In the Clear

by Tamara Morgan

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “No, he’s really nice,” Lexie said, her defensive hackles rising. “He’s been a friend of my brother’s—of my whole family’s, really—for years. You’ve never met anyone so dependable or so sweet. He’s . . . it’s hard to explain. He’s the guy you trust with your most valuable possessions. The one who makes you feel better when no one else can.”

  “Oh, I believe you.” Joan licked her lips and leaned in. “What I can’t believe, however, is that you’ve been sitting on Spokane’s famous rescue guy all this time. If he’s been a friend of your family’s for years, why are you only now rolling him out for us? Cute, heroic . . . and he probably loves kittens.” She released a wistful sigh. “They always love kittens.”

  Lexie had no idea. Kittens had never struck her as a deal breaker before.

  But Joan wasn’t done. “The women at the luncheon are going to eat him right up. By all means, bring the man. He probably looks incredible in a suit. He certainly did that wet T-shirt justice.”

  Lexie stopped breathing. He really had.

  She wasn’t sure what was more compelling about that internet photo, which had been printed out on the office’s high-resolution printer and was currently tucked away in her desk drawer of shame, underneath all the candy bar wrappers she pretended didn’t exist.

  Was it the look on his face, normally so unreadable, transformed into the gruff, resolute expression of a man who’d just saved a woman’s life? Or was it the way all his clothes clung to his long, lean body, the sweep of his wet hair a deep brown across his brow?

  The nipples.

  She shivered. It was the nipples that did it, erect and beckoning against the hard swell of a chest that had seen one or two bench presses as of late. Tiny man nipples. Strong man chest. What was it about that combination? And on Fletcher, of all people?

  For as long as she could remember, Fletcher had been the lanky, pasty white guy at the beach. The one who always waited until the last minute to take off his shirt before plunging in the water. The one whose tiny man nipples were the last thing on her mind.

  “Do you think we could get him to give a speech?” Joan asked, prodding Lexie back into reality. “Something about everyday heroes making the biggest difference? He’d make a fantastic keynote.”

  Oh. Oh. What had she just done? “I don’t think so. He’s um . . . shy.”

  “Shy?” Joan said the word as though it were poison. There was no place for introversion in the nonprofit fundraising world. You made polite noises and got money—or in Lexie’s case, you made loud and obnoxious noises and got money. That was how it worked. “Surely a man who jumps into freezing lakes . . . it won’t hurt to ask, right? I mean, since he’s already going to be there?”

  “I don’t really know him well enough . . . ”

  “You just said he’s a longtime family friend.”

  “He is.”

  “But you don’t know him well enough to ask?”

  No. She thought she’d known him as well as she knew Sean, but that was proving to be false on so many levels. A favor she might have couched in a laugh and a smile last week now had all kinds of meaning. Soul-crunching, unfamiliar meaning.

  “I’m sure you won’t let me down.”

  Lexie plastered a smile on her face, but the heaviness in her stomach—and her heart—didn’t leave her feeling very hopeful. Fletcher probably had hundreds of better things to do with his time. Save people. Woo ladies. Keep secrets.

  Sean was right. She wasn’t the kind of person people told their deepest, darkest thoughts to or relied on to get the job done. She couldn’t be trusted with anything.

  Joan stood, doing that graceful elevation thing that only women with legs up to their ears managed. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Lexie. Against all odds, you always manage to make things work.”

  Joan hadn’t meant to be unkind, but as she very carefully propped the door open with the wrought iron rabbit, Lexie couldn’t help but feel hurt.

  Because it was true. Against all odds—against the depressing fact that Lexie Sinclair couldn’t do a single thing without making a mess of herself—she somehow managed to continue brangling her way through life.

  “And now all you have to do is convince Fletcher to be your very public and highly anticipated date for a Christmas party,” she told herself darkly. “And to make a speech in public . . . tiny nipples and all.”

  Chapter Five

  “What are you doing?” Sean watched as Lexie pulled a long, rectangular dish out of the oven.

  It smelled like lasagna, and it looked like lasagna, but she wasn’t making any affirmative statements as to its status just yet. Cooking had never been her forte. It always seemed to her that recipes were more of a guideline than an ironclad set of rules, and the food was the one to suffer for it.

  She stabbed the cheesy noodles with a fork. When it came back benign, she decided to call it. “I’m making dinner.”

  “I see that.” Sean gave a tentative sniff. “The question is, why? I thought we were finally making good headway on those turkey sandwiches.”

  “Fletcher doesn’t care for turkey.”

  “How would you know? And more importantly, what does that have to do with anything?”

  Emboldened by her culinary success, Lexie decided to go for broke and attempt a salad. “He’s always hated turkey. I think it has something to do with the fact that his dad died around Thanksgiving.”

  “You can’t possibly know that.” Sean picked up the fork and made a few more stabs in the pasta. He, too, was perplexed to find it intact and seemingly edible.

  “Why?” She yanked the fork away. He was ruining her perfectly good meal. That was a predatory lasagna right there. She needed to bag, tag, and woo Fletcher in time for the luncheon on the twenty-third—and that wasn’t going to happen if Sean kept dangling women in glittery dresses in front of him every night of the week. The only glitter Lexie had was when she overdid it on the bronzer. She had to pull out all the stops here. “I have eyes. I pay attention. He also doesn’t care for chocolate cake, but he always orders it when we go out. I end up having to eat it all so it doesn’t go to waste.”

  A knock sounded at the door, and there was a brief scuffle while Lexie and Sean raced each other to answer it. Fletcher waited on the other side, and it suddenly seemed imperative that Lexie get there first. She wouldn’t give Sean the chance to taint him with his negativity and promises of the flesh. She had a domestic image to maintain here. She was even wearing an apron.

  As Lexie rounded the corner of the couch, Sean pulled a fast one on her and leaped over the back. She was no match for him in terms of agility—not with his freakish, ape-like arms—and he skittered to a stop and pulled open the door just as she reached the back of it. With her face.

  She hit the ground with a thud.

  “Hey, Sean.” She heard Fletcher’s voice as if from the end of a long hallway. “Why does your apartment smell like food? It never smells like food in here.”

  Lexie let out a moan and lifted her sleeve to her nose, where the familiar warm, wet seepage of clumsiness trickled. “Sean, you jerk. I’m bleeding. I think you broke my nose.”

  “Impossible. It takes a lot more than a door to break your nose. Don’t you remember that time you accidentally hit yourself in the face with the tire iron and you barely even bruised?”

  “Oh, shit, Lexie. Are you okay?”

  She felt rather than saw Fletcher drop to his knees next to her. Her eyes were closed against nausea as the largest proportion of the blood trickled down her throat, but it would have taken ten tire irons to the head not to feel the warmth of his hand as it wrapped gently around the back of her neck.

  “Go grab a towel, Sean. This looks really bad. Here, Lex—sit up, but not too fast. What happened?”

  Sean let out a longsuffering sigh as he moved to the kitchen, mumbling something about two left feet and a skull crafted of iron.

 
Lexie finally cracked open one of her eyes to find herself practically ensconced in Fletcher’s lap. He sat on the floor next to her, cradling her upper half, one hand gently tilting her head back to avoid the spill of blood all over their white carpet. There goes the security deposit. Though, come to think of it, she’d probably already lost a big chunk of that from the candle that had fallen in the bedroom and scorched what looked like a pentagram near her bed.

  “Hold still,” he commanded, his voice gentle but firm.

  “It’s not that big of a deal. Sean’s right. If I fell into a maidenly swoon every time a door hit me in the face, I’d be bedridden for life.”

  “Why were you standing by the door in the first place?”

  Because I was chasing you down seemed a bit too honest, given her current proximity to his man nipples. In fact, Fletcher’s jacket had fallen open to reveal that the only thing separating her from the expanse of chest holding her close was the thin fabric of a Mountain Gear T-shirt. Now that she thought about it, he was always wearing things like that, worn shirts with logos for outdoor equipment. She’d never made the connection before.

  Connections were being made now. Connections were all over the place. In fact, she could practically reach out and trace the outline of the O where the hard protrusion of her new favorite body part poked through.

  “Here.” Sean dropped a towel onto Lexie’s face, and except for the slightly musty smell of what had to be something dragged out of the dirty laundry, she knew a moment’s thanks for timely intrusions. Had she seriously been about to tweak Fletcher’s nipple? What is wrong with me?

  Fletcher took one look at the towel and made a face. In the manner of kindly grandfathers and adorable men everywhere, he whisked a handkerchief out of his pocket and used that instead. Still supporting her with a pair of surprisingly strong arms, which held her firm and sent a shock of delight to her own not-so-tiny nipples, he administered what had to be some kind of mountaineering first aid. If the sight of blood bothered him at all, it wasn’t evident in the way his hands moved all crisp and efficient over her body.

  Oh, dear. Now he had efficient hands and strong arms in addition to his well-anointed man chest. By nightfall, Fletcher would be nothing but a collection of masculine body parts for her to dream of licking.

  And she wanted to do it, too. Right now, coming to her rescue, cradling her against his chest, Fletcher and her saliva didn’t seem like such a strange combination. She was as bad as all the other women falling for the image of the hero rather than the real man.

  “Stop babying her.” Sean loomed over them both. “Next thing you know, she’s going to want to go to the emergency room for every tiny broken toe.”

  “I’m okay now,” she said feebly. Sean kind of had a point. A girl could get used to a man taking care of her—and that was something she could ill afford. The chances of Fletcher being on hand to lift her up after every one of her mishaps were slim, to say the least.

  She took the handkerchief from his hand and glanced at it, giant crimson splotches ruining what looked like a very nice square of fabric. How many more of those splotches covered her face and apron? She was scared to look. “I’ll, um, wash this?”

  “Nah. Keep it.” He peered at her, his eyes crinkled at the corners. They were kind crinkles. Caring crinkles. “I think the bleeding has stopped. You should probably take it easy tonight, though.”

  “You might also want to change your clothes. You look like you got your hand caught in a garbage disposal.” Sean didn’t even try to conceal his irritation. He always hated not being the center of attention—he’d once accused her of being clumsy on purpose as a way to gain sympathy points. Easy for him to say. He’d been born with natural grace, moving smoothly through the world and one hundred percent confident of his place in it. Near the top, naturally. “Are we about ready, Fletcher?”

  “I dunno.” Fletcher cast a worried look her way. “Maybe we should stick around and keep Lexie company tonight.”

  This was her in. She should have thought to pull the damsel in distress routine days ago. Sean had nothing on wilting femininity.

  “I cooked.”

  Fletcher’s eyes flew open.

  “It’s not that hard to believe,” she protested. Shyness overtook her as she realized the second half of the cooking plan involved her begging Fletcher into being her date. Having been so near to defiling his nipples just minutes ago, she was having a hard time picturing the conversation. “Anyway. There’s a backup pizza on the way and I rented movies. Ones with lots of explosions and underdeveloped female characters.”

  Fletcher’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “You have a backup pizza?”

  “And explosions.”

  Sean, clearly sensing defeat, threw up his hands. “I cannot believe three young, attractive, single people are going to spend a Saturday night covered in blood and pretending to eat Lexie’s undercooked noodles. I’ll be right back. I’m putting on my stretchy pants.”

  He took the last of Lexie’s confidence with him. She’d been alone with Fletcher hundreds of times before, of course, both in silence and happily chatting away. But there had never been . . . pressure before.

  She was definitely feeling the pressure now. It filled her and made her feel as if she were floating. Or crushed underneath the weight of it all. It was hard to tell the difference.

  “You don’t have to eat my food if you don’t want to,” she offered, still stupidly clutching the blood-soaked handkerchief. She could make out a monogrammed FO in one corner. How cute was that? He had his hankies made with his initials. She finally risked a look down and saw that her chest did, indeed, look as though it was the site of a recent murder. “I should probably go change, too.”

  “I’d love to.”

  She stopped in the act of removing her apron. Had she asked him out and not realized it? She’d done that once before, to a gorgeously handsome man and the gorgeously beautiful wife standing next to him. The outcome had not been so gorgeous.

  “Eat your food, I mean,” he added. “And thanks for planning a night in for us. Don’t tell Sean I said so, but I’m exhausted trying to keep up with him at all the concerts and bars.”

  “Oh.” Her first feeling—of supreme relief—was soon replaced by fear. If he was already nearing burnout mode, what were the chances he’d be the least bit interested in going out with her? “Then I guess that means I won’t be able to convince you to be my date on Friday for this holiday benefit luncheon my work is throwing, huh?”

  He stared at her for one very long, very painful minute, the silence broken only by the sounds of Sean thumping as he wrangled himself into the pair of polar bear flannel pajama pants he had a habit of lounging around the apartment in.

  “Date?”

  Right. He sounded horrified.

  She decided to backtrack. “We-ell, let’s not call it a date, exactly. It’s more like I need a high profile plus-one, and you’re kind of a local hero right now. And it’s possible everyone at my work sort of already thinks you’re coming. And it’s possible they think it because that’s what I told them.”

  When he still didn’t say anything, she had no choice but to lay it all out there. “Let’s face it. I’m a horrible human being and I say things before I completely think them through.”

  “You’re not a horrible human being, Lexie.” His voice was soft, almost painfully so.

  “Yes, I am.” She braced herself for the rest. “Just wait—my story only gets worse.”

  She felt the light touch of his finger under her chin. “Hey. What happened?”

  There was no way to avoid it. The soft look in his eyes made her feel like a fraud, and she was still bloody and ensconced in his lap and more comfortable there than was good for either of them. But she was already all in.

  “My boss was also wondering if maybe you’d be willing to give a speech.”

  His finger dropped like a dead weight. “A speech?”

  “Five minutes, tops. Just
a little bit about what inspired you to join your Search and Rescue group and how giving back to the community helps. An everyday hero sort of thing.”

  He looked at her with an odd expression—not mad, exactly, but not pleased either. “Because people love heroes,” he said.

  “I know it’s awful of me to ask this of you, but I was on the spot and I thought . . . .” What had she thought? That he might be willing to set aside his dislike of public speaking simply because she asked him to? That he was all of a sudden a different person who pounded his chest and bragged about his success to perfect strangers?

  That wasn’t fair of her. It wasn’t even kind. Like everyone else in the world right now, she was treating him as Fletcher the Great. Not Fletcher the Man.

  “Sure.”

  His response caught her so off guard she physically teetered, leaning on him for support. “Do you mean it? Or are you still talking about my lasagna?”

  There was that half-smile again. And the eye crinkles. But this time, they resulted in a rapid-fire leap of her pulse in her throat. “I’d be happy to be your plus-one.”

  She clapped her hands and threw her arms around his neck. “Would you really?” Somehow, forward momentum got the better of her, and she landed on top of Fletcher in a giant, bloody bear hug that ranked up there with her top ten most inelegant moments—and there was some stiff competition in there. Inelegance aside, she lingered a moment, her head hovering over his, her breath and pulse building up on top of one another until she felt like a plane about to take off.

  “And don’t worry about the speech,” she said, her voice even more high pitched than usual. “I’ll make up something to tell my boss. It’s not like I’m impressing them with my professionalism over there anyway.”

  He gently extricated himself out from underneath her, his gaze long and difficult to read. Did he hate her? Think she was ridiculous? Wish she hadn’t put him in this position in the first place? “This is really important to you, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t want you to feel like you have to sing for your supper. In fact, let’s forget I ever mentioned it. Please?”