by Megan Hart
“We could run away,” she said seriously, tipping her head back as he let his teeth graze her throat. “Join a circus or something. I’ll sell popcorn. You can be the guy who cleans up after the elephants.”
“How come I have to be the guy who cleans up after the elephants?”
Alice giggled softly. Her fingers curled in the front of his shirt. She kissed his mouth. “Because you don’t like popcorn.”
It was true, though how Alice knew that, Mick couldn’t guess. It was one more thing to add to the long, long list of magical things about her. He kissed her mouth, but this time she put a hand on his chest to hold him back.
She shook her head and looked stern. “Nope. Inside. We’re doing this.”
“You were just talking about running away to the circus,” he protested, but she cut him off with a fingertip to his lips.
“You’re the one who didn’t want to go inside,” Alice said. “This is for your own good. Me. You. Your family. I’ll try not to make them hate me—”
“They aren’t going to hate you, Alice.” Mick snorted softly. “All right. Let’s do this.”
He shouldn’t have worried, he realized about five minutes into the visit. Even Mary, who’d been bugging him for years to bring around a girl, didn’t make a big deal out of Alice being there. His family welcomed her into the chaos and cacophony of a McManus Sunday dinner, complete with a screaming toddler, a shouting match between his brothers and a platter of dinner rolls dumped all over the living room floor by his fumble-fingered nephew who’d been upended by the dog.
Through it all, Alice beamed. She offered to help his mother with dinner. She listened to Mary’s weary complaints about the burdens of child-rearing without rolling her eyes. She fended off Jack’s political opinions. By the end of the visit, it was clear to see that his family loved her.
Mick understood how they felt.
“You want to see my baseball trophies?” He was already leading her up the narrow stairs and down the hall, still lined with family pictures including some really embarrassing school portraits.
Alice, her fingers linked with his, gave a low laugh. “Is that sort of like asking me to see your etchings?”
“I don’t have any idea what that means,” he told her as he opened the door to the tiny room at the end of the hall he’d slept in as a child. “But if you’re accusing me of trying to seduce you, I’m offended.”
She swatted him lightly as she followed him into the room. “You are not. You’re a dirty, bad boy. This was your room?”
“Yeah.” Once inside it, he wondered if he ought to be more embarrassed about this room than the pictures in the hall. The single bed still made up with the quilted comforter from his childhood, the same pennants on the walls. What would Alice think of him now when she saw who he’d been?
She turned from the wall where she’d been looking over his collection of classic car posters. “I never thought of you as a Camaro sort of boy. I figured you for a Mustang lover.”
He came up behind her to settle his hands on her hips, his chin on her shoulder. “I really always wanted a Charger, like the—”
“Dukes of Hazzard!” She turned in his arms with a surprised laugh. “Yeah. Me too!”
It was the perfect time to kiss her, which had been his idea all along. She melted into the embrace the way she always did. How was it that she always fit against him so well, that every kiss was perfect?
“We should go downstairs,” Alice said against his mouth. “They’ll be wondering where we got to.”
“You don’t want to make out with me on my twin bed?” He took a few backward steps, easing her along with him.
She followed. She let him pull her onto his lap, straddling him. The bed creaked. Alice took his face in her hands to hold him still so he’d have had to work harder to kiss her.
“Why didn’t you ever bring anyone home before?” she asked quietly. Her eyes caught his and wouldn’t let them go, even though he wanted to look away.
Mick had lied to plenty of women in his life, but so far, never to Alice. Looking at her now, he wondered if he’d ever want to lie to her. Or if he’d be able to, even if he tried.
“I never felt about anyone the way I feel about you,” he told her. “Never wanted anyone to meet my family. It didn’t seem fair, you know, to bring someone around and have everyone get to like her if I didn’t have any intentions of keeping her around.”
Alice’s smile twisted in that way she had that always told him she had his number, all right. “So, you intend to keep me around, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” He rocked her hips toward him, watching for the telltale flutter of her eyelids that always gave away when she was getting turned on.
He loved that about her. That he could do something so simple and make her react that way. That she responded to him like gas to a match, and she never pretended otherwise.
“Alice,” Mick said suddenly. The words rose to his lips, those three words that in his experience led to nothing but the eventual end with someone storming away angry. To hurt and heartbreak. Three dumb words that now tasted like Alice did, sweet and savory and intoxicating, every single time.
“Mick! We’re getting ready to leave!” Mary’s voice from the hallway pushed Mick and Alice apart as fast as if they’d been in high school, caught doing what they shouldn’t. Alice skipped backward to the dresser to look over the collection of rocks and shells in a tray there, while Mick adjusted his jeans on the other side of the room. His sister poked her head around the doorway. “Come say good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” Mick said, deadpan, knowing it would make her crazy.
Mary narrowed her eyes. “Come say good-bye to your nephews, you giant ass.”
Alice laughed. Mary gave her an assessing look, but Alice had already passed inspection and was now safe from his sister’s disdain. She did give Mick another frown, though.
“I’m coming,” he told her. “We’ll be down in a minute.”
Mary didn’t budge. Mick gave her a fierce look of his own until she capitulated with a toss of her hair. That hadn’t changed much since high school, either.
When she’d gone, he went to Alice and took her in his arms. He had to kiss her again. One more time, before he had to share her again with everyone else.
She let him, but only for a few seconds, before she nipped his lower lip and pushed him away. “Later.”
“Promise?”
With his hand in hers, leading him to the doorway, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Oh, yeah. I promise.”
Chapter 26
“You met his family? That’s kind of a big deal, right? How long have you been seeing this guy?” Alice’s sister Wendy coughed into the phone. “Sorry. I feel like crap. I didn’t want to miss our lunch.”
“Better than giving me whatever you have.” Alice twirled in her desk chair, glad she’d packed a yogurt and some fruit that would take the place of the lunch she was now going to be missing. “I met him about three months ago. Going on four. Is it a big deal? I feel like it is.”
“Meeting a guy’s family is always a big deal. Feels like it, anyway. Which reminds me, when are we going to meet him?”
Alice laughed. “I don’t know. His family has this big Sunday dinner thing every week, it was kind of convenient and not like we had to plan something special.”
“You don’t have to plan anything special to meet me.”
“I know. It’s the time and distance thing. Too hard to get together on ‘school’ nights. We only get to see each other on the weekends.”
Wendy’s laugh became another cough. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. And you want to spend all your time together making kissy face.”
“Um, duh.” Alice let her chair tip back so she could close her eyes, thinking of it now.
It was only Wednesday. Two more days until she could see him, though they hadn’t made any specific plans. In four months, she could count on two hands the times they’d actually decide
d anything in advance. They spent the weekends together, usually ending up at her place because she was the one who always asked if he wanted to spend the night. She should start packing a bag, just to be ready, she thought, in case he ever asked her to stay over.
“You like him that much, huh?”
“Yeah. He’s different, Wendy. We have this spark. It’s more than just the sex stuff, though I’m not going to lie, that part is amazing.”
“TMI,” her sister said.
“Shut up.” Alice laughed. “Like I didn’t have to listen to you raving on and on about Joe Murphey’s—”
“Never speak of it again!” Wendy’s hoarse voice turned the command into a bark. “We shall refer to it only as the dream penis. Don’t remind me of its loss. My lady garden has never bloomed the same way since.”
Alice choked with laughter, shaking her head. “His boner might’ve been a dream, but the rest of him was a nightmare.”
“True.”
“Mick is . . . he’s just . . .” Alice trailed off into a happy sigh. “He makes me laugh. We talk for hours and hours, and we never run out of things to say.”
“Sounds like true love to me.”
“Ugh.” Alice shook her head, though the protest was automatic and not necessarily heartfelt.
Wendy coughed another laugh. “Don’t try to deny it. You’ve got it bad for this guy. I can tell. When’s the last time you spent more than a month with someone who didn’t annoy you? Oh, let me think about that, maybe I guess never!”
“I didn’t say he didn’t annoy me,” Alice said.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“He’s always late,” Alice added. “Always because something came up he wasn’t expecting. He barely makes plans, and then changes them at the last minute because he’s running behind or decides something else would be more fun.”
“Well. Is it?”
“Sometimes,” Alice admitted reluctantly. “But sometimes I really just want to do whatever it is I was planning on doing with him. I don’t care if it’s dinner or a movie or bowling or whatever, but if I’m thinking about doing one thing and he switches it up, I get . . . you know how I get.”
Wendy coughed. “Yeah. I know how you get. Doesn’t he? Do you fight about it?”
“We haven’t fought, not exactly. I’ve tried to tell him that I don’t like it when he’s constantly changing plans we didn’t really make in the first place, but I guess I don’t want to sound uptight. Because it is fun being with him. I think he’s amazing and wonderful, and . . .” She let her words trail away, trying to think of how to describe her insecurities without sounding like one of those girls who started picking out china patterns after two dates.
“And what?”
“I’m not sure what he thinks about me. I know he likes sleeping with me,” Alice said, a little harder than she’d intended. “I figure he likes me well enough, too. You don’t spend so much time with a person if you don’t actually like them aside from the sex parts.”
Wendy cleared her throat. “Yeah. I’d agree with you, there. So what’s the problem? I’ve never really known you to be worried about how a guy felt about you before, Alice.”
“He doesn’t say it.” There it was, out loud, and saying it, even to her sister, felt embarrassing and a little needy. Gross. “I mean, he doesn’t say anything about how he feels about me. I say something like, ‘I think you’re amazing,’ and he gives me an uncomfortable punch on the shoulder and calls me ‘dude.’”
“Shit,” Wendy said. “Ouch.”
“Yeah. Unless we’re fucking or just finished fucking,” Alice said flatly. “He’s a lot more vocal about what he likes about me then.”
“You can spare me the details on that. But you should tell him how you feel, Alice. No good relationship grows without honesty. And not telling him about what makes you mad isn’t honest.” Wendy cleared her throat with a sigh. “I’m gonna go take some more meds and a hot shower. Sorry about lunch. Good luck with your new boy toy. Don’t keep him a secret too much longer, or I’ll think he’s got a tail or something.”
Alice burst into laughter. “Maybe that’s why I like him so much.”
“You would,” Wendy answered and hung up.
With her lunch plans canceled, Alice grudgingly ate the snacks she’d packed instead of going out for pasta and meatballs, which is what she’d been craving. Her resentment fled, though, when Mick’s name popped up on her IM list. If she’d been out of the office, she’d have missed him.
Hey, she typed. Fancy meeting you here.
No answer. With a sigh, Alice shook her finger at the computer screen. “Pay attention to your messages, McManus!”
Of course that didn’t do any good. He’d probably popped online for a second and then left his office again to do something else. Her job as administrative assistant to the head of human resources for Snazzy Nailz nail polish chained her to her chair for most of the day, but most of Mick’s time was spent onsite or in meetings about those onsite visits. Still, seeing the green dot beside his name was like a grain of sand in an oyster . . . only there was no pearl, Alice thought half an hour later when she’d finished her meager lunch and he was still online but hadn’t replied.
Ugh.
Busying herself with work, she managed to get through a number of assignments that had been put on the back burner for one reason or another. Stomach growling, she gave in and decided to hit the employee cafeteria. The food there was slightly better than fast-food takeout, which would’ve been her second option. After a quick sandwich and a salad, she was back at her desk . . . to find a message from Mick.
Hey, hot stuff. Heading out to a job in York.
Hey, you there?
user mcmanus has gone offline
“Dammit,” Alice muttered as she slid into her chair. Not only had she missed him, but York was only twenty minutes from her office. He never came this close to where she worked, though Jay sometimes had.
She looked at the clock. The messages had come in fifteen minutes ago, which meant he was probably still driving. A quick glance at her workload showed her where she could rearrange things. She called him, heart already skipping a beat at the thought of getting to talk to him midday on a Wednesday. Thumping harder at the idea that if she could finagle things just right, she might even get to see him.
When the call went to voice mail, Alice said, “Hey, it’s me. I got your IM, but I wasn’t at my desk. Sorry I missed you. When you get to York, if you have a chance, can you give me a call? I could come meet you for a late lunch or something. You’re so close.”
She hesitated, then added, “I miss you. Would love to see you today. Bye.”
She worked for another hour or so. No call from Mick. She thought about sending him a text, but this close to the end of the month she was in danger of going over her texting allotment, and she’d learned her lesson last month about how expensive that could be. She should bump it up another thousand messages, she thought randomly as she forced herself to focus on work and not her silent cell phone. But she already had a phone plan for five hundred a month, who the hell would ever need to use that many texts?
By the end of the day, any hope she’d had that he was going to call her from the site had fled. When her phone did ring as she was packing up to leave, it was Jay. She tried not to sound disappointed.
“I need a hump day happy hour,” he said without preamble. “Come meet me.”
“Jay . . . I have to work tomorrow.”
He spoke almost before she’d finished her excuse. “You can crash at my place.”
“And get up an hour and a half early to make it to work on time? Ugh.” Phone cradled to her shoulder, Alice zipped her purse.
“I think Paul is cheating on me.”
Alice paused. “Shit. I’m sorry, Jay.”
“Yeah. Well. Is it really cheating when the other person won’t exactly fully commit?”
“I guess it’s cheating if it feels like it,” she
told him. “To you, anyway.”
“Happy hour. C’mon, Alice. We haven’t been out together in forever. You’ve been spending all your time with Mick on the weekends.”
“He told you that? Does he talk about me? Were you working with him today?” The thought intrigued and made her nervous. “What did he say?”
Jay huffed. “He didn’t say anything. I haven’t worked with him in weeks. I just know that’s who you’ve been with, because you’ve barely called me.”
“Sorry.” She was chagrined, but not too much.
They arranged a meeting place and time. One more time, Alice checked her instant messages, but Mick hadn’t come online again. She shut down her computer and headed out. Traffic was a bitch, as it always was the closer she got to Baltimore. When she passed the exit for Timonium, where Mick lived, her foot unconsciously lifted from the gas, earning her a little road rage from the asshole who’d been tailgating her. She kept going with only a look in the rearview and a sigh, her silent phone mocking her from her purse. By the time she got to the restaurant where she was meeting Jay, she was starving and cranky.
Bless him, though, he’d ordered appetizers and two margaritas, so she didn’t have to wait. Alice gave him a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. Jay pushed her margarita toward her.
“So,” she said. “What’s going on?”
He told her. The secretive phone calls that ended when Jay walked into the room. The way Paul had stopped returning his calls right away, sometimes going hours or even a day or so. How he seemed distracted, even in bed.
“All the classic signs,” Jay said with a vicious stab into the loaded potato skins.
Alice had been cheated on a couple of times, and she wasn’t proud to admit it, but she’d cheated once, herself. She’d never condone it, but she couldn’t exactly be judgmental. Well, except that Paul was an asshole. “Just ask him about it, Jay. Don’t torture yourself.”
