Diving In

by Galway, Gretchen

  The door buzzed again.

  She got out of bed, confused but relatively sober. It must be late. Her mouth was parched and foul, as if she’d snacked on vomit before sucking on a blow dryer.

  Maybe she’d imagined the buzzing. She used the toilet, brushed her teeth, and guzzled tap water for five long seconds before she heard it again.

  She blinked at her own reflection in the mirror, more concerned about the mascara on her nose than whoever was ringing her bell.

  Another buzz.

  “Fine,” she said, storming out of the bathroom to her door. She had a small apartment; crossing the living room took her four strides. She held down the white button on the intercom near the door. “Yes?”

  “Nicki, it’s me.”

  She took a step back, questioning her senses. She’d imagined his voice as she was climbing into bed, only to admit a moment later that it had been a neighbor’s TV.

  She held down the button. “Who?”

  “Ansel.”

  Her heart began pounding so hard, she couldn’t move. She swallowed but didn’t know what to say. She’d expected a phone call, a grudging willingness to talk, not a home visit.

  “I’m so sorry. Nicki? Please let me in. Hello?”

  She needed time to figure out how she was going to approach this.

  Now he wanted to see her? After weeks of silence, in the middle of the night?

  She put her mouth near the mic. “Come back in the morning.” A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. In the four years she’d lived in the building, she’d always thought the intercom was a hassle; the price of living in a low-rent neighborhood near the freeway. Now she’d pay extra for it.

  Thirty years old was late to learn you had a taste for revenge.

  There was a long pause. So long, she started to regret her vengeful impulses. After counting to five in Japanese, she pressed the button again. “Ansel?”

  He responded immediately. “I’ll come back in the morning if you want me to. Or right now. Which would you prefer?”

  Involuntarily, she smiled and put a hand on her chest.

  She missed him so much.

  All right, so her taste for revenge was a small one. He’d said he loved her. Maybe it was true.

  She held down the other button to let him in.

  He’d gotten her messages and come over in person. What had she said? She’d told him she was over Miles. She’d called him stupid…

  She put her forehead against the door, waiting for him to climb the stairs and knock, which he did very gently, a tap so quiet she wouldn’t have heard it if her head weren’t pressed up against the wood.

  And that thing about loving him.

  She stepped back and opened it.

  He was dressed in the usual monochromatic shades of charcoal but more formal than she’d ever seen him in Hawaii: slacks, button-down shirt, closed-toe shoes.

  The sight of him sliced her right between the ribs and pinned her where she stood.

  He returned her stare. He looked short of breath.

  She stepped aside to let him in, then dead-bolted the door behind him with clumsy fingers.

  He had said, with some evidence, that fear ruled her. But she had a spine when it mattered, and it mattered now.

  “I love you,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. She lifted her chin. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I love you, too,” he said. He took a step closer.

  She let the words sink in, like butter into hot toast, before she responded. “You sure give up easily. You ran away at the first sign of trouble.”

  “I never meant to stay away so long. I have a ticket to fly to Kahului first thing in the morning.”

  She wasn’t ready to let him see how much that meant. “Booked it as soon as you got my message?”

  His face melted into a grin that made her breath catch. Shaking his head, he moved closer, about two feet away. “Booked it yesterday. I’m so nervous, I’m about to vomit, but you make me laugh anyway.”

  “I’m about to vomit because I drank too much.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Are you kidding?”

  “Mostly.” She combed her hair with her fingers. “I was celebrating a little too hard.”

  “I came as soon as I heard your messages. I’ve never driven so fast over the Bay Bridge as I did just now.”

  “Did your girlfriend mind you leaving her alone?”

  He shook his head, the humor draining out of him. “There’s nobody else. There’s never been anybody like you.”

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  “You terrify me. Ever since I saw you floating off that boat and I realized I could lose you. Since you’re the only one of you, you know?”

  An unfamiliar joy washed over her. He was kind and funny, sexy, smart, everything she loved; she loved him, and he said things like that to her. “I’m sorry I scared you. If it hadn’t been for that boy—”

  “I know. You thought you had to do it, which is why I’m so afraid. You have these impulses that could kill you, and then who would I live with for the rest of my life?”

  She stopped breathing.

  “See?” He put his hands on either side of her face, capturing her. “You think you love me, but you’re not ready for me. I’m impulsive, Nicki. I do things all the way. I dive right in. I’m stupid that way. I can’t help it.”

  “Like leaving me?”

  “Exactly. How could you ever forgive me for that? I never meant to stay away so long, but for each day that went by, I got more hopeless. I convinced myself you’d had a good time and you were done with me. I was just a substitute for a hot pool boy, nothing you’d want to bring home with you.” He moved his mouth to her cheek, not kissing, just breathing. “Especially after you found out I was broke.”

  She drew back. “But if I wanted you just for sex, why did I need you to be rich, too? If I was just going to chuck you overboard, so to speak, when I was done with you?”

  He moved closer again. “You’ve got to understand, Nicki, until I met you, the money seemed to affect what most people thought of me. Not just women. Everybody.”

  “I think it affects what you think of yourself more,” she said.

  He rested his cheek against hers and pulled her close. “Yeah. I’ve been working on that.”

  His jaw was rough against hers. She put her arms around his waist. “I don’t want you to be rich if it makes you unhappy.”

  “Being rich was fine. Trying to get there, not so much.”

  She smiled into his neck. “I like you right where you are.”

  “Yeah.” His hands moved down her body, caressing, exploring. His voice lowered. “You scared the hell out of me when you said you didn’t love me,” he said quietly.

  “I never said that.”

  “You couldn’t say you did, though. That was enough.”

  She slid her hand down to his chest and felt his heart beating through the fabric. “I thought I was in love with you when we met. Way back when.”

  “But seeing me again cured you?”

  “Getting to know the real you made it true,” she said. Her body melted into his. She felt hot and charged, brilliant, happy, alive. “And I’m not afraid of this.” She kissed him. “I want it all.”

  “I’ll give you everything I have,” he said.

  “Same here.”

  “And if that’s not enough,” he added, dropping kisses along her throat, “I’ll get more.”

  Deep anxieties, not the kind that had made her faint near swimming pools, but the more profound, existential type, stopped her from pulling him down to the couch and taking off his clothes just yet. “What if I’m not enough?” she asked him.

  He caressed her hip. “Oh, you’re perfect.”

  “I write for a blog about my phobias,” she said. “I never told you about that.”

  “Sounds cool.” His hand slipped under her shirt and fondled her breast.

  “But as soon as I’ve tackled each on
e, I’m going to stop writing about it. I don’t want to have any incentive to hold on to this way of thinking.”

  He ran his tongue along her lower lip. “Sensible.”

  “Ansel?”

  He was sucking on her earlobe. “Mmm?”

  “What if I cure myself?” she asked, closing her eyes. “I’m starting to believe it’s possible.”

  “You will,” he mumbled against her mouth, tilting his head to kiss her. “You’re amazing.”

  She kissed him back, forgetting her worries for a minute and then pulling away as she remembered. It was too important to ignore, just the thing to sabotage this shared life they were starting. “Will you still want me if I do?”

  “Want you if you do what?”

  “If I get over the anxieties. If I’m not a mess.”

  “You’ve never been a mess, Nicki.”

  “Brand and Diane, even Rachel, say you like your women screwed up,” she said, “but I’m not going to stay screwed up just to turn you on.”

  “Swear to God, I’m going to kill them,” he muttered. “You, Nicki, are the least screwed-up woman I’ve ever known.”

  She stared at him. “How can you say that?”

  “Who are you comparing yourself to?” He held her shoulders and looked into her face. “I’ve been with women who couldn’t hold down a job or who relied on me for the cash to gamble or buy drugs.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  “Feeling faint when you go over a bridge is a piece of cake compared to that.”

  “It can be a lot worse than that. I used to have days when I couldn’t drive to work.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I had to take the bus.”

  “Big tragedy,” he said.

  “I can’t believe you’re mocking my anxiety disorder.” She let him squirm for a second before smiling. “I love it when you do that.” She traced his jawline with her thumb.

  “It seems better than freaking out with you.”

  She nodded. “Whenever other people take my fears seriously, it’s like they’re agreeing with me. Like I should be at full panic level.”

  “Speaking of panic, I’m starting to worry about getting you naked.” He hooked his ankle behind hers and pulled her down with him to her overstuffed couch.

  Before her pajamas came off, Nicki straddled him and pinned his shoulders to the cushions. “What were you going to do tomorrow when you got to Maui?”

  His eyes were unfocused with passion. “What?”

  “What were you going to say to me? Did you have a plan?”

  “Of course I had a plan. I couldn’t risk my life’s happiness without having a plan,” he said, caressing the small of her back.

  His touch made her shiver with pleasure, but she continued. “Before you knew how I felt, what were you going to say?”

  “You sure do talk a lot.”

  “I know how you men are. This might be the last time we ever have a decent conversation about our relationship,” she said.

  He turned his face away, groaning.

  “Come on,” she said. “Pretend you don’t know I adore you and want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I’ve just opened the door.”

  “Are you naked?”

  “Nope. Lots of clothes.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then I’d be able to concentrate, remember my notes from the plane.”

  “You have notes?”

  “Not yet, since I wasn’t on the plane, was I?”

  She grinned, wriggling on top of him. “Okay. I’m standing there in my clothes. You remember your notes. What do you say?”

  “Are you wearing that sexy green dress? Because then I might forget my notes.”

  She was feeling forgetful herself. His body felt so good beneath her…

  “It was short,” he said. “I was going to improvise the rest of it.”

  “Let’s hear it. Don’t be nervous. You already know how it’s going to turn out.”

  He reached up and touched her face. “I need you.”

  “I can feel how much you need me,” she said, rotating her hips. “Focus. What do you say?”

  “That’s it. That’s what I say.” He gazed up into her eyes. “I need you.”

  She sobered, struck by his serious tone. “I need you, too, Ansel.”

  “That’s how you’re different from the other women in my life. They needed me, never the other way around.” He lifted himself up until his arms were around her waist and his face was close to hers. “I can’t imagine life without you. That’s what I was going to say. You don’t have to love me. I just want to be with you. I need to have you in my life even if you aren’t nearly as crazy about me as I am about you.”

  Her mouth was dry. “But I am. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone.”

  He paused. “Thank God,” he said finally with a sigh, rolling over with her in his arms. “But really, as long as you’ll let me stick around, I’m happy. Because I need you that bad.”

  She kissed him, gently at first, then desperately. Neither spoke for a long time. They were suddenly in a hurry to make up for the long, lost weeks, even though they knew they had a lifetime to do it.

  Epilogue

  THEY WERE MARRIED SIX MONTHS later in a beachside ceremony. It was the height of whale watching season, and the flash of giant tails rising out of the water interrupted the vows more than once.

  Nicki, barefoot, wore a custom-made white silk sundress that danced around her long legs like butterfly wings. Ansel wore a tuxedo jacket with board shorts.

  Brand and Diane were their honor attendants. Because of their devotion to their shared career in the real estate field, they had flown in for only the day, although they were in high spirits and laughed at all of Nicki’s jokes. Their gift to the couple was an oceanfront office building with monthly rents twice that of the neighboring structure. Its maintenance costs were reduced by the solar panels on the roof.

  Jordan was in charge of the guests’ picnic bento boxes after the ceremony. As a dig to Melinda Jury, he’d packed her a box that contained one tuna salad sandwich with extra mayonnaise, an apple, a small package of cheese-flavored fish crackers, and a chilled carton of chocolate milk imprinted with a dancing cow princess. She laughed and ate every bite.

  The father of the groom, wearing a three-piece suit and waterproof hiking sandals, offered a long, meandering toast about how he hoped his new daughter-in-law knew what a terrific, generous human being she’d married, and if she ever doubted it, to come by for dinner and he’d set her straight. Only Nicki’s mother, who was touchy about that sort of thing, thought it was in poor taste.

  At least twice at the reception, Rachel told everyone that she was responsible for the happy couple being together. Brand and Diane claimed the same thing. Betty knew they were all wrong, but she was too busy proposing to Jaynette—and then enjoying her response—to argue.

  When the celebration was winding down, and the guests sat in the sand, watching whales have a party of their own, everyone agreed it was worth the cost of the trip halfway around the world.

  It was at that moment, while they held hands on the outskirts of the celebration, that Nicki and Ansel shared a long meaningful look. They were supposed to leave a little later, after another round of drinks.

  Ansel glanced at the parking lot. “Shall we?”

  Nicki grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  And so they made a run for it, muffling their laughter as they galloped across the hot sand to the old gas-electric hybrid, garishly decorated with paint and streamers, that waited for them.

  “Now will you tell me where we’re going?” she asked as she buckled her seat belt. He’d refused to tell her where they’d be spending the night, although she had a pretty good idea.

  “It costs two thousand a night,” he replied, “and has excellent privacy curtains.”

  As he peeled out into the road, she laughed, wondering when she’d ever been so happy. So completely, b
lindingly happy.

  She was thirty-one, so—she counted back through the years—one, two, three…

  Never. Yeah, never was about right.

  Author Note

  Thank you for reading!

  You can dive into the story of how Miles and Lucy met in THE SUPERMODEL’S BEST FRIEND, available now in ebook and paperback.

  To get an email alert when I release my next book, please sign up at www.gretchengalway.com. I only send out an email about new releases, and I’ll never share your address with anyone else.

  And… if you liked the book, please consider leaving a review online. It’s ridiculously helpful.

  Finally, I really love to hear from readers. You can find me here:

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  Happy reading,

  GG

  About the Author

  GRETCHEN GALWAY writes romantic comedies because love is too painful to survive without laughing. Raised in the American Midwest, she now lives in California with her husband and two kids.

  Also by Gretchen Galway

  (Miles and Lucy’s Story) THE SUPERMODEL’S BEST FRIEND

  THIS TIME NEXT DOOR

  LOVE HANDLES

  QUICK STUDY

  ** Click here to visit Gretchen Galway’s Author Page on Amazon **

  The Supermodel's Best Friend

  * * Miles and Lucy’s story * *

  ©2011 Gretchen Galway

  Happily-ever-after isn’t only for the rich and beautiful…

  When her long-term fiancé dumps her, 34-year-old Lucy Hathcoat is determined to replace him as efficiently as possible. Her best friend the supermodel is getting married to a billionaire—what better place than their week-long wedding in a luxury eco-resort to find a new man? Lucy isn’t picky; she just wants a decent guy who’s eager to start a family. Someone as logical, responsible, and practical as she is.