The One You Can't Forget

by Roni Loren

  “Now all we need are weapons,” he declared.

  She reached into the bag of takeout and pulled out the eco-friendly cornstarch forks Dev used in place of plastic cutlery. “How’s this?”

  “Perfect. We can go for the eyes.” He took his fork and grabbed the keys. “Let’s do this.”

  “I’m ready.” Some of their playing around must’ve distracted her from her nerves because when Rebecca got out of the van, her shoulders seemed looser and there was a tentative smile on her face. She nodded toward the house and set her fork on the hood. He followed suit, since if he really had to take action, he’d need his hands free. “My extra key is by the back door.”

  They headed around the house and into the small backyard. She hunched near an overgrown herb garden and fished around, finally coming up with one of those fake rocks. She flipped it over and keyed in a three-digit code on a spinner combination lock.

  Wes snapped a leaf off one of her plants and inhaled the scent. “Mmm, lemon thyme. You’ve got quite a collection out here. Cilantro. Oregano. Italian parsley. I’m a little jealous.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I honestly have no idea what most of them are or what to do with all of them. I had the house landscaped when I moved in, and I guess the gardeners picked the perfect spot because they grow like crazy. Except the basil, which was the one I actually knew how to use. That one was a goner during the first hundred-degree day of summer.”

  “Basil is a sensitive soul.” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her he could show her how to use the herbs, but he held the offer back. His brother had been right. Making her laugh was like some weird sort of drug to his starved system, but she didn’t need a guy flirting with her right now. It couldn’t go anywhere anyway. He didn’t date, for one. And even if he was doing the casual hookup thing these days, she didn’t strike him as the type who’d be down for that, especially with someone like him. So he had nothing to offer her besides garden-care tips.

  She stuck the key in the lock and opened the back door. There was no beeping alarm to greet them. Rebecca made a frustrated sound. “Goddammit. I didn’t set it.”

  That information sobered him quickly and got his mind back to where it should be. Though it was unlikely, someone could legitimately be in the house. He tossed the thyme aside and stepped in front of her, his gaze scanning the small, white kitchen. He kept his voice low. “Anything look off?”

  She peeked over his shoulder. “No.”

  “Okay.” He took another step inside, taking in all the dark corners and possible hiding spots in the kitchen. “Do you keep a gun in the house?”

  She sucked in a breath, and he turned his head to find her with a stricken look. “No. I can’t—I hate guns.”

  Something in the way she said it gave him pause. He could sense true fear there. Probably because she’d had a gun pointed at her tonight. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Okay. I wasn’t asking because I wanted to use it. I just wanted to know if someone else could get to one.”

  She rolled her lips inward and pointed at the kitchen counter. “I have a big knife if we want something to walk around with.”

  He went over to the wooden knife block and grabbed one of the smaller knives. He was good with a chef’s knife in the kitchen, but in a fight, he’d want something closer to a switchblade. He’d carried one when he was younger, living in a watch-your-back neighborhood, and still knew how to protect himself that way. He pressed his phone into her hand. “You’re on phone duty. If you hear or see anything, don’t wait.”

  She nodded and took the phone, but she also grabbed a large, steel pepper mill in her other hand.

  He smirked. “Is this where you bash me in the head and drag me to the basement?”

  Her smile was brief, but her eyes sparked with humor. “Yeah. You scared?”

  “I could think of worse fates than being held captive by a pretty redhead.”

  The second the words were out, he wanted to snatch them back. They’d slipped out automatically, some old version of himself flickering to the surface, but the way her expression went flat told him how bad a move it’d been. No flirting while searching her house for bad guys, you dumb-ass.

  He winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”

  She shook her head. “I know. It’s fine. Let’s just do this search. Nothing seems out of place, so we’re probably fine. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can eat.”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat and motioned for her to follow him. “We have Indian food waiting.”

  He stepped into her living room, which looked like a photo from a home magazine. Refinished hardwood floors, oatmeal-colored couch, nature photography on the walls. The only thing that revealed that a person actually lived here was the stack of books on the floor by the comfortable-looking red armchair and an abandoned glass of wine on a side table.

  “Everything look all right?” he asked.

  Her gaze scanned the room. “Yeah.”

  There were no closets or hidden alcoves, so he moved toward the hallway. If anyone was here, they’d probably know it by now, but he stayed alert just in case. The hallway was narrow. There was one small bathroom off to the left and an office to the right. Both were empty and in order. Last was the master bedroom at the end of the hallway.

  He eased the door open and peeked inside. This was the only room that didn’t look photo perfect. A pale-green comforter was pushed halfway down the bed, a pillow still held the indent of the head that had rested upon it, and a few clothing items were on the floor next to the bed. His gaze traced over them. A striped pajama top, thick woolen socks, and a lacy pair of blue panties.

  His mind tried to go there—as if it were a reflex to picture the woman behind him getting ready this morning, sliding those sexy panties off and tossing them aside. Had she strode into the bathroom after that without a stitch on?

  He swallowed hard and tried to ignore the fantasy images popping up in his head. He was a grown man. A pair of women’s panties shouldn’t get him that distracted. But apparently, his libido was starved enough to revert to teenager mode when activated. Panties…oooh. He took a deep breath, forcing his focus elsewhere, and headed toward the open closet door. “Uh, anything out of the ordinary in here?”

  She moved into the doorway, and he heard her under-the-breath curse from behind him. He turned her way and found a look of mild horror on her face. She glanced at him, and then her gaze shifted away. “I, um, was in a hurry this morning.”

  He cleared his throat. “Closet looks fine.” He moved to the next door and peeked into the attached bathroom. A stand-up shower and a claw-foot tub surrounded by a sea of white subway tile. Totally not picturing her naked in either one of those. Nope. Not at all. “Clear!”

  “Great!” she said, her voice pitching high.

  He turned to step out of the bathroom and almost ran into her. She had ditched the pepper mill and phone and had her dirty clothes clutched to her chest.

  A tight smile jumped to her lips. “Guess we’re all good then. Why don’t you grab the food from the car, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen?”

  Don’t look at the panties. Don’t look at the panties. He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Right. Food. I’ll go get that.”

  He cringed inwardly. Now he was turning into Tarzan. Me. Asshole. You. Hot.

  A loud banging rattled the window, and Rebecca screamed. She dropped the clothes and leapt forward. Instinctively, he grabbed her, pulled her against him, and dragged her into the bathroom, his heartbeat thumping in his ears and the knife clutched in his hand.

  But before he could figure out how to get them out of the room or to the phone, the banging came again. Not gunshots. A fist. “Hey, someone need a lock changed?”

  The sound of the deep smoker’s voice had him releasing a breath. The locksmith.

&nb
sp; “Yeah, be right there,” Wes called out.

  There was grumbling from the other side of the window as the guy trudged back to the front, and Wes could feel Rebecca shift against him.

  Against him. Oh, hell. She was pressed along the wall, and they were body to body. Good parts to good parts.

  And his good part was quickly taking notice.

  He hurried to move away from her, give her some breathing room, but she clung to him, her face pressed to his shoulder. Only then did he realize she was trembling all over.

  Uh-oh.

  chapter

  SIX

  Rebecca did not want to be freaking out, but her whole body was shaking without her permission. When she’d heard the banging, she’d thought for sure those boys with the gun had come back. She’d braced for the shots she’d expected to shatter the window. Could already feel the glass cutting her skin, the bullet hitting. Wes had dragged her into the bathroom, blanketing her body with his, which had given her a sense of protection, but it’d also brought back horrid memories of feeling the weight of Finn on her and the pain in her leg when she’d been shot at the school.

  Another hard tremor went through her.

  “You okay?” Wes asked, his voice soft and urgent against her ear. “Talk to me.”

  Only then did she realize that she was still huddled up against him, her fingers gripping the front of his shirt and her face pressed to his shoulder. Clinging. Oh, shit. She quickly released her hold on him, and he stepped back. She scrambled for words, trying to get her nerves in check. “I’m—I’m really sorry. That was…”

  “A totally reasonable reaction,” he finished for her.

  She looked up and curled her quivering fingers into her palms.

  He scowled. “Who the hell goes banging on windows like that this late at night? Damn. Call my cell, man.”

  She swallowed hard, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. “Right. But I’m sorry anyway. I’m not usually this…” Her hands fluttered helplessly. “I don’t know what I am tonight.”

  “You’re someone recovering from a terrifying night. Seriously, give yourself a break. Even my brain went to gunshots first.” He walked back into the bedroom and set the knife down on the dresser. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  She followed him out, her legs feeling a little steadier beneath her but her muscles still tingling with adrenaline. “I know. I just hate acting like some damsel in distress. I’m usually more together than this and—”

  “Hey, stop, all right?” he said, breaking into her rambling. “You damsel however you damn well please. No one’s grading you on how to react after being robbed. You’ve had a hell of a night. You didn’t expect to be attacked. You didn’t expect to be saving a dog. And I’m sure you didn’t expect to have some strange dude traipsing through your bedroom at midnight.”

  “With my underwear wrapped around his shoe,” she said, forcing the joke out to push back the fear, to bring this back to something she could deal with.

  “What?” He glanced down at the scrap of lace hooked over his boot. “Aw, hell.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at his obvious chagrin. He crouched down, but she put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “I should probably get those.”

  He coughed, trying to cover a laugh. “Right. Yes. Good life lesson. No touching other people’s underwear without permission.”

  She bent and snagged the lace from the floor, balling it in her hand, and then tossed it into the bathroom. “How about we pretend I didn’t panic and you didn’t see my underwear, and we can let the locksmith in?”

  He gave a quick nod. “I’ve already forgotten everything. What’s your name again?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on. All this freaking out has made me hungry.”

  * * *

  A little while later, the locksmith had changed the lock on the back door and was hard at work out front while Rebecca and Wes dug into their food at the kitchen counter. She tried to make small talk, asking Wes questions because she didn’t want to talk about herself. She was under no illusion that once he figured out who she was, things wouldn’t turn awkward and ugly. She didn’t have the energy for that tonight, and right now they had an easy rapport. She wanted to keep it that way. Wesley Garrett could eat his food and leave before he ever realized that they’d met before.

  “So you work at a school?” she asked between bites of butter chicken. “This is delicious, by the way.”

  “Devin knows what he’s doing. And not a school. I teach culinary arts at an after-school program for teens who’ve gotten in some kind of trouble—with the law, with school.” He smirked. “You know, giving kids with anger problems knives and access to fire.”

  “Ah, living on the edge,” she said with a nod. “You like it?”

  He was looking at his food again, but she caught his hesitation, his frown. “It wasn’t my plan to do this, and the cooking itself is pretty basic. But I like the kids, and I’m not teaching them one of the standard subjects, so they don’t mind coming to my class. It’s not too bad.”

  She considered him. She didn’t think that was the job he’d had when he’d been married. He’d been some type of chef. When Devin had mentioned Wes cooked, the memory had clicked into place. But she’d won Wesley’s ex-wife a big settlement, from what she could remember. More than what a teacher could afford. “And Devin thinks you shouldn’t be doing that?”

  “Devin has a vested interest in me doing something else. He’s trying to get me to buy a food truck from his uncle so that I can open up my own.”

  She looked up at that, remembering the wistful look on his face when he’d stared out at the food park. “Is that something you want to do?”

  His expression clouded. “‘Want’ or ‘don’t want’ isn’t really the question. I’d love to fly a fighter jet, doesn’t mean I should. I had big plans in my twenties to open my own place and I got close, but it…didn’t work out.” His jaw flexed and he looked up. “There are lots of pluses to where I work now. Regular paycheck. Predictable schedule. All that good, stable adulting stuff. But I do miss cooking my food and the creativity involved. Dev thinks a food truck would be a good compromise. Something smaller scale and, at least in theory, more manageable.”

  “They seem to be all the rage now.”

  “They are, which also means heavy competition. It’d still be a high-risk bet, and the truck’s in rough shape. I’d have to build the thing up from scratch on my own and do all the remodeling in between my teaching hours. I’d also have to get an investor or two to help with the up-front costs. So if it doesn’t work, I’ve lost a ton of my money, other’s people’s money, and my job.”

  “There’s that.” She broke off a piece of naan and dipped it in the green sauce. “I’d say no risk, no reward, but I’m not one to talk. I’m not a gambler.”

  He considered her. “Sure thing kind of girl?”

  Understatement of the year. “Failure isn’t fun. Plus, I work all the time. There’s not a lot of opportunity for risks or chasing some passion project anyway.”

  He ignored the wine she’d poured him from a bottle she’d found in the back of her pantry and took a sip of water instead. “All work and no play carries its own risks. You may end up seeing ghosts and chasing people in a snowy hedge maze with an ax.”

  “True. I’ll make a note to avoid all creepy hotels and mazes.” Though it was a joke, she couldn’t help but think how the parallel to The Shining wasn’t all that far off. She had heard and seen some ghosts tonight. She took another long sip of her wine. “Maybe if I had a hobby I wouldn’t have been walking home so late from work tonight.”

  He frowned. “That’s not what I mean. What happened tonight could’ve happened at any time, so don’t put that on yourself. But too much of anything can turn bad. If you did have the time, what kind of project would you want to do?”
>
  She shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Really? What are you into?”

  She laughed under her breath, no humor to it. “That’s the problem. I’ve spent so much time working on school or career stuff that I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She shook her head. “And damn, that makes me sound boring.”

  She glanced up to find him staring at her, and she realized she’d said too much, that the wine and the stress of the night had messed with her normal guards. She was being overly chatty and philosophical. God help them both.

  She waved a dismissive hand. “Sorry. Ignore me. Tonight has put me in a weird mood, and I talk too much when I drink.”

  “Don’t apologize, and I don’t think that makes you boring, just focused. Plus, figuring out where to start may be the fun part. You could try different things and see what clicks. Take a class on something or volunteer somewhere. I could show you how to cook. I’ve heard I’m a pretty good teacher of egg frying.”

  A choked laugh escaped her. “You do not want to take on that train wreck. I once set my dad’s kitchen on fire making popcorn.”

  He grinned. “Oh, but I love a hopeless case. I have a student who couldn’t make toast when we started this year. This past week, she made crepes that I could’ve served in a white-tablecloth restaurant. I have faith.”

  Rebecca bit her lip, realizing that maybe he was being serious, that he wanted to see her again and teach her to cook. Images of that flitted through her head. Wes next to her, sleeves rolled up, his hands on her, guiding her through the steps, feeding her bites of food. And…

  What. The. Hell.

  She needed to end this conversation before it went off the rails along with her good sense. She’d let herself forget she wasn’t supposed to be talking about herself or enjoying his company too much. She could not see Wesley after tonight. Could. Not. “I don’t think I have a hidden passion to cook.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. “But there’s something in there. You don’t strike me as a woman without passion.”