They broke apart, both trying to catch their breath.
“Sorry.” He hesitated but then gave in to the temptation to touch her again, smoothing the hair at her temple. “I’m trying not to go too fast for you. I meant to ask first.”
She grinned, unable to stop herself. Did he expect her to slap his face? “I would have said yes. In case you’re wondering.”
He stared at her mouth, which felt dewy and deliciously swollen, and then flicked his hot gaze up to her eyes.
“You’re beautiful. You know that, right?”
She didn’t know that. Not at all. And he wouldn’t be so mesmerized by her face if he could see all the inner demons she’d been trying so hard to conquer these last several months. If she was any kind of a woman at all, she should warn him.
“Brady,” she began.
His brows contracted. “What’s my name?”
Wow. This one didn’t forget a thing, did he? Wouldn’t let her get away with anything and probably was straight-forward with his thoughts and where she stood with him at any given moment, and wasn’t that a refreshing change?
“Dexter. I’m nothing but trouble. Why don’t you find a nice girl to be with?”
“I already have,” he said flatly. “Now let’s go eat.”
“Five Guys Burgers and Fries, eh?” Dexter watched Kira unwrap her loaded burger from its foil with great relish, pausing to lick some of the oozing condiments—yes, she’d ordered, if he recalled correctly, mayo, ketchup, mustard, barbeque sauce, and hot sauce—off her thumb. “ Really?”
“Really. I’ve had enough dinners at overpriced restaurants where they serve you half a baby carrot with the stem still attached and one scallop and call it a meal to last the rest of my life. No thanks. Besides. Where else are you going to get burgers like this?”
Opening his mouth to answer, he found his thoughts derailed by the way she bit into the thing with orgasmic delight, complete with closed eyes and satisfied moan. Until this moment, he’d rarely noticed a woman eat or found anything particularly sexy about anyone inhaling food as though it was his or her first meal after a threeweek forced fast, but he couldn’t look away. Nor could he do anything about the sweet ache growing between his thighs.
“Eat much?” he wondered, fascinated, as always, by everything about her.
“Yeah.” Grinning around her mouthful, she kept right on going. “And if you don’t get started, I’ll eat yours, too.”
Since he was pretty hungry and she looked fully capable of eating his burger and then climbing over the counter and grabbing them straight from the grill, he pulled his tray closer in a protective gesture.
“I was planning to take you someplace fancier. Somewhere with, you know, more than burgers and fries on the menu.”
“Well, first of all, they also have hot dogs here. Don’t forget. Second, you’re not taking me. I’m taking you—”
“I beg to differ. Who drove?”
“—And third, I love burgers. As you may recall.”
This pointed reference to that day, six months and several lifetimes ago, when she’d snuck out to meet him at a T.G.I. Friday’s and beg for his help in escaping Kareem (she’d been willing to risk her neck by trying to find evidence of Kareem’s criminal activities) reminded him that they had several housekeeping matters to attend to before they could focus, as he fully intended to do, on steering their fledgling relationship out of the past and into the future.
He hadn’t meant to have this discussion here, among the chattering patrons, red-shirted employees, and cheery red and white tiled walls of Five Guys while Duran Duran blared over the speakers, but what the hell. No time like the present.
“I remember.” I remember everything about you. “And I owe you an apology, don’t I?”
“Hmm.” Looking thoughtful if not particularly forgiving, she grabbed a napkin and wiped the corner of her mouth. “For what? Not trusting my motives? Making me jump through a few hoops? Reminding me that my hands weren’t entirely clean? And anyway, you already apologized.”
“No,” he said, shining his megawatt examination light inward for once, on his unforgiving nature. It wasn’t pretty. “For being a judgmental SOB. How about that?”
“You were very hard on me that day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I deserved it.”
Those three quiet words tied him up in knots because if she thought she deserved his harsh pronouncements about her motives and choices, did she also think she deserved the rape?
“No, you didn’t. And you need to understand something.”
Hesitating—man, he really hadn’t meant to get into this right here and now, over burgers on their first date without even a drink or two to soften the mood—he tried to say it right without putting all his emotions on the line, but screw it. By this point she had to know he was wild about her.
“That day was about me doing a terrible job of keeping my feelings for you in check—”
“I was so sure you hated me.”
“Well, don’t get me wrong. I tried to hate you. Wanted to hate you. Needed to hate you. I just never managed it. And I didn’t understand you.”
“You think you understand me now?”
He couldn’t tell if the idea amused or horrified her more, but either way she didn’t seem to know what to make of him. “I understand now that you were young when you married ... him.” An inverse relationship was growing between his feelings for Kira and his hatred of Kareem; the more he cared about her, the less he could tolerate anything about the bastard, including his memory and his name. “Too young to know what you were doing.”
Demons and shadows moved in, crowding out the light in her face, and her lips twisted with self-derision. “You shouldn’t make excuses for me.”
“And you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You want to know my theory?”
“Probably not.”
“My theory,” he continued, ignoring the way her eyes narrowed into chips of brown flint, “is that you married him because it was a better option than staying at home.”
She stilled.
“I’m hoping that one day—if you’re still speaking to me after this—when you’re ready, and you feel comfortable about it, you’ll tell me what happened to you.”
“Why would you want to turn over those rocks and look underneath?”
“You know why. But I can say it if you want me to.”
An impromptu staring contest broke out at that point, with her searching, he supposed, for his motives and him wanting her to see how he felt, and that if she thought he’d turn away from her just because she’d had a few rough spots in her life, she’d better think again.
She looked away first, which made him the winner.
“Wonderful,” she muttered. “Dinner with you is like being analyzed by a psychic.”
Her little defensive maneuvers weren’t going to keep him away, either. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m just making sure we understand each other up front.”
Since this portion of the conversation seemed to be making her nervous—she fiddled with a fry, swirling it in ketchup, but didn’t eat it—she reverted to something safer. “So that day in the law library, when I hugged you to thank you for helping me, and you pushed me away ... ?”
“I wanted to swallow you whole,” he said simply.
All around them, things began to disappear: the crowd ... the music ... the mom and pop ambiance in all its unrelentingly friendly glory. Only Kira was left, with her dark eyes, beautiful soul, and mysterious woman’s smile curling the edge of her lips. Christ. If given half the chance, he’d swear he could stare at her until the day he died, never looking away, never getting bored, and never wanting to see anything else.
“You’ve got a way with words, Dexter.”
“I’ve got a lot of things to say to you.”
A pause, and then, softly, “I’ve got a lot of things to tell you.”
At that point in the proceedings, his need to
touch her overcame everything else, including things like, say, his general sense of decorum and his sharp dislike of public displays of affection. Maybe he should alter his perspective a little: witnessing PDAs was to be avoided, but participating in them, with Kira, was perfectly acceptable, and if other people had an issue with that, then they were heartless morons with decimal points in front of their IQs.
That decided, he rose up in his chair just enough to lean across the table and plant a lingering kiss on her sweetly smiling lips.
Yeah, he thought, sitting down again and finally giving a name to the feelings that had tiptoed up on him and then plagued him since the moment he first saw this woman.
He could really get to love this one.
“So,” she said, her cheeks flushed and pretty.
“So.” Man, he felt like an idiot. He felt like a teenager who’d just squeezed his first pair of breasts. He felt happier than he’d ever felt in his life. “Tell me what you’ve been doing this whole time.”
“Oh, no.” She went to work on her fries, smothering them in so much ketchup she’d need a spoon in a minute. “That’s more than enough about me. What have you been up to? How’s your mom?”
That made him grin, and he wished, suddenly and vehemently, that the two women in his life could meet each other. He’d have to arrange that. “She’s great. I saw her a little while ago. She was excited because they were having sundaes and a movie tonight.”
Lorraine Brady fidgeted in her wheelchair, fighting a yawn and wishing she had her blanket.
They were in that one big room (the fun room, they called it—or was it the activities room?), all their wheelchairs lined up at the long table for now, but soon, she knew, they’d turn them all around to face the big screen, and they’d watch a movie. A good movie, too, an old black and white with the actor she loved so much. What was his name? Not Spencer Tracy. Not Clark Gable. Well, it would come to her later. This was the movie with the plane at the end, and the Swedish girl with the accent. Oh, what was her name? She couldn’t remember much of anything these days, which was why she was here, living with a bunch of old farts who drooled and said the same damn thing over and over again because they’d all lost their minds.
“Excuse me,” she said to the nearest woman in uniform. She smiled, too, because it was important to be polite, even when you were an old fart saddled with a wheelchair and a fading mind. The employees worked hard around here, and they deserved nice manners even if they keep it too cold. “Can I have my blanket, please?”
The woman turned. She’d been wiping the gaping mouth of the woman in the wheelchair next to Lorraine’s—yeah, they always drooled around here—but now she paused and smiled. Oh, dear. Her face was so familiar. Had they met before? Should she know her name? Why couldn’t she remember any names these days?
“Cold again, Lorraine?” Oh, no. They had met before, and Lorraine would be embarrassed in a minute when it became obvious she had no earthly clue who this woman was.
“Honey, I haven’t been warm since the sixties. Now how about that blanket?”
The woman laughed. “Give me a minute, Lorraine. I need to get Ethel here cleaned up first.”
Lorraine frowned and shifted in her chair, wishing the damn thing was more comfortable, but of course when you sat on your bee-hind all day, any chair was bound to make you stiff.
She looked around the crowded room, bored. Now what? And when would they start the ... the ... what was the activity tonight? There was an activity tonight, wasn’t there? She hoped it wasn’t show tunes with Betty again because Betty, frankly, couldn’t play the piano to save her life. Bingo would be better, and she wouldn’t mind watching a movie, either—
“Is that you, Cousin Lorraine?”
Startled, she glanced up, adjusted her bifocals, and discovered a man standing there. A good-looking young fellow he was, too, with smooth brown skin (she did like nice skin), sleek black hair, and a goatee that gave him a devilish glint. Oh, this one was a rascal, all right. And look at that smile! Dimpled and charming, as though he knew she didn’t get many visitors and certainly never had any handsome young men looking for her. Except for Dexter, of course, but he didn’t count because he was her son.
She didn’t remember him, though. That was always the problem these days. Still, she could fake it, because she’d gotten quite good at faking it.
“Hello, honey.” Beaming, she extended her hand and discovered he had a nice, firm grip, which was a good sign. You could always tell whatever you needed to know about a person by his grip. “It’s so good to see you.”
He leaned down to kiss her, his mustache tickling her cheek. Oh, my. He smelled so good. Fresh and clean with a hint of the kind of expensive cologne she’d never been able to get her husband to wear. “It’s good to see you, too. And these are for you.”
“Oh,” she breathed, accepting a beautiful bouquet of pink flowers from him, the ones that had that wonderful scent. What were they called? Daffodils? The name wouldn’t come to her, but they were gorgeous. “Thank you. They’re my favorite.”
“You like roses?” Roses! That was the name! He pulled a chair out from the table, a regular chair, not a wheelchair, and sat next to her, taking her hand between both of his. Oh, he had nice fingers. Strong and clean, with trimmed nails. They were long fingers, too, and she wasn’t too old and forgetful to remember what that meant, she thought, blushing. “I was hoping they’d brighten your day.”
“They have,” she assured him. “And how have you been?”
His smile flickered but didn’t go out completely. “I’ve been out of circulation for a while, but now I’m back.”
“Oh?”
“I have a few things I need to straighten out.”
“Well, I hope you won’t be too busy to come back and see me.”
Dimpling again, he squeezed her hand. The flirt! She squeezed back because what was the harm and when had she last held hands with a handsome man?
“I’ll be back real soon,” he assured her. “Don’t you worry.”
“Have you called Dexter yet?”
“Not yet. I want to surprise him.”
Lorraine blinked. Why had he said it like that, with that new edge in his voice? Oh, no—had she done something wrong? Did he realize that she’d forgotten both his name and the fact that she knew him at all? That must be it, because now he was getting up, and his visit was over already, reminding her of the worst thing about having a stroke and losing your mind: no matter how much of your memory might be gone, there was always enough left to know that you’d once been much less alone than you were now.
“You’re not leaving?” she asked, tightening her grip on his hand.
“Like I said, I’ll be back, Cousin Lorraine. I’ll take you for a nice walk in your wheelchair, okay?” He smiled again, and he didn’t seem angry after all.
Hope filled her up, pushing some of the dark confusion away, at least for now. They could still be friends and, more importantly, he’d come see her again and break up the monotony of her empty days.
“But I need to go now,” he added. “I’ve got a busy night ahead.”
Chapter 17
After dinner, they went to Graeter’s for ice cream, where Dexter, true to his word, ordered vanilla, although, to be fair, it did seem to have specks of bean in it, and he did try, a little reluctantly, a spoonful of her chocolate coconut almond chip. They managed to stretch the dessert portion of the evening into two hours, which, combined with the three-hour burger/fry dinner and chat fest they’d already had, made for a grand total of five hours for a first date.
Pretty good for an evening that didn’t include sex, she thought, possibly a world record, and that seemed significant.
And then, too soon, they were back in his truck, holding hands but otherwise silent. Maybe his throat was sore from so much talking, but she was silent because she was thinking that even if she saw him again tomorrow morning at seven, that would be a long time to wait. A really long
time.
Too soon after that, they were back at his house, standing in between his truck and her car, staring at each other by the light of a reluctant moon hiding behind a gray fluff of clouds, their fingers laced together and down by their sides.
“So,” she began, and got no farther.
Her thoughts didn’t want to be gathered, probably because her body was so excruciatingly aware of everything about him. His height. The palpable heat radiating from him on this balmy summer night, enough to keep her warm for hours to come, possibly days. The harsh planes of his cheeks ... the lush softness of his lips ... the strength of his fingers.
The restrained power of his thighs so close to hers aroused her unbearably, and she wanted to look down, between his legs, to see if she affected him anything like the way he affected her. Did he know that? Did he have the slightest idea that she was hot and slick for him, her dormant body alive again when she’d spent so much time wondering if it would ever recover from Kareem’s assault?
“I should get home and check on Max.”
“Hmm.” His distracted gaze strayed to her lips and stayed there. “I was wondering where he was.”
“He’s got a little in-out door flap thing, and a fenced yard with a doghouse.”
“Oh.”
More staring ensued. While she was pondering the compelling mystery of whether his brows had always been so full and expressive, they drifted closer, and the next thing she knew, his arms were around her, bringing her up against the hard wall of his chest and the harder bulge of his groin, and all four of their hands were clasped together behind her back. She sighed helplessly, drifting deeper into the hazy area where she knew it wouldn’t be smart to sleep with him tonight but she just couldn’t make herself give a damn.
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