Keep On Loving you

by Christie Ridgway

  That sounded as if she didn’t have a date.

  The fingers of Ash’s right hand curled into his palm and he tapped it against his thigh in surreptitious victory. “A drink from me’s a sure thing,” he said.

  “I need to find Lee.”

  Ash’s gaze narrowed. “Lee’s your mechanic friend.”

  “Um...yeah.” She seemed surprised he remembered.

  His teeth clenched, and then he tried to relax his jaw. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I thought there were good things coming...” she murmured, the words trailed off on a shrug. “But never mind. It’s no big deal.”

  “Is your car giving you trouble again?”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “You keep saying that, but ‘no big deal’ is not what I’m seeing on your face, Tilda.” It was true. Now that he knew there was a problem, he noticed the faint line of stress between her dark brows.

  “I’m handling it.”

  Ash felt a burn kindle in his belly. Since he was a little kid, fuming on the soccer field because the other five-year-olds kept clumping around the ball and didn’t get the concept of pass, he knew he had a temper. His father had talked to him about it for years, encouraging him to put a choke hold on the feeling when it arose. Deep breaths, son. Nothing’s worth losing control of yourself.

  So he hauled in a breath and did his best to channel John Robbins, and be the cool and calm customer his dad expected. “I can look at it again,” he said. “Wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “It’s too dark to now. I left it in the market parking lot.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said.

  She acted as if she hadn’t heard him and shoved the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder. “Well, uh, nice bumping into you.”

  “How are you getting home?”

  “Um...” Her gaze darted around as if the answer might be written on the walls.

  “Come on, let me give you a ride.” He smiled. “My dad would never forgive me if I left a damsel in distress.”

  She stiffened. “Your dad,” she began, then shook her head again. “I really need to go.”

  “With me,” Ash said. “Are you ready to take off now, or would you like to have that drink or something to eat first?”

  Her front teeth hit her full bottom lip, and she sucked it into her mouth. Stalling, he thought, and she had no idea how damn sexy he considered the move.

  Even with his dick getting hard, his temper fired again. Why was she always so resistant? “Hell, Tilda, do you have to make this so effing hard?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe things come too easy for you,” she snapped back.

  He liked the show of spirit, but her stubbornness wasn’t going to win the day...or get her back to her place. “Done with this,” he said and grabbed her hand. “Let’s get out of here.” Then he remembered why he was at Mr. Frank’s, so instead of immediately heading toward the exit, he towed her over to Zan.

  “I have someone else to drive home,” he told the other man. “I’ll be back.”

  Another guy sitting beside Zan glanced over his shoulder. “I can do it.”

  That was enough for Ash. Ignoring Tilda’s sputters, he hauled her out of Mr. Frank’s. Once the cold night air hit him, his temper cooled and his mood jumped from frustrated to feeling pretty damn happy. After all, he had Tilda’s small hand in his. He was the one who was taking her home.

  All good.

  “You can be annoyingly arrogant, you know,” she said when she slid into the passenger seat.

  He shut her door and rounded to his side, smiling at the snotty tone of her voice. It meant he was getting to her, he decided.

  Yeah, annoyingly arrogant.

  But she was in his car and he was going to turn the heater on and make sure she was warm for the ride, too-thin coat or not.

  “Directions?” he asked when he settled behind the wheel.

  A new vibe entered the small space of the car. As he tried figuring it out, he started the engine, fiddled with the heater controls and adjusted the vents so they’d blow on her. That small hand had been near-freezing.

  “Which way do I go?”

  She was hesitating again, that bottom lip in her mouth.

  Instead of getting mad this time, he softened his voice and smoothed his palm over her hair. “I can’t get you there if you won’t tell me.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said on a sigh. Then she told him how to get to her place.

  It took a while on the dark roads that were unfamiliar to him. They passed the outskirts of the village and then wound through forested land. Instead of going up, this route took them beyond a tiny hamlet in the notch of two mountains. On the outskirts of that, they passed a couple of bared lots that held nothing but snow-clearing equipment.

  Then they were at the mouth of an even narrower lane.

  “You can drop me off right here,” Tilda said.

  He looked out his windshield at the dark night, the dark pavement ahead, the darker shadows created by the trees crowded alongside it. Then he turned his head to Tilda. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  She sighed. “It’s about a quarter-mile along here.” Her voice sounded resigned.

  Ash thought it was the perfect setting for a teen horror movie. Up ahead, he could see a dilapidated two-story building of six units, the only lighting bare bulbs highlighting the apartment numbers. As his tires crunched on the gravel in the adjacent parking lot, he kept his eyes peeled for an ax murderer or even a rabid bear.

  Continuing forward, he noted a bent and rusted screen over the door to the nearest apartment was flapping in an errant breeze, letting out a scratchy squeal each time it moved. Seriously creepy. Before he had a chance to turn off the ignition, she was half out of the car. “Thanks.”

  He caught her by the arm. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  “Totally unnecessary.”

  As if he would let her go without seeing her safely inside, if safely was a word that could be applied in any way, shape or form to this run-down set of apartments. “Again, I couldn’t look my dad in the eye if I didn’t.”

  She yanked her arm out of his hold. “Believe me. It’s better this way.”

  Before he could blink, she was on the gravel and scurrying toward a set of rickety stairs to the second floor. Cursing under his breath, Ash followed. Though she had to hear his footsteps on the metal steps behind her, she didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, she made her way to a door marked with a five. No light seeped from the curtain-covered window beside it.

  With her keys in hand, she paused, though she didn’t look at him. “Okay, your duty’s done. You can leave now.”

  “Or you can ask me inside.” He stepped up behind her, wanting her again so damn much. “We can talk.” Bending his head, he touched his cheek to hers, then pulled her around to face him.

  For a long moment, she only stared up at his face. Then he saw her lips move.

  Had she mouthed “gorgeous”? Running a knuckle down her cheek, he smiled at her, hopeful again. “Or we can not talk. I’d be content just to spend time with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” He lowered his voice. “Aren’t you aware we’re good together?”

  Though she nodded, there was a battle going on inside her, he could see that.

  Watching her, he touched her cheek again, his finger trailing down to stroke the side of her neck. At her full-body shudder, he gave up.

  “You’re cold,” he said and began to move back. “Go inside.”

  Tilda grabbed his hand and pulled him close again. “I’m not cold,” she said. “That’s not why I’m shivering.”

  It was Ash’s turn to still. “Then why not let me in?”

 
“Because...” She glanced over her shoulder, then back at him. “Right now it’s because I don’t want you to see this place. I don’t want you to know how I live.”

  His heart felt twisted by her two small hands. “Tilda—”

  “It’s nothing like you’re accustomed to.”

  He was accustomed to things being way too easy. She’d been right about that. But now it was his turn to make things easier for her. With his free fingers, he found her keys and plucked them from her.

  She let them go and she also let him nudge her to the side so he could unlock the door. Pushing it open, he noted that while the place smelled like pine cleaner, the air was barely warmer than the outside temperature.

  He pulled her inside and shut the door. A dim light was on, illuminating a tiny kitchen and a living room with a futon and a clunky TV on a metal stand. “Roommates home?” he asked, guessing that she had them.

  “They waitress at one of the ski lodges. They won’t be back until late.”

  “Can we get this place any warmer?” he asked, glancing around for a thermostat.

  She remained by the door, as if second-guessing her decision. “The heat hardly works. When it’s cold like this, we hang in our bedrooms, under blankets.”

  “You share a room?”

  He heard her swallow. “I have the single.”

  Crossing to her, he took her hand. “Take me there.”

  At her hesitation, he drew her against him, then softly kissed her mouth. She trembled in his arms and he could feel warmth rise to the surface of her skin. “Take me there,” he said again.

  Now she moved, guiding him along threadbare carpet into a short hallway. They passed a bedroom, a small bathroom, and then she opened a door. The space was tiny, almost dominated by a single bed heaped in blankets, a tiny stand beside it holding an even smaller lamp that was letting off a faint glow. Some plastic drawers were tucked in a corner and a curved metal rod—maybe formerly for a shower?—was bolted into a wall for hanging clothes.

  “They made the closet into another bathroom,” she said, pointing to another narrow door.

  Inside was only a toilet and a tiny sink.

  “It’s awful,” she whispered.

  “It’s cold.” He crossed to the bed and pulled back the covers. “Come on. Slip off your shoes and get in here.”

  When she did as he asked, he unlaced his boots, slipped off his coat and crawled in beside her. She scooted to make room for him, but he pulled her against him, cuddling her close.

  She went stiff in his arms. “I’m worried about this, Ash.”

  “We’re only getting better acquainted,” he said.

  “You might not like what you learn about me.”

  “Not a chance.” Because he felt as if all the questions had been asked and answered months ago, when he’d looked over at the table of young women and his gaze had lit upon her—the paper crown listing on her mane of hair, the sweet, pouting lower lip, the way her eyes had lit with pleasure when the server handed her the drink he’d sent over. Her head had turned his way, a smile tilting the corners of her mouth, and he’d known.

  There you are, he’d thought.

  His parents had been college sweethearts and he admired and wanted a relationship like theirs, so he’d expected to find his own sweetheart during those years. But while he’d enjoyed himself and admired plenty of girls and dated a few, not one had given him that instant sense of certainty.

  There you are.

  “I couldn’t get you out of my head, the whole time I’ve been gone.”

  Tilda turned her face into his neck. “I wanted to forget you,” she said, her mouth moving against his skin. “I wanted to forget everything about that night and especially about leaving you the next morning.”

  The first of that didn’t sound promising. Only the last bit was slightly better. But Ash figured he couldn’t be here, in this bed with her, if she really was serious about wanting to forget him.

  Using his finger under her chin, he tilted her mouth toward his. Then he was kissing her, soft at first, and then with more heat and desire. Her body turned more deeply into his and then he felt her stubborn resistance finally fall away.

  But when he broke the kiss he could tell she was still worrying too much by the way her gaze was anxious on his. God, all he wanted to do was make things simple and easy for her. Be her comfort instead of her concern.

  “This place,” she whispered, “is a dump. I still wish—”

  He cut off the rest by pressing his fingers to her mouth. Then he touched his forehead to hers. “What I see is you,” he said. “What I know is you.”

  What I want is forever with you.

  There. It was said. Out in the open, at least in his own mind.

  * * *

  MAC SAT WITH her elbow on the table at Mr. Frank’s, her chin in her hand, while Stuart went to the bar to get second drinks for them. She was thinking of how she could break it to him, and gently, that while he was welcome to attend Shay’s wedding with her she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea that it was a date date. Then fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her out of her chair.

  Blinking, she looked up to see Zan. When had he arrived? “What?” His gaze was intense and she wondered if he might be a little drunk.

  “Dance,” he said.

  Drunk seemed more definite. “You don’t like to dance.”

  He hadn’t attended his high school prom. Neither had Brett. Instead of tuxes and corsages, that night they and a knot of buddies had broken into the school’s office and stolen all the caps and gowns, stored there in preparation for the upcoming graduation.

  Upon detecting their absence, the administration had threatened to cancel the ceremony and then the missing items had been “mysteriously” returned, the whole plastic-wrapped lot of them crammed in the cafeteria’s refrigerator.

  Well, she didn’t know for certain that Zan, Brett and their buddies had done such a thing, but it was exactly the kind of thing they would have done. She and everybody else assumed it had been their prank, with Zan the mastermind.

  Without another word, he now towed her to the small dance floor and took her in his arms. The dance music was exclusively ballads on weeknights. On the weekends, there’d be a mix, including some line-dancing tunes, but tonight it was straight up love songs.

  She sighed. “Lay Me Down” by Sam Smith. Great.

  They had gone together to her high school prom. It had been held at the ritzy yacht club on Blue Arrow Lake. She’d worked for months making stars and moons out of tagboard covered with aluminum wrap. It had taken hours to hang them from the ceiling. Zan had helped her and the rest of the decorating committee, he’d brought her a gorgeous wrist corsage to match her dress—thanks to the hints dropped by her sisters—and he’d shown up wearing a black tuxedo that she knew for a fact he owned and hadn’t rented.

  Weeks before, she’d driven down the hill for prom dress shopping with her girlfriends, and the gown she’d found on sale had probably cost less than his socks.

  But she’d felt beautiful.

  When she was with Zan, everything was beautiful...until he left. At that thought, her spine stiffened and she moved to put more inches of space between them.

  He tried pulling her closer. Though some traitorous part of her wanted to press her cheek to his chest and melt against him, the older and wiser Mac forced her head back to catch his gaze with hers. Something was up. “Explain the dancing,” she demanded.

  “If I sat at your table, your friend Stuart would join us and then we couldn’t have a private conversation.”

  “A private conversation about what?”

  “The other day.”

  She’d managed to almost wipe yesterday out of her memory banks. But now it flooded in, the uncertainty sh
e’d felt about the Zan situation, the solution she’d come up with to deal with it. How the cards-on-the-table, bravado-laced discussion she’d imagined having on the subject of becoming sex buddies hadn’t taken place because she’d knocked his family’s photo album off the desk.

  And then she’d taken off.

  “Are you okay?” she couldn’t help but ask, her voice low.

  “I was fine. I am fine.”

  He said both sentences with a flat inflection and a blank-paper expression.

  “Still,” she said. “You could talk to Brett—”

  “I never talk about that.”

  It was true. All that she knew about his family tragedy had come from other people. “The Walkers have suffered loss, too, Zan,” she couldn’t help but remind him.

  “Yeah. But the Walkers still had their siblings and this whole place, the mountains and the lakes,” he said.

  She wanted to tell him he could have had them, too. The Walkers, the mountains and the lakes. Her. For always.

  Danger!

  “But like I said,” he continued, “I don’t want to talk about that.” Then he pulled her tight to him, so close their thighs brushed and she could feel his belt buckle against her middle. At that sensation, her breath caught and her skin tingled. A shiver rolled down her back.

  Zan’s voice went quieter. “I want to talk about you and me being sex buddies.”

  Her gaze jumped back to his. Sex buddies had been her mature solution to the problem that was the sparking and spitting chemistry that erupted whenever she and Zan were in the same airspace.

  It was simmering between them now, their thigh-to-thigh and belt-buckle-to-belly friction kindling a full-body heat that made her breathe high in her throat. Just the thought of him brushing his lips against her sensitive skin made her want to whimper.

  Her proposal was common sense, really, because she’d known that day, just as she knew right now, that it was inevitable they’d both get naked...and then things would really ignite.

  But his ultimate leave-taking wouldn’t break her as it had before if she gave it parameters, certain and rigid lines, designed entirely to keep the relationship a shallow one.