by Ally Blake
Of course! French, gorgeous, grouchy and an avid reader. How silly of her to even question him!
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
And it took Evie a moment to realise he’d let her off the hook on which she’d been floundering. “Hmm? Yes. Yes. I’m done. All done.”
Armand held out a hand towards the door, and Evie scooted by, holding her breath so as not to catch the scent of him—warm, elegant, inviting.
Downstairs, the Bullpen was like a sleeping giant: the hum of machines, the low lights, as if a good kick and it would rear back to comic-bright life in a second.
They hit the alley and walked side by side through the near-darkness, moonlight slanting over the artwork decorating the brickwork and over the angles of Armand’s face. Their shoes making music against the cobblestones beneath their feet.
If they hurried they’d still make the last train. If they didn’t hurry she could still call a cab and she’d get to enjoy the strange magic of walking with this man in the moonlight. Tuck it away like a little gift to bring out and admire as she lay on her lonely futon wherever she ended up.
“I have organised a car,” said Armand.
And Evie realised they’d hit the street. A sleek black car with tinted windows rumbled to life against the kerb. She could just make out the outline of a driver in a peaked hat. “You take it. I live an easy walk from the station.”
“Nevertheless.” Armand opened the rear door for her.
The street lamps dropped perfect circles of golden light on the footpath, a light breeze rustled the branches of a sapling planted in a hole in the concrete. And Evie found she couldn’t move.
She felt as if she had to say something—more than a simple thank-you for the car. They’d made a kind of breakthrough tonight. She wouldn’t say they were friends. More like interested observers. Visitors at the zoo, only neither could be sure which of them was the exhibit.
He watched her watching him—quietly, patiently. As if he too knew what it meant to require time to figure things out.
What if he had written her the poem? What if he’d been waiting for her to figure it out all along? But she couldn’t ask. It would have been embarrassing a few days ago, but now—yes or no—it would change everything.
And yet the possibility snagged at something inside her. Some place warm and soft and fragile. For the crush she’d hoped would dissolve away the more she got to know him had instead evolved as she’d come to regard him with respect, with intrigue, with a yearning that never quite went away.
If it was him she had to let him down. To break the fortune cookie’s curse.
He was tougher than he seemed. Seriously tough, she’d come to realise. Warrior-, hero-, soldier-level tough. He’d get over it.
The real question was: would she?
The breeze kicked up, lifting the hair not tucked into her beanie. She pushed it behind her ear.
Somewhere a clock struck, the chimes counting down to midnight.
As if a finger had been hooked into her shirt she felt herself sway away from the car. Towards Armand.
He noticed. He always noticed. Meaning he probably knew all about the crush. The intrigue. The respect. The yearning.
His hand tightened on the top of the door. Yeah, he knew.
His feet stayed where they were, moonlight shining off his nut-brown dress shoes. “Get in the car, Evie.”
“In a minute.”
When she took another step closer his nostrils flared but he still didn’t move. The man was a rock.
And the way her life was floundering, maybe a rock was exactly what she needed. In the interim. Until she was back on solid ground.
Armand looked off to the side, his eyes full of shadows, the breeze sending waves through his hair. After a long, slow out-breath his gaze came back to hers.
The figurative finger hooked into her shirt gave another little yank and she stumbled forward one more step. “I wanted to thank you. For tonight. For sticking around and letting me do what I needed to do. For making me feel like part of a team.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
The wind caught her hair again, catching in her eyelashes, on her lip. When she tugged it free, Armand’s gaze dropped to her mouth. And stayed there.
“Whatever it takes to get the job done.” His voice was deep, a rumble that shot through her body before zapping into the earth beneath her feet.
“See, that’s exactly how I feel.”
Yet her heart slammed against her ribs as if it was trying to break free. How could it not when he gazed at her lips as if haunted by the space between them? When he looked at her as if she was not only a curiosity, but also a disruption? As if he was confounded by the very fact of her?
The fortune cookie bobbed up in the corner of her mind like a final-warning sign. Danger Ahead! Though it was a bogus excuse. Or a case of apophenia. Sufferers looked for patterns in random data to make sense of the world. She’d looked it up. It had first been discovered during schizophrenia research. Good to know.
As she stood there in the moonlight, the breeze tugging at her hair, her clothes, with Armand clearly holding on so tight, she knew—if she believed in patterns as much as she claimed to, then ignoring them when it came to Armand was hypocritical.
She wasn’t alone in this. She wasn’t alone.
Before she could stop herself, Evie took a single step forward and pressed her lips against Armand’s.
No other part of them touched. He still held on to the car door, her back foot resting toe down on the ground.
It was delicate, daring, and it took less than a second to know she’d stepped over a line.
But she didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her mouth remained gentle against his. Cool to warm. Dewy to dry. Her entire body alight with the most exquisite sensation she’d ever known.
Kiss me back, she thought. Or push me away. Stop time. Rewind. Anything but the beautiful agony of the in-between.
Then, just as the backs of Evie’s eyes began to burn, Armand’s slowly closed. His hand slid around her back. He pulled her into the hard length of his body and a fist of tightly held desire unfurled inside her.
Weighted, heavy, her eyelids lowered and she grabbed a hunk of his shirt as she tilted and pressed her lips more fully to his. Testing, tasting, drowning in release. The warmth of his mouth, his body, a stark contrast to the wintry breeze at her back.
His other hand sank into her hair, his thumb brushing her cheek, her ear, dislodging her beanie, before he nudged her lips apart and set her world on fire.
Her hands were running up his back, sliding through his hair, over his spectacular backside, her knee nudging between his until every part of her that could lean into every part of him did.
Minutes, hours, aeons—probably seconds—later Armand pulled back, tipping his forehead to hers. Bodies heaving, they found their breath.
Evie felt less as though she’d been kissed than as if she’d been hit by a train. She couldn’t feel her feet and her vision spun with stars. She still gripped a fistful of his shirt but no way was she ready to let go. It was the only thing keeping her from sinking into a puddle at his feet.
A car horn beeped long and hard, young male voices whooping and laughing as their car cruised by.
Evie came back into her own body enough to press back and look into Armand’s eyes.
After one more deep breath Armand looked up, his stormy gaze tangling with hers.
What she saw there brought her back to earth with a thud.
For the man was in pain. She could see it in the curve of his shoulders. In the furrow of his brow. In the tempest of emotion in his eyes.
While she felt wracked with lust, Armand looked as though someone had just discovered the bruise in the centre of his soul and jabbed it with a sharp stick.
It was too much.
>
He was too much.
What had she done?
Before he could say a word she yanked open the car door, leapt inside and gave the driver Zoe’s address.
As the car eased smoothly out into the street Evie sank her face into her hands and screamed. Silently.
She’d kissed him. And he’d clearly wished she hadn’t.
How the hell was she meant to face him again? At work? On the train? Every day? How was she meant to face herself? When acting contrary to her own interests over a man was the one thing she’d been determined she’d never do?
* * *
As the train neared Armand’s usual pick-up spot the next morning Evie’s leg jiggled so hard it was making her travel-sick.
“How much coffee did you drink this morning?” Zoe asked.
“One, two cups.” Evie literally couldn’t remember. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Not exactly.”
“Ah, I see.” Zoe nudged her in the shoulder. “Bad dreams. I bet I know who’s the leading man. And speaking of dreamy, look who it is.”
Evie knew exactly who Zoe was talking about and kept her gaze trained determinedly on the window. If she didn’t make eye contact perhaps he’d head to his old seat. And they could pretend the night before had never happened.
When she heard the pop of Zoe’s phone taking a photo, her head snapped around. “What are you doing?”
Zoe showed her the picture and, yep, it was Armand. “Seriously. That man is the very definition of a long, cool drink of water.”
Knowing it was a losing battle, Evie glanced up from the phone to find Armand making his way through the carriage towards her. Her insides came over all gooey at the sight of him. He looked so French in his dark suit, dark shirt, dark tie, stubble now hitting sexy-beard length.
When she remembered how it felt to kiss him—the soft scrape of his stubble, the heat of his lips, Evie struggled to remember how to breathe.
Zoe said, “Lucky he’s not completely to my taste, or I’d be in big trouble. I like rogues. Bad boys. And my daring Lance is the baddest of them all.”
Evie thought back to Armand’s revelations of his past adventures and decided not to tell Zoe lest she implode on the spot.
“Love poem or not, you are a fool if you don’t at least put your hat in the ring there. Let me be your go-between. A fairy godmother if you will.”
“Not necessary.”
By the time Armand made it to their seat, Evie’s leg was cramping from shaking so much.
This was for the best. Get the mortification over and done with. When his gaze connected with hers she braced herself... Only to melt from the head down.
“Good morning,” he said in that voice of his, his gaze locked on to hers.
“Good morning!” Zoe sing-songed before Evie was able to find her voice.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
“Our Evie had bad dreams,” Zoe said, helpfully. “Or were they good?”
“Not important,” Evie said, her voice raw.
She could have sworn she saw a flicker of light behind the clouds in Armand’s eyes. But the vision of him looking so pained the night before wiped it out.
Then Armand said, “I believe this is yours.” He held out her beanie. The one that had fallen off her head when he’d kissed her.
Strike that. She’d kissed him. With the excuse she was trying to discover if he was the poet or the one the fortune cookie had told of. The truth was, she’d wanted to kiss him. So badly. Consequences be damned.
“Thanks.” Evie leaned past Zoe and took the beanie, shoving it into her backpack.
She caught Zoe’s eye when she sat up, to find her oldest friend watching her with far too much understanding on her face.
“So tell me about yourself, Armand. Married? Single? Got your eye on someone?”
Evie shot Zoe a death stare but her friend refused to engage, too busy was she keeping an eye on Armand to test his reaction. Little did Zoe know that the man was a Zen master.
Glancing at Armand as briefly as humanly possible, Evie said, “Ignore her. She’s of the mistaken impression that anyone but her would care about such things.”
When Zoe went to say something else, Evie leapt in. “Please leave him out of this. He already thinks Australians are too uptight about romance.”
“Does he, now?”
“He’s French. It came up.”
“Hmm, he could be right,” Zoe said. “Evie is being very circumspect about the prospects at work. Perhaps you can illuminate me.”
“Zoe!” Evie wished she could climb under the train seats, despite whatever disgusting things lurked down there.
Then Armand said, “What about your young friend in the Bullpen? The one who always wears a cap.”
Evie’s jiggling leg came to a grinding halt. Was he seriously suggesting what she thought he was suggesting? And after he’d held her to him the way he had the night before, kissing her until her knees no longer worked?
“You mean Jamie?” Evie offered helpfully. “I do not want Jamie.” Then something made her add, “But even if I did want him, I still have no intention of mixing work and play.”
“Ah, you’re still stuck on that, then.”
Evie’s leg started up again, now at double speed. “Not stuck. That makes it sound as if it’s not my decision. I am completely determined.”
“If you say so.”
The train began to slow, the metal beneath the belly of the beast screeching as they came to a halt. Evie ducked under the strap of her cross-body bag and stood, stepping over the school bags at her feet, and over Zoe’s knees.
Till she found herself behind Armand. She could smell his aftershave. Or maybe it was just him. She closed her eyes and breathed. Earthy, clean and delicious.
When she opened her eyes he’d moved away, heading towards the doors.
“Off you go, then,” Zoe said. “Can’t wait to hear what ‘comes up’ today.”
Once she could no longer see him, Evie made a dash for the door, catching it just in time. Her beanie slipped sideways, one of the puppy-dog ears dipping into her eye. She fixed it then took off at lightning speed towards the office so as not to be late.
“Evie!” It was Armand.
Of course, he wanted to walk with her today. Right when she felt all strange and discombobulated, confused and raw.
“Evie, please wait.”
Evie stopped and spun, only Armand hadn’t seen it coming and barrelled into her.
He grabbed her by the upper arms, turning her, their legs entwining, the world going topsy-turvy until he found balance enough for the both of them. There they stood, breath intermingling, bodies slammed against one another as gravity and momentum settled back to a normal ratio.
“Look at me,” he insisted.
“I’d rather not.”
“Why? Are you afraid you’ll kiss me again?”
Evie laughed, the sound only slightly hysterical. “Don’t panic. I got your message. I won’t be doing that again.”
“Evie.”
She flinched at the intensity in his voice, the way it rolled over her skin like a caress. And she couldn’t help it. Her eyes found his.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You have nothing to apologise for.”
Evie rolled her eyes. Or at least she tried to. With Armand so close—close enough she could see the flecks of navy in his irises, could trace the shape of his jaw beneath his stubble—she was struggling to maintain control of herself.
Her voice was raw as she said, “I saw the look on your face last night, Armand. You don’t need to throw Jamie in my face as a way to try to deal with me.”
A muscle beneath his eye twitched. “He seems like a nice young man.”
Evie laughed again. “You’ve barely said two words to the guy, so how would you know if he’s a nice young man?”
Armand breathed out long and slow. “You’re right. Most people blur into one another in the end. A rare few have surprised me. Of which you are most definitely one.”
Evie felt herself flush all over at the look in Armand’s eyes, the rough note in his voice.
Then he let go of her with one hand to tug her beanie into place. “Jamie is off the table. You would never find contentment with a man of his ilk. You need someone who knows your worth.”
Now what was he saying? That he was that man? No, there was still that sense of a bruise about him. As though if she looked beneath the sharp suit she’d find he’d been beaten black and blue.
She glanced between his eyes but found him as barricaded as ever. The colour in his eyes so dark she could no longer differentiate the blues from the greys.
And yet he still held her. Close. So close she couldn’t stop trembling.
That line she’d stepped over the night before? In that moment she knew—there was no going back. Not for her.
“What if I’m not looking for contentment?” she asked.
Her conscience perked up. That’s exactly what you’re looking for, kiddo. Keeping your dreams manageable, your expectations reasonable. No running back to the farm for you!
“Evie...”
“You kissed me too, you know. Sure, I kissed you first, but you kissed me back. And it was a good kiss.”
His eyebrow lifted in the international sign of, Come on. It was better than good.
“Fine. It was a great kiss.” She’d still been floating three inches off the ground when she’d slunk into Zoe’s apartment forty minutes later. “And yet it can’t happen again.”
Why not? she asked herself. But then he got that look in his eye again. As if kissing him was a death sentence.
“What do we do about it?” she asked.
“Why can’t we do nothing?”
“Nothing.” Huh.
“The moon was high,” he said. “The hour was late. The wine was good. The work intense. And we kissed. Not everything in life has a deeper meaning.”
Evie reared back. “When you were in the jungle with your men, and it was late, and you hadn’t seen another soul in hours, and things were about as intense as things can ever get, did that kind of thing happen to you a lot?”
