She decided to go home for Christmas break though she spent the first few days at school catching up on her studying and looking for a part time job.
She headed home on December 23rd, not looking forward to the time with her parents. She hoped they wouldn't question her about Luke or raise the question of dealings with the male sex at all.
She'd been asked out a few times by guys. Mostly those who shared various classes with her. But she always declined and got the feeling that she had developed a reputation as either stuck up or a lesbian. She honestly couldn't care less what most people thought of her.
The time she didn't spend studying, she spent mostly with Ashley, who at first tried to drag her to parties. But after constant refusals she, too, stopped asking. So the time she spent with her roommate was mostly spent studying now too.
She dreaded running into Luke around town and made sure that she left the house only when she absolutely had to.
She had tried to cover up the smell of her cigarettes in the house by opening the window as far as it would go, and running the air purifier constantly, but her mother still complained about the smell. So she took to smoking outside, sitting despondently on the front steps.
She didn't like to consider herself unhappy. She thought of herself as involved in her studies, having little time for a social life.
She was sitting on the steps the afternoon of the day before New Year's Eve and had her nose buried in a book when she heard someone call her name.
She looked up to see Austin and Ilana walking by. Ilana was pushing a stroller. She wanted to get up and escape into the house, but Austin was waving at her as if he considered her a friend. She got up off the steps reluctantly, making her way towards them. To her surprise Ilana gave her a hug, though they had never really been friends. Sierra held her embrace for a moment, then pulling back to take a peek at the child sleeping in the stroller.
She was adorable Sierra thought, with Austin's blonde hair and Ilana's curls (though the child's hair looked more manageable, her hair not as thick as her mother's), her long eyelashes touching her cheeks.
"She's so cute." Sierra felt a little pang.
She wasn't ready to be a mother herself, wasn't sure she'd ever really be ready, but watching Austin and Ilana together with their gorgeous little girl, obviously so happy, made her yearn again to have Luke beside her.
"Thanks." Ilana reached down to straighten the blanket that had started to come off as the child moved in her sleep.
"Well," Austin said. "I guess we'd better get her home. Have a nice new year's Sierra. It was good to see you."
He waved as they walked away and she could see the glint of a wedding ring on his finger.
She spent New Year's Eve alone in her room.
Her mother and Timothy were at a party thrown by someone high up in the company that Timothy worked for. She figured they would probably be returning quite late if they returned at all that night. The party was being held at a hotel and several suites had been rented out so that those who became intoxicated didn't have to drive home.
She was tired of reading, reading so much was starting to make her eyes hurt. She wasn't in the mood to listen to music either.
She went downstairs and out the door a little before midnight, sitting on the steps and digging in her purse for a cigarette.
She could hear the noise from a loud party somewhere down the street and briefly wondered if it was coming from Luke's house.
The thought of him with another woman started to drive her crazy. She turned around intending to go into the house, put her pillow over her head and go to sleep.
Instead of going into the house, she found herself going to her car. She sat in the drivers’ seat for several minutes before she started the car.
What was she doing she thought? If the noise was coming from Luke's, what was she going to do? Barge in, most likely to find him in the arms of another woman?
She mentally cursed herself as she started the car, driving down the street slowly.
As she neared his block, she noticed that the party noise was coming not from Luke's house but from a house on the other side of the street that had been unoccupied before.
She breathed a sigh of relief, and then glanced at his house. She noticed that it was dark and his car wasn't in the driveway.
As she turned around at the end of the block, she slowed as she drove by the house, finally noticing the for sale sign on the lawn.
Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She reached for a cigarette, not noticing that she had slowed the car almost to a crawl until a car that she hadn't known was behind her honked.
She sped up, so angry she could hardly see straight.
She ended up passing her house the first time by and had to circle the block to get back. She went into the house, shaking with anger and an intense pain that she didn't want to let herself feel.
So what if he'd moved she thought? It was over between them and he was getting on with his life.
She was angry at herself then, for letting it get to her. She vowed that she would think of Luke no more. That she would get on with her own life for once and for all, too.
Chapter 13
Two years later
Kimber
He'd been coming into the bookstore for several weeks now on an almost daily basis.
She had inherited the new/used bookstore/coffee shop from her great aunt who had died when Kimber was in her second year of college, majoring ironically enough in business management. Her aunt had had no children of her own. Kimber had worked summers for her when she was a teenager. Since she was the only one in the family besides her aunt who had any kind of interest in the place, the store had gone to her.
The business was still pretty good even with all the chain bookstores and coffee shops. She enjoyed running the place, only hiring employees on a temporary basis at times of the year that were especially busy.
The store would never make her a millionaire, but business was good enough that she was able to live comfortably, especially considering she had also inherited her aunt's house.
He'd come in for coffee, browsing the shelves afterwards, sometimes buying a book or two, sometimes not.
It was a Thursday and business was slow, as it had been raining off and on all day. A lot of her regular customers that came in for their coffee and paperbacks didn't like to venture out into the rain.
He shook himself when he entered the store, wiping his shoes on the mat by the door and brushing the water off of his jacket.
Kimber had tried to ignore how good looking he was. She wanted nothing to do with men at this point in her life as she'd recently walked in on her fiancé in a rather compromising position in their bed with not one, but two women.
She'd walked out on him that day, dropping the cheap engagement ring that he'd given her down the garbage disposal. She hadn’t bothered to return for any of the clothes she'd left there and had moved into her aunt's house then, deciding not to sell it after all.
He walked up to the counter. She couldn't help but find him to be completely adorable at that moment. He was soaked from the rain, with his dark, wavy blonde hair falling into a gorgeous pair of hazel eyes.
She could tell he was built. His t shirt was clinging to his chest accentuating the muscles.
He draped his jacket over the back of a chair and sat down. "Can I get a coffee please?"
She nodded at him, moving to the pot, pouring him the strong Columbian blend that she knew he favored.
She placed the mug in front of him, and had started to move towards the cash register to ring up the coffee when he stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Do you know anything about poetry?"
"Not really. Why?"
He sighed. "I write songs, and have been asked to write a love song for someone. And having no love in my life to speak of, I have hit a wall. The one that they so casually call writer's block."
She wondered for a moment if this was some kind of cheap come on, thinking that th
ere was no way that a guy that looked like him could be short of female attention. Then she decided that he seemed pretty sincere.
She moved out from behind the counter. "I don't know a lot about poetry but I suppose I can help you find a book since business in here today isn't exactly booming."
He followed her over to the shelves. She found herself pulling several books off the shelf at random, not really looking at them, uncomfortable with his closeness.
She handed them to him, stepping back out into the wider aisle at the center of the store. She almost breathed a sigh of relief as some distance was put back between them.
She'd caught the scent of his cologne as he looked over her shoulder at the books and it had been threatening to drive her crazy.
He paged through a couple of the books, nodding at them, seemingly satisfied. "I think these will do. Thank you. I don't think I caught your name."
"Kimber."
"I'm Luke. It's nice to finally know your name. That's a pretty name. Kimber."
"Thanks."
She rang up the books and the coffee, bagging the books.
"I suppose I'll have to venture back out into the lovely weather now. Have a nice day Kimber."
"You, too."
He was almost to the door when he turned. "This might seem kind of forward, since we just officially met and all. But would you like to go out to dinner sometime?"
She wanted to tell him she had a boyfriend, thinking that maybe he would stop coming into the store. She thought that she would be able to go back to her peaceful existence of not thinking about men then. But she found herself unable to get the words out.
He was attractive and she'd certainly found herself attracted to him today, almost aroused. She surprised herself by blurting out "Okay."
"Great. I've got to get some work done on this song. It's the first time somebody asked me to write a song for them. It's really a wonderful feeling since I'm not exactly well known, but I wished they hadn't asked me to write a love song. I suppose your number would be helpful so that I could call you."
She pulled a scrap of paper from beside the cash register, a little relieved that he was busy for the time being and wouldn't be expecting to take her out soon. Maybe he would end up not calling at all, though she felt a little disappointment mixed with her relief at that thought. But it wasn't like he didn't know where she worked, she thought. She suppressed a nervous giggle as she scrawled her cell phone number on the paper.
"I will definitely be giving you a call." He took the paper and gave her an almost cocky grin as he headed out the door.
The rest of the day was spent straightening shelves, and checking her inventory as the rain continued its deluge. She had few customers.
Luckily though, it let up the next day and business was back to usual. She was soon caught up in the day to day business of running the store.
Several days passed. She tried not to think about Luke. Tried not to hope that he would call, but it wasn't completely working. She was a little annoyed with herself for wanting to become involved with another man.
But, she told herself, he only wanted to take her dinner. It's not like he'd proposed marriage, she added to herself with a shudder, marriage no.
She couldn't believe she'd accepted Orlando's proposal months before. Marriage had never seemed like something to look forward to to her. Her parents had divorced when Kimber and her brothers were quite young. By then it was a relief, the fighting in the house was so constant.
Her dad was on his third wife, though they had been together for several years now, and seemed happy. But her mother was on her fourth husband and that was threatening to crack. Upon finding out that her husband was screwing around with his young secretary at work, she was determined to get back at him, and had chosen to prove her continued desirability by taking up with a good looking but rather simple minded guy who was younger than Kimber.
It was all rather embarrassing and thoughts of marriage didn't sit well in her mind. Though she supposed that not all marriages were doomed from the beginning. There had to be people who got married for the right reasons. Who truly stuck together through thick and thin and stayed faithful.
She brushed the thoughts from her head as she unlocked the door to her house.
Her cell phone rang as she had started to prepare dinner. She picked it up distractedly, without looking at the caller ID. She clamped it between her neck and her shoulder as she continued to chop lettuce for her salad.
"Hello."
"Kimber," a masculine voice said. Though it was somewhat familiar, she couldn't quite place it.
"Yeah." She put the knife down on the cutting board and sat down at the table.
"It's Luke. I finally finished that song. I was wondering if you were busy this weekend. If you might like to go out to dinner and a movie on Saturday night? Though please don't make me sit through anything even vaguely romantic. I've watched so many sappy romance movies on cable this past week for inspiration that I don't think I could take another one.” He laughed.
"Um okay."
"Great. How does Saturday at six sound?"
"Sure."
She closed the store at five and it was only minutes away from home. That would give her plenty of time to go home, shower and find something to wear.
"If you'll be kind enough to give me your address, I'll pick you up."
She gave him her address. They said goodbye soon after.
She didn't let herself get too excited over the thought of her date.
She had been a little lonely since she'd walked out on Orlando two months before. Though she didn't like to admit it, she was finding herself wondering what Luke looked like without clothes on, picturing his well-toned chest.
She put thoughts of Luke out of her head as she finished her dinner preparations, chastising herself for thinking of what a guy she barely knew looked like naked.
So what if he was sexy as hell she thought? From his voice, to those eyes that could melt the heart of any woman who let herself look into them for long enough.
They were bedroom eyes, full of the promise of what she was sure he was very good at doing in bed.
She sighed as she finished the dishes, retiring to her room with a newly out paperback thriller by one of her favorite authors.
She was hoping the book would take her mind off of Luke, off of sex.
Luckily it did. As she went to sleep that night, her mind was on the twisted tale of the characters in her book.
Saturday came all too quickly. She found herself standing in front of her closet after her shower, her long blonde hair wrapped in a towel.
She had no idea what to wear.
She figured casual would probably be best, though she wondered if jeans would be too casual.
She sighed, running her eyes over her clothes. She had nice clothes of course, a few pant and skirt suits since she'd been planning a career in business but she had always felt most comfortable in jeans. She was glad that she could wear what she wanted to work as she was the boss.
She pulled out a fairly new pair of jeans and finally decided on a sleeveless lavender blouse, with a matching cardigan.
She appraised herself in the mirror, adding a bit of gloss to her lips.
She knew she was pretty, enough people had certainly told her so, both men and women as she was growing up. But she had always been a little defensive about her size.
She was 5'9, with long blonde hair and blue gray eyes, and while at a hundred and forty pounds she certainly wasn't fat, sometimes she thought she would have preferred being born as a smaller girl.
Well, she thought as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, at least Luke was tall, at least six feet. Orlando had only been five ten and with his wiry frame he'd barely weighed more than her which had driven her absolutely crazy. She wouldn't have to worry about feeling so big next to Luke.
She figured he had to weigh two hundred pounds or close to it, though she could tell that most of it was muscl
e.
She scowled at herself in the mirror, thinking that it was going to be hard enough to keep her mind off of his body with him next to her. And here she was, already thinking about it when he hadn't arrived yet.
As if on cue, the doorbell rang.
She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear; one that never seemed to stay put no matter what she did with it, and walked to the living room.
She wanted to peek out the window at him, to see what he was wearing. But she figured that it would be rude to leave him standing on the porch in the cool spring air that sometimes still felt more like winter at night.
She held back a sigh of relief as she opened the door.
He was wearing jeans, with a long sleeved t-shirt and a light jacket over top. "You ready?"
She nodded, reaching behind her to the end table to grab her purse.
"You sure you’re going to be warm enough? It's still kinda cold at night."
"I'll be okay," she said, though she could feel the chill already through the light sweater.
He shrugged his shoulders, leading her to the beautifully restored cherry red mustang that was sitting in her driveway.
"Nice car."
"Thanks. I wish I could take credit for all the work of putting it back together myself but I gave up after a while. Had to have somebody else do it for me."
He went around the car, getting into the driver's seat. She was grateful that he had left the car on, and the vents were pumping out hot air.
Damn her stupid female pride she thought. She should have gotten over herself and brought a damn jacket.
"I hope you like Italian.”
"Sure," she said, as they pulled up in front of the small restaurant.
She loved the place. Their spaghetti and meatballs was almost famous locally, but she didn't want to seem too eager.
She was trying to play it cool when her heart was thudding in her chest, and her palms were sweaty. She felt like she hadn't been on a date in years.
Why did he have to be so damn good looking she thought? And so much a gentleman?
He'd opened the car door for her and stood back to hold the door for her as they went into the restaurant.
Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set Page 7
