But she had, because she was kind and generous as well as smart and quietly funny and incredibly hot.
Okay. Maybe it was a little more than a thing. Maybe he was well and truly infatuated.
He was scheduled to touch base with the hospital that morning to arrange for follow-up X-rays to track the progress of his recovery. He made the call over breakfast, then sucked up his gumption and called the station. Another firefighter, Danny, answered, and they spent a few minutes shooting the breeze before Leo asked to be put on to the commander, Mack.
“Bennett. Was wondering when we’d be hearing from you.” There was a question in Mack’s voice, one Leo wasn’t sure he was ready to answer.
“Yeah. Things have been going a little slower than I thought they might.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. His body was healing, but his head was still a mess. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to continue doing the job he’d once loved without his buddy by his side.
“We’ve got the big fund-raiser Saturday. You should swing by and catch up with the guys.”
“Sounds good,” he said, carefully not committing to anything. The aim of the fund-raiser was to raise money for Cameron’s fiancée, Carrie, and the baby, but he wasn’t sure he could face her yet.
There was a small pause.
“We all miss him, mate,” the chief said. “But you throwing in the towel isn’t going to bring him back.”
Leo rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had no idea how the chief knew what was on his mind, but he couldn’t deny that was exactly how he felt—he had no right to just pick up the threads of his life and carry on as if nothing had changed when his best mate was dead.
“I’ll try to make it to the fund-raiser,” he said.
“Good man. And if you need to talk before then, my door’s always open.”
“Thanks.”
He couldn’t figure out what to do with himself after ending the call. He tidied his mother’s kitchen, then thought about mowing the lawn, but wasn’t sure his wrist was up to it yet.
He floated restlessly around the house for a few hours before heading out for a walk. It was well past lunchtime by the time he hit town, but he bought some muffins and dropped into his mother’s shop, knowing it would make her happy to see him. It did, but his restlessness wouldn’t let him stop and chat for long. He walked some more before making his way down to the beach. He was sitting with his back against the sea wall, the same spot where he and Rachel had talked yesterday, when he glanced up and saw a tall, slim figure walking along the edge of the water, shoes in her hand.
Rachel.
He watched as she drew closer, breaking away from the water’s edge to cut across the dry sand. She stopped in front of him, using her free hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. He had no idea how she’d known he’d be here, but it was only now that he was looking into her eyes that he understood why he’d been so restless today, and why, no matter how far he’d walked, he’d kept circling back into town.
She dropped her shoes to the sand and let her bag slide down her arm. Then she sat beside him.
“Windy today,” she said after a moment.
“Yeah.”
“I just talked to your mum at the shop. She said you’d been in. That maybe you weren’t having a great day.”
Ah. That explained it, then.
“Define ‘great.’”
She smiled and drew her knees up, looping her arms around them as she gazed out to sea. “I don’t know. Happy? Content? Comfortable in your own skin, maybe?”
“Then, no, not a great day.”
She didn’t push, and he didn’t volunteer. Instead, they talked about the weather, about George R.R. Martin, about their favorite holiday spots and least favorite foods.
“Where are you from, originally?” he asked after she’d finished denigrating brussels sprouts as the Worst Food Ever.
“New York. The state, not the city. Syracuse, to be exact.”
“Been back recently?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Keep meaning to, but...” She shrugged. “I guess there’s not much for me there now. Everyone’s got their own lives. What am I going to do, drive my rental car past our old place? Mum’s still here in Melbourne. There’s no reason for me to want to be anywhere else.”
“So you’re an Aussie now?”
She glanced at him just as the wind lifted her hair and blew it out behind her like a pennant. “I wouldn’t go that far. I can’t stand Vegemite. I still don’t understand Australian Rules Football. And it will always be aluminum to me, not aluminium.”
“Vegemite is an acquired taste. You have to persevere. The secret is lots of butter.”
“It’s a cultural joke. I think it’s time you guys just came right out and admitted it. You laugh yourselves silly every time you convince a foreigner to stick a teaspoonful in their mouth.”
He laughed, aware of something in his chest loosening for the first time in weeks. “I guess the really important question is how do you feel about beer?”
“I like it. Quite a bit, actually.”
He nodded approvingly. “Bottle or glass?”
She gave him a sideways look. “Bottle. What planet are you from?”
They talked for nearly an hour before it started getting dark. He walked her back up the beach and into town. She stopped on the corner of Main Street and gestured toward a side road.
“This is me.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you around.”
“I guess you will.”
This time he lingered ever so briefly when he ducked his head to kiss her cheek. Her skin was soft and sweet smelling, and he paused to draw her essence into his lungs before pulling back.
She gave him a small, slightly uncertain smile before turning away.
He opened his mouth to ask her if he could take her out for dinner, but the words wouldn’t come. He didn’t want to overstep and ruin this...whatever it was that was happening between them. It was very possible that yesterday and today had been about pity, pure and simple. She was a nice person, after all. She cared for people.
Maybe the feeling he had when he was with her was completely one-sided. Maybe she wasn’t immediately happier when he was around, as though the world was a better place. Maybe he was just some messed-up sad sack she was being kind to.
She glanced back over her shoulder as she headed down the road, raising her hand in farewell.
He waved. Not so long ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to go after what he wanted. But he wasn’t sure he had the right to inflict himself on anyone at the moment. Rachel deserved better. Hands in his pockets, he headed for home.
* * *
HE WAS WAITING for her outside the library the next day. And the next. By the time her Friday-evening dance class rolled around, Rachel’s head was full of him.
Things he’d said, the way he moved. The smell of him—clean clothes and soap and man. The way his five-o’clock shadow only accentuated the clean lines of his jaw, the low rasp of his laughter.
She knew without asking that she was not the sort of woman Leo typically dated. She’d seen his girlfriends in high school.
Then again, he wasn’t her typical type, either. She tended to go for men who wore suits and glasses, men who worked behind desks for a living.
Yet there was no denying the excited thud she felt in the pit of her belly every time she exited the library and found Leo waiting for her. No surprises there—he was a good-looking man with an amazing body, and she’d discovered he’d successfully shaken off the jerkishness of his teen years to become a thoughtful, funny, insightful man.
She was only human. She wasn’t proof against such a deadly combination.
But she also wasn’t silly enoug
h to let their walks take on any significance in her mind. He was a man in crisis. Injured and heartsore, he was in Sorrento on a time-out, staying in his childhood home, taking a step back from his real life. Their walks and conversations were part of that time-out, and she would be a very foolish woman indeed if she started to read anything more into their relationship than there was.
The thing was—
“Ow. Got me good there, Rach,” Greg said.
They stopped spinning across the floor as she registered that she’d all but impaled her dance partner’s foot on the heel of her shoe.
“I’m so sorry. I lost track of where we were. Are you okay? Have I crippled you for life?”
Greg laughed. “All’s well, sweetie. Do you need a break? Shall we take five?”
That was his diplomatic way of saying, “Girlfriend, get your head in the game.” And he was right. This was their last class before the competition on Sunday. They were supposed to be polishing and finessing their routine now, not fumbling around because her head was in the clouds.
“Five minutes sounds good,” she said, offering him a sheepish smile.
He squeezed her shoulder, then crossed the parquet floor to confer with Jack.
Rachel walked to the coffee urn in the far corner and poured herself a big cup. Hands clasped around the warm china, she did her best to clear her mind of everything except the steps she and Greg had been rehearsing.
Leo is not an option. He is a mirage. A sad, sexy mirage. Get him out of your head.
She’d done well at her studies in school, well enough to have gone into medicine or law if she’d wanted to. She was a smart cookie, as her grandma Mags used to say. Smart enough to know when to protect herself. The problem was, she wanted to throw caution to the winds whenever Leo laughed at something she said, or looked into her eyes in that slow, steady way he had. And when he kissed her cheek...
Yep. Definitely hard to keep her head when he did that. Which meant maybe it was time to curtail their little walks. Purely as a self-protective measure.
She stared down into her coffee. She would miss him. His laugh. The way he viewed the world.
But he was getting better, she could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. Soon, he’d be going back to his life in the city. So this little time-out of theirs would be over soon anyway.
“Okay, ready to go?” Jack called, clapping his hands together imperatively.
Rachel downed the last of her coffee in one scalding swallow, dumped her mug in the sink and took a deep breath. “Ready.”
She joined Greg in the center of the floor and together they took up their starting position. Jack started the music, and she and Greg began to move.
“Much better, Rachel. But make sure you keep your hands loose, give Greg the room to lead.”
They stepped and spun and flourished their way across the floor, Jack calling out encouragement and reminders.
“No looking at feet, please.”
“Chin high.”
“Small steps, people. Conserve your energy.”
A smile started to build inside her as the dance progressed, fueled by the sense that she and Greg were getting it right this time around. It simply felt right, everything flowing, her body perfectly attuned to Greg’s. As they headed for the finale, she couldn’t stop herself from laughing with the sheer joy of it.
Then Greg whipped her out to the side, reeled her in and she let herself fall back into his arms as the music ended.
Greg was grinning like a loon as he hoisted her to her feet.
“Great, guys,” Jack called.
“Let’s do that again,” she said. “That felt amazing.”
Then she noticed the man standing behind Jack, his big arms crossed over his chest, a bemused smile curving his mouth.
“Leo.”
* * *
LEO BLINKED AT the pink-cheeked, tousle-haired vixen standing in the center of the dance floor. Dressed in black stockings, some kind of gauzy, floaty-skirt thing and a spaghetti-strapped tank top, she looked as though she’d stepped out of a poster for a Latin dance club.
She did not look like a librarian, or the woman who came to his mother’s place every Saturday to sew, or the woman who’d walked in companionable silence with him every day this week. Yet it was undeniably Rachel standing in front of him in another man’s arms. He’d known it the moment he walked in and discovered her spinning and strutting her way across the dance floor.
“What are you doing here?” She was frowning, her chest rising and falling as she attempted to catch her breath.
“I was on my way back from the city and I saw your car parked out front,” he explained.
It sounded dumb when he said it out loud, but a few minutes ago it had made perfect sense to pull over and go find her. Her little red car had stood out like a beacon, drawing his eye. The next thing he knew, he’d pulled over and climbed out of the car. The dance school was the only business still open at this time of night, so it had been a no-brainer to look for her in here.
“I didn’t realize you danced,” he said stupidly.
The understatement of the century. Because Rachel didn’t just dance, she danced. She and her partner had burned up the dance floor, moving as one, their movements both crisp and languid at once, the whole appearing effortless and damn impressive.
“Well, I do.” She was very pink, and he realized she was embarrassed.
“You’re amazing,” he said, just in case she wasn’t aware of that fact.
“Thanks.” She couldn’t hide her smile at his compliment, but it was obvious she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, either. “I’m just learning, really.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She shook her head, her smile broadening. “Greg and I are only beginners.”
He forced himself to make eye contact with her partner. The guy who’d been throwing her around the dance floor and gyrating his hips against hers and manhandling her in the most intimate way possible. Greg nodded an acknowledgment, curiosity plain in his face as he followed their conversation.
“Hey,” Leo said, returning the other man’s nod with one of his own.
“Hey, yourself,” Greg said.
Something inside Leo relaxed when he heard the lilting cadence to the other man’s speech. He was gay. Thank God. Now he wouldn’t have to resist the urge to flatten him for the way he still had his arm around Rachel’s shoulders.
The skinny blond guy who’d been shouting instructions from the side of the dance floor checked his watch. “You know what, guys? I think we’ll call it a night.”
“Okay, sure,” Rachel said. “As long as you’re happy...?”
“Do that again on Sunday and I’ll be more than happy,” the blond said.
Rachel’s gaze slid to Leo. Then she took a deep breath and walked toward him. He watched her hips, the sway of her body. No wonder he’d always been fascinated by her walk.
“I think this officially makes you a dark horse,” he said.
“It isn’t a secret.”
“And yet you haven’t mentioned it once.”
She used the back of her hand to push a damp strand of hair off her forehead. “It’s kind of a hard thing to work into a conversation.”
“Is it?”
Her lips twitched a little. “Okay, maybe I’m a little shy about putting it out there. Greg and I have only been in one competition. I don’t want to make a big deal out of something so small.”
“Speak for yourself, sweetie,” Greg said as he came up behind her. He draped Rachel’s cardigan over her shoulders and handed her her gym bag. “Text me, okay?”
She smiled her assent before Greg gave Leo another nod and headed for the exit.
“We should probably go, too, so Jack can lock up,�
� she said.
Leo followed her outside, still a little dazed. As though he’d fallen down the rabbit hole.
“What other secrets do you have?” he asked as she opened the hatch of her car and stowed her gear.
“None.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She looked startled. “Don’t you?”
“No. I’m beginning to believe you’re like one of those Russian nesting dolls, always another revelation just under the surface.”
She laughed. “I’m a librarian, Leo.”
“A bloody sexy one.”
Her eyes widened and her throat worked nervously. Then her gaze dropped to his mouth.
So...she was aware of him as a man. She’d thought about kissing him the way he’d thought about kissing her.
Suddenly all the reasons why he should keep his distance didn’t hold water anymore. She was standing in front of him, pink and a bit flustered, her body warm from dancing, and the only thing on his mind was claiming some of that warmth for himself.
“Rachel.” He reached for her, his hand sliding around her waist, palm flattening against her back as he drew her close. Her breath hitched, her eyelids fluttered. Her head fell back slightly in wordless invitation.
Desire rocketed through him like a freight train, fierce and undeniable. She rested a hand on his shoulder as he pulled her body against his. They matched perfectly, breast to chest, hip to hip. He ducked his head, but instead of finding her mouth, he pressed a kiss to the soft skin beneath her ear. He’d been wondering about that little patch of tender flesh. Wanting to taste it.
She gave a low sigh as he teased her with his tongue. He was already aroused, but that small, helpless sound pushed him over the edge. Fingers curling into her slender body, he pressed his mouth to hers.
She tasted of coffee and heat. He stroked her tongue with his, his free hand rising to cup the sweet shape of her jaw.
She tasted good, alive and real and eager. He started making calculations in his head, working out in whose car they would leave here, how long it would take to get to her place, where he could get her naked. Because he needed to do that, very badly. He needed to—
The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing Page 24
