There’d been a couple other women since Joy died, and they hadn’t even caused a glitch on his radar. An old girlfriend of his still lived in the city, and they’d hooked up several times, mostly to get him back in the saddle again, but she’d never been a contender, even back when they’d dated in college. Then he’d had a couple one-nighters with women his brothers fixed him up with.
That was all, and it’d been all fine and good and enough.
And then Miranda showed up.
Just like that, she started supplying a new infusion of warmth, laughter, beauty and hope in his life, and—damn her—took it with her when she left the room.
The kicker was, she didn’t give him any choice. No one asked him if he was ready for a relationship, and he had no say in the matter. She was just, suddenly, there, and he couldn’t get around or ignore her any more than he could reverse time or ignore his need to drink water. She commandeered his thoughts during the day and his dreams during the night. The damn woman even owned his eyesight, because half the time he superimposed her shining face over the features of whomever he was with.
He wanted her with a frantic, all-consuming urgency.
He feared her almost as much.
Staying away from her had never been a real option, though. Oh, he’d tried, sure, back in the early days after they met. At first he’d avoided Java Nectar altogether, which was a difficult task since they were next-door neighbors.. But a couple of weeks went by and his longing to see her—just to lay eyes on her again—threatened to choke him. So he’d told himself that dropping in for coffee would be fine, especially if he kept it brief and impersonal.
It was just coffee, right?
“Morning,” he’d said the next day, when he stopped in on his way to the store. It was past the morning rush and he knew the boys would be at school—not that he’d planned to come at a time when she’d be free.
She’d been wiping off a table, but her head snapped up at the sound of his voice, almost as though she’d been waiting to hear it again. Her eyes brightened and her lips widened into the kind of glorious smile that made a man feel like the king of the universe.
“James,” she said quickly. “Hi. Did you come to ask for directions to Starbucks?”
“Why would I do that?” he asked, excruciatingly aware of the changes that came over him in her presence. Like the way his heart pounded and his body felt lighter, as though the slightest breeze would be enough to send him soaring through the sky.
“I don’t know. You looked a little funny when you left the last time. I was thinking I’d offended you somehow.”
“Nope,” he said lightly, trying to look puzzled by this idea.
“Good.” She headed for the counter and he trailed behind. “Let’s see if we have any black coffee available ...why, yes. You’re in luck. We’ve got two gallons, just brewed.”
“I’ll take some.”
Another smile, so amazing it caused a sweet ache in his belly.
He decided that his mind’s eye was a sorry piece of equipment, because it hadn’t captured half of her qualities. She was prettier than he remembered. Warmer. More vibrant.
He wanted her harder than he had before.
And he realized, as he watched her, that he’d lied to himself just like he’d lied to her. Coffee wasn’t just coffee. Coffee meant getting a small shot of Miranda in his life. Not enough to satisfy him—just enough to torment him for more days to come.
He wasn’t ready for a relationship with her.
But he knew he’d be back again tomorrow anyway.
She passed him the coffee. He passed her the money.
He lingered, reaching for a napkin.
She cleared her throat.
He wanted to say something—anything—but crippling emotional paralysis kept him locked behind a brick wall.
“It’s quiet right now,” she said brightly, nodding at the empty tables. “Can you stick around for a minute? I could have a cup with you.”
He stiffened, feeling his eyes do the whole deer-in-headlights thing.
“You don’t have time.” Her smile faltered. “I understand.”
No.
She definitely didn’t understand.
“Well,” he said lamely, holding up the coffee cup. “Thanks.”
“Any time.”
He trudged to the door, slowed by his leaden feet and his sinking heart. He was, clearly, the biggest idiot that ever lived.
The next morning, they repeated the whole procedure, except that she didn’t invite him to stay and they discussed the weather.
The morning after that, he proved himself to be a brilliant conversationalist.
“Is that your Saturn parked out front?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She’d been pouring his coffee, but she paused to shoot him a quizzical look. “Why?”
“The treads are almost gone on the front tires. You’ll need to replace them before winter.”
“Oh,” she said, a slight frown marring her brow. “Okay. Thanks.”
“No problem. You have an ice scraper, too, right?”
“Umm ...yes? I think there’s one in the trunk.”
“You think? Is it heavy-duty?”
“I’m not sure what duty it is,” she said, one corner of her mouth curling.
Was she mocking him? He couldn’t tell and he didn’t care as long as she got that little car in roadworthy condition for the winter. She and the boys needed a safe and reliable vehicle.
“You need to double-check,” he told her.
“Aye, Cap.”
With a last, narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder, he left.
The next day, he presented her with an ice scraper he’d personally selected from the hardware store.
“What’s this?” she said blankly when he handed it over the counter to her.
“An ice scraper.”
“I have one.”
“You weren’t sure.”
“I checked last night. It’s still in the trunk.”
“Is it like this one?”
She eyeballed the thing, which had a stainless steel telescoping handle, a brush on one end, a snow scoop on the other, and a bunch of other bells and whistles that an ice scraper didn’t normally have. He might have even gotten her the battery-powered heated model; he couldn’t remember.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It definitely isn’t like this one.”
“Well, now you’re set.”
“How much do I owe you?”
He waved a hand. “Forget it.”
“James—”
“Forget it.”
She studied him as though he’d just ridden in on a flying carpet. “You’re a tough nut to crack, aren’t you?”
Predictably, he froze. “What’s that mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “Nothing whatsoever. Thanks for the ice scraper.”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
He left, feeling, as he always felt after these encounters, unsettled. Dissatisfied.
The encounters continued after their one and only date, an event he’d instigated in a moment of extreme weakness, then immediately regretted. There’d been the time he loaned her one of his favorite kung fu DVDs because he thought the boys would enjoy it, but declined her offer to watch it with them. The time last winter when it snowed, and he hitched his little plow to his truck and, under cover of being an exceptionally thoughtful person, cleared all the neighbors’ driveways just so he could personally make sure Miranda’s drive was safe. Oh, and the time he’d had all the boys in his troop make elaborate flower boxes for Mother’s Day because he’d wanted her to have a great present from her kids and didn’t trust her loser of an ex-husband to handle the job properly.
The whole time—all those tortured months—he’d reassured himself that he was doing a brilliant job managing his feelings.
Yes, indeed. He was quite the liar, especially when it came to deluding himself.
“James?”
Blinki
ng, he looked up from those last few drops of brandy and discovered her walking toward him on silent feet covered with his black wool socks. She was wet-haired and rosy-cheeked from her shower, cocooned inside his red plaid fleece robe, which belted at her waist and puddled on the floor. She smelled fresh and sweet, her skin doing thrilling things for the utilitarian Ivory soap he used. Her wet hair had reverted to spring-loaded curls that she’d wrangled into a ponytail, and her bright gaze—wary, defiant—held his.
“We need to talk,” she said. “Now.”
Chapter 7
Miranda stepped closer and reached out a hand, beseeching. Something in her expression—a new determination, maybe—caused his flight response to flare up with a vengeance.
“We have to talk about this,” she told him.
He shook his head and turned away even though he had nowhere to go. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
A harsh sigh. “How did I know you’d say that?”
Probably because he was as predictable as Greenwich Mean Time, not that he’d admit it.
He looked around, desperate for an escape. The scariest thing about Miranda had reared its ugly head again. She saw him. She saw through him. Like his mother, she saw things about him that he’d need an advanced degree to figure out. All he knew right now was that the walls were closing in on him and Miranda was the one who’d set them in motion. He couldn’t breathe. He needed fresh air. That was it. Firewood. They needed firewood to get through the night.
Jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the back of his house, where he had a chopping block and a cord of wood at the ready, he grabbed his flannel jacket off the back of the chair where he’d tossed it earlier. “We need firewood. I’ll go chop some.”
“We don’t need firewood this very second. We need to work things out.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You? Say something?” She laughed, but there was no humor in her smile. Only bitterness. “Why would I ever hope for that? I may be a misguided optimist, but I’m not delusional.”
That low blow was so far beneath his belt that he took an aggressive step forward and got right in her face. “Sorry I’m not as open as you want me to be. The last person I opened up to went and died on me, so I’m a little guarded.”
Another derisive laugh. “A little? The only thing more guarded than you is Korea’s demilitarized zone.”
He stiffened. Way in the back of his jaw, he felt a muscle begin to twitch.
It felt like this conversation was causing him to implode. His gut churned and burned, surging and retreating like the glowing orange magma in a volcano about to blow. And Miranda didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. Instead of running to safety as fast as her legs could carry her, she hitched up her chin and came closer, into the danger zone.
“Do you think this is easy for me?” she asked quietly.
He wheeled around, away from her, and shoved an arm into his jacket sleeve. “I’m getting wood.”
“No.” Her hand clamped down around his wrist with surprising strength. He tried to jerk free, but there was no shaking her off. “I’m talking to you.”
He looked to the vaulted ceiling, blinking against the sudden stinging in his eyes. Blinked. Shook his head. Tried to laugh, to shake it off. To breathe.
She waited.
Finally there was nothing else to do but meet her determined gaze and try not to notice the way she smelled—like flowers, his hand soap, and Miranda—or the way the edges of his robe—she was wearing his robe, and nothing else—had eased apart enough to reveal the satin gleam of her skin and the deep curves of her breasts.
He opened his mouth. Out came a hoarse croak. “What do you want, Miranda?”
Deep within the brown depths of her eyes, a hopeful light appeared. “I want you to stand here, without walking out on me, and listen to how I feel.”
His pulse thudded. Did she think that would be easy for him? Why didn’t she just ask for his heart on a silver platter and be done with it?
She waited again.
He nodded sharply, wrenched his gaze away from her and focused on the far wall over her shoulder.
“This isn’t easy for me, James. I know men like to do the chasing. And I know what I am.”
That snapped his attention right back to her face, where her cheeks now blazed with color.
What she was?
A constant torment to him? His every thought and breath? The center of his universe?
“What’s that?” he asked.
A rueful smile. “A thirty-seven-year-old divorced woman. Who has twin boys and an ex-husband and a whole lot of other baggage. And who needs to lose fifteen pounds or so.”
He frowned.
“I’m not perfect. Not even close. And I know I’m a lot to take on. I’m not a free and easy twenty-five-year-old. I get that, okay? I. Get. It.” She choked up a little at the end and had to pause to clear her throat. Dropping her grip on his wrist, she blew out a breath and swiped the back of her hand under her nose. “But I’m a good person and you have to know how I feel about you.”
He stared at her, enthralled and utterly incapable of responding.
“No?” She blinked, freeing a single tear that trailed down her cheek like melted crystal. “You don’t know that I’d do anything for you? That I live for the three minutes a day when you show up in my shop to get coffee?”
His heart contracted painfully. “Miranda—”
“You have to know that all it would take is one tiny signal from you, and I’d be yours. Do you get that? If you met me a tenth of the way, or smiled at me or reached for me—” She trailed off, shrugging helplessly. “That’s all it would take.”
Was that true?
After all the tormented days and nights he’d spent, wanting her and avoiding her, could it be that simple? What would he do if it were?
Inside him, the magma crept higher, clogging his throat and stretching hot fingers over his cheeks. He opened his mouth, desperate to explain himself, but his thoughts and fears were hidden behind a swirling cloud of smoke, and he couldn’t find them, much less pin them down.
“James?”
The rising urgency in her voice only locked him down tighter. It was all he could do to hold her gaze, to shake his head, to shut his mouth again without saying anything.
“That’s all you’ve got?” With a frustrated cry, Miranda shoved him in the chest, backing him up a couple of steps. Her eyes were wild. Her words came in staccato bursts, like gunfire. “I open up a vein and bleed out my feelings for you, and that’s all you’ve got?”
This time, she put her back into the shove, grunting with the effort and forcing him to back up a couple of steps.
For one disbelieving second, he wondered whether this woman realized he outweighed her by a good fifty pounds, and if it would matter if she did. Then all his anger roared to the surface, and he erupted.
“What do you want from me?” he roared, sweeping his arms wide so she could see he was damaged and hollow, with nothing to offer her or any other woman. “I told you I can’t do this! I told you I wasn’t ready!”
“Ready for what, James? To love me? To be happy? Do you even know?”
“To put myself out there again!”
Her eyes widened, mirroring his own surprise that he’d said it. He hadn’t been thinking anything like that. If anything, his brain had been flooded with the endless mantra that’d started the day he met her and hadn’t stopped since:
I want; I can’t. I want; I can’t.
But now that the words had vaulted over his brick walls and sprinted out of his mouth, he knew they were true, and he didn’t want to get them back.
“Do you think I want to go through that again?” he demanded.
Her face twisted derisively. “Through what? Losing someone? Shouldn’t you take a shot at having me before you worry about losing me?”
“You think this is a joke?” he shouted. “You think losing a spouse is no
thing?”
“I know divorce isn’t the same as a death, but I lost a spouse too!”
“No! No!” Swiping the back of his hand over his mouth, he took a shuddering breath and tried to keep himself together long enough to explain that he hadn’t rejected her on a whim. This was all about survival—his survival. “You want to know about loss? Loss is having your wife call at seven o’clock to tell you she’s on her way home from her business meeting in the city, and then having the police show up at your door at seven-forty to tell you she fell asleep at the wheel and wrapped her car around a tree while you were back home grilling salmon for dinner! You think I want to take a chance like that again?”
“I’m so sorry she died. I hate that you went through that. But you and I? Whether we want to or not, we’re taking chances like that already, James!”
“Like hell I am!”
Over on his pillow, Frank, who didn’t like shouting, raised his head and whined. James snapped his fingers at him. Muttering, Frank dropped his head on his paws and watched them intently.
“We don’t get to choose whether we care about each other or not. It’s not something we can control,” she said.
“I can control it. I will control it.”
“Yeah? How’s that working for you so far?”
“Fine,” he lied. “Great.”
“Then why were you so upset tonight when you found me? Why were your hands shaking so badly?”
Shit.
He wheeled away from her, shoving his telltale hands deep into his pockets.
Miranda edged back into his line of sight and kept at him, as relentless as the driving snow outside. There was nowhere else for him to go unless he wanted to lock himself in his bedroom, and that would just be pathetic. He seethed, that muscle in his jaw going haywire. Apparently there wasn’t a single square inch of his house that was safe from the damn woman.
“What if I’d frozen out there, James?”
This horrific image made him flinch.
“Would you be patting yourself on the back right now? Huh? Would you be glad that you made a narrow escape before you got hurt again? Or would you be upset that you’d wasted all this time when you could’ve been with me? When we could’ve been making love?”
A Journey's End Page 6
