by Sparks, Ana
If I hadn’t been so tired myself, I would have woken him back up and asked him how the hell he fell asleep so quickly, because it was a trick I definitely could have used.
Instead, though, I went straight to my room, locking the door behind me and refusing to even change into my pajamas before falling into bed, where I had bizarre and extremely hot dreams about chocolate, coffee, and a pair of eyes that made me want to do incredibly naughty, and incredibly uncharacteristic things.
Chapter 5
Erika
I woke up gradually, coming to the surface like I was swimming up to it, and wasn’t in a big hurry, but knowing that I had to get there for some reason. Knowing that there was something I had to do.
Someone I had to—
I jerked upright, then put a hand to my head, immediately regretting the action, which hadn’t been kind to a head that hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Glancing blearily at my phone, I saw that it had only been three hours since I’d arrived back at my house, with—
Oh, God.
I dropped my phone and stared suddenly at the door to my room, memories crashing back into my head like boulders rushing down a hill.
It had only been three hours since I’d gotten home with a random stranger I’d picked up in the bar. The stranger who was, at this very moment, sleeping on my couch!
What the hell had I been thinking? I never brought strangers home to my apartment, and on the rare occasions that I did, I definitely never let them spend the night. I absolutely never went to sleep when they were still in the apartment.
“Terrific, Erika,” I hissed at myself, climbing out of bed, remembering that I hadn’t bothered to change before I went to sleep, and heading quickly for the bathroom that was attached to my bedroom. “Not only do you invite a random guy home from the bar, you then fall asleep while he’s in the other room!”
On the way to the bathroom, I paused at the bedroom door to check the lock. It was still securely fastened, which, I guessed, was as good a defense as I was going to get, given the situation. When I leaned an ear against the door, holding my breath and listening intently, I… didn’t hear anything.
No snoring. No music. No laughing.
And yeah, if I’d heard someone laughing, I would have been a little bit worried. Because who sits in someone else’s apartment and laughs to themselves?
The point was, though, that I didn’t hear anything. It sounded like there was no one out there. Had the mysterious Francisco decided he’d had enough of this random tour of Chicago, which had started with his supposed tour guide taking him to her apartment and immediately falling asleep, and gone back to his hotel?
His hotel that he supposedly didn’t remember?
I blew a breath out, trying to make my brain come up with some logical action in this situation, and then decided that no matter what I was about to do, it should start with clean clothes. I didn’t have any scientific evidence for it, but I didn’t think anything good happened when you were in last night’s work clothes, stinking of peanuts and beer.
I hustled toward the bathroom, grabbing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt on the way, and paused for long enough to scrub my face clean and apply a swipe of moisturizer. Then I changed clothes more quickly than I’d ever changed clothes before, my ears turned toward the living room the entire time, and hustled back toward the bedroom door.
Once I was there, I leaned toward the door again, listening—before actually breathing out a chuckle at myself. If anyone could have seen me in the moment, they would have thought I was absolutely bonkers.
And they probably would have been right.
So instead of pausing any longer, I threw open the door and rushed out into the living room, my hands up in front of me like I was actually getting ready to fight someone.
I jerked to a stop when I saw Francisco himself standing in the kitchen, a bottle of cider in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, his eyes wide with shock… and then amusement.
“Tell me, do all Americans always come out of their bedrooms at a run, looking like they’re going to fight whoever they find in their apartment?” he asked, grinning unabashedly. “Or is that specific to Chicago?”
He put the items he was holding carefully down on the counter, like they might explode, and then held his hands up to show that he wasn’t holding anything else.
And at that moment, I realized what it was that had actually woken me up. It hadn’t been noise, and it certainly hadn’t been my body telling me it had gotten enough sleep. No, it had been the scent of food. Jibaritos, to be exact.
And good jibaritos, if my nose wasn’t lying.
My eyes went to the bag on the counter and I let my hands drop to my sides. “I don’t think it’s an American thing so much as a thing you do when you’re a girl who lives by herself and has decided for some reason to let a stranger sleep on her couch,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
Francisco shrugged, like it wasn’t the first time he’d received a reaction like that—which made me wonder once again what sort of life he’d lived—and then smiled at me. “I’ve had worse,” he admitted. “Did you sleep well?”
“I did,” I answered, surprised at the idea that I had, in fact, slept better than I usually did. “Did you… Did you bring food?” My stomach growled at the thought, and I knew without having to ask that I was blushing. But I was also starving, and I wasn’t going to apologize for that.
Francisco’s hands went back to the bag, and he quickly pulled out two long, wrapped packages. Then he went to work going through my cupboards—looking, it turned out, for glasses. “I did,” he said as he worked. “You fed me this morning, so I figured it was the least I could do to make sure you had food here when you woke up. Besides, you promised me this magical jibarito. I wasn’t going to let you send me back to the hotel without it. Though I can’t speak for whether I chose right when I ordered it.”
I moved forward and started helping him unpack the food, already salivating at the thought of it.
“You wake me up with jibaritos and you think I’m letting you go back to your hotel?” I asked, unwrapping the sandwiches and putting them on plates. “You’ll be lucky if I let you go at all. I might keep you here just to supply me with food.”
I was surprised when he bumped his hip into mine… and then left it there, his body heat soaking through his clothes and right into my skin, and leaving a path of sparks. When I glanced up, I saw him smiling down at me, his eyes meltingly intense.
“Be careful, Erika,” he said softly. “I might hold you to that.”
Something jumped from his body into mine, giving me the insane urge to turn, pull him up against me, and kiss him, and I felt my hands jerk in the wrappings from the sandwiches.
My mouth opened a bit—though I hadn’t given it that command—and my eyes went to his lips, my own breath going still. His eyes dropped as well, the smile melting off his face, and the entire world grew still around us, in that way it does when something really, really important is about to happen.
Then common sense crashed back in, the world started up again, and he spun away from me, his shoulders tenser than they had been before.
“Sit down,” he said. “This might be your apartment, but I owe you a debt of gratitude for letting me stay in the bar, and then in your home. For right now, you are my guest.”
I turned and went toward my table, trying like mad to remember what breathing was supposed to feel like, and to get my stomach to settle back into the spot where it was supposed to live.
And reminding myself that I didn’t know this man. I’d barely even learned his name, and I hadn’t even talked to him until just this morning. There was absolutely no reason to be acting like some lovesick fool who had never met a handsome man before.
I’d met plenty of handsome men. Hell, I’d slept with my fair share of them. But none of them had ever woken me up with food. They hadn’t gone into a city they didn’t know and found the food I’d promised them and then brought it
back as a thank-you for having done them a very small favor.
They also hadn’t looked at me like I was some delicious, chocolate-covered strawberry that they wanted to lick up and down and then bite into very, very slowly.
And thoughts like that were not even a little bit helpful when it came to the breathing problem I was having right then. So I dropped into a seat, stared at my hands, and did my best to think of completely unsexy things. Like how cold it probably was in Lake Michigan right now. And how tired I was going to be during my shift tonight, without having had enough sleep today.
When Francisco slipped into the seat across from me, though, sliding a plate and a glass my way and grinning like a kid who had just experienced his first cupcake, all those non-sexy thought disappeared into the ether, leaving nothing but the heat of his gaze—and an amazingly good jibarito.
Chapter 6
Erika
I wasn’t surprised when the jibarito turned out to be good. Francisco, of course, acted like it was all because of him—but I knew better. Jibaritos were specific, requiring exactly the right mix of spices, plantain, meat, and veggies, but in Chicago, where the sandwiches had been invented, we’d perfected the mix. You could get a number of different versions, but they were almost always good—and definitely always filling.
When we were finished, he sat back, his hands on his stomach, and sighed happily. “I’m not even sure what I just ate,” he said honestly. “Was it sweet? Was it spicy? Garlic? Fresh vegetables? But I think I might have found what they serve in Heaven.”
“And that,” I told him triumphantly, “is exactly why I told you that you had to try it. Can the clam chowder in New York even begin to compare? Really?”
He closed his eyes, as if he was remembering every bit of the meal we’d just eaten, and shook his head. “You were right, I suppose.” Then he opened his eyes and grinned at me. “Now, what are we going to do next?”
I laughed, because I still wasn’t committed to the idea of being his tour guide for the city. I was already going to be a wreck at work tonight, with the lack of sleep today. Any further outings and I’d be completely useless.
So I was as surprised as you probably are when I tipped my head, considered the fun I’d already had with him—and the way my body was even now lighting up at the warmth of his smile—and agreed to show him around town.
Or maybe you’re not so surprised to hear that, after all. Maybe you already saw it coming.
It’s easier to see those sorts of things, I think, when you’re not personally involved in them. And that’s really my only excuse for the shock I still felt as I texted my boss a minute later and told him that the cold I’d felt coming on this morning had gotten even worse, and that I was probably going to have to call it in for the entire weekend.
“I certainly don’t want to get anyone else sick, if I’m coming down with anything,” I said aloud as I typed out the message.
When I looked up, expecting Francisco to be laughing at the blatant lie, I found him nodding seriously instead.
“A very mature and responsible decision,” he said.
“Because lying to my boss and agreeing to take a complete stranger around town is so mature?” I asked.
He just shrugged. “We are hardly strangers, Erika. You have cooked breakfast for me, I have brought lunch for you, and we have slept in the same apartment. Those are not things strangers do.”
We’d also come extremely close to making out in the kitchen before that second meal, but I didn’t think I needed to bring that up right now. After all, nothing had actually happened.
Aside from my blood buzzing like it was full of butterflies and my heart thumping loudly enough to be a drum solo, and me having to actually clench my fists together to keep from running my fingertips over his lips. Wrapping my hands in those curls and yanking his mouth to mine.
Suggesting that he devour me whole, right there in the kitchen, with those luscious, laughing lips of his.
No, I didn’t think I could claim that we were strangers anymore, either. Though technically, we’d only known each other for about twelve hours or so. And not even that, if you counted the fact that I hadn’t actually spoken to him until this morning, when I woke him up.
I hit ‘send’ on the message to my boss and put my phone down, setting aside the nagging feeling of guilt about playing hooky and telling myself that I had never in my entire life broken the rules. I was twenty-six years old and an insanely handsome and charming man was currently standing in my kitchen, asking me to entertain him for the weekend.
I would have been insane to tell him no. I’d been working hard for my entire life. Wasn’t it time I had an adventure?
“What do you want to do first?” I asked with as confident a grin as I could muster.
* * *
In the end, Francisco decided to let me choose the itinerary—me being the native of the city—so we started off in one of my favorite stores in the city, a place that had been an apothecary once, and was still designed to look like one, but now had a whole range of more modern apothecary-type things.
“And what exactly do they sell here?” Francisco asked, looking into the window and frowning at all the jars, full of unnamed substances.
“Everything you can think of,” I told him, grinning. “And the best hangover cure I’ve ever found. Even better than greasy food and coffee.”
I grabbed his hand and towed him into the store, already arguing with him about whether this particular cure was better than the greasy breakfast I’d recommended just this morning.
By the time we left the apothecary, we had bags full of organic candy, tea, essential oils, and even bubble bath.
“The bubble bath will change your life,” I told him, completely serious. “It’s magic. Takes away any ache or pain you can imagine.”
He didn’t argue with me, instead looping his arm around my waist and pulling me close against the Chicago wind. “Well, now that we have the all-important bubble bath, what are we going to do about dinner? Jibaritos?”
“As if,” I told him with a laugh, falling very easily into this idea that we were going to be having dinner together as well. Even though it hadn’t been on my original schedule.
I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? Or something like that?
“For dinner, we’re going to the best bar in town. Or rather… we’re stopping for pizza, and then going to the best bar in town.”
I’d promised him deep-dish pizza, after all. Or at least, I’d noted that it would stand up to what New York called pizza. So on the way to the bar—one of the most historic places in town—we stopped by a stand that sold slices, and grabbed three apiece.
“Do we need all this?” he asked, juggling the pizza and a bottle of coke as we walked away.
I pointed toward a bench up against the nearby building. “Believe me, you do. The first slice is just a taste. By the second slice, you’ll be knee-deep in the stuff and figuring out how to eat it. And once you finish that second slice, you’ll need the third, just to enjoy it. You’d be upset with me if you didn’t have it.”
He sat, made just enough room for me to sit next to him, and then gave me the wicked grin that I was starting to really, really enjoy.
I slid in next to him, those chills running down my spine again at how close he was, at the feel of his skin against my skin, and suddenly the pizza in my hands seemed like a bit of an afterthought.
When he turned to me, still grinning, and his gaze went right to my lips again, I actually shivered. Yeah, the pizza was definitely seeming less important now. More important was how close he was to me. Close enough that he could bend a bit further and seal those lips down on mine.
My own breath stilled at the thought that I could lean forward, too. Shift just a bit and seal my own lips to his.
Then the moment was gone, just like the one in the kitchen had been, with Francisco pulling back into himself suddenly, laughter in his voice as he asked me how the hell we were
supposed to eat something so much resembling a pie without a fork.
I pushed my stomach back down to its rightful place and tried to focus on the pizza in my hands, wondering—not for the first time today—what it was that seemed to be growing between him and me.
Because I’d thought I was going to have an adventure. Play hooky from work for once in my life and be the rebel I’d always been told musicians were supposed to be. But I hadn’t seen Francisco coming.
Sure, I’d thought we would have some fun flirting with each other and I’d have an excuse to see the city through a tourist’s eyes. Do the things I never took the time to do, courtesy of having lived here for so long.
I hadn’t anticipated the sizzling chemistry that happened every time he looked at me. And I certainly hadn’t expected the yearning, pulling need for him that had started somewhere deep down in my core.
I’d gone into this telling myself I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. But I was starting to wonder exactly how committed I was to that warning.
Chapter 7
Francisco
“You’re telling me,” I said, still too surprised to really take it in, “that I might have just sat in the same seat as Al Capone once did?”
Erika laughed and shook her head at my question, which I’d been asking all night. “Don’t they have more history in Europe than we do here?” she asked, bumping her shoulder into my side. “Aren’t you undermining some sacred European promise by being so impressed with American history?”
“We don’t have gangsters in my country,” I informed her. “And I’ve been obsessed with them since I was young.”
