“You’re very welcome,” Nancy said. “Now should you choose to accept the position, we can arrange to take care of the paperwork online until you can get here.”
“Um,” I said, feeling the panic rise in my throat. “How long do I have? Before the job starts, I mean?”
“Well, we like to get people here as soon as possible.”.
“Because I’m on a very important project right now,” I said. “Kind of hush-hush. And as I mentioned in the phone interview, I won’t be able to leave for two more months.”
There was a pause. “That’s quite an extended wait.”
“I know,” I said. “In fact, I really thought it lost me the position when I told them about it. I could totally understand if that is a deal breaker.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s actually in the notes in your file.” I had a file. “We were just hoping that perhaps the situation had changed since then.”
I closed my eyes. “No, unfortunately not.”
“Well then, that’s that,” Nancy said. “I’ll pop this paperwork over to the e-mail address you listed on your application, and you can look it over. It includes all the pertinent information regarding salary, benefits, job duties, and so forth. If it suits you, and you’re still interested in becoming part of the Cali Dynamic team, my number will be on the e-mail. We’ll get you set up for whatever date you need.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Thank you for calling me.”
I hung up and sat there, wondering who decided when life got to be so smart aleck and cold. When a month ago, I would be dancing out the door that very day, now I just sat in stunned silence. Because one, Aunt Ruby’s house. And two, the fact that there was a number two. Nick. He wasn’t supposed to figure in, but it sure as hell felt like he did.
I stayed out there, sipping my Coke till a smoker came out, needing a fix.
When I forgot how to log back into my machine after lunch, my boss came and suggested I take a half day and go home and take some aspirin and go to bed.
I almost hugged her. And when I couldn’t stop rambling and told her that I had so much on my mind—old stuff, new stuff, random stuff—she said to look at what I thought of first thing each morning and my last thoughts every night, and throw everything else away. All the rest was just noise, but those two things were worth diving off a cliff for.
So as I thanked her for her wisdom and walked out the back door of the bank, I thought about what my two things would be. It wasn’t the job. It wasn’t any of my jobs. What did I wake up thinking about? Where did I go every night as I closed my eyes?
Goose bumps covered my whole body.
I couldn’t get to my car fast enough.
* * *
I wasn’t even bothered by the extra car in the driveway. Tara was okay. She was more than okay, actually. She was the one to show me my feelings, and essentially tell me it was okay to feel them. That giving a shit was a good thing. Okay, she didn’t actually say that, that was my interjection, but she insinuated it.
I could thank her. If I were a writer, I’d put her in the acknowledgments. As it was, maybe I’d just send her a three-month supply of honey. It would make her feel all homey and remember the gooey moments.
Nick had made her out to be such a bitch. And in truth that was more show than reality. Then again, I also hadn’t lived with her or tried to raise a child with her, so probably my sense of reality was slightly skewed.
My heart skittered in my chest as the thought of looking Nick in the eye and saying what I needed to say swirled around me. That face, those eyes, the slow lazy smile that warmed my thoughts every morning and wrapped me up safely at night.
I needed to find him, to touch him, to say the words before I chickened out. A glimpse of movement outside the back patio doors caught my attention and I headed that way, my heart speeding up to double time. Breathe. Having a heart attack in the middle of a monumental moment wasn’t sexy.
Then there he was, smiling, talking to Tara, but that was okay. She’d see my face and know, and make herself scarce. As I reached the window-paned doors and touched the knob, however, my nerves up in my throat, something wasn’t right. Tara’s hands went up to his face, his came up to hold her head, and—no.
No.
I froze in that spot as Nick kissed her.
The sound of my heartbeat was overtaken by the sound of my breaths. I could hear them one by one, proof that I was still alive in a body that had gone numb.
It wasn’t a sexual passionate kiss, but I’d kissed him enough now to recognize intimacy. The lingering of mouths, the touching of faces, the—oh my God, the thing I was going to say.
I was so stupid.
I’d done it. I’d gone there. The thing I swore I’d never do, never say, never act upon because it turned sane people into idiots. I’d channeled my weak mother and done it. I felt the hot tears trekking down my cheeks before I registered that I was crying.
I was crying. Over—sweet Jesus, I was pathetic too. A little squeak escaped my throat and the knob made a metallic sound as I removed my hand and backed up a step.
Nick looked up. He looked up from kissing his ex-wife, his first love, the love of his life, the woman who played me like a needy fucking fiddle. He looked up, her head still in his hands, the perfect hair spilling over his fingers, and looked at me.
“Lanie.”
I couldn’t hear it, but I saw my name on his lips. The lips he’d just kissed her with. His eyes registered alarm in the last second before I turned and walked away. I didn’t care. Let him be alarmed. Let them both burn in hell. They deserved each other.
Blindly, tears distorting my vision blink after blink, I made it to the door and out into the sunshine. Stumbling down the steps, I skipped the car and just kept walking. Circling around the property, I headed down the rock path. I needed clarity. I needed home.
My name was being yelled in the background but that was meaningless. That went with the guy that made the girl a stupid fawning give-a-shit-way-too-much idiot. I was even about to turn down the perfect job for him. I’d become my mother, minus the booze and the pain pills. And something mentally slapped me upside the head on that thought and said that was overkill, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking straight because I’d let myself believe—just for a minute—that the thing I’d avoided my whole life could maybe be for me after all.
“Lanie!” he called out from the house. I was most of the way hidden into the path, protected by the trees, but he might know me well enough to—fuck that. He knew nothing.
Keep walking. I blinked new tears free as the image of them holding each other stabbed at me repeatedly.
“Lanie!”
He was closer. Damn it, he figured it out. He must be jogging. Maybe she donned her cute little blue sweatband real quick and came with him.
“Go home, Nick,” I called out, passing the old fireplace, needing the soothing trickle of the water over the pebbles. Home. How fucking ironic. “Go back to my home, actually, and tell your woman to get her lying, conniving fucking ass out of my house, and then I don’t give a shit what you do.” The irony of those particular words was not lost on me. Even in my churned up state. “Go, stay. Do whatever the hell you want to do as long as I don’t have to see—”
“Stop,” he said, swinging me around by the arm.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, yanking my arm free.
He stepped back when he saw my face. “You’re crying.”
“Gold star,” I said, swiping angrily at my face.
“Lanie.”
“Your woman is waiting,” I said. “Get her out of there before—”
“My what?”
“Don’t insult me, Nick,” I muttered, turning on my heel.
“My—” He stopped when I took up speed-walking again, and took three long strides to cut me off. “Excuse me. My woman?”
“I didn’t stutter.”
I was trembling like a
leaf, though. He shook his head like I wore him out. Really?
“My woman is the crazy chick I’m chasing down right now,” he said. “The one that drives me fucking mad and makes me laugh and want to pull my hair out all at once. The one I can’t figure out to save my life. Who’ll do anything to save an old house but nothing to save herself. My woman is the one I’m supposed to be faking it with, and yet I’m at a loss for what to do because there’s nothing fake about it anymore.”
Good words. Excellent words, actually, but they didn’t take away the visual I’d seen. Nothing could purge that intimacy from my brain.
“Stop,” I choked.
“Because she’s the one who I can’t wait to tell a funny story to, or see at the end of the day,” he continued. “And then I do see her and my first thought is She’s mine, and then my second thought is Wait, what the fuck? And then damn if my third thought isn’t God, yes. She’s really mine.”
He stopped and took a long breath, locking his gaze in on me with something I understood too well. Fear.
“I love you, Lanie McKane.”
“Don’t say anything you’ll have to apologize for later. Crow tastes like shit.”
Chapter Seventeen
What did he just say to me?
Nick’s expression looked like he was asking himself the same question. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly like it was keeping him balanced.
“You—” I began. “I saw—”
Complete sentences weren’t happening.
“You saw good-bye,” he said.
Breathe. “What?”
“She was leaving,” he said. “Tara was leaving. She probably left as I ran out the door. And she had some things to—I don’t know, get closure on I guess. I told her.” He paused, his eyes boring into mine like the second time took more strength. “I told her I loved you.”
All my blood rose to the surface.
“She knew,” he said softly. “She said she saw it on me. She recognized it. And yeah, I kissed her good-bye,” he said, as if he’d said they threw a football around. “We have eighteen years and a kid between us. It seemed right.” He wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “But not if it made you cry.”
All the rage and the hurt and the anger and the retribution of five minutes ago tumbled around inside me like lottery balls in a cage at his touch.
“I’m fine,” I said, blinking free the rest and wiping them away. God, I couldn’t think.
“Why did you come home early?” he asked. “What did you come to tell me?”
What had I come to say? What he’d already said twice.
“I got the job in California,” I blurted.
He tilted his head as if he hadn’t quite heard right. He’d just spilled his guts. And I said—that.
I deserved to rot somewhere really bad.
No-the-hell-wonder I sucked at this.
“You—what?” he asked.
“They just called me,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, letting them drop, crossing them again. “Offered me the job.”
Nick just nodded. His eyes started to glaze over; he was shutting down the portal he’d just blasted wide open. The one that exposed his heart and soul and everything he was afraid, like me, to do. The one that trusted me for about two-point-five seconds. Well, I’d trusted him too.
“So,” he began, crossing his own arms. “What does that mean?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, once upon a time, it was all I wanted, it was everything I thought I’d never get, but—”
“But what?” he said, his tone flat. “Now a rickety old house with bad plumbing means more? Or were you coming to tell me you were leaving? That the gig was up?”
I shook my head. Everything was happening too fast. Nick was jumping to conclusions before I even fully grasped what the questions were.
“No,” I said.
“And if that was the case, why the hell would you care who I was kissing?” he said, his voice low. He turned to walk back to the house.
It was going south for the second time and I hadn’t even caught up to the north part.
“No, Nick,” I said, pushing my legs forward to catch up to him now. My hands were on his arms. “I came to tell you that I—” Say it. Say it! The words that felt so ready just minutes ago stuck in my throat, cowering behind hurt and fear and justification. “They’re giving me the two months, so—”
“Good for you,” he said, just above a whisper. His eyes weren’t blinking. They were angry. And hurt.
“No,” I said. Again. It seems that was the only word I could keep saying without reservation. “I can’t imagine any of it. Going, staying, anything—without you now. I—give a shit.” I gave a weak smile. “A lot.”
“We’re past give a shit,” he said.
“Wasn’t that just yesterday?”
“This isn’t a game anymore, Lanie,” he said, pulling free of my hands. “It’s real. I don’t know when or how it got that way, but it is. And if you’re not there with me, then okay. I get that.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t get why you just stormed off crying and spouting all that crap if you’re not, but okay. There are so many things about you I don’t understand, I could—”
I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him with all I had. There was only a second’s pause where he inhaled sharply, and then he groaned into it. My hands shook as I slowed us down, kissing him softer, deeper. With my heart. Five seconds later, hands cradling my face, he pulled back and gave me a leery look.
“Don’t play,” he said, his voice scratchy.
I didn’t realize my eyes were full of tears again until I opened them. Kissing him like that, with every emotion and intimate feeling I had—it was gut-wrenching. It was exposing and revealing and felt like my heart was being laid wide open. I wasn’t familiar with that. It was terrifying. But I felt like I would self-combust if I didn’t have more of it.
“Does this feel like play to you?” I asked, my voice not more than a whisper and wobbly as two tears fell over his hands. I pulled him back to me, needing to feel his lips against mine. “I don’t know what the future brings, Nick,” I said, kissing his lips again and again, tasting the salt from my tears. “But I know I can’t imagine one without you.”
Covering my mouth with his, he dove deep, one hand fisted in my hair and the other traveling my body, pressing me hard against him as he went. I wrapped both arms around his head and let it take me. God, kissing him was like leaving the planet and going to Disneyworld and the best food and the best wine and the best of everything all in one. I wanted to keep it loving, to show him my feelings that my mouth wouldn’t spill, but my body was on fire for him.
All the foreplay from two days ago hadn’t been forgotten. It was like it just lay dormant, waiting to take up where we left off, except there were suddenly all these clothes in the way and my God I needed them gone.
Nick responded the same way, his breathing going erratic as his hands traveled me, pushing up my breasts and meeting my cleavage with his mouth, kissing, tasting, swiping under the fabric with his thumbs to find my nipples and making me arch against him. He reached around to unzip but there wasn’t one, and I could feel the need buzzing off him.
“You kill me in this dress,” he moaned against the inside of my right breast.
I lifted his head, lightheaded with desire. “Sit against the fireplace,” I breathed.
He backed up the step to the bench and sat, his hands running up the outsides of my thighs to grip my ass and pull me against his face.
“Lift your dress for me,” he said, his voice thick with desire and his eyes so deadly hot I could have come right there.
I let go of him to lift my dress up and took it all the way over my head before tossing it on the ground, bra too, as he gazed heatedly at my body and curled two fingers into my panties without hesitation.
“Please,” he groaned, his lips
grazing the tender skin as he lowered them.
Words left me as his mouth followed them down, lingering where I needed him most. He let the panties drop as he gently picked up one of my legs at the knee and held me as he hooked it around his neck.
“Oh God, Nick,” I mouthed without sound as he kissed me there the same way he kissed my mouth. Without boundaries. With abandon. Teasing, tasting, making me tremble in ways I hadn’t in a really long time. His fingers joined the party and I had to let go of his head and grab the rusty metal handle on the side of the fireplace. My legs weren’t going to hold me. Nothing was going to hold me. My bones were going liquid as heat and everything molten built up, taking my words away, my breath away. I bucked against his mouth as the earth shook under me and the world as I knew it exploded in light and waves, and if fireworks were a good thing for me, they’d have been there too.
Nick held me as I came down from on high, and looked up at me unblinkingly as he slowly wiped his lips on my thigh and unwrapped my leg from his neck. Breathing hard, I lowered on very shaky knees to the ground in front of him.
“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, his voice strained.
“You’re damn lucky I didn’t snap your neck,” I said, bringing a chuckle from his throat.
“What a way to die.”
“Your turn,” I said, running my hands up the legs of his jeans to the boulder residing at the top.
Nick shook his head. “I doubt that.”
“And why is that?” I asked, kissing his stomach as I unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped very slowly, letting him out inch by excruciating inch. I looked up to see his jaws flex and his eyes shut tight as he sprang forward. Commando. God help me. “Mmmm,” I sighed, running my tongue up the length.
He started as if given an electric shock, and grabbed my head.
“Fuck, that’s why,” he said, tangling his fingers in my hair as I dropped wet sloppy kisses on it, working my way up, and when I took him in my mouth and made love to it the way he had, Nick moaned. “God, that’s so good.” Then he pulled me off. “Too good,” he breathed. “Keep that up and I’ll never make it inside you.”
A Charmed Little Lie Page 18
