by J. Sterling
Tamping down my inappropriate thoughts, I watched as Ryan greeted Claudia before turning to look me in the eye. He’d noticed that she was alone, and it didn’t take long for him to put two and two together. Shaking his head, he looked away, pretending not to have an opinion on the matter, when I knew he damn well had one and I’d hear all about it later.
Claudia headed to my side of the bar, wearing a beautiful smile. “Hey,” she said as she neared, her tone a little nervous. It was fucking adorable.
“Hey, yourself. I’m glad you made it. Do you want anything to drink?”
I knew I should care more about what the hell I was doing in this moment, but all I could think about was spending a little time with her. I wanted to get to know her better, and even though my head kept blaring warning signals, my heart was clearly taking the lead.
My heart. I was starting to sound like Ryan.
“Do you have soda? Like Sprite? Or are you going to force me to drink alcohol?” she asked with a laugh.
“I’d never force you to do anything,” I said a little too seriously. “One Sprite coming up.” I moved near Ryan to pour Claudia a Sprite and myself a Coke. If she wasn’t drinking, then neither was I.
“Did you invite her?” Ryan whispered, and I nodded. “We are so discussing this later.”
I looked at him. “I’m well aware.”
“Good.”
With the two drinks in hand, I walked back to Claudia before tipping my head toward the back of the bar, which was pretty much empty. She followed as I led her toward one of the high-top tables. I could have led us to the couch, but figured that sitting at a table might discourage my inappropriate behavior.
I pulled out a bar stool and sat down, placing Claudia’s drink across from me. She sat and we stared at each other, grinning as we sipped our sodas.
“Can I ask you something?” She put her drink down, brushing her fingers across the moisture on the glass.
“Of course.” Honestly, I was a little nervous at what might come out of her mouth. If she knew I had a girlfriend, she hadn’t let on. But if she asked, I wouldn’t lie to her. I knew I was already lying by keeping the truth from her, but I wouldn’t outright lie if she asked. I couldn’t.
“What took you so long to text?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. She was straightforward, and I appreciated it.
“Why are you laughing at me?” she asked with a small frown.
“I’m not,” I said, still grinning at her. “I like that you say what’s on your mind.”
She pursed her lips and narrowed her brown eyes at me. “So, what’s your excuse, Fisher?”
“Which one will get me out of trouble?”
A loud ha! escaped before she covered her mouth, then lowered her hand. “Who says you’re in trouble?”
“I just figure you wouldn’t be asking me about it if I wasn’t,” I teased.
She stayed quiet for a minute. Hell, maybe it was longer. Reaching for her drink, she took a few sips, never pulling her soft brown gaze from mine. Finally, she lowered her glass and gave me a smile, signaling she was ready to talk again.
“I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“I’m not really that difficult. I am a guy.”
And that right there was the truth. Men aren’t nearly as complicated as women. Women often have a thousand emotions, a million reasons, and a billion different scenarios going through their minds at any given time. We men usually have about three, maybe four, max. Any more and our circuits might short out.
“But you’re a quiet kind of guy. Those are usually the most complicated. And dangerous.”
“You think I’m dangerous?” I couldn’t help but laugh again. I’d never been called dangerous in my life.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“I think you might be the dangerous one,” I said, and she had no idea just how much I meant it. I wasn’t sure that even I had any idea how much I meant it.
Her cheeks flushed as she looked away for a second before bringing her attention back to me. “I am from Colombia,” she said with a wink.
Jumping at the topic, I asked, “When did you move here?”
“My mom and I moved when I was seven.”
“Why?” I sincerely wanted to know, curious about what it was like to be from another country and want to move to America.
Rather than answer, she sucked in a breath, making me wonder if she was weighing her options about how much to share with me. Instead of pushing, though, I waited. I wanted her to trust me.
“My dad had a girlfriend,” Claudia finally said. “When my mom found out, she asked him to leave, and you know what he did?” She raised her voice, her heightened emotions telling me how much this story still affected her, all these years later.
“What?”
“He left,” she said with a shrug. “He packed a single suitcase. It was brown and tattered, with a blue sticker on it. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. So vividly. I remember him giving me a kiss on the forehead and then walking out the front door and never coming back. I was four.”
My heart sank, hurting for the little girl she once was and for the woman she had become.
“He didn’t even say anything to my mom. He just left. She waited for years, thinking that he would come back, but he never did. So we came here. It was like once she made up her mind to leave for America, there was no stopping her. I don’t even think my father could have talked her out of it by that point.”
God, Claudia was honest. It was as refreshing as it was damning. Guilt stormed my heart, reminding me that I wasn’t much better than her old man had been. How was what I was doing any better than what he’d did?
“Is she remarried now?”
“She is. And he’s great. Bradley raised me like I was his own daughter. I’m thankful for all he’s done for us.”
I couldn’t help but smile as she talked about her stepfather. It made me happy that she seemed happy. “Have you been back to Colombia since you left?”
She shook her head sharply. “Not once.”
That shocked me. “Do you want to?”
“More than anything. I want to see where I came from, where I used to live, you know? I don’t really remember any of it.”
The conversation halted for a while, neither of us pressing the other to speak. There was a comfort in the silence, an easiness, that I couldn’t remember ever feeling with anyone before. I wasn’t the kind of guy to fill the air with noise that wasn’t necessary, but I always sensed when people wanted to drown it out. Claudia seemed content in the silence between us.
What she’d said about Colombia sank in, and I rolled that around in my head as I waited. I had no idea what she was thinking, but I refused to interrupt her thoughts. I waited for her to come back to me, for her mind to return to where we were, but I didn’t press. I could have stayed quiet for hours, if that was what she needed.
A few moments later, her gaze lifted from the table and found mine. “What about you? Are you from here?”
I nodded. “I am. We grew up in Laguna Beach.”
“Fancy.”
“It wasn’t when Ryan and I were kids, but it is now. My dad’s loaded,” I admitted with a sheepish grin. The last thing I wanted was to throw my family’s money in anyone’s face. We might all be successful business owners, but I hated arrogance, and I knew she did too from what she told me the other night when those guys were hitting on her.
“What’s your dad do?”
“He owns a marketing firm.”
Her mouth dropped open like the gears spinning in her head had all connected together. “That makes so much sense.”
“What does?”
“The marketing, and Nick being so good at it.” She gave me a sheepish look. “I might know way more than I should about you and your brothers. That’s a little weird, right? You can tell me it’s weird.”
I laughed, wanting to reassure her. “Used to it, honestly.”
“Stop it. Now you’re just being nice.”
“I’m never nice if I don’t mean it,” I said, meaning every word, and she smiled.
“I like that.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” I teased, and she looked away, her naturally olive-skinned cheeks turning pink. “What else do you know about me and my brothers?”
She shrugged. “Not much, I swear. Just that Nick does all the marketing, and he’s a genius. Your own Snapchat filters? A wall just for Instagram pictures? Pretty brilliant.”
I agreed, even though I didn’t use either app. I had a Facebook page that I never checked, and that was it as far as social media was concerned. Everyone I cared about knew how to reach me if they needed me, and it damn well wasn’t through a computer.
“What else do you know?” I pushed her for more. It embarrassed her, based on how my interest made her fidget, but I found it endearing.
“Ryan’s a god at making drinks, and every woman who steps foot in the bar apparently falls in love with him,” she said with a nonchalant shrug.
“Not you, though?”
“Not me, what?”
“You didn’t fall in love with Ryan?” I asked with a cocky grin.
Claudia looked toward him working the bar. “Eh, I guess I could be persuaded,” she said with a small smile, then cut a teasing glance back at me.
I wanted to hop across the table, grab her by the waist, and pull her against me. “Oh yeah?”
She laughed as she played with my emotions. “Nah. He’s not my type.”
“Poor Ryan. I thought he was everyone’s type.” I cast a quick glance at my brother, noting him smiling like always at one of our female patrons.
“Apparently, I prefer the more brooding, quiet type.”
“Don’t get too many of those in here.”
“One’s really enough.”
When her gaze locked with mine, I couldn’t fucking breathe. I wanted to tell her everything, hating the fact that I was keeping something so huge from her, but I couldn’t. I knew instinctively that if I told Claudia about Shelby, she would leave, and I wasn’t ready for that. Hell, it was the last thing I wanted—to lose the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about, even though wasn’t mine in the first place.
“Tell me about your job,” I said, wanting to know everything there was to know about her.
“I work for a bank.”
“Which one? I’m switching branches.”
Claudia laughed at my lame joke, and I grinned back at her.
“I’m in charge of small business loans,” she said with a smile that lit up her eyes.
“You love it.”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Tell me why.”
Claudia sucked in a quick breath. “Because people come to me with their dreams in their hands, and I get to try to help them make those dreams a reality. Do you have any idea how many people want to start their own businesses and work for themselves?” She stopped short and shook her head. “Of course you do. You own your own business.”
“You meet with people every day who are trying to get business loans?”
“Pretty much all day long.”
“Wow.” I had never given much thought to the number of people who needed to borrow money to make their dreams a reality. We’d been lucky enough to start ours with our own funds. “So, do you get the final say?”
“I wish. But then we’d probably be out of business, because I’d give everyone the money they wanted,” she said before taking a sip of her drink.
“Everyone?”
“Why should one person be entitled to their dream more than someone else? I think everyone should get a shot at accomplishing the things they want.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. She obviously believed in what she said, even if was a pipe dream, a fairy tale.
“I think it’s a nice idea,” I said carefully, “but probably not very practical.”
“You apparently think like a computer and not a human,” she said, her accent coming out with her words.
Apparently, I’d said the wrong thing. Trying to make peace, I held up my hands.
“I’m not trying to upset you. I get what you’re saying from a sunshine-and-rainbows standpoint. But from a financial standpoint, you can’t go around giving everyone who asks a bag full of money. It’s just not smart business. You have to make sure that your investment will be returned; otherwise, you’re taking a loss.”
“But who are you to say what will or won’t work based on some stupid business plan that you’re required to provide?”
I laughed. I loved the way her mind worked. “That’s what the business plan is for.”
“You think I don’t know what a business plan is for? I know that, Frank.”
She’d spat out my name like it was sour on her tongue, and I hated to admit that seeing her get this fired up turned me on a little.
“But what you don’t understand,” she said, “is that not everyone has the means to have a well-written business plan. Do you have any idea the number of people who pay for someone to write them a plan that’s pretty much guaranteed to get them the loan, versus the people who do it themselves? The people who write their own might not write it very well, or make it complete, but it’s done with passion. They’ve done the best they can. They believe in their ideas, and I believe in them. It’s not fair that because of some software program where I insert numbers into blank spaces, they can be approved or not. It’s not fair because sometimes the idea is really good.”
Claudia stopped for a second to suck in a breath, and when she continued, her accent was thicker than I’d ever heard it. “In fact, sometimes the idea is really good. But the computer says no. And I’m required to tell them no. It breaks my heart, actually hurts my feelings to tell good, hard-working people that we can’t help them. When all they’re trying to do is better themselves.”
Her color high, she pressed her lips together tightly as she breathed through her nose, apparently waiting for me to respond. When my lips turned up into a smile, she narrowed her eyes.
“I have no argument,” I said with a slight shrug.
Claudia glared at me. “Really? You have nothing to say to all that?”
“I have something to say, but it has nothing to do with your work.” I thought about how turned on I was hearing her talk like that. How her good heart and passion for helping others ignited a fire inside me and fueled the connection between us.
“Ugh, you’re so typical.” She groaned.
“I can’t help it. You’re fucking hot when you’re fired up. And this crazy thick accent comes out of nowhere. It’s sexy as hell.”
That got a laugh out of her. “Clearly, we need to change the topic.” She cleared her throat, possibly trying to tone down her accent. “Tell me what you like to do in your spare time. Shoot, do you even have time off?”
I thought for a second about letting her know that I usually had a standing day off on Thursdays, but then she’d expect me to ask her out. And I couldn’t. I shouldn’t even be sitting here talking to her like this, getting to know her better, but here I was, breaking all of society’s rules. Not to mention my own.
“Not often, to be honest. I spend the majority of my time here. But I like to go for rides on my bike, clear my head, get away.”
Her eyes flew open wide. “Your bike?”
“My motorcycle.”
“Oh, thank God. For a second there, I thought you meant a bicycle. I’m sorry, but I can’t see all this,” she waved her hand toward me, “riding a bike around.”
I glanced toward Ryan. “What about him?”
An adorable laugh bubbled out of her. “Definitely. Probably a beach cruiser. With a basket and a bell.”
My own laughter burst free, matching hers. We sat there for a few seconds, both laughing at the thought. Knowing Ryan had no idea he was the butt of our joke made me laugh even harder.
When the laughter died down, I asked, “Do you like motorcycles?”
“I’ve never been on one before.”
Of course, my mind instantly went there. I imagined Claudia’s body pressed tightly against my back as I navigated us through the Hollywood Hills, or up the Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu, my favorite spot to unwind.
Without thinking, I said, “I’ll have to change that one day.”
It was too late to take the words back, too late to stop them from tumbling from my stupid lips. I had no self-control when it came to this woman, and it was going to get me into trouble. Hell, it was already getting me into trouble. I was walking a dangerous line and I knew it, yet did nothing to stop it.
Claudia smiled at me. “I’d like that.”
“The idea doesn’t scare you?”
“Why would it scare me?”
“I don’t know. Some women are scared of motorcycles.”
Shelby hated my bike and refused to ride on it with me, no matter how hard I had begged her in the past. I’d stopped asking a long time ago, but also stubbornly refused to consider any other mode of transportation.
“Well, I’m not.” Claudia leaned forward, her silky black hair falling over her shoulders. “And I trust you to keep me safe.”
She trusted me.
She trusted me to keep her safe.
My stomach twisted at her confession. I’d do anything to keep her from harm, but I couldn’t tell her that. Not when everything I did was the exact fucking opposite. Her emotions weren’t safe with me. Her feelings weren’t safe.
I should tell her about Shelby.
I need to tell her.
But at the sight of the softness of Claudia’s brown eyes when she looked at me, I melted on the spot. If she knew the truth, she’d never look at me the same way again. Everything soft would turn hard, and I’d lose her forever.
So I kept my damn mouth shut.
More Than a Little Crush
Claudia
Frank’s expression changed when I told him that I trusted him. Convinced that I’d scared him with my honesty, I tried to pull back. I was a little rusty when it came to dating, and had forgotten how easily guys could be scared off, even if Frank hadn’t seemed like the type.
