by Jen Doyle
Seriously? “Because you’re—”
Thankfully she stopped herself from blurting out his name. As she’d told Fitz, she hadn’t deliberately been hiding the fact that she knew who he was, but it was also far too late to throw it out there now. “Because you’re gorgeous,” she answered. Which was only marginally better.
The man actually blushed.
“Oh, please.” She glared at him as she gathered the rest of what she’d need for chocolate cupcakes. “You’re obviously aware of that fact.”
“Do you always say exactly what you’re thinking?” he asked. She didn’t need to be looking at him to know he was laughing again; she could hear it in his voice.
“Only when I’m nervous,” she muttered. The fact that she’d brought it up for a second time being case in point.
The silence lasted so long that she was sure he’d turned away. But when she spun around to reach for the eggs, he was right there. Then his hand—oh, God, his hand—went to her hair, slid down her jaw and tilted her head up gently so that she had no choice but to look up at him.
“I don’t want to scare you,” he said softly. “Just say the word and I’m gone.”
Forgetting the counter was right behind her, Dorie took a step back and came right up against it.
This was crazy.
Ludicrous.
Her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t hear herself think.
Sex was one thing; being so unsettled by a man’s presence was another entirely. She obviously needed to put a stop to this. She’d tell him to leave.
But what came out of her mouth instead was a whispered, “If I wanted you gone, I’d knee you in the balls and then chase you out with that bat over there.”
And there went the moment. Leave it to her to mention kneeing a guy’s balls when the lips of one of the most eligible bachelors in the world—angel with fallen wings or not—were about three inches away from hers. But that’s who she was. Better to scare him off now, she supposed.
Except rather than freak out or even look at her strangely, he laughed as his hand left her hair and he took a step back. “I like you, Dorie Donelli. I think I might like your brothers, too.”
Now that there was no longer skin-on-skin contact, she was able to breathe again. Dizzy enough to have to clutch the edge of the counter, but at least she could breathe.
Chapter Seven
What. The. Fuck had just happened?
Nate’s heart was racing so fast he was practically sweating. It made no sense. She wasn’t his type. Blondes and redheads were definitely more up his alley. And she was short. At six foot three, he tended to date women who were on the taller side. He was a professional catcher, for Christ’s sake. He spent hours out of every day crouching; the last thing he wanted to do when he came home to a woman was bend down.
Dorie was around five foot five, five foot six and she didn’t seem the type to wear Jimmy Choo shoes, yet he found himself thinking that he couldn’t care less. All he really wanted to do was lift her up, wrap her legs around him and then bury his head right there at the curve of her neck until she begged him to—
“Can I be doing something right now?”
Her voice startled him enough that he almost dropped the skillet he’d just lifted to drain.
“Uh, no,” he answered quickly, just to be safe.
He wanted to kiss her. To thrust his hands in her hair and pull her up against him and take it directly from there. But rattling around in the dark recesses of his brain was the notion that going down that road right now would be a mistake of the highest order. And, for reasons he couldn’t even begin to name, that scared him. The only thing he did know at the moment, in fact, was that in the past twenty-four hours he’d barely thought at all about the accident or anything that came after it. The contracts teetering on the edge of disaster, the questions about his knee, the whole damn Breathalyzer thing...
None of it.
Instead, his mind kept drifting back to her. To here. To this apartment and the fact that it seemed to be the one place in the entire world where the past six weeks were history. Where, in fact, he couldn’t stop smiling.
Hell.
“Almost done.” He threw in some seasoning and then turned the gas down to low. “It just needs to simmer for a few minutes, then we should be good to go.”
Although she frowned, her eyes sparkled with amusement. “Except for the part where it has to be in the oven for an hour.”
He made his shrug as casual as was humanly possible. “There is that.”
Leaning back against the counter, she folded her arms across her chest. The look in her eyes was, it seemed, utter and innocent bewilderment. “So what exactly were you planning to do to pass the time?”
Fuck her into oblivion would have been his honest-to-God answer up until about three minutes ago. He almost laughed when the words, Get to know you, nearly came out of his mouth instead.
With some nerves of his own—which was ridiculous; he didn’t get nervous—he reached for his beer, actively fighting the urge to down the entire thing. “Tell me how you came to have some of Aunt Laura’s casserole in the first place.”
A sad smile came to Dorie’s face as she looked away. “She thinks I’m lonely. And like any self-respecting grandmotherly type, she wants to feed me to make me feel better.”
“Are you lonely?” he asked without thinking. Whispering almost.
She looked up quickly, clearly not expecting that to be his response. Or maybe just not expecting the intensity of it. Hell, neither had he.
She gave a self-conscious laugh, but her shrug was answer enough.
He wanted to touch her again. To take her in his arms and kiss her—tell her she’d never be lonely again.
Then she shook it off and gave a huge smile. “Between the brothers and the wives-slash-girlfriends and my parents, etcetera, etcetera....” She rolled her eyes. “If it means I get to live my life and not get any grief for a little while? I’m good. Besides, I like hanging out with Mr. and Mrs. Grimes. They’re totally my speed.”
“Mine, too.” He tipped his bottle toward her in a mock toast. “I’ll be spending all day tomorrow hanging out with them in the library. Come find me there to see for yourself.”
She froze, beer halfway to her mouth. “Wha...?”
So, okay. A little bit more of a reaction than he’d expected, but whatever. He shrugged. “There’s a new librarian in town, I guess. And a lot of heavy lifting. She, uh... Dorie?”
Her gaze was focused somewhere over his shoulder and it was pretty clear she hadn’t heard a word he’d just said. Then she met his gaze. “You’re coming to my library tomorrow?” she said, partly curious, and partly, well...partly horrified. Except then she gave another one of those little laughs from the back of her throat and said, “Of course you are.”
No way. “You’re the librarian?” That was unexpected. Not unwelcome by any means—just...intriguing.
He turned back to the stove and went about getting the chili finished so it could go into the casserole dish, cheese and all. It was easier to talk when he wasn’t looking at her. “Then who’s Lucinda?” He was pretty sure that was the librarian’s name.
“Right,” Dorie muttered, almost to herself. “Your aunt seems to have an issue with names. I keep telling her I go by Dorie, but it doesn’t seem to stick.”
“Tell me about it,” Nate answered, laughing. “She’s only ever called me Nathan. Even my mom rarely calls me that.” So caught up in what he was doing, it wasn’t until Dorie replied that Nate realized what he’d just done.
“Nathan, huh?” The smile in her voice sent ice up through his veins. “Not D.B.?”
Shit. Shit.
He truly hadn’t meant to deceive her. He’d just been so grateful she ha
dn’t recognized him—and, okay, yes, completely turned on—that he’d wanted that moment for himself. To not be someone whose face had been plastered on the news for the past two months. Not be the rich and spoiled athlete some people still insisted on believing had been driving drunk—and definitely not be the guy Courtney had cheated on.
Was D.B. the best choice? Hell, no. It had just come out. But he was pretty sure that if he’d been honest about who he was, the night would have turned out a whole lot differently.
“D.B. is a nickname,” he mumbled, concentrating really hard on putting the finishing touches on the casserole so he could put it in the oven.
“Maybe I could call you Nathan instead?” she asked, still smiling from behind him.
“Or Nate,” he said, dreading the look of recognition that was sure to come into her eyes and yet partly wanting that very thing. “Most people call me Nate.”
He finally turned around, straightened his shoulders and looked at her. She was standing there within arm’s reach. He could feel the heat coming off her skin.
“Okay,” she said, looking up at him from underneath those long, dark lashes. The smile finally reached her eyes. “Nate.”
It was like a bomb went off in Nate’s head. Chest. Heart. Whatever. Nothing had ever struck him the way it did when Dorie looked at him and truly smiled.
He snatched up his beer. Wanting to get to know a woman was a new thing for him. He needed something for his hands to do that wasn’t trailing up and down her skin.
“So, Dorie-not-Lucinda,” he finally said. “Any other names I should know about?”
She smiled again, and this time he managed to keep his reaction a little more subdued.
“My brothers all call me Luce,” she said, “which can be incredibly annoying...”
“Hey, what’s wrong with Luce? I like that.”
“Because I asked them to call me Dorie,” she said, all little-sister attitude.
Hell, he liked that, too. He grinned as she continued, “It’s short for Dorinda, my—well, one of—my middle names.”
“One of? You have more than one middle name?”
She nodded. “Five.”
“Five? You have five middle names?”
“Well...”
“You know I have to ask...” he added when she didn’t elaborate.
Rolling her eyes, she said, “Lucinda Dorinda Yaz Yaz Tommy Sue Donelli.”
Beer halfway to his mouth, he paused. “Yaz-Yaz? That counts as two?”
“Well, it’s Yaz once, then Yaz again.”
He laughed. “Is that a family name?”
She hiked herself up to the counter. “Yaz, as in Carl Yastrzemski.”
Ouch. “You’re a Red Sox fan?” For the first time in his life he cared more about whether or not she actually watched baseball—hoping for the not right now—than he did about who she rooted for.
“Well, duh,” she answered. “From Boston. Hello.” She gave a cute little frown. “Shay, my brother, was five when I was born, and he loved Yaz, so that’s the name he picked. And since Colin didn’t have a thought of his own until he was, like, fourteen, he just picked Yaz, too.”
“Wait,” Nate said, holding his hand up. “They picked your names?”
“I know, right?” she said. “When my mom went into labor my dad couldn’t get anyone to take care of my brothers so he had to bring them all to the hospital until my grandparents could come pick them up. He bribed them into behaving by promising them they could name me. It didn’t occur to him that they’d all want to pick a name of their own.”
For as exasperated as she seemed with her brothers—with the story itself—the love and affection that came through her voice as she spoke was almost overwhelming. It pulled a smile out of him even though that earned him another frown. “So, Yaz Yaz,” he said, holding back his laugh. “And the rest?”
Her glare diminishing only slightly, she answered, “Sean—he was nine and thought Lucinda sounded like a princess, so he decided on that. Jack decided that since Dorinda rhymed with Lucinda, that must be a princess, too. You know the Yaz Yaz part. Tommy was three when I was born, so the only name that came to mind when they asked was his own.”
“That’s five,” he said, catching the surprise as she looked up at him. “Sean, Jack, Shay, Colin, and Tommy.” Her eyes widened even further. Hell, yes, he was paying attention. “Who’s number six?”
“Christopher. He wasn’t really talking yet. He babbled something and they decided it was ‘Sue.’”
Nate did some quick math. “So seven kids in nine years?” He refused to acknowledge that he kind of liked the sound of that.
“Go ahead, you can say it,” Dorie said, rolling her eyes in a way that made it clear she’d had this conversation a million times. “That’s way too many kids. Overpopulation and all that,” she mumbled, peeling the label off her beer bottle. “Or you could say something about the Catholic thing. The Irish-Italian one. Or maybe even that they could have just gone for two more and gotten a baseball team out of it.”
Her voice trailed off, which made him realize that he was staring at her again. That he was thinking about how different she was from Courtney—from any woman he’d ever known.
And it scared the ever-living shit out of him.
“I, uh...” He ran his hand through his hair. “I need to...”
Go, he was going to say. Except he couldn’t force that final word out when she hopped to the floor, almost looking relieved, as she no doubt knew exactly what he’d been about to say. That was his moment. Where he should have grabbed his coat and gone. But his feet were rooted to the floor.
And he was so fucking glad that she didn’t push him toward the door. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself and looked down at the floor. “So.” She kind of shrugged. “I don’t suppose you’d be up for some GTA?”
It was so unexpected a segue that it threw him for a minute. “Grand Theft Auto?”
She got that prickly look, which amused him to no end, even—or maybe especially—when she said, “And by GTA, I mean GTA. All clothes are staying on.”
From the way she then immediately clamped her mouth shut, it was clear she was feeling the same push and pull he was. To his complete surprise, it made him laugh. “You’re on.”
She kicked his ass and made no bones about enjoying every minute of it.
Granted he was distracted. Not because of the way she looked, although he couldn’t deny his attraction. It was more the determination painted all over her face as she went all in. The glint in her eye when she made a move, the enthusiasm and joy as she leaped to her feet, lording it over him when she won.
By the time dinner was over and dishes were cleaned up and put away, he realized it wasn’t just that he’d made a terrible mistake—he’d made a fatal one. It wasn’t the part about him wanting so badly to get a woman out of her clothes—it was how much he wanted to be there when she got back into them.
Chapter Eight
For the second night in a row, Dorie didn’t sleep; and for the second morning in a row, she found herself sitting in her office, staring out at the street. Unlike the night before, she’d gotten past the part about whether it had all been real. Obviously it was. The problem now was that she had no idea what to do about it. She’d spent a whole lifetime building the fantasy of him up into the ideal man—what on earth was she supposed to do with the true-to-life one?
And now even her potential-one-night stand idea had become complicated. She was almost afraid to admit how much she liked him—definitely more than most of the guys she’d slept with, and that was even without the Nate Hawkins factor. In fact, she’d almost blurted out that she did know exactly who he was so that they could just get on with it.
Yes, she was resolved to do that very thing, especially sinc
e they could then acknowledge his pre-Courtney reputation for one-and-done hookups, actually do the hooking up, and then both move on. He was clearly here to lick his wounds before heading back to Chicago where he’d either go back to his old ways or be on the search for his next Courtney, so it should work out fine.
Right.
But even if he never spoke to her again, she’d deal. That she’d had the chance to hang out with him at all was a dream come true. And if against all odds he did speak to her after she’d come clean, well, she didn’t plan on doing much speaking. In fact, she would happily provide any necessary licking services whenever and wherever required.
Shaking off the completely useless tingly feeling that thought brought about, she glanced at the clock. Mrs. Grimes had said that her nephew—no name mentioned—would be here by ten, which was an hour away. And Dorie had a whole lot of things to get done: on top of the normal erasing-ten-years’-worth-of-neglect to-dos, last week’s blizzard had taken out two windows in the main reading room. The resulting four-foot snowdrift had taken out most of Fiction, Do—H and had broken Dorie’s heart. Right up until she realized what an incredible opportunity it was. She got to buy books—hundreds of them. And new furniture. New carpeting. They just had to determine what could be salvaged first.
It was half an hour later when she heard the door chimes she’d installed the previous afternoon. She’d managed to wedge herself into the area of the room with the most damage and was balanced on the bottom shelf of a bookcase that had fallen against the wall.
“Back here!” she called out loudly enough for Mrs. Grimes to hear her from the circulation area out in front. “Could you make up a few more boxes for me?”
“My pleasure,” answered someone who was very obviously not Mrs. Grimes. “How many do you need?”
Dorie spun around at the sound of Nate’s voice. Given how precarious everything was in the first place, that meant she very ungracefully kept going, losing her balance in the process and falling face-first into the pile of books on the floor. As if that wasn’t bad enough in itself, she was pretty sure the view he had was a direct one of her ass pointing up in the air.
