No Time for Surprises (The No Brides Club Book 6)

by Karen McCullough

  “If you’re up for it.”

  “I’m doing okay. I took some ibuprofen during lunch but really the only thing bothering me is one of my knees. I think the left one took the brunt of the fall and the bruising there is deeper. But it’s not going to keep me from taking full advantage of being here.”

  He nodded and she went with him, letting him guide her to the area of the Egyptian exhibits. She’d seen this one some years past as well, but it still exerted a power to fascinate as the objects and displays drew her back into a period of history and way of life very different from her own. By the time they’d gone through it, however, she was having some regrets about agreeing to do the paintings area afterward.

  Dan wisely declared a break time that involved soft drinks and pastry at a different cafe. The rest and fuel helped her recover enough for a go at another area of the museum. Although she found most of the paintings interesting, they didn’t intrigue her the way the other exhibits had. Dan, who’d had some art training, though he claimed no talent for it, enjoyed them more than she did. But he shared any insights he had on techniques and subject matter and those were often quite fascinating.

  By the time her phone said quarter to five, she was tapped out. Her brain had gone numb thirty minutes prior to that, but her knees told her they were done then as well. She found a comfortable bench and sat while Dan took in a few more pictures.

  He came back and said, “Done. And done in. Ready to think about a drink and dinner. How about you?”

  “I really ought to get home.”

  “If you insist. But it occurred to me I still haven’t asked the questions about the leak that I called you about yesterday. And about some other things. I’m willing to dangle drinks and a nice dinner for a chance to ask those questions.”

  She sighed. Those “some other things” questions probably related to the more personal issues between them. She didn’t have any good answers. She didn’t have any answers at all. Her resolve was weakening, and he either knew or at least sensed it happening.

  “I know a nice place not too far from here. And I promise not to keep you out late.”

  Her brain had flipped out. That was the only explanation for why she said, “Okay.”

  They got a taxi to the restaurant, which was only five or six blocks away. Under ordinary circumstances they could have walked it easily. But in addition to her battered body, storm clouds rumbled ominously above them, though no rain had yet fallen.

  The restaurant was on the ground floor of an upscale apartment building, with a menu heavy on veal- and steak-based dishes augmented by seafood and vegetarian offerings. The atmosphere was old-fashioned cozy tending toward romantic, with darkly paneled walls, cloth tablecloths and napkins, and dim lighting accented by lighted candles in glass goblets on each table.

  They started with cocktails and appetizers, lingering over those as long as they could and then ordering dinner. Conversation flowed easily. Dan made sure of it. They discussed some of the artifacts they’d seen, speculating on how they’d been made and what they meant, what might have sparked their creation and how they reflected their times. He had deeper knowledge of art than she did, but she had more grounding in history, so they could bring different perspectives to any subject.

  Their similar interests and curiosity about so many things and the love of exploring ideas had drawn her to Dan in the first place. But when she looked at him across the table, studying his face in the dim light, highlighted by the flickering candle, she had to admit that his looks factored into her feelings. Shallow maybe, but the hard, exciting lines of his cheek and jaw, the sparkle in the silvery blue eyes, the dimples that framed his mouth all appealed to her at some visceral level. The flickering candle cast glints of fire in his hair, pulling out the red highlights.

  Her heart clenched, and stomach lurched. For a moment she fought back tears. He was her past, not her future, she reminded herself.

  After a while he turned the talk to business. He questioned her some more concerning who might’ve known about the code she was working on. When she asked him why, he said, “I haven’t had much success finding anyone that seems likely to be guilty of the leak, so I’m trying to tackle it from the other direction. Who benefitted from it? And how did that person or persons know about it?”

  “That makes sense. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can help you much. There were people I talked to at the show you mentioned, but I don’t remember telling anyone specifically what I was working on. There are some who might’ve guessed, though.” She gave him a couple of names, which he noted on a pad he’d pulled out of a pocket.

  He put it away, sighed, and stared down at his plate. “I’ve put in a call to the president of the company that released the competing program using your code, but so far I haven’t heard anything back. Odds are I won’t, but it’s worth a try. I’ll see if I can track down the people you mentioned.”

  “And I’ll do my best to think back and see if I can extract some more names from my memory. But don’t count on much there.”

  “Understood. If you have any ideas in that direction, I’d be grateful.” He took a piece of bread and buttered it.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Julie sensed he wanted to get to the more personal questions.

  Finally, he wiped his hands on a napkin and sat up straighter. Muscles in his face and hands tensed before he spoke.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about where I’m going and what I’m doing. What the future might hold. And I can’t help but wonder about you. What are your dreams for the future? What do you want out of life? Do you have any goals? Have they changed any in the last few years?”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of heavy questions. I don’t know if I have a lot of heavy answers. Back then I didn’t think much about goals beyond marrying you, building a career as a developer, and maybe having kids someday. Then… For a while after Spieler Round One, my main goal was survival. Figuring out how to earn a living and rebuild my life after it had all gone sour. And once I got there, then it was financial success and showing the world what a really good developer I am.”

  She toyed with her fork as she spoke. “Now, I’m going after a certain level of security. Enough money put away to let me do what I want. I have a dollar figure in mind as a goal, but I’ve still got a way to go before I get there. I want to have enough saved and invested so I can live on the income from it and work on whatever project I want. Whatever takes my fancy. And to explore the world a bit. Travel more. Move out of the city. Don’t get me wrong, I love New York, but like most people, I guess, I’d still like to think about having a family some day and the city isn’t really a great place to raise kids. So there’s that. What about you? Are you still angling to be president of Spieler some day?”

  He gave her a half-smile that seemed almost sad rather than happy. “Not anymore. You know that was my goal at one time. But following that grail blinded me to what was really important in my life. Of course, by the time I understood that, it was too late. I kept at it afterward because it was all I had left. Then I got to the next rung on the corporate ladder and I realized how little taking that step meant to me. It was good, don’t get me wrong, and it’s had its satisfactions, but overall the achievement wasn’t worth the cost. And I’ve lost confidence in the management. So now, I don’t know.”

  They’d just about finished their dinners by then. He let the conversation lag, though he continued to watch her with an intensity she found disconcerting. His stare reminded her that hunger came in many flavors and he might be feeling a craving food wouldn’t satisfy. If she were honest with herself, somewhere deep inside she shared that need. And just as honestly, it scared her in too many ways to count.

  He set down his fork and picked up his wine glass. After taking a sip, his fingers tightened on the glass’s stem and swirled the golden liquid. He stared down into it for a moment and sighed lightly before he looked up at her again.

  His eyes narrowed. “You know
where this leading, don’t you? What I want to say?”

  “I suspect,” she admitted.

  “Can I say it anyway?”

  She nodded. “Just don’t expect to hear the answers you want.”

  He set the wine glass down, but his fingers remained wrapped around the stem. “I made a terrible mistake three years ago. I realized it within days, but I figured I’d made such a mess of things there was no hope of repairing the damage. I was arrogant and ambitious, and I let that overrule what my heart knew. I spent so much time worrying about my career I let the most important thing—person—in my life slip away.”

  He looked straight at her and his expression showed a level of anguish that tore at her heart. “I never expected to get another chance. I certainly don’t deserve it. But I have one now and I can’t afford to waste the opportunity. I still love you, Julie. I still want you. Now and for always. But I understand why you don’t feel the same way. I’ll do everything I can to prove you can trust me this time, that I’m not the man I was then. I know what’s important and what isn’t.”

  He glanced down into the glass as if it might suggest the right words to him. “Unless you tell me that it’s completely impossible, absolutely will never happen, I want a chance to win you back.”

  She didn’t know how to answer. The silence stretched until it became uncomfortable. Finally she said, “After we broke up, three years ago, I was a total wreck for a while. Depressed, miserable, lonely, and at a loss. Then a friend of mine from college dragged me to a happy hour at a tavern not far from here and introduced me to a group of women she knew. We began talking and we hit it off. We were all at a sort of crossroads of our lives and needing support and motivation. So we kept meeting and we helped each other make it through various crises. And we all swore off romance in favor of concentrating on our careers. We’ve been meeting regularly ever since. We call ourselves the No Brides Club.”

  “Is that a gentle way of telling me to forget it?”

  “No. A couple of our members have just gotten engaged, and the others are all involved with guys they’re interested in or struggling with the possibility. Strange how our lives have moved on such different tracks, but in similar directions. So maybe we’re all learning that we have to grow and change. We’ve all had some career success, but…” She paused. “Maybe we’re all finding we need better balance. That we don’t have to cut out emotions from our lives. Is our definition of success too narrow?”

  “Mine was,” he said. “I learned the hard way that success can be too expensive.” He picked up a napkin, wiped his mouth, and tossed it down on his plate. “Does that mean there’s hope?”

  “I don’t know.” she answered. “I don’t want to give you any false hope. After three years of struggling to recover, it’s kind of hard to just turn around after a few weeks and say what happened in the past doesn’t matter.”

  “Understood. But you’ll give me a chance to try to convince you?”

  “I guess I will. But I can’t guarantee anything, and I don’t know if it’s fair to let you get your hopes up, because I don’t know if we can ever get back to where we were.”

  “I don’t want to go back to where we were. We were different people then. We were both too immature, too unbalanced, back then. I’d like to move forward as the people we are now. I know the attraction is still there. It certainly is for me, and I’m pretty sure it is for you, too.”

  “Yes, but…there are shadows over it. I don’t want to string you along. I really, honestly don’t know if I can figure out how to trust you again.”

  “Fair enough.” He thought about that as he took another sip of wine. “How about this? We give it a month. I’ll do my best to convince you we can make it work again. At the end of that time if you don’t think it will happen, I’ll walk away and leave you alone from then on. It won’t be easy and I’ll hate it, but I’ll do it. I won’t be the kind of guy who continues to harass a woman who doesn’t want him. Do you think a month would be long enough for you to know?”

  “Yeah, I think it would.” She didn’t really know, but it would be unfair to both of them to extend it any longer, allowing a hope that would never be fulfilled. Until she could look at him without seeing the shadow of past betrayal, she couldn’t go any farther than that.

  Later he escorted her out of the cab and then into her building. When they exited the elevator into the hallway outside her door, he put his arms around her and drew her gently closer. He stared down, into her eyes, a question in his gaze.

  She wasn’t aware of nodding, but he somehow read her willingness. His mouth came down and lips brushed gently over hers. Electric tingles radiated from that point of contact and spread all through her body. Heat inflamed her skin. Heat that started where his lips touched hers and then danced through her nerves and veins until her entire body roared into flame and nothing else in the world mattered.

  Then he deepened the kiss. She wanted him, wanted nothing more than to be close, closer to him, to feel him against her, to become part of him. His mouth plundered hers sweetly, hotly, branding her with his taste and his fire. Her heart pounded and blood pulsed fiercely as breath heaved in shallow pants.

  She was lost, drowning in him, consumed by him, and she didn’t want to let go.

  Only when he finally broke the contact and backed off did sanity return, but it trickled back slowly and painfully. They were both breathless and shocked by the intensity of the interaction. Silence reigned between them until he found a way to force out the words, “That was even better than I remembered.”

  She nodded slowly but didn’t dare say anything. Her fingers shook, along with the rest of her body, as she reached into her purse for her keys.

  CHAPTER 13

  She woke at her usual weekday time of seven on Monday morning, but found herself reluctant to get up. Staying in bed and claiming she needed to work in peace at home on the next stage of the app held a lot of appeal, but in truth, the next round of testing with Maureen on the data retrieval and presentation was more pressing.

  Still, she dreaded showing up at the office this way. The bruises from the mugging had darkened to several interesting shades of blue, black, and purple, and makeup still wasn’t going to hide the evidence.

  The reaction was every bit as bad as she anticipated, starting with Maureen’s sucked-in breath and startled exclamation. “What the heck! What happened? You go a couple of rounds in a kick-boxing match?”

  “Just one round—with a purse-snatcher who tried to snag my laptop case on the way home from work last Friday.”

  “Who won?”

  “I guess you’d have to call it a draw,” she said. “He didn’t get the laptop, but I collected a nice of assortment of bruises and sidewalk rash in the process of hanging onto it.”

  Suddenly half the remaining staff surrounded her, gaping at her bruised and battered body, brimming with curiosity and concern.

  “Did someone call the cops?”

  “Did they catch him?”

  “Did you go to the hospital?”

  Julie held up a hand to halt the questions. “The mugger took off when he saw I wasn’t letting go and people were taking notice. One guy tried to chase him, but he was gone. And someone else called the cops but we couldn’t give them much description, so there wasn’t much they could do either.” She told the whole story of what had happened, repeating the first part as more people gathered.

  “Mugger should’ve known better,” one of the sales reps said. “No way anyone could snag that laptop case away from you. Like one of them ancient warriors that wouldn’t give up his sword.”

  “Yeah, you’d fight ‘em to the death for that,” someone else agreed.

  A few others nodded, so Julie didn’t tell them she had no idea what the sword reference was all about. It sounded good, anyway.

  They asked her about the damage, how she was feeling, who’d helped patch her up, until she assured everyone she was fine. Still, it went on and on. Finall
y, she shook her head and said, “I appreciate all the concern, but really I’m okay. Just a bit sore and bruised. And in need of caffeine. Heading for the break room.”

  Most took the hint and let her go alone to fill her cup. When she got back only Maureen was at her desk nearby. “Ready to get into testing the next stage?” she asked. “I’m setting up the first test run database now.”

  “Sounds good. It’s mostly ready to go. I’d like to be well into it before the office move this week. Hate the interruption.”

  “Okay. Is Dan Foster going to be around today?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Just wondered how you’d feel about him seeing you like this.”

  Julie sighed. “He’s seen the damage.” She leaned over to Maureen and said, quietly, “Can you keep this to yourself, please?” At her friend’s nod, she told her about the weekend, leaving out only the conversation in the restaurant, Dan’s plea, and the kiss at the end.

  “So, I was right,” Maureen said. “He’s got it bad.”

  “Maybe so. But I’m still not sure I trust him or the company, so I’m making no commitments. And I would prefer the rumors kept under wraps as much as possible.”

  Maureen laughed harshly. “Dream on. The people who haven’t actually noticed themselves have heard about it from others.”

  “Great. Anyway, let’s get to work. I think I’ve got the data retrieval and presentation screens ready to go for testing. While you vet those, I’ll work on the updating process.”

  “Okay.”

  No one showed up to interrupt their work that day or the next, letting them make good, steady progress. The rest of the remaining staff spent most of their time packing things and loading them into vans provided by Spieler to move equipment and supplies.

  She didn’t see Dan again until Wednesday when he came to review the progress on moving. He stopped at her desk as soon as he arrived to study her face and ask how she was feeling.

  After a minute, Maureen got up and headed down the hall, leaving them alone to have a quiet, private conversation. Julie assured him that she was healing well, despite the colorful remnants of bruising on her face and arms, and felt fine. Her chest squeezed and heart beat faster at the warmth of his smile.