“I think this might be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.” He lifted the top piece of bread and rifled through the sandwich’s contents. It looked ordinary enough, what with all the meats and vegetables and sauces. He took another bite. “You can cook.”
She laughed. “I told you—culinary arts degree, or most of one, anyway. I know my way around a knife. You should remember that, by the way, if you feel any of those homicidal urges coming on.”
“Noted.” And delighted. “Out of curiosity, why do you work at a coffee shop and a swimming pool if you have a cooking degree?”
“I don’t technically have it yet. I haven’t passed the final exam.”
“Why not?”
She stared at him, chewing slowly. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to laugh.”
“Fine, but I can’t promise not to smile. I seem to have a hard time controlling that when you’re near.”
“Flattery isn’t going to work. I already gave you the hair points.”
He set his food aside. The strong undercurrent of tension in her voice compelled him to give this moment all his attention. “I still can’t promise not to smile.”
“His name is Wally,” she began, giving in.
The same roiling anger from the night they met filled his throat. It was ridiculous of him to assume Gretchen didn’t have men in her past—or her present, or her future, or in any of the places in between. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Barbaric, self-deluded, macho...call it by whatever word fit, but Jared hated the idea that Gretchen’s life had been in any way shaped by another man.
She saw it, of course. Jared had never been very good at concealing his emotions.
“Stop glowering at me like that. Wally is a lobster.”
“A lobster?”
“My lobster,” she corrected. “My final test. We were all given a live lobster and instructed to make them delicious.”
“Was Wally not very delicious?” he asked sympathetically. It was easy to be charitable now that he knew he was going head-to-head with a crustacean.
“He could be. We don’t know yet. He currently resides in a saltwater palace next to my headboard.” She laughed and shook her head, releasing one of the coils of hair wound at the back of her head. As the date progressed, more and more of those coils were slipping free. Jared harbored a profound wish that she’d be nothing but a frenzy of long black hair by the time the date was through.
“I was able to get Wally a stay of execution. I stood there over a pot of boiling water, looking into his sad, protuberant eyes, and I couldn’t do it. My instructor promised to let me finish my course and get my degree once he died of natural causes. Well, he offered that a few years ago. I haven’t had the courage to check and see if the offer still stands.”
“You know there’s turkey in this sandwich, right?”
“I’m well aware of the origins of meat products. Unfortunately, carving an already dead turkey and casting my pet lobster into boiling water are two different things. I’ve had Wally for five years now. Would you want to cook your dog?”
“Of course no—Wait a minute.” He fixed his interest on her averted eyes. “How do you know I have a dog?”
Color burst in two bright spots on the sharp rise of each cheekbone. Gretchen had very charming zygomatics when she blushed.
“I may have caught a glimpse of you rescuing one that day outside Java Rocket. Don’t look so full of yourself. You shouldn’t feed bagels to dogs. It’s bad for their digestive tracts.”
“Let me guess. You’re a vet too?”
She stopped just short of sticking her tongue out at him. “I have kept Wally alive all these years. And they told me he’d never last.”
“What else have you seen me do without my knowledge?”
“Don’t blame me.” She stabbed a finger at his chest. “I’m not the one who bought tea and baked goods from the same person for over four months and never noticed her.”
He swallowed heavily. He was definitely noticing now.
“How is he, by the way?” she asked, her voice losing some of its edge. “You kept him, right? Poor thing looked pretty rough.”
“Yeah. Max is still around. He’s good. Healthy. On a perfectly balanced protein diet.”
She laughed. “See? It’s not fair. Imagine if your future career hinged on serving him up in a lemon butter sauce.”
“Touché. Though I wonder what you’d think of me if I told you these two hands have wrung the necks of countless chickens in their day. I’ve even plucked the feathers myself. And slept on the pillows we made from them.”
A look of mock horror swept across her delicate features. “How dare you.”
“You think that’s bad—some of the chickens even lived with me before their untimely demise. I gave them names. Shared my blanket. But it all came down to either continuing to eat canned meats or doing that whole when-in-Rome thing. The Rome way is surprisingly delicious.”
She reached out and touched his arm, as if testing the veracity of his existence. “None of it is an exaggeration, is it? You really lived and worked and saved lives in all those places.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. His past wasn’t his favorite topic in the world, but it was his own fault for bringing it up. “What if I killed Wally for you? I can make it painless.”
“Your gallantry in offering to murder my pet is touching, but this is one of those things I have to do myself. And until I can either find the resolve to do it or he dies of lobster-related illnesses, my career as a famous sandwich chef is on hold.”
Jared suspected there was more to the story than that. No one stalled their entire life for a shellfish.
“And that’s why, in the meantime, I’ve also taken classes in bookkeeping, film studies, and—again, you aren’t allowed to laugh—pyrotechnics.” She nodded once. “You are an unparalleled expert at one thing. I’m passably tolerable at several. Right now I’m learning about automotive repair.”
“So you’re a roller derby player, a barista, a lifeguard, a budding chef and a lifelong student?” He let out a low whistle. “You are a woman of untold depths. You make me feel like an underachiever.”
“Please. I dabble. Dabbling is not depth. It’s the opposite.”
“Dabbling sounds perfect. Don’t dock points for that,” he said when a martial light glinted in her yellow eyes. “I’m serious. You have no idea how wonderful that sounds. I’ve given my life to my career. You demand life from yours.”
She didn’t respond right away, and Jared was struck with the thought that he’d once again crammed his foot sideways into his mouth. As that wasn’t his favorite position to be in—though painfully familiar—he asked, “What does one learn in a pyrotechnics class, anyway? Fireworks? Dynamite? If I asked you to blow something up, could you do it?”
“You’re a very violent man, you know that?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” Unable to stand it another second, he lifted a hand to the tattooed stem escaping from the ruffled neck of her blouse. His fixation on the leafy tip all through the movie had brought the plant to life in his mind, leaving him surprised when his fingers brushed against mere skin, flush with her natural heat. “I’m also unpredictable. Disreputable. Untrustworthy.”
But she just laughed, her pulse leaping under his fingertips. “Now I know you’re lying. Ask any person in the borough—ask any person in the country. That’s not who you are.”
He pressed harder against her throat. “How would you know?”
“I don’t.” With the increased pressure, her eyes widened but didn’t falter. “Trying to scare me?”
“No, dammit. I’m trying to undo this top button.”
A smile on her brightly painted lips, Gretchen lifted a hand and popped the button for him. Jared released a sigh of contentment
that mingled with hers as he pulled back the top lip of her blouse. The tiny unfurling leaves he remembered from the swimming pool were visible where her neck sloped to her clavicle. Then...nothing. He couldn’t see any further down her shirt without ripping the damn thing with his teeth.
Not a bad idea, actually. Before he could overthink it, he brought his lips to where ink met skin.
Gretchen tasted of sunshine and chlorine, of elements he couldn’t place and didn’t care to. Of more immediate importance was the flare of desire that jolted through him as he opened his mouth to taste deeper, the baring of teeth to nip gently at her pulse.
Gretchen jumped away, her mouth open in a perfect O of surprise. And delight. There was definitely delight in her face and in her eyes as she extended a finger in his direction. “You were totally going to cheat.”
“What? Me?”
“Minus five points. No, minus ten. You were trying to get a sneak peek at my tattoo.”
“You never said attempting to get you naked was going to cost me.” He crossed his arms and did his best to look intimidating. “I can tell you right now—that could become a problem. It’s my intention to explore every last inch of you, tattoos, skin and everything that comes with them.”
She narrowed her eyes, but a smile continued playing at her lips. “I think you’re misinterpreting the whole purpose of this.”
He reached for a lock of hair that had escaped her elegant updo and wound it around his finger. With a crook, he brought her close enough to kiss. Mouths almost met, exhalations almost mingled, but all he did was speak. “Are you sure about that?”
She didn’t move.
Normally, Jared would have taken a lady’s hesitance as a sign she wasn’t ready for what came next. Of all the less-than-desirable things he’d done in his life, foisting unwanted attentions wasn’t one of them. But with Gretchen, he suspected that pause was a challenge. Would he cross that line? Did he dare to take what he wanted, consequences and points be damned?
He dared.
With a deft slip of the hand, he nestled his grip in the silky strands of her hair, holding her firm. Her lips parted as he brought his mouth to hers, the softly sweet feel of her skin all but lost as he gave in to the urgency of the moment.
Sensation crashed around him, her lips the center of the storm. He could have remained like that for hours, exploring the little jolts of pleasure that erupted at every tiny movement of her tongue against his.
But it seemed important that he let his true intentions be known. Kissing was nice, but he also wanted to bite her neck and devour her skin. So he did. He intended to sweep his tongue roughly along her own, exploring the heat of a mouth that alternately welcomed him in and demanded he prove what he could do. So he did.
A soft moan rose from Gretchen’s throat and tumbled into his own, and he almost lost his grip on her hair in the overwhelming desire it spiked in him.
Which was why it was all the more surprising when he felt himself pushed away, a palm flat against his chest.
With the sudden lack of blood flow to his brain and the departure of a pair of lips he missed already, it took a moment to realize that he was being propelled forcefully to the edge of the roof—and by a woman he could probably lift with one hand.
Squaring his stance, he stopped her mid-step. “Who’s the homicidal one now?”
“You are missing the point.” She reached up and buttoned the top of her blouse, but not before Jared caught sight of a slight red impression where his teeth had hit skin. Desire tightened in his groin, taking him from mildly aroused to hard in just a few pumps of his heart. I did that. I marked her. So many colors swirled on her skin, so many stories told there, yet there were places that remained untouched.
He reached for her again, but she stepped back, tsking lightly. “Jared, the idea is that you’re supposed to earn the good stuff. Yes, I’m willing to admit it’s kind of hot when you swagger around and make your manly demands, but you can’t seriously expect that to work every time.”
“You like my swagger?”
A smile rose to her lips—lips, he might add, that were plump from the kiss she was very clearly pretending hadn’t affected her. As if such a thing were possible. As if that seductive, gleaming spark in her eye could possibly mean anything else.
“What I’d like is for you to understand the relationship between cause and effect. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you can’t always have what you want just because you want it? Haven’t you ever had to behave yourself in order to get something?”
No. Never.
High school had been a blur of girls and full access to his dad’s liquor cabinet. His acceptance to medical school came before he’d even turned in the application. He’d been given a head field position at Make the World Smile with no prior experience. Even his friends had forgiven him and let him join the practice in Pleasant Park because they needed his reputation to boost theirs.
“Would you hate me if I said no?” he asked, his chest tight. Did she have any idea how unique she was in his world? People didn’t make him work for things because they didn’t care enough to try. It was so much easier to simply put him in place and extract what they wanted.
And he’d been all too happy to let them, always feeling the position was his due, not caring enough about what got him there to demand more.
He braced himself for the worst. “What would you say if I admitted that everything has been handed to me on a golden platter? That it’s never mattered that I didn’t once deserve it?”
“I’d say you’re wrong.” She took his hand firmly in her own and pulled him back to the safety of the roof’s solid, sticky center. “Maybe you haven’t had to work very hard, but I think it matters. It matters a whole lot more than you’re willing to admit.”
* * *
Stealing their way off the roof was much easier than sneaking on. As soon as Gretchen and Jared finished the last of their rooftop picnic, with much more space between them for the second half, they simply waltzed through the door and back to the red and gold lobby.
Moving with confidence had a way of allaying the worst suspicions. That was something Gretchen was rapidly coming to learn from being in Jared’s presence.
The second movie had already started, so she and Jared were in the midst of a discussion about whether to push through or to continue her personal history of never making it through the entire marathon when an older couple entered the theater arm in arm. They bore every appearance of having lived in Pleasant Park since the dawn of time, their clothes pressed so that nary a crease showed through—a far cry from their faces, which showed the crinkled visages of longevity.
“Dr. Fine,” the woman called, lifting both her arms in greeting. The overpowering scent of lavender cloyed Gretchen’s senses, causing her eyes to water. She might pride herself on her ability to hit the rink at the bottom of a pile of eight women in skates and rise again, floor burn and all, and she might take a hundred skates to the face before she’d falter, but one woman’s lack of olfactory receptors could bring her to her knees.
Without a word or even a nod in her direction, Jared strode forward, taking the woman’s hands. “Mrs. Robinson. Dr. Robinson. It’s so nice to see you both.”
“I was just telling Jerry how I ran into your father the other day. I can’t believe they passed you over for the Horowitz Humanitarian Award.”
Gretchen watched, her head swimming, as Jared continued to converse with the older couple. Based on snatches of conversation gleaned over the ringing in her ears, she gathered that they knew Jared’s parents and possibly belonged to the same country club. Or owned the same country club? She couldn’t tell.
What was coming through loud and clear was her role here. Not once did Jared turn around to introduce her. Not once did he check to make sure she was even still present. The message couldn�
��t have been clearer. Gretchen was second tier. Gretchen could wait.
The bastard was doing it again.
Hot: His lips insistent as they explored the most sensitive part of her neck.
Cold: The broad expanse of his back as he chatted with friends.
Hot: The damnable boyish arrogance that made quick work of all her quivery parts.
Cold: The damnable boyish arrogance. Period.
When he finally finished his conversation and waved a brief farewell to the couple, Gretchen still hadn’t decided which temperature was currently lapping around her head, threatening to pull her under. Hot plus cold should have equaled lukewarm.
Unfortunately, her feelings for this man were anything but that.
He turned and lifted an enquiring brow, rubbing his hands together. “So. Movie.”
She just stared at him.
“Or no movie?” Jared ventured, more hesitantly this time. He wasn’t sure he liked the look on Gretchen’s face right now. That was definitely displeasure pulling at her lips. “I did something wrong, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. Good job for recognizing something beyond your own self-important reflection.”
“What did I do? And please don’t look at me with that hurt face women get sometimes and say If you don’t know, then I won’t tell you. I have a history of not being very good at that one.”
“You know, I’m willing to overlook a lot of things. You’re condescending and a bit of an entitled ass and annoyingly unconcerned about both these things despite knowing they’re there.”
He nodded at each one, unwilling—and unable—to disagree. Even if he had felt compelled to argue, he’d have kept a tight rein on it. Gretchen’s irritation, a justifiable, righteous thing, worked as a sort of cleanser on his soul.
“And you think me getting annoyed is some kind of game. I give up.” She sighed. “When one runs into people one knows while on a date, one generally makes the introductions.”
The Derby Girl Page 7
