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Tonight the lighting seemed the perfect accompaniment to the woman sharing his table. It also played into a little fantasy that had been growing in size and scope since the blonde in black had opened her door and rocked his world.
He’d been anticipating staid, stodgy and subdued. The last thing he’d expected was sexy with a capital SEX. And again he felt that niggling sense of unease that he wanted to discount as nothing more than pleasant surprise. Oh, yeah. Had she ever surprised him.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Is that what this is about? Me having a good time?”
It didn’t take much to put her on the defensive. His fault. He’d done little more than give her grief for five years. He wasn’t even sure why he’d changed the game plan now. “Well, I would hope so. What did you want it to be about?”
“Jess Golden’s things.”
“Ah. But I don’t want to talk about that yet.”
A frown brimming with rebuke crinkled up her forehead.
“Later,” he promised. “I want to talk about you first.”
Clearly she hadn’t been prepared for that.
“Jacob—” she began to say, a clear preamble to another roadblock.
“Jake,” he interrupted. “My friends call me Jake. And for once don’t argue, okay? Let’s enjoy the evening.”
He sat back in his chair, toyed with the stem of his water glass and watched her face. It didn’t hide her emotions nearly as well as it hid her secrets. She was uncomfortable. It was one thing for him to put her on edge with a little good-natured teasing. It was another for her to feel discomfort because she thought she was out of her element, which is what he suspected was going on right now. And he wanted to remedy that situation ASAP. “How about we start with something easy? Do you like your work?”
“I do. Yes,” she said without hesitation—and with a noticeable lack of elaboration.
Okay. So he was going to have to pry every snippet of information out of her. “Why a respiratory therapist? And yes,” he insisted at her doubtful look, “I really am interested.”
“My freshman year of college,” she said at long last, “I was awarded some work-study money. My assignment was at the university hospitals and clinics. Cleaning rooms, if you really want to know. I rotated between several floors and got interested in respiratory therapy when I was working in that unit.”
“Work-study? So you worked your way through school?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“What other types of jobs did you have?”
Their bread came about that time, so she busied her hands with it and seemed to let down her guard a little in the process. “Too many to count. Let’s see…I tended bar, worked the night shift at the front desk of a couple of motels, cashiered at a convenience store. Whatever it took to make tuition and board.”
His admiration for her kicked up a couple more notches. “Sounds tough.”
She shook her head, not an ounce of regret registering on her face. “Sometimes, yes, but for the most part I enjoyed it all. Appreciated every job I had. Without them, I wouldn’t have gotten my degree.”
“Your family wasn’t in a position to help?” He broke off a chunk of bread and picked up his butter knife.
What little reserve she’d let down jumped back up with a vengeance. Instead of answering, she asked her own question. “And what did you study in college? I don’t recall ever seeing any courses in oil-well firefighting on any course catalogs.”
All righty, then. Talking about her family was off-limits. Since she’d struggled to make her own way through college, he had to figure one of two reasons was the cause. Either her family was very poor and she felt self-conscious about it or she was estranged from them, and that just made him more curious about what had precipitated the break.
Regardless, it explained—at least in part—why she was such a serious Sara all the time. She knew hardship. She knew if not poverty, at least slim pickings. He supposed if he’d had to work as hard as she had to get his education, he’d have a tendency to take life a little more seriously too.
He would have liked to press a little harder about her family, but he took his cues from her and let it drop. “Actually I majored in business management with a minor in accounting.”
“Oh, well,” she said, buttering a piece of bread, “I can see how that would make a natural transition into fighting oil-well fires.”
His smile at her little joke was slow. “So she does have a sense of humor.”
“When motivated, I can be funny,” she said, sounding a little defensive.
“Well, then, I’ll have to see what I can do to motivate you more often.”
Yeah, he thought when she gave him a wary look. That means exactly what you think it means. We are going to do this again. This is not a one-time deal, so get used to it, sweetie. I plan to see more of you.
He wasn’t sure when that intention had become apparent to him or why he was so certain he wanted to see more of her. For that matter, he didn’t understand the edgy sense of calamity that accompanied his thoughts. He shook it off and rationalized the situation instead. Why did some men find it impossible to resist the lure of Mount Everest? Why did some risk their lives jumping out of planes? Why did he make a living with men who marched into the jaws of oil fires risking everything, including their lives, in the process?
Sometimes the why wasn’t nearly as important as the want itself. And right now he wanted to get to know this woman better.
“This bread is delicious.”
Nice table talk, but the segue wasn’t going to work. “So is the view.”
She actually looked behind her to see if she’d missed seeing something. When she turned around and correctly read the look on his face, she didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but he could tell she wanted to.
“That was a compliment, Christine.”
She set her knife on the edge of her plate, propped her forearms on the table and took his measure. “You don’t have to flatter me, Jacob.”
He wagged his knife at her. “Jake. And I’m just calling it like I see it.”
Oh, that long-suffering look. Oh, that heavy sigh. She was just too much. Was she really that naive?
“You don’t really think that tonight is just about Jess Golden’s things, do you?”
Now she looked wary again. Maybe not naive. Maybe it was more a question of distrustful. Again. His fault.
“I want to get to know you, Chrissie.”
“For what possible reason?”
From any other woman he’d consider the question coy. From her it was exactly what it appeared to be: utter puzzlement.
“I’ve been giving that some thought.” He shrugged. “Maybe because you intrigue me. Maybe because I find you a contradiction. Or maybe because the way you look tonight only increases my curiosity about something that’s got me wondering.”
She’d grown very still. Even her eyes didn’t so much as flicker, although they were wide with the unasked question, What have you been wondering about?
“I’ve been wondering,” he said, responding to both the wariness and the anticipation revealed by the accelerated pulse thrumming at the base of her throat, “why you normally go to such lengths to hide the fact that you are a very beautiful woman. And why it embarrasses you to be told that you’re beautiful.”
“I’m not embarrassed.”
Yet she was flushing pink—something he chose not to point out. “What, then?”
“Uncomfortable,” she finally said. “I could do without the scrutiny.”
He laughed. “Then you shouldn’t have worn the dress.”
“My thoughts exactly,” she grumbled under her breath.
“Okay, look,” he said after a moment of her looking as though she wished she was anywhere else but here with anyone else but him, “just lighten up a little. You’re taking yourself way too seriously.”
“Right. Something you’re an expert on.”
“Hell, no.” He grinned, appreciating her sarcasm. “That’s the point. Life’s too short to take so dismally serious. You, sweet woman, need a few lessons in loosening up.”
“And I suppose you’re just the man to teach me.”
“There you go. I am definitely the man. And starting tonight, I’m leading the class in the education of Christine Travers, good girl with a yen to go bad.”
She smiled. A full-out, bona fide, no-holds-barred smile. Okay. So it was laced with the same sarcasm that sometimes put a bite in her words, but it was a smile. The first one. It felt like a major victory.
“You are so full of it, Thorne,” she said, sitting back in her chair when the waiter brought her salad.
“I am, for a fact. Full to bursting with possibilities on how we can loosen you up.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Because?”
“Because,” she said on an exasperated breath, “this is a ridiculous conversation.”
He couldn’t resist baiting her even more. “Scared?”
Her head snapped up. “Scared? Of what?”
“Of letting go, sweet cheeks. Of living life.”
“Just because I’m cautious, just because I’m discriminating, doesn’t mean I’m scared. Believe me, I know what scared is…it’s something I no longer choose to be. No matter what you think.”
Whoa.
I know what scared is…it’s something I no longer choose to be.
Her statement shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it had—to her as well as to him. The expression on her face said she hadn’t meant to reveal something so intimate about herself. He hadn’t expected the revelation. He’d guessed that there had been some not-so-great events in her life that might have shaped her, contributed to her defensive reserve, but he hadn’t wanted to think it was something ugly.
I know what scared is…
Not knowing what she’d endured, only that she had endured it, increased his desire to show her how to have a good time.
“What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done?” he asked as he dug into his salad. On the other side of the table, she shoved the greens around on her plate. “And don’t say it’s that you wore your Monday panties on Tuesday ’cause that ain’t going to cut it.”
He could see that she was a deep breath away from telling him to take his question and put it where the sun don’t shine. But reserved, controlled soul that she was, she swallowed back the urge.
“I cut class once,” she said.
He grunted in disbelief. “That’s it? That’s the best you can come up with?”
She shot him a defiant look.
“Oh, Chrissie. Sweetheart. That’s pathetic.”
“So sue me. I’m a model citizen.”
He leaned forward, his fork poised over his salad. “Don’t you ever get the urge to be bad? Just do something a little shocking? A little wild?”
Her silence as she finally met his eyes said it all. No. No, she didn’t.
“I often work double shifts. I volunteer hours at the Historical Society. I don’t have a lot of time left to pursue a sideline of mischief and mayhem. Much like you don’t have time out of your fun and games to get involved with something of a little more substance.”
“Sticks and stones,” he singsonged and pried another reluctant and very small grin out of her.
“You know, there is such a thing as being too frivolous,” she pointed out.
“And I would be a prime example?”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
“So, what if I stepped up to the plate and did something…oh, let’s say, civic? You’d consider that a move in the right direction?”
“What direction you move makes no difference to me.”
She’d tried to make her words sound snippy but didn’t quite accomplish it. She also tried to make him believe it. He didn’t.
“I think it does. I think that if I did something—how did you say it? something of substance?—that you might begin to see shades of gray instead of black-and-white and that might prompt you to loosen up a bit.”
“It is still beyond me why you care about what I do or think.”
“It’s a little beyond me, too—or it was until you wore that dress. The fact is, I think we could help each other. I can loosen you up and you can straighten me out.”
She patted her mouth with her napkin. “Do you ever quit?”
“No, really, listen. I’m beginning to like this idea.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “How about we make a little deal? I do something you categorize as adult and you do something I categorize as juvenile.”
“I’m already doing something juvenile. I’m a party to this conversation.”
“You get to pick my project,” he pressed on, “and I get to pick yours.”
She was about to launch into another protest on the ludicrous content of their conversation—which Jake admitted he’d started and pursued on a lark but now was warming up to—when Gretchen Halifax appeared at their table.
Only his mother’s insistence on good manners prompted him to stand and acknowledge her presence.
