“Oh, no,” I said, dabbing under my eyes as I laughed. “No men. Or no relationships, I should say.” Something about that declaration made me finally look at him, and my stomach muscles tightened at the intenseness there. Interest? Lust? Annoyance? Thinking about dessert? He was impossible to read. The one thing I for sure didn’t see was pity, and that bolstered me. “Nothing with strings. I don’t need to cuddle.”
His mouth tugged on one side, and his eyes looked amused. I think.
“Amen,” Belle said. “Who needs cuddling? That just means somebody’s hogging the blanket. Get you an orgasm and move on.” As the room collectively laughed, she added. “Hell, there are gadgets for that. Buy something that vibrates and get a dog.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
“Hey, my dog hogs the bed much more than my wife ever did,” Collin said, amidst more snickering.
The conversation went scattered from there, to pets and dog hair and mattresses and someone’s new futon. I met my mysterious friend’s eyes across the circle and felt a tingle down my back as if we were suddenly the only people in the room. He gave a small grin before blinking his expression clear and running a hand over his face. He got up with a deep exhale, starting a trend as three others did the same.
A line started for the dessert, something I’d already partaken of, so it kind of left me with nothing to busy myself with. He was talking to Collin, and then Aspen (of course), and I needed to not look so completely lost, so I patted my pocket for my keys, remembering they were disemboweled across the room. I reached for my phone in my other one, and froze. It was gone. I spun around and looked at the floor around my chair. Nothing.
“Crap,” I muttered, scanning the room.
“What’s wrong?” said a voice behind me that I already recognized and instantly made my palms sweat.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant. “Just—can’t find what I did with my phone.”
“Did you bring that big bag you had last week?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I—that was last week.” He remembered that? “I normally just carry a wristlet but tonight I just put my phone and my keys in my pocket.” I turned in a circle and walked toward the nametag table with my key parts. No cell phone adorned it.
“You left your wallet in your car?” he said, making me turn to face him.
“Yes, Dad,” I said.
He grimaced. “Don’t do that.”
“Then can you help me instead of giving me a lecture?” I said.
He pulled his phone out with a sigh. “What’s your number?”
I gave him a double-take as little goose bumps went down my arms.
“What?”
Handing me his phone with the keypad already up, his eyes met mine for a moment.
“Call it.”
That moment jumped up and down and waved its arms and yelled all kinds of things about this being the point of no return or questionable choices. My mouth opened and closed, and I forced my focus down before I could think too much more about it.
“Okay.” I typed in the numbers and waited. Damn it, I’d turned it on vibrate.
“Someone’s phone is buzzing over here,” Aspen said, pulling my phone out from under a tin lid.
Because my haste in tearing into the food had also brilliantly left my phone buried in the rubble.
“Oh, thank you!” I said, rushing over, taking it from her as it stopped buzzing.
“I hate it when I do that,” she said. “It’s a massive panic, isn’t it?” I nodded and smiled. “It’s become such a crutch. We’re so dependent on things, that we forget we used to get by just fine without them. We forget about people.”
“True,” I said, more interested in the person behind me. “See you next week.”
I barely had time to register that I’d just said that out loud, because when I turned around, I stopped short. He was gone.
“What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?” said Belle, the second person to ask me that in the same ten seconds.
“I was just talking to—” My eyes fell on the nametag table, where my key fob sat on the same napkin, all put back together and happy. “Did you see where he went?”
Knowledge dawned in her eyes, and I wanted to groan from it. “Man Without A Name?” she asked. “He just walked out the door.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Really.
Did he just punk me? Give me a taste of my own medicine?
“Unbelievable,” I mumbled, reaching in for a slice of kiwi when there was daylight in the line. I smiled at Veronica. “Excuse me.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I’d go buy a whole damn tree of these things if I were you.”
Yeah, an hour ago, I would have. Now, it just ticked me off. I popped it into my mouth as I grabbed my key fob and headed for the door, heading out into the night air. The flavor exploded in my mouth again, but without that holy shit factor that was evidently going to be a distant memory because he had just been playing me.
Ugh.
This was why I was off men. It was exhausting.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Good. Rain. Maybe I could make it home before it hit, and listen to it roll through while I sat on my back porch in my pajamas.
My back porch.
Not for long. God, I wanted to string Bart up by his nut sack.
My car didn’t automatically unlock when I got there like it usually did, so I hit the button. Nothing.
Nothing.
My head fell to my chest.
“No,” I said. “This can’t—no.”
I hit the button two, three, fifteen more times. It didn’t work. I’d been screwed over by lemonade. I loved lemonade. It wasn’t right.
I looked at the people starting to file out and leave, suddenly not talking or visiting once they made it outside that door. Like cavorting with other tainted people in public was unacceptable. I could have asked any one of them to help me, but I didn’t. I pretended to be talking on my cell phone. Because—that’s how mature I was.
The wet cold made me wish for more than this thin sweater. I rubbed at my arms as the last of them left, even Aspen, as we smiled at each other and she got in her car. Why had I done that?
Where was my single woman handbook that probably stated in bold and blinking neon lights: Do not leave yourself vulnerable and alone after dark. What was I thinking? I could call Micah. It was only thirty minutes away. She’d bring Leo, and he rode a motorcycle, so—so what, he’d know how to make a lemonade-infused electronic thingy work? Still, I could call them, or my sister, or my parents, and someone would drive out here and get me. But they’d kind of already witnessed me have an epically bad day. I really didn’t want to perpetuate it, but I would have to—
“Fucking hell,” I whimpered as I stared at the bare little key fob again and realization punched me in the neck.
Fob, as in singular, as in minus my house and shop keys. I stared at it harder, trying to mentally force them to appear. They hadn’t been on the table. He’d had them in his hand and then he got a call, and—
“Damn it,” I hissed, actual tears burning the backs of my eyes.
I was going to have to call him. The one I clearly kept misreading. Hi there, I know you’re trying to get the hell away from me, but can you come back with my keys?
God. I didn’t know how much more of this day and night I could stomach. The thunder rumbled closer and a mist swirled gently, making me shiver. What was I thinking? My dad would rip me a new one if he knew I’d put myself in such a stupid situation. Once upon a time, I had a husband who would have as well. Hell, if I still had a husband, I wouldn’t be in Denning at a stupid-ass divorce group meeting calling myself Poppy.
My phone buzzed in my other hand, as if it needed to be the smart one, and call me. It was a number I d
idn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
How we’d already progressed to hey without an intro, and knowing who that was, I did not know, but the warmth in the word sent goose bumps all the way down my back, dancing down my thighs, and circling all the way to my toes. Suddenly the nasty chill was nowhere to be found. Jesus, I was easy.
The keys, Gabi.
“Hey,” I said back. “I was just about to call you.”
There was a pause, and my heart jumped ahead fifteen beats like I was a preteen girl talking to a crush. In the rain. Locked out of her car. Where her wallet lived.
“Your keys,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I just found them in my pocket,” he said. “I’m really sorry. Are they important? Do you have another set and I can throw these in the mail to you?”
So I don’t have to come back.
“Probably,” I said. “My ex stuck the extras somewhere, I’d just have to call him.”
“You didn’t change the locks?” he asked.
I closed my eyes, feeling my sanity begin to pull thin. “I kind of have a bigger issue, actually,” I said. “I’m still in the parking lot.”
“What?”
“My key remote isn’t working,” I said, bouncing on my toes to generate some energy. “I can’t even get in my car, much less start it.”
“Jesus,” he said. I heard shuffling like he’d dropped the phone. “Hang on, I’m headed back. I can’t believe no one helped you.”
I could lie.
Ironically, the ground shook under my feet at the next round of thunder, bringing with it much more than a misty swirl. I left my car and jogged to the cover of the sidewalk eaves.
“I didn’t ask,” I said, shaking my head at the long pause. “I know. I was about to call a friend of mine to come get me.”
“Where’s the regular key that comes with it?” he asked, in lieu of the lecture I knew was really on his lips.
I shut my eyes. Fate was having an enormously good time with me today.
“Not—with it. It’s in my wallet.”
I heard the exhale. “That’s inside your car.”
“Yep.”
I didn’t even know this guy, and I could picture the nodding, the frustrated rake of fingers through his hair, the desire to shake me until my teeth rattled.
“Okay,” he said. “Get away from the car, you might as well be sending up a bat signal, standing out there like that. Go up on the sidewalk, out of the rain, and sit against the building so no one can sneak up on you.”
“Way ahead of you on that,” I said, sliding my back down Aspen’s office door. “I have survived this long in the world, you know.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “A strange man makes off with the keys to your life, and now you’re about to meet up with him in an empty parking lot at night with no one else around.”
I snorted. “Well, if that strange man hadn’t bolted out the door like his ass was on fire, this might have been an easier scenario.”
“Bolted out the door?”
“Pretty much.”
“Pot, meet kettle?” he said.
Weary laughter bubbled up from my chest. “So, it was payback for me leaving you last week?”
Did I just say leaving you? Heat rushed to my scalp in spite of the cold and my wet clothes and hair making my teeth chatter. It felt like some of the vapor from my breath could be coming off my face as well.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is that what you did?”
The rain got heavier, and part of me wished I could just hide behind it. I put a hand over my eyes in lieu of that. I should have just stayed home and licked my wounds, burned Bart’s pictures, watched a sappy chick flick in my empty house with no dog and no gadget—well, I had a gadget but it died.
I could have just bought some batteries. And ice cream. Saved myself a mountain of drama and possibly death by dismemberment in a professional strip mall parking lot. I mean, what if he was a psychopath? I still hadn’t heard his story. Maybe he planned it that way. Maybe he figured stalking a divorce group would be a fantastic way to lure weak and insecure women into his web, and then I’d end up in a hole in his basement being hosed down and told to put the lotion on.
“You know, you never got to share,” I said.
“Subtle.”
“So, were you the dumper? The dumpee?” I continued, trying to will the shakes out of my voice. The cold felt like it was one with my bones. “She run off to join the carnival?”
“Really?”
“Hey, I live in—” I clamped my lips closed. Hose and lotion and all that. “Where I live, that’s not so crazy.”
I heard a sigh, and I was pretty sure he was just placating me with some Boy Scout type thought of keeping-the-victim-on-the-phone, but I had to admit it helped.
“I was the dumpee,” he said. “No carnival, she was just—tired of me, I guess.”
Tired of him? Tired of looking at—really? Not that looks said everything. You never knew what went on behind closed doors, or what people’s lives were really like without the pretty fronts we all displayed. Just because he was ninety-nine shades of gorgeous didn’t mean he was easy to live with. I got the impression he was a tad overprotective, for example, judging by the fact that he was driving back in the pouring rain to take care of a perfect stranger and had already schooled me in a couple of points.
“We married young,” he said. “And she got restless. I was comfortable, and she resented that.”
“Comfortable can be dangerous,” I said. “It can slap you upside the head when you aren’t looking.”
“It can also be nice,” he said, his voice moving away as though he put me on speaker. “Who wants to constantly be on edge and on their game all the time?” Headlights turned into the parking lot, and goose bumps warmed my back as I stood. “If you can’t be yourself, be able to relax and just enjoy each other, hold hands, fall asleep in each other’s arms, fart without panicking, what’s the point?”
“See, that’s the beauty of my plan,” I said. “You never get to the farting stage.”
“You actually have a plan?” he asked, pulling up next to my car.
“I do,” I said, hugging my body tighter to stem the full-out shivering. “I can be structured. Or I can be when it’s not this particular day from hell.”
The lights and engine shut off, along with the call, and a black umbrella popped up above his open door. I blew out a breath.
“Here we go,” I whispered, as he walked up to me with a towel and a big jacket.
“Dry off,” he said, without fanfare. “You look blue.”
“Wow,” I said, teeth chattering wildly as I towel-dried my hair first and then did the best I could with the rest of me. “Such flattery. I can’t imagine—”
The heavy jacket came around me, shutting off all words and thoughts as the heat from his truck enveloped my skin.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, eyes fluttering closed. “That’s heaven.”
The assessment didn’t change when I opened my eyes to find him looking down at me from only inches away, his hands still holding the jacket lapels. Heat that had nothing to do with that jacket washed over my skin. My stomach tumbled and bounced until he blinked away.
“Put your arms in,” he said, backing up a fraction. “Shaking like that means your core temp has dropped too low. You need to warm up.”
Yeah, nothing says sexy like hypothermia.
The jacket was thick and lined and felt decadent as I pushed my arms through it and wrapped my fingers up in the excess. I inhaled the scent of him on the fabric and let myself enjoy that for half a second. It was just delusion from the cold, after all. It didn’t mean anything. Or then again, it did. I don’t know what I kept trying to fight. I’d been saying for months that I
was off men but not off sex, talking up some big game about keeping everything carnal and simple. No strings.
Here was walking, talking, sexy carnal deliciousness served up right in front of me. No names, no strings. I was Gabi-friggin’-Graham again. My only response should be yes, please.
Why did nothing feel simple with this guy?
He handed me my other keys, dangling from a smaller ring, and motioned for the other one. I gave it to him and he walked back to the car, hitting the button several times to no avail. He peered inside and felt around the window before coming back.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I got it dried out enough. Maybe the sugar. Or the acid in the lemons did something.”
“Awesome,” I said.
“Know any criminals?” he asked, to which I quirked an eyebrow.
“Just took them all off the payroll yesterday,” I said.
He slid me a look. “Your locks can’t be jimmied, they’re inaccessible, so you need either someone who knows how to pick an electronic lock—”
“Nope.”
“Or go to your car dealer tomorrow and get a new remote,” he said.
I shook my head and looked down at the boardwalk under my feet. My options were growing increasingly dim.
“I’ll call someone to come get me,” I said finally. “Thank you for trying. I’m sorry you had to—”
“I’m not leaving you here again,” he said.
“Okay, then stand here till someone comes,” I said, pulling out my phone. “But it’ll be about thirty minutes, probably forty-five. You could be home.”
“Or I can just bring you home and save everyone a lot of time.”
I met his eyes. Even in the dark, they looked sincere. Nothing sinister in there. But how many serial killers actually advertised?
He made the sign of the cross on his chest and held up two fingers. “I promise to erase all memory of where you live. Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Boy Scout?”
“Eagle.”
Of course he was. “Hmm.”
I rocked from my toes to my heels, then lifted my phone and took a picture, the flash making him draw back and make a noise.
A Charm Like You Page 6
