by Ana E Ross
“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispered gently in a deep voice as he held her, his hands soothing and comforting as he caressed her back and shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay...”
They stood holding onto each other in the parking lot with curious people watching and the warm July sun beating down on them.
After a while, he put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to his. “It’s gonna be okay,” he reiterated, gazing into her eyes. He backtracked a few steps with her, bent down, picked up her backpack and shopping bags, and handed them to her. “Your groceries are ruined.” He bent down and began to scoop up as much as he could of the mess of food from the ground.
Tashi slid one strap of her backpack over her arm and bent down to help him. As they carried the soggy paper bags with ruined groceries over to the trashcan and deposited them inside, Tashi felt an unexpected warmth from his tenderness. His genuine concern for her—a stranger—was touching.
“If you come inside with me, I’ll replace your groceries,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that.” She could have salvaged most of the items and washed off the spaghetti sauce once she got home, but she was too tired to bother. “It’s my fault for being paranoid.”
“Why do you take on so much blame?’ he asked. “In the café, you blamed yourself and now… I snuck up on you there, and I scared you just now. It’s not all your fault, you know.”
A heaviness settled in Tashi’s stomach. But it was. If I hadn’t been so naïve that nice FBI agent would be alive today, and that driver too—even though he was a bad man. It was her fault.
“At least let me reimburse you.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket.
“No. It wasn’t that much. I’m fine.” She hoped her camera was fine. It was expensive and she didn’t want to have to replace it. At least her phone was tucked safely inside the pocket of her dress. She would die if it was ever lost, damaged, or stolen.
The man’s eyes continued to bore into hers as he replaced his wallet. “Are you in some kind of trouble?” His voice was deep and rich, and it made her feel safe.
Tashi needed that voice at night as she lay in bed trembling and frightened, whispering that everything would be all right. She needed that voice to bring her out of the nightmares that continually plagued her sleep. She swallowed and shook her head, then pressed her hands against her temples. “No. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
“It’s only noon,” he pointed out in a patient tone.
She tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth just trembled. “Where’s your little girl—Tif—Tiffany, right?” she asked, noticing what she supposed was green dried baby food in the tresses of his long black hair. She envied the woman who had this gentle, loving man to comfort and protect her. She wished she had someone like him to lean on. To trust.
“She’s with her grandmother,” he answered, offering her a smile that made her knees weak, not from fear or heartache this time, but attraction. “Come back to the café with me. Have a smoothie and some apple pie. It’ll calm your nerves, make you feel better. I promise.”
Tashi shook her head. “The apple pie is delicious. I usually have it for desert.” Usually, she thought in wonder. She hadn’t ordered it today, and if she had, she would still have been sitting at her table when this stranger walked in. She would not have stood up and bumped into him. “I just ate and I’m really full.”
“Maybe another time then?” he asked, on a warm smile.
“I’m sorry for crying all over you,” Tashi said, willing herself not to fall victim to his charm. The lingering smell of green beans and applesauce on his shirt made him even more irresistible. He was somebody’s dad—the one thing she never had growing up.
“Why did you cry all over me?”
She hesitated before responding. “It’s just that, when I saw you standing there talking on the phone, and then when you turned around, I panicked. I thought you were—” She stopped, and dropped her gaze.
“You thought I was someone else. The person you are running away from?”
“I’m not running from anyone.” Tashi’s defenses instantly returned. She didn’t know this man. He was nice, but he had his own family to take care of. If she were his wife, she wouldn’t appreciate him paying so much attention to another woman—especially one who in spite of the mental brakes she was trying to apply found herself highly attracted to him. She stepped back and glanced up at him. “I have to go.” She hooked the other strap of her backpack over her shoulder.
“Where? Where do you have to go?” he asked, the beginning of a new smile tipping the corners of his sexy mouth.
“Bye.” She turned and walked away, clutching her two garment bags in her hand.
“I’m Adam. Do you live around here?” he called after her.
Tashi stopped in her tracks. Adam. His name was Adam. His name began with an A…
Her mind rewound fifteen months to the night in New York and the split second just before the first round of shots blasted around her: “When you get to Granite Falls, look for A—” and just before that, “I’ll send word to my friend. He is to give you the protection of his name and family by making you his temporary bride.”
Tashi did not dare turn around. It was too good to be true. He couldn’t be that friend. The agent hadn’t said anything about him having a child, and she was certain that if Adam was already married, the agent would not have asked that he marry her. What if he’d gotten married in the fifteen months she’d been wasting away in this town? Well, if he was that man, he could still give her protection, just not as his wife. “Yes,” she said in a voice squeaky with hope. “I live around here.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tashi. Tashi—” She hesitated, then decided to go for it. “Tashi Holland.”
She waited for some indication of recognition. A “My goodness, I’ve been looking for you for months,” or something along those lines. When none came, Tashi continued on her way.
Tashi.
“Tashi Holland.” Adam whispered her name as he watched her walk through the parking lot, her long jean dress flapping loosely around her ankles. When she exited the lot, Adam realized that she didn’t own a car. The thought that she couldn’t afford a car upset him. How many other basic necessities of life—things people like him took for granted—did she live without?
He was tempted to follow her, even though he’d told her he hadn’t been following her. That was then. This was now—now that he knew she was afraid of something or someone, the urge to run after her and hold her again mounted by the second. Twice in one day, within the hour, he’d held her against him, pressed her cheek close to his heart—his heart that was now beating madly out of control.
Adam pressed his palm into his chest where her cheek had lain. His shirt was damp from her tears. His skin tingled from her heat. He fisted his hand as if he could capture her sadness and make it his own.
“What frightens you, Tashi? Who scares you? An obsessive boyfriend? An abusive husband?” he asked out loud as he watched her cross the street and walk west on Beacon Avenue, pass Mountainview Café, toward Union Street.
Soon she would be out of sight, but positively not out of mind, he thought as he recalled her eyes—wide sapphire pools of mystery and magic, bright open windows to her timid soul. His pulse quickened as he remembered the rich golden glow and enthusing aroma of ginger scenting her soft auburn curls, and the sensuous bouquet of jasmine and vanilla emanating from her smooth silky skin.
Exotic. Sweet. Enticing. Lei era la spezia e il sapore al suo stufato—yes, the spice and the flavor to his stew, indeed. The kind of woman a man wished he could bump into again and again—all pun intended.
Adam’s excitement waned when she made a right turn onto Union Street—the low-income part of town, littered with rundown multi-family houses where people existed from paycheck to paycheck. His heart squeezed mercilessly. A woman like Tashi didn’t belong in that kind of neighborhood. She
belonged in a palace surrounded by servants eager to grant her simplest request.
As her diminishing figure disappeared from his view, Adam walked into the supermarket. His concern for the girl sprouted wings and his protective instincts toward any damsel in distress bulldozed through the barrier he’d erected several years ago. It ripped through him like a fist smashing through the surge of a waterfall.
Tashi was in trouble. Not the kind that went away with a threatening phone call or a letter from an attorney. She was in deep. The girl was a bundle of nerves, and seemingly as defenseless as an alley cat trapped with its back against the wall.
Much like Claire, sans the entourage of negative vibes.
As he pulled the box of disposable diapers from the shelf and headed to the checkout, Adam tried to put all thoughts of Tashi Holland out of his mind. He told himself that she was not his concern. He berated himself for asking her name and if she lived in the vicinity. Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone?
It wasn’t that he was opposed to helping damsels in distress. It was just that damsels in distress were his weakness.
He’d discovered his Achilles’ heel at age twenty-one when he’d rescued Claire, a damsel in distress from an abusive relationship. A practicing yogi and meditation guru since the age of twelve, he should have known that a woman with that kind of baggage and high levels of toxins circling her orbit would tip his Libra scales way out of equilibrium.
Perhaps the challenge of teaching her to trust again, to show her that not all men were cruel, and most emphatically the fact that she was the first woman he’d made love with had clouded his mind, made him think he was in love with her, and pushed him to propose. It could also have been his father’s frequent referral to the fact that since Adam was his only heir, it was his duty to carry on the Andreas bloodline.
Or perhaps it was that longing in his heart to share his life with someone special, to create his own home with a wife and children that was filled with joy, happiness, laughter, and respect—much like the one he’d grown up in. Whatever it was that had pushed him to ask, Claire had accepted his proposal, and had seemed excited about marrying him in the months they’d spent planning the elaborate wedding of the decade.
Then she’d broken his heart.
Eventually, his heart had healed and had forgotten the ache of rejection. A true believer in love and Happy Ever After, he’d opened up to another damsel in distress. He never got as far as the altar with Denise, and he couldn’t say that his heart had been broken the second time around—just a little hurt and somewhat disappointed at failing again.
That kind of consecutive rejection could wreak havoc on a man’s confidence, not to mention his ego—even if that man practiced yoga and meditation on a daily basis. While yoga and meditation were efficient in helping him regain and maintain balance in his inner universe, they, however, were ineffective when it came to matters of the heart and soul.
The heart and soul, he’d discovered, were restless teammates—forever on perpetual journeys to find their one true love—the ultimate mate to complete them. Twice burned, Adam had learned that the best way to deal with his heart and soul was not to engage them, to keep them away from things that affected them most.
For him, that thing was a woman in distress, since the moment he thought he had to rescue a woman was the moment he began falling for her.
After his emotional disasters with Claire and Denise, he’d made a conscious effort to only pursue independent women who didn’t need to be rescued, women who wanted a career more than they wanted love and a family, those who bowed out as graciously as they bowed into their affairs with him. To be fair, he was always mindful to let them know right up front that there was no permanency in a relationship with him. Consequently, he was known as Temporary Adam to some, and the Temporary Tycoon to others.
Adam had been initially surprised that there were actual women out there who didn’t see marriage and children as the prime reason for their existence, that it wasn’t a goal they needed to attain to feel complete and valued by the opposite sex, or by society. What many women really wanted had changed in recent decades. Some of them just wanted to have fun.
Adam appreciated their contemporary philosophies, and while the opposite was true for him, temporary was working out just fine. The heart couldn’t always get what it wanted, and since he’d conditioned his not to fall in love, it seemed to have ceased its endless quest.
The safest way to keep temporary permanent was to stay away from damsels in distress. That meant no opening of Pandora’s box—well, in this case, Tashi’s box—for a quick and curious peek inside.
By the time he walked back to Mountainview Café and handed the box of diapers to Felicia, Adam had succeeded in putting all thoughts of Tashi Holland out of his mind.
At least that’s what he thought.
CHAPTER TWO
Once inside her apartment, Tashi turned the dead bolts and dropped her bags on the floor. She leaned against the door and took deep breaths of the stifling hot air into her lungs. She felt as if she’d been holding her breath ever since she’d collided with that incredible man in the café.
“Adam.” She finally allowed herself to say the name that had been bouncing around in her head during her fifteen-minute walk home—the longest and most difficult she’d ever taken. Ever since she took the first step away from him, her legs had been wobbly and stiff—a contrasting combination she didn’t know was possible. It was a miracle she hadn’t collapsed on the sidewalk.
“Adam,” she said again as if repeating it would somehow ease the constriction in her lungs, the quaking in her belly. As the sound of his name bounced off the walls of her apartment, the image of his gentle blue eyes, the lingering feel of his arms wrapped around her, the warmth from his hard strong body made Tashi flush all over. Even now in the delicious aftermath of their brief physical encounter, she felt as if her skin was on fire.
But that fire quickly waned as Tashi remembered the little girl in the stroller. He was married. He had a child, maybe more than one. Ms. Felicia was his mother-in-law. Maybe that’s where she’d seen him before—at the café. She shook her head. No. If she’d seen this man in person before, she would have remembered. He was not the kind of man a woman forgot meeting.
He was kind, and gentle, and considerate. Okay, yes, and sexy and appealing too. He’d offered to replace her groceries even though it was her own paranoia that had caused her to drop her bags. And he’d invited her back to the café for dessert—to help calm her nerves he’d said. Why hadn’t she accepted? Because he was married, and if she were his wife, she wouldn’t appreciate him sharing anything with another woman, no matter how innocent it looked. That was how illicit affairs began—innocently.
He could be divorced. Separated. Widowed, her lonely heart debated. Could be, she thought, squinting her eyes, trying to remember if she’d seen a ring on his finger.
Tashi slid her backpack off her shoulders and made her way into the living room, where she placed it carefully on the glass-top coffee table.
In an effort to bring down her body heat, she flipped the switch to the air conditioning unit in one of the two living room windows. As the room vibrated from the ruckus of the cooling unit, Tashi plopped down on her posh leather sofa, picked up her laptop from the coffee table, and opened up her browser. There were a lot of men with Adam for a first name living in Granite Falls, but Tashi knew without a doubt that the first name on the first page belonged to the man she’d collided with today.
Adamo Alessandro Andreas. Triple A’s for first, second, and last names. He seemed like a man who would be first, at the top of his game, at the top of everything, including a list of website pages. He was A all the way. Adam, the first man God created. Tashi’s heart pounded furiously at the realization that she’d been nicknamed “Little Eve” after her mother, Evelyn, because she looked so much like her.
Expelling a ragged breath, she clicked on the Wikipedia link. Several images
of Adam popped onto the screen and his intense blue eyes seemed to pierce through her like they’d done in person earlier. With curiosity burning a hole in her belly, Tashi leaned back into the sofa and began to devour as much information as she could about Adam Andreas.
He was thirty-two years old, the only child of Alessandro and Arabella Andreas, and sole heir to Andreas International—an exclusive chain of restaurants and hotels situated all over the globe. Tashi remembered walking past both Hotel Andreas and Ristorante Andreas last summer when she’d decided to extend her walking parameters as far as Lake Crystal at the eastern border of town. It was a long walk from her apartment, but well worth the effort. She’d photographed some interesting sights on the way, and once there, she’d people-watched from the boardwalk, and enjoyed both a delicious seafood lunch and a dinner at two of the local restaurants.
Having nothing and no one to go home to, she’d stayed all day, and had even dipped her feet in the cool crystal water while the town residents and visitors frolicked around her, and mini yachts docked and undocked all day long, picking up and dropping off rich-looking men, women and children in a noisy melee of fun and excitement.
It was nightfall by the time she’d finished her dinner, and although the crime rate in Granite Falls was less than a quarter percent compared to the rest of the state and the country, she’d decided to take a taxi back to her apartment.
Tashi clasped a hand to her mouth. That’s where she’d seen Adam Andreas before. She’d picked up a copy of Granite Falls People News magazine from the back seat of the cab, and had been absentmindedly leafing through it during the latter part of her ride. She’d turned a page and just as her eyes landed on a photo of four men all dressed in business attire, her taxi ride had ended.
