“Speaking of heading out,” Joe interrupted. “I’m going to do that now. Hot date tonight,” he explained, then grinned.
Samara smiled back at him. “Have fun.”
“I plan on it.” Joe waved to both of them and was gone.
Samara started packing up her equipment. “I’ll just be a couple of minutes,” she told Steven.
“You’re not rushing off for a hot date?”
She shook her head. “Not tonight.”
Which didn’t give him any hint about whether or not she was dating anyone at the present. Of course, it was none of his business. And it wasn’t as if he was planning on asking her out on a date or anything. Not only would such an invitation be completely inappropriate, considering their work relationship, but he wouldn’t know how to approach the question.
The last time he’d asked a woman on a date, the senior George Bush was president. The last time he’d kissed a woman who wasn’t his wife was the night before his wedding, and the next day that woman had become his wife—a realization that made him wonder if he was dedicated to the memory of the only woman he’d ever loved—or simply too scared to venture out into the dating world again.
“How are you enjoying the job so far?” he asked Samara.
“I love it,” she said. “And it sure as heck beats serving coffee and doughnuts.”
He smiled. “The Java Stop’s loss is definitely our gain.”
“That might be hopping the gun a little.”
“It’s ‘jumping the gun,’” he told her.
“I have trouble keeping all those expressions straight,” she admitted with a shrug.
“And I’m not,” he said. “Jumping the gun, that is. I saw the first sets of proofs.”
She finished packing up her equipment, zipped the bag. “You like what you’ve seen?”
He reminded himself that she was talking about her work, though he would have nodded anyway. “Now I’m going to have to thank my sister-in-law and put up with her smug I-told-you-so attitude.”
“Jenny’s not smug,” Samara said loyally.
“She will be about this,” he told her.
“Well, she was right.” She slung her bag—more of a knapsack than a purse—over her shoulder. “And I’ll try to have the next set of proofs ready for you by Monday.”
“It’s the weekend,” he told her. “You are entitled to time off.”
She just shrugged again. “I don’t have any big plans.”
“It’s supposed to be nice both Saturday and Sunday. You should take some time to see the sights.”
“I’ve already done most of the touristy things.”
“There’s a lot more to Chicago than the Navy Pier and the Hancock Observatory,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got an extra ticket to a hockey game Saturday night.”
The corners of her mouth lifted. “Are you inviting me to go?”
Was he?
He hadn’t planned on it, but the words had almost spilled out of his mouth of their own volition. “It seems I am.”
Her smile widened. “I’ve never seen a hockey game, but it sounds like it could be fun.”
“My mom’s coming into town to spend some time with Caitlin,” he explained. “So I was going to take Tyler, but then he got invited to a laser-tag birthday party which, when you’re nine years old, trumps even a Blackhawks game. It seems a shame to let one go to waste if you’re interested. In seeing the game, I mean.”
Her eyes danced with amusement. “Didn’t I already say I was?”
She had—he just hadn’t expected her ready acquiescence and wasn’t sure how to respond, so he only nodded.
“What time?” she finally asked.
“Oh. Yeah. The game’s at seven-thirty. I could pick you up at quarter-to, if that’s okay.”
“That’s okay,” she agreed, then slipped past him toward the door. “I’ll see you then.”
Steven watched her go, wondering how it had happened that, for the first time in three years, he suddenly had a Saturday-night date with someone other than his children.
Samara had a date.
Okay, she wasn’t sure that an invitation to a sporting event with a man who just happened to have an extra ticket counted as a date, but it was, at least, an outing.
Of course, she had no idea how to dress for a hockey game, then she decided—if the dinner party last weekend was any indication—Steven probably wouldn’t notice what she was wearing anyway. She opted for a crimson V-neck sweater, her favorite pair of jeans and low-heeled boots.
This time she wasn’t surprised when Steven didn’t comment, but she did catch his eyes skimming over her and felt her skin tingle in response to his appraisal.
She knew that she was playing with fire, that spending time with Steven away from work was probably a mistake. While she knew that she couldn’t continue to hide behind a broken heart forever—not if she ever expected to find someone to share her life, and she very much did—she also knew that it would be a mistake to get involved with a man who was both her boss and her best friend’s brother-in-law.
So why had she agreed to go out with him tonight? It would be easy enough to justify her decision on the basis of the fact that she’d spent far too many Saturday nights alone in the past couple of years, but the truth was that she’d chosen to do so. And if it was simply a change of routine she was looking for, she’d had other offers.
Of course, most of those other offers had come with expectations. They were invitations from men who had clearly telegraphed their desire to get her into bed, and she knew from experience that accepting such an invitation implied that she was interested in more than dinner and a movie.
Steven’s invitation, on the other hand, had come not only without strings but seemingly without conscious thought.
“So, what do you know about hockey?” he asked when they were settled in his car and on their way to the game.
“Less than I know about cars,” she admitted.
“I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”
She laughed. “You probably think I’m such a girly-girl, but I’m not really. I just never took much of an interest in sports and even less in anything with a motor.”
His eyes skimmed over her again.
“You look like a girl to me,” he said, surprising her with this proof that he had taken note of that fact, and making her wonder if she’d been wrong to assume that the tug of attraction she was feeling was one-sided.
“I only meant that I didn’t grow up playing with dolls. I was more interested in books and video games, and not at all interested in organized sports.”
“Well, now that you’re living in Chicago, we’ll have to make sure you learn about the Bulls, Bears, Blackhawks and Cubs.”
“What about the White Sox?”
He glanced over at her again. “So you do know baseball.”
“I used to go to games in Tokyo with Jenny sometimes,” she told him. “But hockey isn’t very big over there.”
“Hockey wasn’t that big in North Carolina, either, until a few years back.”
“But you grew up in this area, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Until I was in high school.”
But she knew it wasn’t anything to do with high school that had made his mother take her younger son and move out of the area—it was the murder of her husband—Richard and Steven’s father. Samara hadn’t been told much about it beyond the fact that Stan Warren had been killed when some teenage junkie with a gun and a desperate need for a fix tried to rob his coffee shop, but it was enough to guess that Steven wouldn’t even want to think, never mind talk, about that now. So she asked instead, “Did you play hockey as a kid?”
“From the time I was six until I was sixteen. Then we moved to North Carolina and I fell in love with stock-car racing.” He looked over at her again and grinned. “But we’ll save the intricacies of that sport for another day.”
His smile—or maybe it was the promise that there might be
another day—warmed something inside her, and she wondered again about the wisdom of spending time with him.
But she enjoyed the game, and Steven proved both knowledgeable and patient as he explained offsides and icing and the various penalty infractions that were called. And by the time the puck was dropped to start the third period, she’d convinced herself that she was perfectly safe with him, that any attraction she thought she’d experienced was simply a fabrication of her long-deprived imagination.
Then he bought a tub of popcorn for them to share. When their fingers accidentally touched inside the bag, he withdrew his hand so quickly that the container tipped, spilling popcorn in her lap.
Steven apologized profusely and tried to help clean up the mess. He was brushing at the crumbs on her jeans before he seemed to realize that his hands were rubbing over her thighs. Her suddenly very warm and tingling thighs.
His hands froze.
His eyes locked on hers.
Held.
Then another whistle sounded from the ice, and he tore his gaze away.
Samara picked up her soda and took a long swallow.
She had a lot more trouble focusing on the game after that, her mind preoccupied by an increasing awareness of the man at her side. And when the final buzzer went, she had to look at the scoreboard to see who had won.
When Steven pulled into a visitor’s slot outside of Samara’s apartment building, she didn’t bother to protest his intention to see her to the door as she’d done after Richard and Jenny’s party. He’d insisted on walking her up anyway and she’d thought it was kind of nice to be escorted to her door.
“Elevator still not working?” he asked, when she automatically headed to the stairs.
She nodded. “It seems to be out of order more often than not,” she told him. “Which makes me extremely grateful that I’m only on the second floor.”
“Old buildings tend to have a lot of quirks.”
“And character,” she said defensively.
He smiled. “It is a great building.”
“Jenny found it for me,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t have had the first clue where to begin looking for an apartment if she hadn’t been around.”
“You’ve known her a long time, haven’t you?”
“Since we were at Stanford together. She was a journalism student, I was in molecular biology.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“How did you go from molecular biology to photography?”
“Not very easily.” And not without a lot of grief from the father who always seemed to expect more of her, but that was a story for another time.
She stopped at her door and turned to thank him for taking her to the game. But when she opened her mouth, the words that came out were, “Did you want to come in for coffee?”
He hesitated a second, then finally said, “I should be getting home.”
“Oh. Well. Okay.”
“Unless you really want company,” he added.
She wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea for him to come inside, but she said, “I’d like your company.”
So they had coffee and they talked. Their conversation touched on various topics but focused on nothing in particular. Steven admitted to a fondness for action films, Samara told him that she preferred romantic comedies. He read thrillers, she enjoyed biographies. He listened to country music, she leaned toward pop. The more they talked, the more obvious it was that they had almost nothing in common. And yet, the tension between them continued to build until the air fairly crackled with it.
Or maybe she was imagining the lingering glances and making too much of his casual touches. But even if she wasn’t, there had to be one hundred and one reasons why it would be a bad idea to get involved with Steven Warren. Still, there was something about the man that tempted her to ignore all reason and jump him.
But she knew it would be a mistake to rush into anything. So, when Steven finished his second cup of coffee and suggested it was time for him to go, she didn’t protest but walked with him to the door.
“Thanks again for tonight,” she said. “I had a good time.”
“Me, too.” He hesitated, cleared his throat. “Good night.”
She felt a sharp pang of disappointment as she watched him cross the threshold.
“Steven, wait.”
He turned back.
“You, uh—” she felt her heart pounding, her mind racing “—forgot something.”
He looked at the jacket he carried in one hand and his keys in the other, then back at her. “What did I forget?”
“This,” she said, and tugged his head down to hers for a kiss.
Chapter Five
Samara wasn’t sure what compelled her to make the first move. Except that she’d caught Steven’s gaze lingering on her mouth more than once throughout the evening and was fairly confident that he’d been thinking about kissing her. As she’d admittedly found herself wondering what it would be like if he did.
But when it became apparent that he was going to leave without giving her an opportunity to answer that question, she didn’t think she had any choice but to take matters into her own hands. She told herself it was only to satisfy her curiosity. But in the moment that his lips came into contact with hers, everything changed.
She’d surprised him. That was apparent by the way he instinctively started to draw back. But then his arms came around her—despite the fact that he still held the coat in one hand and his keys in the other—and he kissed her back.
She might have initiated the contact, but there was no doubt that Steven was a willing participant—and a worthy partner. His lips were firm but not hard, and they moved against hers with purpose and intensity.
It was truly an exceptional kiss, the kind that might let a girl think that it could lead to something more. But Samara wasn’t ready for anything more, and she was pretty sure—his enthusiastic participation notwithstanding—Steven wasn’t, either. Reluctantly, she drew away.
He dropped his arms, then didn’t seem to know what to do with them. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again without uttering a word. He looked as shell-shocked as she felt, and the realization helped settle some of her own nerves.
It would be a mistake to make too much of what had just happened, even if her heart was still beating a little too fast and her knees felt a little weak. So she only said, “Good night, Steven,” and closed the door between them.
Steven stared at her door, because while the rest of him seemed alive and well, his brain seemed to have frozen.
She’d kissed him.
Okay, so he’d thought about kissing her, too. More than he was willing to admit. But he’d decided that it was a bad idea, because even if he was ready to get involved with someone, a personal relationship with Samara would just be too complicated.
And then she’d kissed him.
And he found himself thinking about that kiss as he drove home, and considering the possibilities as he took a beer from his fridge. Still preoccupied, he popped the top and made his way into the living room.
“How was the game?”
The question came out of the corner and made him jolt. He’d thought the light had been left on so he wouldn’t have to walk through a dark house—he hadn’t expected that his mother would still be up, and realized that she made him feel like a guilty teenager sneaking in after curfew.
He took a long swallow from the bottle before responding. He’d been thinking about Samara, not hockey, and he needed a moment to switch mental gears. “The game was good. The Hawks lost, but it was close to the end.” He sank down onto the sofa and propped his feet on the coffee table.
“I saw the highlights on the news,” she said, nodding toward the television as her fingers continued to work the knitting needles in her hand.
The implication was obvious, and though he didn’t think he needed to report to his mother at thirty-five years of age, he figured she deserve
d an explanation since she was the one who had been home with his kids. “I went for coffee after the game.”
“By yourself?”
“Why the twenty questions?”
Her brows lifted. “I was making conversation, Steven, not interrogating you.”
He sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Obviously there’s something bothering you,” she noted.
Yeah, he was definitely bothered. And maybe he needed to talk to someone about it, and because of what his mother had been through, he thought she might understand.
But he tipped the bottle to his lips again before he said, “I kissed another woman.”
Her needles stopping moving. “Other than who?”
“Other than Liz.”
She seemed to consider her response for a long minute before she finally said, “Your wife has been gone three years—there’s no reason to feel guilty about being with someone else.”
“But she’s still with me,” he said, and knew it would always be true. “In my heart. I didn’t think there would ever be a time when I didn’t think about her. And yet, when I kissed Samara, I wasn’t thinking about anything else.”
“I’d think you should worry more if you were thinking about Liz while you were kissing someone else,” she said. Then her brow furrowed. “Samara? Isn’t that the name of Jenny’s friend?”
Which proved his brain was still muddled from their kiss or he would never have let that little bit of information slip. “Yeah.”
“The one who’s working at the magazine?”
“Yeah,” he said again.
“Oh.” Her needles resumed their clicking. “That might complicate things a little.”
“A little,” he agreed dryly.
“On the other hand, those extra layers of connection could work in your favor. I can’t imagine either of you would jump into a relationship that would have far-reaching consequences if it ended badly.”
“I’m not even thinking about a relationship never mind jumping into one.”
“Maybe it’s time you started thinking about one,” she said gently.
“Says the woman who hasn’t had a date in about twenty years.”
Family in Progress Page 5