by Lauren Dane
“Really now? So who fucked me in that alley, Todd? Your dop pelganger? Who shoved my mouth down on his cock in his truck three nights ago when we got back from the grocery store? You like it rough. You like it dirty. Why are you so ashamed of it? You didn’t hurt me. I was there with you every step of the way.”
“I don’t want to like it, damn it. Can’t you understand that? I don’t choose to like it. I don’t want to be the man who likes to fuck rough! I choose not to be him.” He shoved a hand through his hair.
Pain sliced through her. “I get it. You think being with me is a bad choice.”
“It’s not . . . I didn’t plan for you, Erin. I like you.”
“But you don’t like who you are when you’re with me. You blame this on me and I’m not having it. I won’t be responsible for your life. You’re a big boy.”
“No. Oh fuck, I don’t know. This is very intense. I have an intense job. I’m not sure if I need an intense personal life too.”
“I see.” She looked into his eyes, wishing he’d wake up and see her. See them and what they could have together.
“You keep saying that, Erin. But how can you see? I don’t even see.”
“All I see is a man who can’t face himself. And it makes me sad, because you’re alive when we’re together and you’re not hiding who you are. You’re playing a game with this, a stupid game. Why I don’t know, because I like who you are. I won’t play this game with you. I’m worth more and so are you.” She leaned up, pressed her hand over his heart and kissed his chin. “Good-bye, Todd. I wish you well, I really do. If you change your mind, give me a call. Maybe I’ll be available.”
He watched her walk out the door and told himself it was for the best, but he knew he was lying to himself. Just like she said he was.
5
Present Day
Todd pulled his truck down his street and smiled when he saw the house. His house. He’d been driving for three days. Escaping Boston, a broken marriage, a waste of a job and eighteen months of physical therapy that had enabled him to walk without a limp. Mostly.
Into his new life, back to Seattle and into his new job with some old friends from the Seattle Police Department.
Coming back to the Northwest seemed a lot less like escape than leaving it nearly ten years before had. He’d spun out of control, run from what could have been a great relationship and into a job he’d started out loving and that had ended up nearly killing him.
That didn’t even address the ex-wife situation. He’d tried; she might have for a few more years, but it just fell apart. She wasn’t who he’d truly wanted, and he wasn’t the person she thought she’d married either. A mess of epic proportions, and the shooting had been the final burden that had simply torn the last bit of the foundations apart.
Sheila was a nice woman and all, but he didn’t ache for her at night, didn’t think about where she might be at any given time. In truth, it was as if the past eight years of his life had been an uninteresting interlude punctuated with a coma, painful PT and mediocre sex. He had no one but himself to blame.
She’d filed for divorce when he came out of the coma, but had hung around to be sure he was all right. He’d give her that much. Not six months after that she’d gotten married to someone else, and last he’d heard she was pregnant with the child she’d wanted but that he’d been too busy to give her.
He’d had a lot of time to examine his life, his mistakes. He’d looked at himself pretty unflinchingly and he’d admitted he lived half a life out of fear of expressing just exactly who he was. So he’d accepted it, and during his physical recovery he’d had the time to make plans for a future doing what he wanted to do. A future being who he was instead of who he thought he should be.
Once he’d gotten the green light to go back to work, he’d handed in his resignation and begun to figure out a business plan with some old friends of his in Seattle.
So here he was, opening the front door to his new house and ready to take on his new life.
The house was typical of the Greenlake neighborhood: big bay windows, hardwood floors, small bedrooms but large common rooms and a good-sized kitchen. The basement had been converted into a mother-in-law flat, so he would use that as his office.
The furniture and boxes had been delivered the week before, and he smiled when he noted that his mother had not only put linens on the beds but had taken the time to leave a note telling him she’d left him dinner in the freezer.
He turned in a big circle. This was his. His life, his future, loomed ahead of him, and for the first time in a very long time, he couldn’t wait to see what was next.
Erin finished stirring the soup for that day’s lunch special and turned around to check the progress of the pasta for the salad. Another two minutes should do it.
She checked the readerboard above the coffee counter and made sure it had been updated with the specials before returning to drain the pasta, cool it and toss it with the dressing and veggies. The work was a ritual; it soothed and connected her to her life when at times she felt like just floating away.
Running the café gave her tangible goals. She started and finished tasks every day. It marked time in a positive way. She needed it.
Brody, her older brother and the owner of the other half of the building—his tattoo shop—ambled in, and she turned to get him something to drink.
“Hit me with some caffeine, sister,” he said as he slid onto a high stool.
She made him the latte he preferred, very hot with extra foam. She even made a foam design in the shape of a leaf for him and popped in a curl of shaved chocolate.
He sighed happily as he drank it. “Awesome. Thanks.”
“Late night?” She grinned at him.
“You know what it’s like when Raven’s in town. We went out late, saw a show. She doesn’t have to be up and at work, so it wasn’t a thing for her to roll in at four.”
“You didn’t have to be at work until eleven! Admit it, you’re too old. I know I am.”
Absently, she made an Americano with room for a customer, followed by a mocha. Her staff consisted of herself and two part-timers, which suited Erin just fine. They handled the early coffee rush during the week, and she took the weekends. The café closed by two p.m. and she had the rest of her day free. Not a bad deal.
She liked her employees enough to consider them friends. Especially Ella. The other woman was young, vibrant and funny. She was working to try to finish a degree at the University of Washington, so she worked at the café to pay for books. Erin admired that, especially in light of some of the personal problems Ella had been going through.
“You’re thirty-four years old, Erin. That’s not exactly an old-timer.”
“But you’re thirty-seven. Tell me you can go on two hours’ sleep like you could at twenty-seven, huh?”
He laughed. “No shit. What’s for lunch today?”
“Pasta salad, three-bean soup, tuna or veggie panini sandwiches. It’s Thursday.”
“Tomorrow is clam chowder day, my favorite.” He grinned as he sipped his latte.
“You’re lucky you got the good genes from Mom, because all that cream would kill you otherwise.”
She heard the chimes over the door sound and finished her greeting to a customer at the counter before looking up.
And into the sleepy brown eyes belonging to Todd Keenan. She froze a moment at the unexpected emotions welling within her, but they wisped away. That Erin had been another person, in what had been an entire lifetime ago.
Still, she took a quick look to the left, where a large mirror hung. Not bad. Thank goodness she’d put on earrings and some makeup before she’d left the house!
She realized, as he moved toward her in what felt like slow motion, that he hadn’t recognized her yet, and a horrifying thought that he wouldn’t remember her assaulted her gut with a cramp.
His eyes slid down her body and back up again. The way his expression went half-lidded and sexy made something
low tug and spark after being dead a long time.
Her nipples beaded against the thin shirt she wore, and he stopped there for several moments of appreciation before meeting her eyes again. He hesitated a moment and then smiled.
It was then that recognition hit his gaze. “Erin?”
She hadn’t known how she planned to greet him, but the beautiful, open smile he gave her and the way he stepped around the counter brought her into his hug and against his body.
Her arms moved to hug him back, every cell in her body reacting to being touched again. Not as a sister, not in grief or mourning, but as a woman.
The unexpected beauty of it, the bittersweet sensation of sexual attraction after being dead inside for years, made her want to grab a pen and start writing. Crying could wait.
For that moment she reveled in it, in feeling something so lovely.
Finally, after a hug long enough to let her know he enjoyed the attraction between them still, Todd kissed the top of her head and let go enough to lean back and look into her face.
“It’s so good to see you. You look damned good. I like the pink hair.”
She laughed and only barely managed to catch herself from playing with it. “Thank you. You look great too. Are you visiting?” Oh yeah, he was married, wasn’t he?
“No. I just moved back to the area. I’m starting a security consulting business, or rather, buying into part of it with some friends of mine.”
She noticed people waiting and stepped back. “Hang on. Let me get these orders filled. Do you have the time to visit a bit?”
“I do, and I’d like a bite too.”
Todd watched her move with the same effortless sensuality she’d had ten years before. Noted how she worked quickly and efficiently, ladling out soup and sliding sandwiches onto plates.
The soup he’d ordered was rich and spicy, and the veggie sandwich served on dark bread satisfied his hunger quite nicely.
What the heck was she doing running a tiny café in Ballard? He knew she and her younger brother had gone down to LA roughly about the time Todd had gotten married. They’d made it big sometime after. Not his kind of music, so he’d only seen her in passing on MTV, on his way to CMT.
She’d disappeared from the limelight—some sort of legal trouble, he thought he recalled. But he’d been so busy with his own life and career, he hadn’t followed the entertainment news at all, outside the country music he liked.
Drugs, perhaps? Although he doubted it. Erin had been a very strong and self-possessed woman. Plus, she and her brothers were very close, so they’d have been a good support system. Still, there was a hesitancy in her she hadn’t had before. He supposed that was only natural. They hadn’t parted as enemies but certainly not on the friendliest of terms either.
She hadn’t been far from his mind over the time they’d been apart though. Not that he’d pined for her, but a wisp of memory would come and fill him with the sense of longing, of loss. And she’d played a part in many of his fantasies over the years too.
About an hour later, after the eight tables and the counter had filled up and then emptied out again, she brought over a bowl of soup and sat with him.
“Sorry it took so long. Lunch rush. You want a refill on the tea? Or some coffee?”
“I want to sit and talk with you.” He put a hand on her arm, gripping to stay her, and their gazes locked. That familiar darkness wafted through him, taunting him.
She swallowed and eased back. Obeying him just like that, and he remembered all the times he’d closed his eyes and thought of her. Of her arching beneath him, taking all he had to give and wanting more. She’d been his, and he’d been too scared to take what she offered. All because he’d been worried about what his desires made him look like.
No longer.
“When do you get off?”
She snorted a laugh and he joined her, adjusting in his seat. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m the boss. I close up at two and then it takes me about an hour to close out the till, clean up the back and prepare for tomorrow.”
“Oh, this is yours now?”
Those hazel eyes of hers took him in carefully. There were shadows there that hadn’t existed before. “Yes. I came back to Seattle three years ago and wanted something to do. Brody had someone else running this place, but it wasn’t doing much. I bought it and I run it how I like. It works to keep me out of trouble.”
“You used to like trouble.” He looked her over again. The hollow of her throat called to his lips. His fingers twitched with a need to touch the soft, warm skin there again. “Are you free when you close up?”
She blinked, and slowly licked her lips, but before she could answer, the bell on the door jingled and she got up to deal with customers.
Erin didn’t know what to think. No one had ever gotten to her as deeply as he had. Not even Jeremy had touched that spot deep within her, let it uncoil. At one point she’d just figured it was that memory thing where you tend to make the past better than it was. But Todd did that to her then, and he affected her still.
Her hands shook a bit as she steamed some milk and absently made small talk with a customer. But when she looked up, she saw him watching her.
Their spark hadn’t been her imagination. His invitation was more than just a hey, let’s hang out and grab a beer. While she was on board with a little reliving of old times in bed with him, it wasn’t going to happen if he was married.
She ladled soup, poured out tea and coffee until everyone had been served, and there he was again, waiting patiently, his eyes moving over her body like a caress.
Erin hadn’t been so sexually on edge or so needy and out-and-out horny in years, it seemed. He hadn’t propositioned her. He hadn’t even touched so much as a breast, but her body thrummed with excitement and anticipation. It seemed wrong to hope he was divorced, but she did anyway.
He sat in the corner, drinking his tea while she worked. She said a few words here and there, but it had been busy, as it sometimes was so near to closing. All he’d said to her was “I’ll wait.”
He’d wait. Lovely. The tension inside her was nearly painful, something she poked at as she worked, like that spot inside your cheek you bit earlier that day. She examined it, stroked over it, thought about it, enjoyed it even.
Finally at three she moved through the place toward the door, and he’d simply stayed like a stray cat she’d made the mistake of feeding. When she locked up and flipped the sign, he finally moved, standing to his full height.
She stood, rooted to the spot as she looked up his body. The width of his shoulders seemed to blot out the light. Erin was tall; at five-eight she didn’t often get the experience of looking up and then up some more at a man.
“Erin, I’d like to know you again. Can we do that?” He brushed the back of his knuckles down her cheek.
Once the sensual shivers subsided enough that she could find her words again, she swallowed hard. “Are you married? Because if you are, we can know each other but we can’t know each other. I don’t do that.”
He smiled, one of the most genuine smiles she’d ever seen from him. “I’m not. Not for the past eighteen months. I’m glad to know you don’t do that, because I sure as hell don’t either. You’re not married or with anyone?”
She lost her train of thought for a moment when he slid those same knuckles down her neck and into the hollow of her throat. God, that felt good.
“No. Not for a long time now.”
“So, we’re both free.” He looked at her. Into her. She felt bare to her bones. His scent rose from his skin, heady and warm. He smelled different than she remembered. This was . . . She leaned in just a bit, giving in to her needs . . . deep and dark. A man who worked with his body; clean sweat, sex, alluring, something she wanted to lick.
He waited as she watched his pulse jump at his throat. So close that if she moved just a bit more, she’d touch his skin with her lips. Suddenly she wanted that so much, it hit her in a wave, bri
nging a slight disorientation in its wake. Instead she reached out, sliding her palm up his arm, over his biceps. “Looks that way.”
His pupils enlarged, the color of his irises deepening. “I have a few errands to run. Why don’t I come to your place. Or you to mine, I don’t care which. Would six work for you?”
She loved his voice, had forgotten how sexy it was. Erin grabbed a pad of paper and wrote down her address. “I’ll let the doorman know you’re coming. Use that code and you can park inside the garage.”
They stood very close in the quiet café. Neither spoke, but they both looked at each other. The tension thickened, tautened until Erin wanted to groan.
Finally it was as if he’d made some sort of internal decision. He slid his palm around her neck, cupping it at the nape. “I’m going to have to kiss you.”
She smiled up at him, raising a brow. “You never used to need to ask.”
His face hardened and his mouth found hers. The taste of him bloomed through her, opening her up, softening her in the right places, hardening her in others. The seam of her jeans pressed with delicious friction against her sensitized clit, even better when he rolled his hips and ground his cock into her.
Oh, they still fit and he still had it going on. Only now he seemed more confident with it. A delightful thrill coursed through her at the thought of a confident Todd, a man who owned his dominance.
On the surface, the kiss was exploratory. He tasted her easily, his tongue sliding back into her mouth like it hadn’t been over a decade since he’d done this last. But beneath that, there was no angst, no guilt or hesitance. The kiss was sure. He knew he wanted to be there and, god knew, she wanted him there too.
When he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and nipped, her knees buckled and she held on to keep standing.
He chuckled then and pulled back slightly. “You still taste like sin, Erin. I can’t wait for more.” One more brief kiss and he headed to the door. “See you in a few hours.”