“Here you go,” Ralph said, handing him the shots.
“Thanks,” Edward said, tossing the first one back and squeezing his eyes shut to savor the burn.
Chairs scraped, telling him the couple nearby was leaving. When he lowered the shot glass and opened his eyes again, Reeve was there, directly in his line of sight, and a server was clearing away her dinner plate. She was sitting at another table, facing him, not twenty feet away, all by herself with a glass of Guinness like his sitting untouched in front of her.
For one arrested second, as his heart pounded like the marching band's drum line during today's parade, he thought, shit, that's some powerful whiskey, conjuring her out of thin air like that, but the plain truth was that the only thing strong enough to make Reeve appear out of nowhere was his desire to see her again.
She'd showered and changed, he saw right away, and was wearing a sleeveless black dress—nothing fancy, but sexy as hell—that highlighted the gleam of her caramel skin in the candlelight. Her hair was straight and loose around her shoulders now, a shiny fall of black silk to frame her pensive face.
And what was she doing, his sexy, sad Reeve? Was she munching from her own bowl of pretzels? Sipping her beer? Perusing the dessert menu?
Why, no.
She was frowning down at the white business card in her hand.
He watched.
She put the card down and turned her head away from it. Rested her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand. Dropped her hand and drummed her fingers on the table.
Picked the card up again and thoughtfully tapped one corner of it against her lips.
The lips he'd kissed earlier.
As though she sensed the weight of his attention on her, she slowly raised her gaze and looked across the room, at him. And when her eyes widened and she started, realizing it was him, he felt a tidal wave of certainty, a gut-deep knowledge, a ringing clarity.
Yeah, said something primitive and compelling inside him. Her.
They stared at each other for several long beats, both frozen.
To unstick her, because the ball was still in her court, he picked up his phone, held it up so she could see it and put it down again. Then he sipped his beer and, now looking out the window, made a show of blandly eating pretzels even though they were sawdust in his dry mouth.
He waited.
Waited.
Waited.
Waited.
His phone lit up, beeping at him.
Everything in him leapt with excitement, which he contained with extreme difficulty. He ate another pretzel. The phone beeped again. He sipped his beer. Another beep. Wiped his fingers on his napkin.
Over at the other table, she muttered, “Really?” and laughed, and the sound was ear ambrosia, the most thrilling thing he'd ever heard.
Now it was time. He picked up the phone, his heart soaring.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” she said.
Frowning and focusing his gaze on the pretzels, he selected another one. “Who is this?”
She laughed again. “Reeve!”
“Reeve who?”
“How many Reeves can you possibly know?”
“Good point. Glad you finally called. It's easier than the way you've been stalking me all day, don't you think?”
“I beg your pardon! I haven't been stalking you!”
“Are you meeting people here?”
He kept it to the generic people rather than asking if she was waiting for a date, a prospect he didn’t want to consider.
“No,” she said. “I had a quiet dinner by myself because I’m decompressing from people. I’ve had enough people for the day. No offense,” she added quickly. “What about you?”
“The same.”
And that was enough with the idle chitchat, as far as he was concerned. He finally raised his unsmiling gaze to hers and watched her grin give way to breathless intensity as she held the phone to her ear.
“I have a question for you, Reeve Banks.”
“Yeah?” she asked softly.
“Don't you think it's auspicious that we've run into each other three times today?”
She didn't answer.
Didn't answer.
Didn't answer.
And then, finally, she put him out of his miserable uncertainty.
“Yes,” she admitted.
With that, his lungs loosened up and allowed him to breathe again.
“Then come have a drink with me,” he said.
* * *
Chapter 8
She grabbed her drink and came over. He stood, intending to help her with her chair, and remembered too late that they were at a booth. Now that he was standing, though, he gave in to the urge to peck her on the cheek because his lips really liked the feel of her.
“Thanks,” he murmured in her ear, noting both her light hand on his arm as she quickly recovered from her surprise and kissed him back—old friends greeting each other at the airport, maybe—and the delicious scent of her skin. “You smell like roses.”
Frowning, she blinked up at him as she put her beer down and slid into her seat. “You noticed my lotion?”
He shrugged and sat down again, sliding way over until they were side-by-side, well within touching distance, but could still see each other's faces. “Hell, yeah, I noticed. It's working for you.”
That seemed to ruffle her a little, because she ducked her head and filtered her fingers through the sleek fall of her hair, a gesture of such unassuming sensuality that he felt the neurons all up and down his arms spark to attention.
Then she nailed him with a stern warning. “I'm not sleeping with you tonight. We should probably clear that up.”
He'd taken a quick sip of his beer, but this announcement nearly made him spit it out again when he laughed.
“Good to know,” he spluttered. “I was afraid I'd have to fend you off all night.”
“I'm serious.”
“I can see that.”
She eyed him suspiciously, pursing her lips.
“What?”
“So...You understand?”
He controlled his grin, but only because he was afraid she'd get up and march off if she suspected he wasn't taking her seriously. “What? You want me to sign a notarized acknowledgment? I understand that you think we're not sleeping together tonight.”
“Oh, man,” she said, shaking her head as she sipped her beer. “You are trouble, aren't you? When I ruled you out as a serial killer, I never thought about all the other kinds of trouble you could cause.”
There was so much subtext behind the rueful amusement on her face that it awakened his inner Sherlock Holmes. “What's troublesome about the two of us having a drink together? We're both single—”
The shadow that crossed her face was so unmistakable it made his entire being seize up with sudden fear. No conscious thought was involved as he reached for her left hand and held it up so he could confirm what he'd noticed earlier: No ring.
Just the narrow band of slightly paler skin where the ring had been.
“You're married,” he said dully, dropping her hand. A wave of resentment hit him at this startling evidence of duplicity and hypocrisy, especially after she'd raised the issue of his possible engagement as an impediment to the two of them starting up a relationship.
“You don't need to glare at me like that.” She focused on her ring finger, rubbing the ghostly imprint of the life she'd shared with some other man. “I was married.”
“How long have you been separated?”
Long hesitation before she took a deep breath and opened her mouth.
“He died,” she said. “Four years ago in Afghanistan. He was a Marine.”
“Oh.” His brain had been whirring, generating an impromptu list of reasons why it didn't matter if she was married (separated was practically divorced, wasn't it?), but now he realized he might be dealing with an entirely different sort of roadblock to hooking up with her: the elephant-sized ghost of her be
loved dead husband, sitting right here at the table with them. “I'm sorry.”
She nodded, all her attention focused on wiping condensation off her glass.
“Is that why you looked so sad a few minutes ago?”
“Not really.” Making a palpable effort at shaking it off, she smiled and tossed her hair. “And I'm sure you don't want to hear all this on a holiday weekend, so that's enough of me yammering—”
“Reeve.”
He quietly held her uncertain gaze, wanting her to know, even at this early stage of whatever sort of relationship they were getting themselves into, that he was a safe place where she could be whoever she was, feel whatever she felt.
She sighed. “I went to see my mother-in-law this afternoon. It didn't go well. My family struggled financially when I was growing up. My in-laws were wealthy. She never thought I was good enough for Adam.”
Adam.
The sound of the name rubbed him the wrong way and made him cringe inwardly, like hearing fingers squeak across a balloon or nails scrape down a chalkboard.
Ridiculous, he knew, and well beneath his dignity to be envious of a dead man.
“I'm not sure mothers ever think any women are good enough for their precious little boys,” he said. “And I wouldn't be surprised if her attitude says more about her than it does about you.”
“What does that mean?”
All that intent curiosity leveled on his face made him hot around the collar, so he took a fortifying sip of beer, which took him to the bottom of the glass. And because that still didn't take the edge off his sudden discomfort, he picked up the remaining whiskey shot, toasted her with it, and tossed it back.
She watched him, waiting.
“It means,” he said, grimacing against the trail of fire making its way to his gut, “that I suspect you're good enough for any man who was lucky enough to catch you.”
“And how would you know that?” she asked softly.
That was a damn good question.
Too bad he didn't have an answer that made any sense.
Shifting to face her, he rested his elbow on the back of the booth behind her head and smoothed her hair back from where it skimmed her forehead.
She shivered, her breath catching.
“When you know, you know,” he said.
And as he stared into the warmth of her face and the sweet purity of her brown eyes, it occurred to him that he didn't know what, exactly, it was that he knew about her.
Only that he didn't doubt it.
A faint smile flickered across her face as she faced him, leaning into his space the way he leaned into hers. “You're touching me again. So far today you've kissed me twice and now you're touching me.”
“Yep. And that's only so far.”
She grinned. “See? This is why I should've gotten that notarized acknowledgment.”
“Too late now.”
She laughed. “So...”
He stroked her temple, then rubbed a hank of her hair between thumb and forefinger, learning its texture. “So?”
“You're a vet, eh?”
“I'm a vet.”
“How fun is that?”
“Much fun. And what are you?”
“A doctor. Well, a fledgling doctor. I just graduated.”
“Oh, yeah? Schools?”
“Fordham. Emory med.”
He raised his brows. “I can see why your mother-in-law thought you weren't good enough. Anyone would think the same.”
This time, when her burst of laughter made her head tip back, he took shameless advantage. Running his hand through her hair, he felt for the solid warmth of her scalp, massaged it with his fingertips and sifted the silky strands through his fingers, noting the way her lids lowered and a low croon of pleasure hummed in the smooth column of her throat.
“So your family’s financial struggles didn’t keep you from soaring, did they?” he asked pointedly.
“Guess not.”
“Are they proud of you?”
“Oh, yeah. Big-time. My mother completely lost it at graduation.”
“Are you proud of yourself?”
She hesitated, her smile fading. “That one’s a little harder.”
“You should be. You deserve it, don’t you think?”
She flapped a hand and tried to shrug his compliment away. “What’re you? My new head cheerleader?”
“Yeah.” It worried him a little how dead serious he was, but he’d think about that later. “I think I am.”
“The position doesn’t pay well,” she said gravely.
“It’s all good,” he said, fascinated by the satiny plumpness of her cheek as he rubbed his thumb over it. “There are other compensations.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said firmly, his attention drifting to her mouth before he caught himself and looked up again.
A long pause followed, heavy with meaning and crackling with electricity.
“Are you from Journey's End?” she asked after a while, her eyes brighter than ever now, her color high.
“Born and bred. Me and my four brothers. You?”
“Born and bred. My brother and parents moved to Denver a few years ago, though.”
“And now you're back? I saw all the boxes in your car.”
“And now I'm back.”
“Good.”
Ducking her head, she laughed. “Yeah. You're trouble, Edward.”
Everything about her seduced him, he thought, and she didn't even know it. The turn of her head, the fringe of her eyelashes, the dimples, the laugh. The big brain and the small hints of vulnerability. It was all he could do not to reach for her, to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she accepted what he already knew—that she was his.
But that would be too much, too soon.
As a consolation prize for behaving himself like a gentleman, he stroked the velvety and tender hollow where her shoulder met her neck, because it was a very fine neck.
“Yeah, you're trouble, too,” he told her.
She looked up and they watched each other for a heated moment.
“You know you're coming home with me tonight, right?” he murmured.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. Flickered back up to his eyes.
“I don't go home with men I just met.”
“Right. Except for me.”
“And why should you be an exception?”
Tough question. Not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he didn’t want to give it: you can trust me, Reeve. Yeah, sure. He wasn’t about to say that and give her the excuse she needed to laugh, go home, and leave him to jack himself off in his lonely bed tonight while thinking about her.
“I’m a good guy,” he said instead. “I plan to be good to you.”
Eye roll. “I didn’t think you were the type of guy to brag about how good he thinks he is in bed.”
Unsmiling, he gave her a pointed look. “Who said I was talking about sex?”
She went still but for the vague frown that grooved down her forehead, making it perfectly clear she had no idea what to think now. Because he was watching her so closely, he was able to see the tremor of awareness—desire?—as it rippled through her. She took a deep breath.
“We'll see,” she said softly.
To give himself something to do other than roar with triumph, he looked over to the bar and raised his hand for the server.
“We'll have another round,” he called.
* * *
Chapter 9
Reeve went to the ladies’ room while the server brought more drinks and Edward checked his messages. There were none from Amber, which was a relief. He was just finishing up a call to his night staff, checking on a collie recovering from the cancer surgery he’d performed yesterday, when she came back.
He hung up and reached out to take her hand when she sat back down.
“Everything okay?” she asked as he twined his fingers with hers.
He was distracted by the warmth of her g
rip, the feel of her fine bones, so much smaller than his, and the rounded edges of her nails, which were painted a ladylike pink. His imagination wanted to take off into a flight of fancy about the kinds of hot and wicked things those pretty hands could do as they glided along his body, but he’d noticed the question in her eyes and knew what she was really asking.
So he satisfied himself with circling his thumb around the center of her palm as he focused on her face. “I had to check in with the clinic. I have a post-op collie I’m a little worried about. And I can see what’s going on in here.” He tapped a finger to her forehead. “I’m not getting married. I already told you. That’s over now.”
“Hmm. Over as of when?”
There was that hot-under-the-collar feeling again, only it was distinctly unpleasant this time. He hesitated, ultimately deciding that any deflections or evasions would do him more harm than good in the long run. “This morning. That’s where I was coming from when I stopped to help you.”
Her jaw dropped and she snatched her hand free. “This morning?”
The open dismay on her face was starting to make him wish he’d evaded, but too late now.
“Yeah,” he said steadily. “This morning. That’s why I didn’t ask for your number initially. I thought it was a little too soon.”
“A little soon? It’s way too soon!”
“I disagree. Way too soon would’ve been meeting you a week ago and being this interested in you when I was still with someone else.”
“So...How long were you with her? Just out of idle curiosity.”
Shit. This just went from bad to worse.
“Total? Seven years. Met in high school here. Off and on while she went to ’Bama and I went to Rice and then Cornell for vet school. Pretty much together since we both graduated.”
“Weren’t you living together?”
“No. She lives in the city and I live here. We never worked out how to be in the same place at the same time for more than a few weeks at a time. Which was a clue I didn’t recognize until recently.”
“Seven years. So the ink isn’t even dry on that relationship yet. What about all the”—she waved a hand while she searched for the right word—“unraveling you still need to do?”
Let's Do It Page 7
