact terrified her. What would the future hold for them? She would never have his heart. Not all of it. Could she settle for less?
Even broken, though, he was a better man than her ex-husband had ever been. No man had ever made her feel so…special, so...accepted, simply for who she was, in all her faults and insecurities. How could she not offer him the same in return?
Just when she was sure she’d lost herself in the taste and feel of him, he released her and pulled back.
“Can I help?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the kitchen behind her.
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Keep them closed. No peeking.”
Seated at the table in the kitchen, waiting as patiently as possible, Alex couldn’t resist cracking an eye. Angela frowned around the refrigerator door at him. Despite the stern, puckered brow, her eyes twinkled with amusement and a touch of mischief.
She was up to something.
Never mind that she’d kicked him out of the kitchen for a good half an hour after they’d put the lasagna together. Now, several hours later, dinner finished and the kitchen clean, she’d promised him dessert, but refused to tell him what it was. Instead, she’d made him shut his eyes.
He re-closed the eye, unable to help the grin that spread across his mouth. “I don’t even get a hint?”
Being with her amazed him. She lightened his heart, pulled him into her softness and the tinkling sound of her laughter, until he forgot about this damn day altogether and lost himself in her. He was grateful to her, for all the trouble she’d gone through on his account. More than he could tell her.
“It won’t be a surprise if you can see it coming.” The refrigerator door snapped closed, then came the soft shuffling of her bare feet across the wooden floor. A quiet thunk sounded as she set something on the table in front of him.
“No peeking, Alex,” she warned again.
A moment later, somewhere across the kitchen, she opened a drawer. The clang of silverware shifting together told him she was on the other side of the center island. Top drawer on the right.
Then silence again.
“Now open your mouth,” she said, her soft voice suddenly right in front of him.
Unable to resist teasing her, he cocked a brow. “You’re not going to poison me, are you?”
“If I wanted to do that I’d have done it already. Open your mouth, Alex.” This time she was so close her soft breath whispered across his lips as she spoke. Alex did as she bade, because he couldn’t think clearly enough not to.
She set a spoon in his mouth. As he closed his lips around it, the delicious flavor of bananas and cream hit his tongue. He groaned in delight. “I haven’t had banana cream pie in eons.”
He opened his eyes to find her standing directly in front of him, a self pleased look on her face. For a moment, the sight caught him. Did she have any idea how beautiful she was?
“A little birdie told me it was your favorite.” She scooped another bite and held it out to him.
He took her hand and pulled her onto his lap before accepting the offered spoonful. “The same little birdie who told me about your love of bagels?” He picked up an unused spoon from the table, scooped a bit of pie filling, and offered it to her in return.
She leaned forward to accept the bite, her eyelids fluttering closed. Swallowing the mouthful, she moaned low in her throat. “Ohh, that turned out good.” She opened her eyes and turned to refill the spoon she held. “It’s your grandmother’s recipe.”
Stunned by her admission, all sense of teasing fled his mind. Alex sank back against the chair, blinked at her as he processed what she’d told him. His grandmother had died when he was fifteen. Her only recipe resided with his mother. All of which told him more than words could how much Angela had gone out of her way this weekend.
For him.
She rested her free hand against his chest. “You okay?”
Pulled out of his stupor, he shook his head in disbelief. “You called my mother just so you could make me pie?”
Running over the list of items she’d picked up from the market in his head, he had no doubt she’d made the entire damn thing from scratch, crust included. Exactly the way his grandmother always had.
A flush crept across her cheeks, and she dropped her gaze to his chest. “Well, Brock had no idea what your favorite dessert was, so I called your mother. She said your grandmother made you this pie every year for your birthday, up until she died.”
She was right. After Gran died, he’d stopped eating pie for his birthday. It just wasn’t the same without her, and no other pie had ever been as good. Angela’s, however, was right up there.
“I was thinking of making an Italian dessert, to go along with the lasagna, Tiramisu maybe, but who am I to break tradition?” Angela peeked up at him through her lashes and shrugged a shoulder as if it were no big deal.
The gesture overwhelmed him. She’d done something incredible for him. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how to tell her what that meant. Oh, people had done nice things for him in the last year, but none of them had ever made him feel comfortable with it. Accepted. Angela’s soft presence soothed the wound itself, in a way he found simultaneously terrifying and gratifying. The woman had humbled him.
He set the spoon he held down onto the table, cupped her face in his palms, leaned forward, and pressed a kiss to her mouth. Once. Twice. Then he sat back. “Thank you.”
Her brow twisted in confusion. “For pie?”
He shook his head. “For being here.”
The tenderness in her eyes made his heart stutter in his chest. Some part of him still couldn’t quite believe this wonderful, stunning creature look
ed at him that way.
“I’m here because I want to be, Alex,” she said, for the second time that day.
She leaned forward, kissing him this time, merely the brush of her mouth over his. Unable to resist, he slid his hands into her hair and deepened the contact. When a quiet moan slipped from her lips and she pressed into him, triumph expanded in his chest. He allowed himself a moment to get lost in the taste and feel of her, before reining himself in. His body throbbed with a need to connect to her in every possible way, urged him to make love to her right here in the kitchen, but he had no desire to press his luck.
Instead, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, let his fingers trail over her silky skin. “I am very glad that you are.”
****
As the credits rolled down the screen, Angela stifled a yawn and glanced down. Alex lay on his side on the couch beside her, his head in her lap. His gaze on the TV, he trailed the fingers of one hand idly up and down her calf. The living room was lit only by the soft glow of a lamp on an end table, creating a cozy atmosphere that made her sleepy yet comfortable and content.
The whole evening had been that way. After dessert, they’d gone for a walk around Central Park before settling in front of the television to watch another old movie, this one featuring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. They’d been sitting in comfortable silence for two hours now.
When the screen changed to a commercial, Alex rolled onto his back. He stared up at her for an endless moment. His fingers stilled, his palm curving around her calf.
“You tired?” he asked.
She slipped her fingers through his hair, brushed it off his forehead, and nodded. “Lack of sleep last night is catching up with me.”
“Me too.” He pulled himself upright then stood and held his hand out to her. “Come on.”
Nervous excitement dancing through her body, she took his hand, and followed silently as he led her through the living room, down the long hallway, to where his bedroom sat at the back of the house. Just inside the room, he turned to her. “Just so you know, I’m not presuming anything.” He tugged her against him, every inch of her pressed lightly to every inch of him. “I’m perfectly content to hold you while I sleep.”