by Kathryn Shay
“Like I told you before, I’m afraid I haven’t dealt with mine very well.” Fuck, had he said that aloud?
Reaching out, she touched his hand this time. Instead of the quick chemical reaction he’d expected, he felt the warmth of understanding fill him. He craved that and detested it at the same time. Still, he didn’t draw away.
“Hey, Stacey?”
She dragged her gaze away from Nick and looked up. “Jimmy. Hey, buddy.”
His boyish face darkened. “What the hell happened to your nose?”
“An accident playing basketball.”
Jimmy looked to Nick. “You do this to her?”
Nick sighed. He wasn’t up for a pissing contest, if that’s where this was going. “We were having a friendly game of b-ball and it got a little rough.”
He scowled. “Didn’t you ever hear you should take it easy on women?”
“Now, wait a minute, Jimmy Curtis. You know I wouldn’t want that.”
He looked from her to Nick. “How do you two know each other?”
“We’re planning the Christmas party for the camp.”
“Well, okay then.” Leaning over, he kissed Stacey’s head. “Call me. And get ice on that.”
Nick got up and retrieved the ice for her, then sat back down at the table. “You said you two were friends. I get different vibes from him.”
“You know, I started to think that way the night when we babysat Faith’s kids. Though I’m shocked. You should have seen his wife.”
“What was she like?”
“As pretty and sophisticated as Parker Erikson.” Stacey raked a hand through her hair, mussing it. “I don’t know how women pull those things off.”
Damn it. By now he’d realized she had a thing about not being sophisticated. “Actually, I don’t find her style that appealing.”
Her pretty eyes glimmered, even in the dim light. “Yeah, Captain?” She leaned over so the V in her shirt gaped a bit. “What kind of woman do you find attractive?”
“Hmm.” There was that spell she cast over him again. Raising his eyes to her hair, he said what was in his heart. “I like natural hair. I’m partial to curly.” His gaze lowered to hers. “Hazel eyes that turn green, I bet, at, um, certain times. Rounded cheeks. Freckles…”
Her cheeks flushed. “I—”
Just then the group at the end of the bar he’d noticed earlier came up to his table. “Hey, Cap, I thought that was you.” Riley Gallagher turned to Stacey. “Stace!” He dragged her out of the chair and gave her a big hug. “How are you? It’s been ages.”
She hugged Jane next. “I miss you, Stacey.”
Even Lisa Beth took her in an embrace. These people obviously had a history with her. Which maybe he needed to see. He’d always considered Riley and Jane as kids. The fact that they were friends with Stacey made his and her age difference—her experience difference—more obvious.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Nick said.
Stacey gave him a questioning look. He knew in his gut she wanted to keep the earlier, more intimate conversation going.
They made room for the four of them, putting Stacey farther away from him. Physically and metaphorically.
“I think it’s great you’re working on the Christmas party.” Jane squeezed Stacey’s hand. “Jess would be pleased.”
She gave them a weak smile. And Nick thought, even they didn’t consider him a likely suitor.
He bought another round of drinks, while the young ones reminisced. “Remember when Jess climbed to the roof of the public pool in high school and dared us all to skinny dip.”
Jesus.
“And that party at the lake. How many kegs did we go through?”
Lisa Beth said, “I didn’t know him as a young man, but Jess was a terrific firefighter. Brave, kind.” She actually winked at Nick. “And by-the-book, right Cap?”
“Right. I hear you two are behaving yourselves.”
“You bet,” Riley said.
“What are you talking about?” Stacey asked.
“Lisa Beth and I broke some rules last summer.” This from Riley.
The doctor with them, Linc Roberts, rubbed his jaw. “And almost my jaw.”
There were smiles all around, more stories.
And it hit him like a ton of bricks that he could no longer ignore or push to the side. These were the people she should be hanging out with. Not some old man who, as Kelly’s call had reminded him, had come as close to murder as he could get without shooting or stabbing someone.
They’d sobered him. Made a decision for him, one he’d been dancing around since he’d met Stacey. He’d been letting go with her. Letting himself get to know her. Like her. Get horny for her. And that wasn’t right. Not with someone as good, kind and happy as Stacey. He’d only drag her down.
He watched Riley, Jane and Lisa Beth, glad they’d joined the two of them before he’d done something totally stupid and irrevocable.
SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED to Nick right after he blatantly told her he was attracted to her. Her friends had sat with them awhile, and she wondered if they’d talked too much about Jess. Excluded Nick from the conversation. It was obvious they thought her relationship with him was business, and the notion disconcerted her.
She was even more disconcerted when the group said their good-byes, and she turned to Nick.
He drained the rest of his beer. “I’m ready to leave if you are.”
“Oh.” She glanced down at the round of drinks he’d bought; she’d only consumed half of her beer. “Sure. Me, too, I guess.”
He stood abruptly. Gone was the fluid ease with which he usually moved. With which he’d starred on the basketball court only a few hours earlier. Now he was stiff, formal. He waited for her to get on her jackets and accompany him to the door. Confused, she walked beside him out into the cool October night, not nearly as chilly as he’d become. She pulled her outer coat closer around her, poor armor against Nick’s sudden freeze out. When they reached her Blazer, parked next to his Bronco, she turned to him. In the light from the parking lot, his face was cast in shadows accenting the hard planes and somber angles.
“Hey, this was fun.” His tone was cool. Distant.
Should she push, or bid him good-night? Was she going to play it safe and protect her ego or go after what she wanted? “Nick, what just happened in there?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well,” she said exasperated. “You told me you liked my looks, more than that really, then you closed down when the others sat at our table.”
“No, no. I…” He trailed off and watched her.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, it’s me.”
Oh, shit, the it’s not you, it’s me line.
Still, she asked, “What’s you?”
“I’m…I’m not the man you think I am.”
“Truthfully, I don’t know what to think of you. You vacillate back and forth with me too much. I want to get to know you better, go further with what’s between us. I’ve made that pretty clear.”
“You don’t want to know me better, Stacey,” he said gravely. “You should be with someone more like Riley, younger, carefree.”
“Shouldn’t who I keep company with be up to me?”
“No, it’s up to me. To protect you.”
“From yourself?” Now she felt anger spark inside her. “Isn’t that a little patronizing?”
“Maybe so.”
At a loss for what to do, she waited. She only knew about men through Jess, and he didn’t have this Jekyll-and-Hyde persona to him. But damn it, she felt something for this guy. So she raised her arms and slid them around his neck. It was dim here under the trees, and the cars blocked anyone’s view of them. She moved in closer. “Unless you can give me a good reason, why don’t you kiss me?”
He shook his head.
“Nick…” She went up on her tiptoes. Whispered in his ear, “Kiss me again. Just once.”
“I won’t be able to st
op at once this time.”
“There you go, then.” Reading that as concession, she plastered her body against his.
He remained stiff, unyielding…for about ten seconds. Then his arms slid inside her coat and banded around her in a fierce embrace so unlike the gentle connection they’d made the night they had dinner. His mouth came down hard on hers and he took it, devoured it, feasted himself.
She encouraged him. She angled her head for better access. His tongue probed her lips and she opened to him, demanded more from him. He tasted so male, so masculine.
He gave her more—more hot, hard and heavy. His arms totally encompassed her and his lower body bucked into hers. She pressed back, deepened the kiss, moaned.
The sound of a car’s horn blaring stopped him. He wrenched away. “Jesus Christ.”
Disoriented, and chilled from the loss of his warmth, she reached for him again.
“No.” He stepped back from her. “I don’t want this with you.”
“You acted like you wanted it just now. For weeks, really, though you’ve been fighting it.” She said the words, not so nicely. But added more gently, “Take me home. Come inside with me this time. Let’s see where this goes.”
“Stacey, sweetheart, you’re too wholesome, too unspoiled for me.”
Wholesome was a word no woman wanted to hear in this situation. “Again, you’re patronizing me Nick. And it’s damned stupid, if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking. I’m telling. This isn’t going anywhere between us. I’ve been trying to make this decision for weeks and tonight solidified it.”
“Then I want specifics why.”
His hand cupped her cheek. It was warm and she was shivering from the cold, from the loss of him. “I’m not giving you specifics.”
“That’s not fair.”
“See, you’re an innocent. Life is not fair.”
“Don’t treat me like a child. I’ve had a lot of tragedy in my life. I know sadness so deep it swallows you up. But we’re alive, Nick, and free.” Her eyes widened. “We both are, aren’t we?”
“Free as in unattached, yes. In other ways, I’ll never be free.”
“What’s so wrong with this?” She waved to encompass him. Them.
“I won’t do it.” He stepped even farther back and shut completely down. The blast of frigidity wasn’t from the night air. “Now get in the car and drive away,” he said curtly. “We’ll work on the Christmas project together but keep things between us professional. It should have stayed that way from the beginning.” He raised his eyes to the heavens. “What was I thinking?”
Suddenly, all the doubts Stacey had about herself, all the feelings of not being feminine enough, sophisticated enough, converged. He’d battered her feminine ego with his words and icy demeanor and she couldn’t withstand the emotional barrage. Why had she ever thought she could be enough for this man?
“You’ve got that wrong,” she said in a cold flat voice. What was I thinking?” She dug in her pocket for her car keys. “Good night, Nick. I’ll go along with what you ask. Let’s do as much as we can for the party through email. I don’t want to be near you again for a while.”
She turned, unlocked the Bronco and yanked open the door, forcing him to step back. Slamming it, she stuck the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life. Without looking back, she tore out of the parking lot, never before in her life feeling so inadequate as a woman.
NICK WOKE UP the morning after his fiasco with Stacey, having dreamed all last night of the look on her face when he’d rejected her. Now, in the stark light of day, he remembered some of what he’d said that could have kicked into her vulnerability.
“Fuck!” was his first word of the day. He’d recognized her lack of self-confidence before. She felt inadequate as a femme fatale, which she wasn’t. She was a real, flesh-and-blood woman who’d turned him on from day one. But he could never fix the damage he’d done to her feminine ego, because he wasn’t planning to see her outside of the party planning.
He bounded out of bed, hit the john, showered fast and was downstairs, having coffee, when the phone rang. The caller ID said Taylor. Huh. He could use a dose of his daughter’s love today.
“Hey, honey, how are you?”
“Not good, Dad.”
His father’s uh-oh alarm went off. Taylor had ridden with the punches when he and Lucinda had divorced. She seemed well-adjusted, though he didn’t get to see her enough.
“Tell me.”
“Mom’s going on a cruise for Thanksgiving. With some asshole.”
She was sixteen. Should he object to her language? Nah, not the time. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She wants me to go stay with Aunt Janet in Rome.”
Lucinda’s family lived in Europe, as her mother had been born in the UK. He’d met Lucinda at a fashion show in New York City, where a fire had broken out. She’d moved here to marry him but had never been happy as a firefighter’s wife.
“Dad?”
“You’re not going to Aunt Janet’s. You’re coming to Hidden Cove.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, having my only child with me on the holiday will be what I need right now. When can you fly over?”
“The week of Thanksgiving. I have to be back the Monday after.”
“Super.”
“It sounds like fun, Dad.”
“For me, too, sweetie. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“No, I will. Let Mom pay for it.” With one of her trust funds.
He laughed.
Taylor’s call brought thoughts of Stacey again. Who would she spend the holiday with? Jimmy Curtis? Jess’s family? He had a quick flash of being with her in bed Thanksgiving morning, and the urge to call her, to grovel and beg was overwhelming. Grabbing another cup of coffee, he stared out the window. Remember what you did, Evans. Remember why you can’t be with her…
He’d been twenty-seven and finally had gotten his sister back, after seven long years. The police had suspected she was a runaway, but Nick knew in his heart that wasn’t true. And one day, she was found wandering around midtown Manhattan, and the cops brought her to him. When she’d told him she’d been kidnapped, he’d gone ballistic. The police never found the perpetrator.
He’d lived in a small house in Brooklyn with another firefighter and two guys from the police department. When Kelly returned, she’d moved into his bedroom, and he slept on an air mattress. A full year went by before she confessed the worst. And it was only because they got a visit one morning when they were having fun making French toast and bacon for themselves and his housemates, who’d been on the night shift and weren’t home yet…
“Nicky, the doorbell rang.” Kelly still never answered it.
“Maybe the guys forgot their keys.” Nick walked to the entryway and opened the door.
A short guy, with slicked-back hair and an oily cast to his olive skin, stood before him with two bruiser-like guys. Bodyguards? Nick’s instinct to protect went on red alert. The little man said, with an accent Nick couldn’t place, “I think you have something of mine, Mr. Evans.”
“What? And who the hell are you?”
He heard a gasp behind him and turned. “Mr. Alban?” Kelly had turned totally white…and totally submissive. She lowered her eyes, her shoulders hunched and she clasped her hands in front of her. She also remained silent.
“I want my purchase back. It’s taken me months to find her.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He smiled evilly. “Have you seen the tattoo on her neck?”
He had. She wouldn’t discuss the strange horizontal set of lines.
“It’s a bar code. A Bill of Sale. To me.”
Oh, no, dear Lord in heaven. Kelly had been sold?
“I will take her now.”
Pure, unadulterated anger surged through him. “Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged.” He nodded to his two thugs.
They each pu
lled a gun.
Behind him, Kelly screamed.
Noise came from down the hall and he saw his roommates returning after their night shift—still dressed in their police uniforms. They halted. When they caught sight of the guns, both pulled their service weapons. The three men turned, took off and disappeared into the stairwell.
Nick had lied to his buddies and said the guy was a nutcase and he’d gotten the wrong house. It was better than telling them his sister had been human trafficked…
The phone rang again, drawing Nick out of the awful memory. What transpired after that had changed his whole life. Damn, the uncontrollable flashback had drained all the cheer about his daughter’s visit from Nick. But it had quelled the urge to go to Stacey. He didn’t deserve her. Depressed, he headed to the fire station in a foul mood.
WHEN CORA CAME into the bookstore the day after Stacey’s night at Badges, Stacey had already torn her office apart to give it a good cleaning. She’d done the same thing to her house last night. All in an effort not to think about the stinging rejection from Nick. Up on the ladder, she glanced down when Cora approached the doorway. Today the woman wore a dress the color of fall leaves, cinched at the waist, clinging in a demure but flattering way. Her hair softly grazed her shoulder. “Morning.”
Cora surveyed the room. “What happened?”
“I’m cleaning.”
“I can see that. I mean, what happened to cause this flurry of housekeeping? You always do it when you’re upset. Last time, when you lost a big bid for a set of first editions, you put everything in the kitchenette cupboards in alphabetical order.”
Stacey rolled her eyes. “I made a complete fool of myself last night with Nick Evans. I’m trying to forget about the whole thing.”
“Why don’t you come down and tell me about it?”
“Nope. My actions are too embarrassing to talk about.”
Cora tossed her head. “Whenever you want, I’m here to listen.”
After rearranging the furniture, moving the plants and dusting and vacuuming everything, every muscle in Stacey’s body ached. Of course she hadn’t slept well, either, plagued by her silly assumption that Nick was really interested in her, would want to go to bed with her. She headed to the kitchenette and found Cora there. Her friend said, “The store isn’t open yet. We can have a few minutes alone.”