by Liz Crowe
Susan handed her a bottle of water. “Here. Drink this.”
She brushed a strand of her hair out of her face and took the bottle, relishing the sensation of his warm hand propping her up, even though she despised the way he’d seemed to appear from her dream, albeit wearing more clothing, to observe her latest embarrassing scene. She downed the water fast, surprised at how thirsty she was. Swiping at the trickles escaping down her chin, she frowned at him. But he didn’t move. He just sat, watching her with a concerned yet neutral expression on his face.
“Okay. I’m fine now.” She held out her arm. He took it and eased her to her feet.
“How long since you’ve eaten anything?” He hadn’t let go of her arm yet and still had his palm planted in the small of her back. Gayle wanted to move out of his reach. But she didn’t. If anything, she leaned into him slightly, her mind still lodged in a pleasant dream-state.
“This morning. Jesus, what time is it, anyway?”
“Almost five-thirty,” Susan said from somewhere in the room. The sound of her assistant’s voice brought Gayle crashing back into reality. She pulled away from Noah’s warm grip, ran her hands down her now-wrinkly skirt and shirt front and lifted her chin. Susan was scurrying around, righting the chair, straightening papers on her desk, irritating the crap out of her. But she understood the woman’s desire to do something, anything, to put what had just happened into some kind of perspective.
“The perfect time to call it quits and get an early dinner,” he declared, not taking his gaze from her face.
“Maybe for you,” she said, her voice sharp—too sharp—but she had to get control of this situation. And the only way that would happen was if Noah got the hell out of her space. He needed to get the hell out of her life, before she made a complete fool out of herself.
“Nope, not just for me.” He grabbed her phone from the floor, where it must have landed when she fell off her chair in the grips of a near wet dream. She glared at him, but he kept his face calm, reaching over to shut her laptop and pluck her purse from the floor where it had slipped off the back of the chair. He tucked the phone into the bag and held it out to her, his grin wide and sincere and so perfect she could barely repress a shudder of desire.
Instead, she snatched her purse from him, jammed it up on her shoulder and headed for the door. But he beat her to it somehow, opening it and putting his hand on her back again. She moved forward, perhaps to put herself out of his reach. He moved with her, staying close, too close, and they made their way to the metal staircase.
Thankfully, the lower office areas were mostly deserted—typical for a Friday evening. Gayle tried not to envision what the few remaining employees saw when they looked up to see who was descending from the executive office level. But she knew they were taking it all in—their new sales director, the woman with the tragic backstory, walking way too close to a man way too young for her to be daydreaming about.
She stiffened as they walked through the wide space between the stairs and the front door. When they hit the oppressive heat of the summer evening, she jerked herself away from him and walked toward away, determined to escape and go home alone to nurse her ego. But once again, he beat her to her car and stood leaning against her driver’s-side door, beaming at her. She rolled her eyes.
“Move. Please.” She crossed her arms. Her legs were shaking with the wave of dizziness which hit her, but she bit the inside of her cheek to hide it from him.
He held out his hand. She stared at it—it was huge, like an overgrown puppy’s paw. The familiar anger rolled up from her chest, burning her throat on its way to her brain. “Stop treating me like…like…” She sighed, finding herself fading again. Would there ever be a time when she didn’t do something stupid or embarrassing in front of this man? Her vision seemed to go gray from the outside in. The heat rose from the dark asphalt beneath her feet.
Noah grabbed her arm, hustled her around to the passenger side of her own damn car and tucked her into the seat. Exhaustion made her floppy and slow-witted as she watched him jog back around to the driver’s side, then climb in behind the steering wheel. His huge, boyish grin made a fresh bolt of white-hot lust shoot down her spine, settling low in her stomach, and still lower. She pressed her thighs together and balled her hands into fists, determined to ignore this—to ignore him—so she could get back to what remained of her life.
“Where to?” he asked, going for the ignition button. The powerful engine roared to life. She glared straight ahead, demanding that her mind not go into its usual comparison mode. Ethan had been one of those men who always insisted on driving, which had rubbed her the wrong way at first, since she was one of those women who preferred to drive herself.
“Just take me home,” she said, her voice cracking with stress.
“I think we should go somewhere else—somewhere we can eat and talk.”
She sighed, pressed her still-balled fists against the dash in front of her. “Fine. You decide. I don’t care.”
He screeched into the heavy rush-hour traffic and navigated the roads expertly without a word. When he pulled up in front of a familiar, old building with a small, faded sign, she shot him a surprised glance. “How do you know about this place?”
He chuckled, released his belt and turned to look at her. She averted her gaze, unable to take it. “Are you kidding me? My brother-in-law owns this dive.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he’d climbed out and was standing at her door, holding out a hand to help her. She put hers into it, recognizing and owning the way her skin responded to their contact. For a split second they stood together, close enough to kiss, inside the open car door. But he moved away, blinking fast, so she could get all the way out and shut the door behind her. He held out a hand. “After you,” he said, his eyes shining. “Hope you like a greasy burger.”
“I can’t imagine anything better,” she admitted, her mouth already watering at the smell. Noah had his hand in the small of her back again, guiding her through the door into the dim space that still held a mild aura of old cigarette smoke. It was so comforting, so perfect.
And so wrong.
He guided her to a table, held out her chair, put a hand on her shoulder and waved to the bleached blonde behind the bar.
“Hey, honey,” she called out, her grin wide. “What’cha drinkin’?”
“Bring us a couple of Fitzgerald ambers,” he said, reaching up to catch the kiss she blew in his direction. “Thanks, doll.”
“Wow. Sexist much?” Gayle said when he sat across from her. She realized she was gripping her purse in front of her like some old lady in church.
“Huh?” He smiled at her, but waved at a few other people, and spent a few minutes calling out greetings. When the woman brought their beers—poured perfectly, Gayle noted, a half inch of foamy head above a lovely red brew dancing with carbonation—Noah patted her ass. The woman patted his head in response and pulled out a pad of paper.
“The usual for you, darlin’?”
He sipped, nodded then pointed across the table. “Make it two,” he said.
The woman looked at Gayle, narrowed her eyes then frowned at the young man, who’d managed to down half his beer. “She looks like a chef salad type to me. You sure?”
“Um, I’m right here,” Gayle said, her female-competition hackles rising so high she figured they were visible to the entire room. “And if his ‘usual’ includes a giant, medium rare burger with orange cheese, a slice of tomato and onion with a side of fries, then that is definitely more my type. Thanks.” She sipped her beer.
Noah grinned over at her, then up at the still-frowning woman. “What can I say? She’s a mind reader.”
“All right then.” She jotted something on her pad, shot Gayle a look that would literally have killed her, if it contained a single dagger, then sashayed back to the bar. Noah watched her go. He finished his beer, then turned back to face Gayle, his grin still wide and mischievous.
“You’re
a pig,” she declared, before staring down at the remains of her own beer. “Jesus, this is good.”
“Yep. It is. It’s our best seller right now.” He held up two fingers toward the bar. Gayle ignored the ugly glare the woman treated her to and focused on the man across from her. “What?” he asked, holding out his arms. “You’re gonna fault me for treating her the way she wants?”
“How do you know that’s what she wants?”
“Tricia’s been working here for almost twenty-five years. She’s the bar manager, the overlord, the mama bear. And she likes for men to let her know she’s pretty.”
Gayle glanced over at the woman, who was pouring beers and chattering with the gathering crowd. She was fifty if she was a day. And she’d definitely been pretty, once. Now she seemed to be a strong, capable, woman in charge. As if sensing her stare, Tricia looked right at Gayle, glanced over at Noah, winked then treated Gayle to more angry glaring.
“She’s a little overprotective,” he admitted. “She knows I’m prone to make shitty choices and likes to remind me of them.”
Their beers appeared, brought this time by a young waitress. Noah treated her to his most sincere smile. “Thanks, Dana. How’s your mom doing?”
“Better, thanks for asking.” She blushed to the roots of her hair. Gayle watched them exchange a few more words, Noah using a kind, respectful, completely different voice with the obviously flustered young woman than he’d used with the brassy Tricia.
“Oh, you are good,” she said, once Dana had made her reluctant way over to a different table.
Noah raised a dark eyebrow, sipped, then set the beer down and leaned forward on his elbows. “I am, yes,” he admitted, in a tone that made her scalp tingle. “But maybe not for the reasons you think.” He shrugged, leaned back in his chair and seemed suddenly vulnerable. Gayle frowned and looked away, berating herself for getting caught up in his weird, female-enticing game.
“Thank you,” she said, keeping her hand wrapped around the cold beer glass.
“For what?” He kept his casual stance, but his gaze was fixed on her in a way that made her feel as if she were the only female in his universe.
Stop it, Gayle. Don’t be ridiculous. The man is a nonstop flirt machine and you’ve just watched him work.
She held up her glass. He touched his to it. They sipped and set them down, still staring at each other. “For being here for me.” She meant it. It was way more complicated, of course, but right then, she couldn’t think of any other way to say it. To her surprise, Noah stretched out his arm and held his hand out, palm up, on the table in front of her. She blinked down at it, unwilling to see it for what it was. If she put her hand in his, it would be a sign, a line crossed, a Rubicon breached, the divide between her life as a miserable, barely functioning, childless widow and her new one filled with possibility. Filled with him.
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing him to withdraw the gesture. When she opened them, he had both his hands out, palms up in front of her. His eyes were soft and kind, nonthreatening and expectant of nothing. In a slight daze, she put her hands into his. He closed his fingers around them, warming her instantly.
“What is this?” she whispered, her lips trembling. “I don’t understand it.”
“Don’t try,” he insisted, still gripping her, anchoring her to earth. “Just enjoy it.”
He lifted her left hand to his lips and kissed the knuckle of her ring finger softly, then let go of her when their huge plates of cardiac-event-inducing food arrived. She stared at him through the rising heat. He smiled, picked up his burger and took an enormous bite. Her stomach clenched and her mouth watered when she looked down at her food. When she picked up the enormous burger and bit into it, she couldn’t resist a groan of pure satisfaction.
As she wiped the grease off her lips and chin, she saw Noah was frozen, his half-eaten burger still in his hand. He blinked, then his perfect lips parted in a smile that was not sweet—not in the slightest. But it was no less compelling. “I like the noise you made,” he said, leaning over the table. He touched his fingertip to the corner of her lips and drew away with a blot of mustard on it. “I could get used to it.” He stuck his finger in his mouth.
“Cheesy,” she declared, taking another giant bite and sighing with pleasure when the perfectly disgusting combination of half-rare ground beef, tart tomato, crisp onion and hot mustard rolled across her tongue.
“Maybe,” he agreed, before taking his own bite and turning the whole process into some kind of a seduction scene worthy of the most purple-prose-riddled romance novel. “But it’s true.”
“Shut up already,” she said. “Let me concentrate on this meal.”
“Sure thing,” he said with a somewhat less lascivious grin. “Let’s drink to it.” He held up his glass. She clinked hers and sipped.
“What did I just drink to?” She dredged some of the steak fries through a puddle of ketchup.
“To the sound you make when you’re happy. The one I’m going to enjoy hearing you make. A lot.”
She rolled her eyes at him. But her body was sending a far different signal. One she was going to have a hell of a hard time resisting.
“This isn’t a date, just to make it clear.” She ate a few more fries, sipped her beer and enjoyed the comfortable silence in the wake of that statement.
“Well, actually, Gayle, it is.”
She frowned, watching him demolish the rest of his burger then start on his fries.
“I mean, you can pretend all you want. But you know as well as I do what this is.”
For a lack of any coherent response, she plowed into her own food, enjoying every last decadent bite of it. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d had what Ethan used to call ‘a slutty cheeseburger’, so she was determined to enjoy the experience, and the company, even with her mind yammering at her that this whole thing was weird, wrong, strange, all of the above.
Chapter Thirteen
Gayle sliced lemons into a big glass of water, sprinkled in some sea salt then handed the thing over to Evelyn. Her friend took it and tried a few sips before setting it down and leaning back on her couch with a wince.
“Good Christ, somebody just kill me. This is the worst feeling ever.”
“You didn’t get sick with Rose?”
“Not this bad, and not this early, either. Ugh.”
Gayle patted Evelyn’s knee, picked up the glass and made her take a few more sips. They were supposed to be going out to get their nails done then have dinner. When she’d arrived at Evelyn’s house, she’d discovered the poor woman crouched in the bathroom, shivering and puking while Austin had looked on helplessly with Rose tugging at his pants leg and demanding to know why Mommy was sick.
Gayle had jumped right in, telling Austin to take Rose outside to the pool for an evening dip to distract her while she dealt with Evelyn. She’d cleaned up the bathroom while her friend had showered, then called for pizza before making what Ethan’s mother had insisted she drink during her days of pregnancy misery. It had worked, at least for a few hours at a time, but it took some getting used to—the sour saltiness had seemed an anathema at first, but she’d gotten to where she craved it through the early months.
After she’d managed to choke the whole glass down, Evelyn admitted to feeling a smidgeon above suicidal, and went downstairs to choose a wine for Gayle and Austin to share. As she sat flipping through a beverage industry magazine, Gayle’s phone buzzed with yet another text. Knowing who it was from, she ignored it as long as she could manage before tugging her phone from her jeans pocket and staring down at Noah’s latest missive. In the five weeks since she’d fallen out of her office chair and been treated to a slutty cheeseburger and not-too-subtle flirting, she and Noah had eased into something approximating a relationship that she kept firmly on a friends-only level, complete with three-days-a-week hot yoga followed by green smoothies or, if they were feeling decadent, ice cream.
He’d asked every weekend to be gran
ted the honor of her company on a real date—dinner, dancing, movie, orchestra concert, nightclubbing, poetry reading, whatever she wanted. But she’d held him off, concocting a wide array of excuses to keep him at arm’s length. Every time she’d convinced herself it was the right thing to do. That no matter how much more she got to know about him—his honesty about his past, his frustration about his future, his wicked sense of humor, and most importantly his deep desire to get to know her better—she didn’t want any more.
She didn’t deserve any more. She was a sad, broken widow and determined to stay that way. There was no room in her world for someone like him—a…a…plaything, a boy toy. But he was more, and she damn well knew it.
She’d caught herself reaching out to him with regular text messages, sharing things about her day, a joke, a frustration, a sad moment. For the last three days, she’d actually forced herself not to do it at all, which had prompted him to be amused by her silence, then aggravated, then a little panicked. Hence, this message.
If you’ll just let me know you’re ok I swear I’ll leave you alone.
Followed quickly by—
Well, I might not leave you alone alone, if you know what I mean. (winky face)
Then—
You’re fucking w/me aren’t u?
And a final one—
You know what? Fine. Leave me to worry.
She stared at the string of messages, her pulse racing at each increasingly intense line. After tapping out and deleting five potential responses, she got up and headed outside. Evelyn emerged from the house, two glasses of wine and one of lemon-choked water on a tray. They sat in silence, watching Austin and Rose cavort around in the pool, and Gayle slowly relaxed.
“So, what’s all this I hear about you and my new brand ambassador—the delectable Noah Stokes?”
