“I had feelings about Ben, too. And look what happened there.”
“Ben was a social midget.”
“Social midget?” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Who says that?
“Hey, you laughed. That’s the first step toward recovery.” Amy checked the mirror once more. “And if nothing else, we’ll have a few drinks and I’ll find someone hot to flirt with.”
“Still no success in the Dr. Daley department?” Amy had been gushing about one of the doctors she’d called on for months. I stopped moving around to stare at my sister. I sensed there was more going on there than she was telling me.
Amy seemed sad for a moment, then straightened up. “A pointless crush, Dani. He’s dating my colleague. You ready? Let’s go.”
…
The second we walked into the darkened club, Rob’s voice wrapped itself around me, settling over my shoulders like a blanket and reaching inside, sending warmth and sadness through me at once. His voice was mournful—that was the only real word to describe it. It reminded me of a combination between Hozier and Eddie Vedder, raw and real, and 100 percent masculine.
I followed the sound through the dim light to the corner where he’d been before, and my heart leapt when I saw him again, long legs draped over a stool, his body hunched around his guitar like it might be his only friend in the world.
There was something heavy weighing this man down. Rob carried a burden, and I was having a lot of trouble keeping myself from wanting to take it from him.
“Hot damn,” Amy said, her voice appreciative as she followed my gaze. She started a beeline for the one empty table, which was right in front of Rob, and I grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
“Let’s stay at the bar,” I suggested.
She shrugged and we wove through the mass of people to the bar. Two men stood and waved us to their barstools. Amy plastered on her flirtiest smile, and we thanked them as they moved slightly down the bar.
“How are you ladies this evening?” one of the men asked. He had a Texas twang in his voice and I could almost feel Amy swoon.
“Good,” I managed. It was hard to focus on anything besides Rob. There was no point denying my attraction to him, and now that I was here, wrapped in his voice again, I knew I had to talk to him. Or make him talk to me.
I might have been staring through the crowd for a while, because by the time I turned back to my sister, she was deep in conversation with the men who had moved for us.
“This is my sister, Dani,” she said, nudging me in the ribs.
“Hi.” I smiled, but my heart wasn’t in the flirting. I was too focused on Rob, too busy trying to figure out what the hell I’d say to him that wouldn’t sound like I’d basically stalked him here.
“Let me get my boy Trent over here to hook you up,” one of the guys said, signaling the tall blond bartender, who responded with a smile and a just-a-sec finger.
“They’re firefighters,” Amy said, somehow managing to make a whisper into a squeal.
I gave them both a quick look—it was practically sacrilegious not to give a fireman a good once-over when you had the chance. I was pretty sure that was written somewhere. There was probably a whole chapter all about which guys deserved attention based solely on occupation. Other guys listed in that chapter were surely jet pilots, any man in a military uniform, and lumberjacks. I’d never actually met a lumberjack, but I was pretty sure about it either way. I was close to adding “tortured guitar player” to my list, based on the way my body was still responding to Rob’s soulful voice filtering over the mass of people and making it impossible to think of anything else.
Trent the bartender got us set up with drinks and then spent a couple of extra minutes talking to the men beside us. I paid no attention until I heard one of them ask him, “What’s up with Rob tonight? He seems off.”
I couldn’t help leaning in slightly. Were they talking about my Rob? And since when had he become my Rob? Aw Jeez, I was in trouble.
“He called to see if he could come play. Something got him riled up today, but he won’t talk.”
“Won’t?” one of the guys asked, as if there was another word that might fit better.
Trent looked worried, running a hand through his mop of blond hair. “I don’t know. I’ll see if I can get through to him later tonight. He was pretty wound up.”
I had no doubt they were talking about my Rob, and I thought of asking them about him for a split second. But something in me suggested he might not appreciate that, and I pretended to be evaluating my martini instead.
Amy made no similar pretense, watching the three men before us talk. She elbowed me at the mention of Rob’s name. “They know Rob,” she hissed at me.
“I got that,” I hissed back.
She looked like she was about to suggest I interrogate them when the music stopped and the crowd parted to let Rob through to the bar. Hearty applause filled the air, and several people in the crowd clapped him on the back, a few girls murmured in his ears as he passed.
A combination of jealousy and terror twisted in my stomach.
And then Rob’s gaze fell on me. I wasn’t sure if he’d known I was there, but now he gave me a curt nod and moved to the other side of the firefighters. That put him a solid six feet away from me, and all the men turned their backs on us now, giving him their full attention. My blood buzzed in my ears, and I was torn between running from the club in admission that this was a very stalkery mistake and pushing my way to Rob’s side to ask about what had happened earlier. Which might have been none of my business. And still pretty stalkery.
Amy watched the scene before us with great interest. She turned to me after a moment and said, “You need to get to know Rob better, if only for his hot friends and the free drinks.”
I frowned at her.
“I’m kidding,” she said, wrapping an arm over my shoulders. “You have a terrible poker face, by the way. You look so sincerely confused right now.”
“I am. I think following him down here was the wrong thing to do.”
She glanced over at the cluster of hot men again and then turned back to me. “Maybe. But he’s just a guy, Dani. And he looks sad. If nothing else, you can be a friend.”
“Looks like he has friends.” The expressions on the faces of the blond bartender and the other guys were not the easygoing we’re-out-on-the-town expressions you might expect. Something was going on, something serious floated between the tight group of men.
“Hey, guys,” Amy said, inserting her shoulder between the dark-haired firefighter and the bar.
He shifted his stance, turning to face us and opening up their little group. When he moved, I could see Rob’s face clearly, and my heart clenched as he looked directly at me, the green eyes pinning me with a questioning stare.
Amy plowed ahead, asking questions about the club, about the fire department. She was a natural-born flirt, and within a few minutes, she had three of the four men eating out of her hand, leaning toward her and smiling the kind of smiles well-suited for guys out at a club at night.
Rob’s gaze caught mine again, and I forced myself to smile, despite the doubt I felt. He looked down and then finished his drink quickly, throwing the amber liquid down his throat. Within seconds, the bartender had another in front of him. He picked it up and walked around his friends to where I sat. He set his drink on the bar on the side opposite Amy.
I kept my smile plastered on like a shield. “I hope you don’t mind me coming down here.”
He shook his head. “It’s nice to see you.” He said this while looking at his hand wrapped around his drink.
“I wasn’t sure it was right for me to come,” I admitted, still not earning eye contact back. My nerves bubbled in my stomach and my mouth began to take off. “It felt wrong, the way the day ended, and I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have…”
Rob looked up then, and the hand that wasn’t holding on to his drink like a lifeline moved, landing on my forearm. I stared at his da
rk skin against my arm, shivered as warmth radiated from his touch. And blessedly, my mouth stopped moving.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Rob said, his slow speech forcing me to hang on every syllable. “And I’m glad you’re here.”
I held his gaze, though it was so charged I had a crazy thought I might lose control of myself completely and leap into his arms, or lick him, or something. It was the same way I’d felt standing on the top of the cliffs at La Jolla or driving over the Coronado Bridge. I knew I wasn’t going to fall, but it didn’t change the very real possibility that I could—that people probably had.
I didn’t know what I was expecting out of this encounter. I hadn’t woken up this morning and wished for some kind of romantic entanglement—more like the total opposite of that. And there was no part of me foolish enough to think that’s what this was. Not exactly. I didn’t know what it was between Rob and me. I just knew there was something here, and something not right about the way we’d left it this afternoon.
I smiled to cover my confusion. “You seem to have your own cheering section.” I glanced over at the two men still in rapt conversation with my sister. Trent had moved off to help other customers.
“We’ve come here for a while,” Rob said. He didn’t offer any more, but my mind flashed to his T-shirt this afternoon. Was he a firefighter, too? Maybe they’d just given their buddy a shirt. Did guys do that? I tried to envision a scenario in which Rob would pull a shirt from a shiny gift bag and thank these guys for their thoughtfulness. Nope, that didn’t work. I could see them throwing the shirt at him as they kicked back on a couch somewhere, watching a football game. Yeah, that was better.
“Trent’s an old friend.” Rob’s words were so delayed I almost didn’t connect them with his previous statement.
“Cool.” Cool? Really? I had no idea what to say. I’d stalked this guy to his place of work, and now I was at a complete loss for words because he’d touched me. I picked up my drink to fill the awkward silence. Rob had removed his hand from my arm and his face was dark, his brow furrowed. He appeared to be thinking hard about something.
“You’ll be at the shop tomorrow?” he finally asked.
I nodded, risking a look into those searing eyes again. They looked cloudy now, troubled.
“Okay if I stop by? With Sampson?”
I smiled at the thought of the massive dog. “Yeah.” What did that mean? Was he going to help me? Or just say “hi”? What was this thing we were doing here? “Actually, I wanted to be more clear about the job. I could use some skilled help, as I’m sure you noticed.”
Rob looked at me a second longer, and then nodded. “We can talk tomorrow,” he said, and then turned away and pushed back through the crowd to the stage. He was clearly not a master of goodbyes. I shook my head and finished my drink.
I didn’t see more of him as the night wore on and the place became even more packed. But I could hear the guitar. He didn’t sing now, just pulled some familiar melody from the strings.
“Let’s go,” I said, turning to my sister.
She looked gleeful, tossing her hair as she turned to respond. “Okay, but we’re totally coming back here. I love this place.”
I raised an eyebrow and watched Amy hand her business card to Trent, who was leaning across the bar, smiling an easy smile at my sister. His eyes shifted to me as she rose and picked up her bag, and I had the sensation he was evaluating me in some way.
He gave us a little salute, and the other guys nodded and waved as we turned to go.
“What’d Rob say?” We stepped into a cab at the curb and Amy turned to face me.
“Not much. But he’s coming to the shop tomorrow.”
Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything else.
“You had fun,” I said.
“I did have fun. I like firefighters.” A goofy smile settled on her lips and she leaned back into the vinyl seat.
I climbed into bed that night feeling both reassured and confused. This was not what I’d intended at all. There was not supposed to be a hot, confusing man on the periphery of my consciousness right now. I was supposed to be laser-focused on getting the shop together, getting my life on track. And after what had happened with Ben, the last thing I needed was to become in any way involved with a man as confusing as Rob had already proven to be.
I held that thought firmly in mind before I drifted off, but at some point it shifted, and I found myself slipping into sleep with an image of Rob’s green eyes in my mind instead.
Chapter Seven
Rob
“So that was the girl with the shop?” Trent quizzed me while I packed up after everyone had cleared out of the club. I stuck around to help him close up sometimes, though getting less than a solid eight hours of sleep wasn’t ideal—especially when I was having trouble.
“Yeah.” I dropped my guitar case next to the bar and began gathering glasses from tables around the room.
“Which one? Amy?”
Something new had crept into Trent’s voice. I paused and shot him a look. “Not Amy. Dani.”
Trent didn’t say anything else for a minute while he worked on printing the night’s receipts. “She tracked you down, then.”
I moved to the bar and watched his back, catching his eye when he turned back around.
“So you didn’t freak her out,” he said. “You were worried.”
He was right, though I hadn’t told him anything more than exactly what had happened. Not that it would really have mattered if I’d freaked her out. I had no plans to see her again. Or I hadn’t. Until I did.
There was no part of me that had expected her to show up here again, and I still didn’t really understand why she had. It would have been much easier—for both of us—to just let it go. And part of me wished she had. I could have gone on, let today become a memory. I would have held on to it, maybe turned it over in my mind sometimes. Because it had been good.
Really good. It would definitely have become jack-off fodder at some point.
But there didn’t need to be more than that. Probably wasn’t anything more. Nothing good, anyway. Only her slow, painful discovery of all my shortcomings. And that would ruin everything. Even the fantasy.
So why the hell had I said I’d come by the shop again? Clearly, I was a glutton for punishment. I’d only just gotten my mind to stop its churn when she’d set herself down at the bar with her sister and stirred me up all over again.
Only, what I felt tonight was different than the confusion and terror I’d had to stifle as I’d left the shop earlier.
The guitar had done its trick. And while the place was packed nut to butt, the noise hadn’t bothered me at all. Until I’d tried to talk to Dani. Then I felt it invading, pressing in on me.
If I was honest, that was why I’d suggested seeing her at the shop again. Maybe I could explain myself if we were away from the pressure of the noise. And I’d probably been rude, turning away from her and practically running for my guitar. But sometimes that thing was a life raft. And in the past few days, I’d barely managed to stay afloat.
…
I woke from a dream in which I was being slowly pressed into the ground by the weight of a car as its exhaust poured into my face. Though the idea was terrifying, somehow the dream wasn’t. Maybe because my subconscious knew what was really happening.
Sampson.
Sampson was happening. All one hundred thirty pounds of him were happening right on top of me.
Staying up late meant sleeping late. And sleeping late meant Sampson’s bladder got to take the hold-it-in challenge, which he sought to remedy by waking me up. Evidently whining and nosing at me hadn’t worked, so he’d gone for the big guns. Full body contact. He settled himself on top of me and breathed into my face.
I rolled, pushing him off. “No,” I managed. His breath reminded me of gym socks. Mixed with trash. And something wet and soggy and rotten.
He whined, but there was an edge of gleeful hysteria in
it now that he’d discovered I was responsive.
When I didn’t immediately get up, he leapt to the floor and whined again.
“Okay,” I moaned, shifting to a sitting position and giving my mind a minute to settle.
The light pouring in under the blackout shade was grey, and a glance outside confirmed that the marine layer had resettled over the beach. They called it June Gloom, but I didn’t mind the wet fog. It kept some of the tourists away, at least.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt, grabbed my cap and faced my best friend. “Let’s go.” He spun in a circle and did a little dance before I opened the door. “But then coffee,” I muttered, rubbing a hand over my jaw as I followed him downstairs.
Trent wasn’t up yet. I glanced around, found my flip-flops and keys, and followed Sampson down to the entry, snapping on his leash before I opened the door. He bolted, pulling me with him out to the sand. He immediately lifted a leg on a tiny bush that hardly met his regular standards. He was desperate. Poor guy.
Business finished, he shot me a look that said, “It’s on,” and pulled me toward the tide.
Today, I pulled back. I had a better idea. I hauled him, fighting the whole way, through the long parking lot and over the berm to what locals called simply Dog Beach.
Sampson figured out where we were going about halfway there and quit fighting me, trying to drag me along instead. Once I topped the berm, I let him off the leash and he streaked down to the edge of the water, hunting the tide as usual.
After a solid ten minutes of unrestrained joy, he sat watching some other dogs play. The tide snuck up on him, soaking his butt and making him yelp in surprise as he swung around, ready to defend himself. I couldn’t help cracking up.
I watched him play, crossing my arms and just letting the wind and water take over my crowded mind. For a huge serious-looking dog, he had a pretty good grasp on his lighter side. I could learn a lot from him.
Once he’d had enough, he trotted back to my side, grinning up at me. He was soaked. And covered in sand.
Without Words Page 5