Take My Breath Away

by Christie Ridgway

  LINUS glances over at CHARLIE, who seems unaffected by the scene playing out in front of them.

  LINUS

  (murmuring)

  Do you know these two?

  CHARLIE, still working on her cone, glances at the pair, focuses back on her ice cream.

  CHARLIE

  They both work for the university’s alumni conference center. Well, worked. She’s returning to college after a summer as camp counselor for the alumni’s kids. Tom maintains the center’s boats. He’s a local, and a year-round employee.

  LINUS studies the young pair, now engrossed in quiet, almost desperate conversation.

  LINUS

  They’re breaking my heart.

  LINUS looks at CHARLIE, who appears unmoved.

  LINUS

  Doesn’t it get to you?

  CHARLIE

  No.

  LINUS

  Maybe she’ll be back.

  CHARLIE takes a lick of her ice cream.

  CHARLIE

  No.

  LINUS

  (unwilling to let this go)

  Next vacation, or next summer—

  CHARLIE

  No.

  * * *

  LINUS’S SECOND STOP of the night was the bar attached to the steak-and-seafood dinner house known as Mr. Frank’s. Ryan and company were still locked behind the gates at the lake house and he felt a little guilty about that. But the celebrity hounds had no interest in him—his days in the limelight were long over—and he had things of his own to do. Without looking left or right, he approached one of the leather-cushioned stools, took a seat, then smoothed his palms over his hair.

  A white square of napkin landed in front of him. “What can I get you?” The man on the other side of the bar wore a crisp red shirt.

  Linus ordered a beer, then took a long swallow of the brew once it arrived. It went down cool and easy and he idly watched the game on the television overhead. Though over in one corner a DJ was setting up equipment near a small dance floor, Linus didn’t give that man or any of the other guests his attention. There was only one person he’d come here to see, and he figured she’d show up in three...two...one...

  “What are you doing here?” Charlie demanded.

  She’d always been a timely sort.

  He glanced over his shoulder, noting she was in full girls’-night-out gear: tight jeans, high-heeled boots, some sort of tunic top. Makeup was smokey eyes and crimson lips. An arresting look, especially when combined with her gilt-blond hair in its sweet pixie cut.

  Charlie had always been a surprise. Last summer, with her golden tan setting off her bright blue eyes and brilliant smile, he’d at first considered her the epitome of hope and cheer. But inside, he’d discovered, she had a skeptical nature, a wry sense of humor and a well-guarded heart.

  Or maybe that was because she’d already given it to Saint Steven Parker, Linus thought, scowling.

  Charlie scowled back, and tapped the toe of her boot on the floor. “Well?” she asked again.

  He glanced from her annoyed face to the posse gathered close behind her. As he’d suspected, her standing midweek date with her BFFs continued. They alternated between Blossom and Mr. Frank’s. With a nod to her ladies, he lifted his beer. “I came in for a drink, maybe some company. You?”

  Her lips pursed. “Are you following me?”

  “I was already here,” he pointed out. “How could I be following you?”

  “I don’t know. I...” She slid a look to her girlfriends, as if hoping they had an answer. When the other women remained silent, she gave a little toss of her head and strode off to a table at the other side of the room, her posse trailing.

  Linus followed their progress in the mirror behind the bar. They all settled into chairs near the dance floor and ordered up girly drinks from the cocktail waitress that stopped by. As what looked like an appletini was slid in front of Charlie, she caught him watching her reflection.

  He hastily redirected his gaze. No doubt she’d consider him creepy for staring like that, and probably worse, if she ever found out he’d stopped by Blossom first, to see if she and her buddies had been there the week before. They had, which had sent him, tout de suite, to Mr. Frank’s.

  He’d been that determined to find her.

  Good God, he thought, his beer stalled halfway to his mouth. It was creepy! Stalkerish, almost. Definitely weird.

  His hand tightened around the sweating bottle. Damn it.

  Damn Charlie! Wasn’t this all her fault?

  How had this happened? Everybody knew Linus as a charming, never-serious rogue, who skated through life with a wink and a smile. No backwoods blondie was going to change that about him, he decided, scowling again.

  More irritated than he could ever remember, Linus slid to his feet then slammed some cash onto the bar. He’d head back to the lake house and maybe take out a few of the paps gathered at the gates as a way to improve his mood. By tomorrow he’d have forgotten all about the woman and the weirdness she brought out in him.

  As he turned toward the exit, he found himself toe-to-toe with a petite brunette in a tight, low-cut sweater. “Uh, hello,” he said.

  Her lips glistened with gloss and she smelled like spiced sin. “Would you care to dance?”

  The DJ was at work, Linus realized. Some hair-band ballad moved through the room’s speakers, an odd choice to warm up the room, he thought, until the little lady in front of him began swinging her hips to the sinuous beat. There was warm-up, and then there was heating up. From the corner of his eye, he noted Charlie was looking at him and it suddenly seemed imperative that Linus reclaim—with her as witness—his free-and-easy status.

  So he grinned down at the brunette and allowed her to draw him to the center of the dance area. It was her girls’ night, too, apparently, because she had a gang of females with her. Fun group. He joined them at their table after the first dance finished, buying a round of drinks and later taking each of the ladies for a spin as the music switched from hair bands to Katy Perry to country rock and back again. Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” segued into “Poison & Wine” by The Civil Wars.

  During that slow tune, his current partner left for a bathroom break and as he turned to find another, he came face-to-face with Charlie. They stared at each other as those around them swayed to the slow, drugging beat. Linus drew in a long breath, and even within the mingled notes of perfume, cologne and alcohol, he was able to isolate her unique fragrance. It brought him back to summer and the nights he’d sought the scent with his mouth, dragging it along the column of her throat, licking the insides of her elbows, sucking at the nape of her neck that he’d had a primitive need to cover or at least mark so that no other man could see its bare sweetness and not know she belonged to Linus.

  Without thinking, he reached for her hands. Both alarm and desire crossed her face as he tugged her a step closer, their entwined fingers against his chest. They danced like that, barely shuffling to the music, their arms a barrier between their hearts. She had to feel his beating, though, and he couldn’t ignore its pounding against his chest wall, the hard tattoo a clear message.

  This thing with Charlie wasn’t finished.

  The problem wasn’t that he’d lost his free-and-easy, he thought. The problem was that free-and-easy hadn’t had its chance to play out. Last summer, he’d had to get back to L.A. at the end of August. The deadline had ended their relationship instead of the usual, natural, waning of interest that he’d always experienced before. The externally induced conclusion had left their association without the proper ending punctuation.

  Something must be done about that. Not a do-over, but a finish-up. They’d pick up where they’d left off and then it could, finally, peter out.

  “Charlie.” He thought
of dropping her hands, of drawing her close. But that would restart their relationship on the wrong foot. This was, after all, about letting go. After six long months, really letting go. “You’ll be with me again, won’t you? For a little while.”

  The answer was on her face. In the softening of her mouth, in the darkening of her dazzling eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Linus nodded, satisfied to know he was not done with her...yet.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ON HIS SECOND full day back at the lake house, Ryan stripped off his sweat-dampened shirt as he made his way down the hall to his suite of rooms. Just like the afternoon before, he’d had his brother direct a killer kickboxing workout for him. His arms were screaming, his abs were burning from the hundred sit-ups he’d tacked on at the end of the hour and all he wanted was a hot shower and some downtime stretched out on his bed.

  The new routine was his way of trying to forget about his impromptu house guests.

  As he approached his half-open bedroom door, a soft noise from inside put him on alert. He halted. Three times in his life he’d come back to his hotel room to find a woman lounging against his pillows. On another occasion he’d discovered a pair of nubile young ladies, positioned like naked bookends, on the California King mattress in his first house on Mulholland Drive. They were nineteen and twenty, respectively, and he’d been ridiculously flattered, though also kind of freaked out. Would someone report the incidents to his mother?

  But he suspected he wouldn’t find female fans lurking within today.

  It was more likely the kid.

  At the thought, Ryan’s sore shoulder muscles bunched. He’d done his best to ignore the boy, but wherever he was, wherever he went, the towhead hovered at the edges of his field of vision. Like a ghost, Ryan thought, his belly roiling.

  Like a ghost he should exorcise for once and for all.

  Setting his face into a stony mask, Ryan shoved open the door with the flat of his hand. “What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

  A feminine yelp and an empty room put him off his game.

  “Poppy?” He glanced about the sitting room, puzzled.

  She emerged from the attached bathroom, a plastic basket in hand. “Sorry. I did some laundry earlier and wanted to put the towels away.”

  Today’s pants were of faded olive denim that she wore with her sheepskin boots and a thin white blouse embroidered with tiny pink flowers. She looked young and fresh and so debauchable that he had to clench his fingers into fists or else grab her up and carry her into the next room where he’d throw her down onto the bed in order to...

  Debauch her.

  Fucking March, he thought, aggravated all over again.

  Poppy paused in front of him. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he snapped, his gaze snagging on the empty plastic container. “You’re not here to wait on me.”

  One of those delicate flushes of hers colored her cheeks. “I apologize,” she said, her voice stiff, “for invading your privacy.”

  He ground his back teeth. It wasn’t her fault he found her so delectable, but her wood-nymph appeal only served to make him feel like the mean and ugly ogre of the forest. He’d walked in here intending to scare the kid—and wasn’t that heroic?—and now he’d insulted Poppy.

  As she made to brush past him, he realized he couldn’t let her go. “Wait,” he said, putting his hand on her arm.

  Big mistake. Because her wide gray eyes lifted to his and there was that dangerous mountain mist again, but this time it was he who might be lost. Let her go, he ordered himself. Walk away. But his fingers merely tightened.

  “Uh...is there anything you need?” he asked, attempting to gentle his voice. “I haven’t seen you much.”

  Because he’d been avoiding her as best he could. Not to mention the kid.

  “Linus assures me the photographers won’t be at the gates forever.” She was now staring at his hand on her arm, her feathery lashes half-lowered. “My son and I won’t be in the way much longer.”

  Her son. Ryan looked over Poppy’s head and out the bank of French doors that opened onto another of the terraces overlooking the lake. Today, the sun was shining, its light the thin yellow of coming spring. It reminded him of the kid’s hair, its silky length fair and pure.

  “They’re not the only problem, though, right?” Ryan found himself brushing his thumb along the soft cotton of Poppy’s shirt. “There’s your ex, too.”

  She slid her arm away from his touch. “From what my sister said, he’s been calling around trying to get my number,” she admitted. “My siblings have businesses so theirs are available and though my cabin has a landline, I’m not there to answer it. My cell isn’t listed anywhere.”

  “What could he want?”

  Her gaze shifted toward the windows. “When he talked to Shay a second time, he expressed to her he didn’t...approve of the company I appear to be keeping.”

  Shutting his eyes, Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Shit. This is all—”

  “Look, Denny has no right to pass judgment on anyone,” Poppy said in a low voice. “He’s never set eyes on his own son.”

  Ryan dropped his hand to stare at her. “Not even once?”

  “No.” Poppy walked to the sofa across from the entertainment center and dropped to a cushion, as if suddenly weary. The basket went to the floor. “We... I was a stupid twenty-one.”

  “Show me a wise person of that age and I’ll buy you a pony.”

  A faint smile curved her mouth. “I have this cousin. At twenty-one, she developed a foolproof plan to keep her from making romantic mistakes.”

  “Then she hasn’t had any fun, either,” Ryan said, seating himself beside Poppy.

  “It was fun, at first,” Poppy said, her expression pensive. “Denny and I.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “At a party. The mountain kids and the flatlanders don’t interact in that way very often...in large social situations. The lake is private, so it’s not like we’re mingling regularly enough with the wealthy set to get an invitation to the fancy homes.”

  Ryan supposed there was a natural divide. Those that came up from L.A. for a few days at a time would bring their guests with them or connect with other short-timers like themselves on the decks of boats or behind the walls of gated estates. But natural didn’t necessarily mean right. He caught the whiff of undeserved privilege. “I already don’t like this Denny,” he murmured.

  Her hand waved the thought away. “What wasn’t to like? He drenched me in compliments and attention. My mother had passed shortly before and he was there to fill some of the gap and take the edge off my sadness. I rushed headlong into every moment.”

  “Twenty-one,” Ryan said.

  Her smile was sad. “I thought I was in love with him.”

  “Twenty-one,” he repeated.

  She was quiet a moment, then slanted him a glance. “Thanks for that. It shaves a little off my idiot quotient.” Her hand found his forearm, gave it a squeeze.

  At the simple touch, lust surged up his arm. The idiot was him, Ryan thought. He should have done what he’d first intended, and kicked the intruder—whoever that might be—from his room. Instead, he was inches from debauchable Poppy Walker, and her bare palm was like a brand against his skin. He despised tattoos but he thought he just might have one now, a palm-size Poppy marking on him that would never go away.

  When she removed her hand, his skin still pulsed with heat.

  “How’d it end?” he heard himself ask. He continued to stare at the invisible throbbing spot just north of his wrist.

  “Oh, the usual way. I had missed my period and realized it might mean I was pregnant. I told him about the possibility.”

  Ryan recalled a similar conversation from ten years before. He�
�d been scared spitless.

  “I took the stick test, still considering it an outside chance. We’d been using protection.” She traced a pattern on her denim-covered knee. Daisies, Ryan realized. Her forefinger was drawing chains of daisies, petal by petal.

  She glanced up. “When it showed positive, he was much less surprised than me.”

  Ryan’s gaze narrowed at the wry note in her voice. “Because...”

  Her shoulders moved up and down on a sigh. “Because he’d known the condom had broken once, but he’d never shared that piece of info with me. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘I guess some swimmers found that tear in the rubber.’”

  “Classy,” Ryan ground out.

  “And that’s the last I ever saw of him,” Poppy said. “I called him when Mason was born. Let his parents know, as well, but they never responded. I’ve continued to send letters and photos annually, but none of the Howells seem any more interested now than they were on the day my son came into the world.”

  “You could have gone to the authorities—”

  “No.” She was shaking her head. “You can’t make someone care for another person.”

  And sometimes you didn’t want to care for any other persons.

  “I felt pretty foolish, though,” Poppy continued. “It’s an old story around here. Mountain rube falling for the slick, sweet-talking visitor. Happened to my own mother—my sister Shay’s a half sibling.”

  Poppy glanced over at Ryan. “I have Mason, though. So I don’t feel sorry for myself.”

  Feel sorry for me, Ryan wanted to say. Feel sorry for me, who is so damn drawn to you and your don’t-cry-for-me attitude, despite the fact it’s March and you have that kid and everything feels so fucked up.

  But he couldn’t utter a word of that. He couldn’t utter anything. The silence turned awkward and he knew she thought so, too, because a pink flush colored her face again and she got to her feet. “Well,” she said. “That’s much more than you ever wanted to know about Poppy.”