Authors: Robin Kaye
Fisher did his best to squelch his urge to smile. “Coffee’s a requirement, dancing is optional.” He took a deep breath and caught her scent. It was somehow familiar, but unknown, arousing without being overbearing, light and a little dark at the same time. Captivating.
“Obviously not for me.” Jessie had spent the last half hour watching this guy and wondering what the odds were of running into the man again after he’d followed her on her morning run. It had damned near killed her to outpace him.
His untamed white-blond hair curled over his collar and looked as if it had been gelled and slicked back in a vain attempt to rein in the wild curls—at least temporarily. His bright green eyes were clear and crisp as the high mountain lake she and Andrew used to hike to. He was at least six three, and ripped in all the right places. He looked like a surfer doing a really bad job of impersonating a professor.
In the half hour she’d been at Starbucks, she’d watched him schmooze every female barista and customer, and most of the males too. Oh yeah, she knew his type. He was the guy who spends half his time working on his tan and the other bleaching his teeth, all the while living in his mother’s basement.
Jessie gave him the Bronx stare, the one that deflated a professional athlete’s ego faster than you could say Goodyear Blimp, only to be met by a grin—a dimple bracketing one side of his mouth and a Tic Tac commercial smile. Crap, the guy must be thick too.
“If you’re uncomfortable dancing here we can go to Humpin’ Hannah’s or Shorty’s.”
Jessie struggled to keep from rolling her eyes. “Not interested, but thanks anyway.” She was surprised to see his smile widen.
“Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Not if I see you first.”
He shot her a wink before he turned toward the door. His smile hadn’t dimmed one little bit. Yeah, he was definitely not a member of Mensa. Maybe he had processing problems. He’d figure out that he’d been turned down sometime in the middle of next week.
Jessie took her place in line and waited. Once the couple in front of her placed their half-hour-long, amazingly complicated order, and paid—having to not only dig for their gold card, but also refill it—she told herself to calm the hell down. After all, she wasn’t in New York, she wasn’t on deadline, and it wasn’t as if she even had a job to go to.
For the first time in her life she had more free time than she knew what to do with. No wonder her mother had always warned her to be careful what she wished for. Jessie had always wanted to have the time to write a novel—she just didn’t want to lose her job and sublet her beloved apartment to get it.
She let out a sigh, pasted on what she hoped was a friendly smile, and stepped toward the counter.
Starbucks’s answer to Lady Gaga with a go-go dancer twist leaned toward Jessie, wide eyed. “Fisher asked you out, and you blew him off? What’s wrong with you? Are you married?”
“No.”
“Gay?”
“No.” Jessie had worked with people for six years who hadn’t asked her such personal questions. The woman had only served her a cup of coffee, and she wanted her life story?
Andrew had warned her that people were a whole lot friendlier in Boise. He didn’t say friendly was synonymous with nosy.
“Why the third degree? So, a guy asked me out, and I said no. What’s the big deal?”
“Hmm. Maybe you have a vision problem. Did you look at the man?”
Jessie did roll her eyes then. “Just because he looks great doesn’t mean there’s anything there, if you know what I mean.”
The barista appraised Jessie’s outfit, a Mets T-shirt, holey, ragged-out jeans, and black Converse high-tops. “I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”
Jessie wasn’t sure if Lady Gaga referred to her taste in men or clothes. She decided it didn’t matter. “May I have an employment application, please?”
“Applications are all online. Just go to Starbucks dot com, slash careers, and you can fill it out there. Lucky you, we’re hiring. I’m sure Steph, our manager, will give you a call.”
“Great, thank you.” Jessie ordered a lemonade iced tea, and after a barista with a pixie face and curly brown hair slid it across the counter with a smile, Jessie went back to the document on her computer that contained nothing but a blinking cursor. At least she had a plan for her forced sabbatical. Write a book and work part-time at Starbucks for the health insurance. It wasn’t much, but it was her plan.
***
Fisher rubbed his stiff neck as he got out of his ancient Toyota Land Cruiser in front of the local Albertsons grocery store. He lifted the door a little to make sure it closed properly. His brothers always teased him about driving a beater, but he didn’t mind. He loved his old truck. He’d bought it used and put another quarter of a million miles on the darn thing, and except for having to replace the engine a hundred thousand miles ago, just as the odometer passed four hundred K, he hadn’t had one problem with it. The same couldn’t be said for his BMW Roadster, or his BMW sport-touring motorcycle, even though he loved both with the unbridled passion of a sixteen-year-old.
Fisher grabbed a cart from the parking lot and made his way into the grocery store—the same store he’d shopped in since he was in diapers.
There was something to be said about shopping at the original Albertsons. He remembered when Old Joe Albertson, who had been one of Grampa Joe’s best friends, used to give him and his brothers penny candy right out of the bins.
Fisher knew his way around the store with his eyes closed and even knew every cashier who worked there. At least there were some places where nothing much changed. He wished he could say the same about his life. He’d been in a bit of a funk lately.
For a moment that morning when he’d asked Jessica out, he’d wondered if the root cause was lack of sex. It had been awhile since he had a date. Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure why. She was the first woman he’d asked out in months, which was strange. Still, even though he crashed and burned in front of an audience of alert coffee drinkers no less, he couldn’t say he was in any more of a funk than he had been before.
Fisher made his way to the produce aisle and grabbed the makings for a nice, healthy salad. Good food, strong body, strong mind, and all that. After tossing most of the produce aisle into his cart, he ran through the rest of the store looking for inspiration. Nothing looked good, but after the kind of day he’d had, it wasn’t surprising.
He’d done back-to-back knee replacements on patients so obese, their joints deteriorated under their weight. After seeing what those poor people went through, he bypassed the frozen food aisle, looking at the shoppers who lived on chemically engineered, processed foodstuffs, and then did a double take when he recognized Jessica.
Okay, it wasn’t her he recognized, but the shapely ass he’d followed that morning. The memory of it was branded on his psyche. Yeah, and he hadn’t exaggerated its perfection either. Jessica had her ass sticking out and her head buried in the frozen food case, while she tossed Lean Cuisine meals into her cart at an alarming rate.
Fisher’s cart glided down the aisle as if it were self-propelled, while he checked out the rest of her cart. Two cases of diet cola sat on the bottom rack—hadn’t anyone ever told her the hazards of drinking that? The day he’d seen cola take the finish off an antique wood table was the last day he drank it. In the empty child seat beside her purse sat a loaf of processed white sandwich bread. He did his best not to gag. He almost failed when he saw the cereal beside it. She
wasn’t
buying cereal with colored marshmallows in it and a prize in the bottom of the box, was she? Maybe she had small children, but who would feed small children that? God, her cart looked like something that should be featured on a television show titled
What
Not
to
Eat
. How could a woman in great shape survive on what she’d dumped in her cart? He didn’t see one fresh fruit or vegetable and nothing whatsoever from the dairy aisle. Of course, depending on the direction she was shopping, maybe she hadn’t hit it yet. One could only hope. “Hi.”
Jessica jumped at his greeting. “What? Oh, it’s you.”
Fisher leaned on his cart and checked her out—still amazed that her beautiful body could run on such low-quality fuel. “We meet again.”
Jessica dumped a stack of chicken meals in her cart and looked him up and down. “Yeah, looks that way. I didn’t see you first.”
She couldn’t fool him. Her words might say she was unhappy to see him, but her body language said different. Hell, from the fit of her T-shirt, she looked downright thrilled to see him, though that could just be from spending five minutes with her head and chest stuffed in a freezer case. Still, he wasn’t about to complain. “Do you actually eat all that?”
She looked from her cart and back to him. “Yes. That’s why I’m buying it.”
Fisher shook his head, tossed aside a few of the frozen meals, and picked up a jar of marshmallow spread that rested next to the peanut butter. “What are you, like six years old? This stuff will kill you.”
Jessica took the jar of Fluff out of his hands and returned it to her cart. “It’s comfort food, and right now, I’m not about to question it.”
“I was just heading over to the butcher block, hoping for inspiration, when I saw you and thought I’d be neighborly and say hello.”
“We’re neighbors?”
“We must be if you shop here. I live in the North End, and I assume you do too.” He moved his cart closer, blocking her in. “I was thinking a nice piece of sea bass, maybe some tuna, rainbow trout, or salmon. How’s that sound to you?”
She shrugged.
Fisher chose to ignore her lack of an answer. “Yeah, barbecued fish, a side of yellow rice with roasted vegetables, and a big Caesar salad sounds good. There’s plenty for two if you want to come over and keep me company.”
Jessica leaned against her cart and stared dumbfounded—that was the only way he could describe the look on her face. “Do you do this often? Pick up total strangers at the grocery store and invite them to dinner?”
“You’re not a stranger. I’ve seen more of you today than I do most people in a week. I know that your name is Jessica, you have a thing for venti Americanos with sugar-free vanilla syrup, and you’re new around here.” He leaned a little closer to her. “FYI, for the most part Boiseans are friendly people. This”—he motioned from him to her and back again—“is nothing unusual.”
“Seriously?” She stepped back as if he had bad breath. “You do this often? How many women have you picked up while grocery shopping?”
“I’m not picking you up. I’m inviting you to dinner. As for how many women I’ve invited to dinner while at this store, I’m not sure. I’ve never thought about it. But really, Jessica, from what I see in your cart, you could use a good, healthy meal. I’m offering one, and I’m a great cook.”
“And modest too.” She took what looked like a mental inventory of each cart before giving him a seemingly self-conscious shrug. “Thanks for the invite, but I have a lot of work to do tonight.”
“Shot down twice in one day. I don’t know if my bruised ego will ever recover.”
She looked as if she was searching for a way to escape. “I can’t imagine it being a problem. I’ll see you around.”
Fisher nodded and rolled his cart out of her way. “Only if you don’t see me first. Right?”
“Right.” The side of her lips quirked as if she wanted to smile and wouldn’t allow it.
Oh yeah, right then and there, Fisher decided he was going to see that smile. If he had to chase her for twenty-five miles uphill in a head wind—hopefully with good visibility—he’d see her smile.
There are times in life when you just have to man up and tally your losses—Fisher just never thought he’d lose this big. “Knitting classes?”
He’d known he was too old to bet on getting laid. Okay, not too old, since Fisher had, after a few shots and some brotherly arm-twisting, reluctantly agreed to the bet. Unfortunately, he’d picked a fine time to grow a conscience, or whatever it was that had kept him from taking home the first gorgeous, willing woman he’d encountered… or the second, or the third. Hell, he’d lost count. He hadn’t known what, but something was missing—something important. He just hadn’t been sure if it was something missing in him, or them. Shit, maybe he was going through a midlife crisis, although thirty-two was way too young to be having one.
Fisher sat at the bar at Humpin’ Hannah’s and ignored his twin brother’s smile—one exactly like his own. He concentrated instead on the wagon wheel mounted from the ceiling and the florescent orange bra, a recent addition to the collection of shoes and undergarments decorating the wheel like Christmas tree ornaments.
Hunter was a brown-haired version of Fisher, with a little more brawn and a lot less brain—okay, maybe not a lot less, but right now, Fisher wasn’t feeling charitable. Unfortunately, Hunter didn’t let the lack of eye contact stop him. “The payback is ingenious, isn’t it? I wish I could take the credit, but it was Trapper’s idea, and you did lose the bet.”
Any reaction Fisher had to his fate would only add to his brothers’ enjoyment, so he kept his face expressionless. Trapper and Hunter were having a good enough time at his expense without him adding to their fun. No, he’d take it like a man and make the best of it, even if it killed him. And really, after being blown off by the same woman twice in one day, how much lower could he sink?
Trapper, their older brother, had a rebel without a cause attitude and long, curly, dirty blond hair, the same build as Fisher, and got paid to work in his robe. Sure, the getup came with a bench, a gavel, and the last Fisher knew, a pretty hot bailiff named Traci who called Trapper “Sir” and “Your Honor.” No matter how often Trapper pulled the judge card, Hunter and Fisher never fell for it. Well, not unless court was in session, and then, only because they were certain Trapper wouldn’t hesitate to have their asses thrown in jail on contempt of court charges.
Trapper set down his beer and slid a paper across the bar. “Here’s a gift certificate for the beginner’s knitting class at Knittin’ Chicks—”
Obviously his brothers discovered an all new low. He cursed his fate, while Trapper droned on, as judges are wont to do.
“Class begins at six o’clock Thursday evening. That’s tomorrow.” If Trapper was trying to keep a straight face, he was failing spectacularly.
“I know what day of the week it is.”
Trapper took a break long enough to finish his beer and slid the empty mug to their sister and bartender, Karma, for a refill. “Dalia will fix you up with supplies. Now the deal is you have to make one project in class—”
“And one project outside of class.” Hunter held up his beer to clear the bar.
Fisher followed suit when he caught Karma holding a full mug and eyeing the bar like a pro bowler with a seven-ten split.
The Kincaid genes ran strong. Karma was a female version of Fisher with Trapper’s hair. She wore hers only a few inches longer then Trapper’s shoulder-length locks and was tall and lean like the rest of them—Karma was a beauty. Behind the sweet, girl-next-door-with-a-killer-body look came a sharp mind and a wicked temper. She loved her family, but turned being a pesky little sister into an art form.
Hunter’s gaze followed Trapper’s frosted mug as it zipped by unobstructed, before setting down his beer. “I know you’re not above talking some pretty young thing into knitting for you, even though you struck out at taking one to bed. We need proof that you can knit something on your own.”
Fisher raised an eyebrow and held back a groan. Of course Hunter would have all the bases covered, he was always the sneakiest of the three. Still, he couldn’t hold a candle to Karma. “Fine. I can’t believe my own brothers would torture me like this.”
Trapper laughed. “Oh, come on. It’s only three classes, and you’ll be surrounded by women. The way I see it, we’re doing you a favor and helping you get over that little problem of yours.”
“I don’t have a little problem.”
Hunter punched his shoulder, hard. “You’re right, little brother, you haven’t gotten laid in over two months. You have a big, big problem.”
“First of all, I’m bigger than you, and being born five minutes after you hardly makes me your little brother, so cut the shit, Hunter. Secondly, how long did you go without before you met Toni?”
Hunter shrugged. “Hell, I spent months in the mountains alone.”
“Bullshit, you had Bianca Ferrari all over you. I should know. She mistook me for you, remember?”
Hunter scrubbed his face and looked around—probably for his wife. That was still a touchy subject for Toni. “Bianca wasn’t my type.”
Trapper scowled. Hmm. Maybe it was a touchy subject for Trapper too. Interesting.
Fisher hid his smile behind his mug. “Yeah, well, none of the women at last week’s Ladies’ Night were my type either.”
Trapper set down his beer and pushed his cowboy hat off his forehead. “Then I guess you shouldn’t have made the bet. The first rule of gambling is don’t play if you can’t pay.”
“You know, Trap, I haven’t seen you out with any women lately. Not since I heard a rumor about you and a hot blonde getting busy in Toni’s room at the hotel right after the wedding. Of course, you were gone for several days after the wedding too. But ever since then, you and I have been holding up the same bar. Sounds to me like you need the class worse than I do. After all, you’re older.”
“Wild Thing” played in the background, and Fisher caught Hunter looking for his wife, Toni. He caught her eye like he had her heart. She left her conversation with Karma, slid under her husband’s arm, and leaned into his side. “Fisher? You’re taking a class?”
“Looks like I am.”
“I just love continuing education. Hunter, why don’t you sign up too? It will give the three you some real male bonding time before we’re stuck on the mountain all winter.”
When Hunter paled, Toni slid her hand up his chest and rubbed her nose against his throat. Hunter’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Step out of your comfort zone.” Toni whispered in that deep sexy voice of hers. “Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, you wild thing, you?”
Hunter just about choked on his beer. God, Fisher loved his sister-in-law. Toni was perfect for Hunter from the top of her Goth head to the bottom of her combat boots. He looked down to find she wasn’t wearing boots. Her shoes looked girly, and well, except for the platform sole, almost normal. Come to think of it, in the weeks since she and Hunter had come home from their wedding, she’d really toned down the shock factor of her clothes. She was still Goth, but definitely not over-the-top anymore. Fisher kind of missed seeing his rather straitlaced brother’s reaction to his wife’s originality.
“Okay.” Hunter stood and grabbed his wife, holding her in front of him—probably a necessity. The man had it so bad, Fisher almost felt sorry for him. Almost. “Now that we’ve got you all set, little brother, Toni and I are going home.” Hunter didn’t waste time on good-byes as he steered Toni out the door, leaving Fisher with the tab.
Fisher rested his elbows on the bar and contemplated the bottle of Macallan 18 Karma kept for him. “God those two are disgusting. Hunter was here less than an hour, and one word out of Toni’s mouth and he’s running for the bedroom.”
Trapper shook his head. “Yeah, they need to take a real honeymoon and get it out of their systems. Then everything should get back to normal.”
“Look at Ben and Gina. They’ve been married over a year, and they’re still acting like horny teenagers.” Fisher didn’t know whether to be jealous or appalled—they both felt wrong. Almost as wrong as the thought of taking a knitting class.
***
“It’s all Andrew’s fault that I’m in Boise in the first place.” Jessie looked up from her beer to the bartender at Humpin’ Hannah’s. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Karma,” she said as she built a Guinness for a man six stools down named Dick.
He must have been a loyal customer if his Humpin’ Hannah’s golf shirt and the time Karma took building his Guinness was anything to go by. When she finally finished the pour, she slid the full mug down the bar.
Jessie watched the beer slow and stop right before hitting Dick’s open hand without even sloshing over the side. “Impressive. How long did it take you to perfect that?”
“A few years.” Karma gave a nonchalant shrug before folding her arms, resting them on the bar, and leaning in. “So, about your best friend, Andrew. What kind of friend is he?”
“What do you mean?” Jessie stared into Karma’s deep green eyes. They were somehow familiar, but she didn’t know why. She’d never seen Karma before this afternoon when she ducked into the bar after exploring downtown Boise.
“Is he just a friend, friend? A bed buddy? A frenemy? An ex? Girl, there are all kinds of”—she held up two fingers of each hand to form quotation marks—“‘friends,’ if you know what I’m sayin’.”
“Oh, no. Andrew’s more like a brother from a different mother. But then I really wouldn’t know since I’m an only child.”
“Must be nice.”
Jessie shrugged, wondering if Karma was serious or not. “Andrew and I met at college orientation. We were both English majors, so we had all the same classes. One night, after way too many of these”—Jessie held up her beer and took another sip—“we talked about dating, but we were such good friends, we decided not to take the chance of ruining a perfect relationship.”
Karma gave her the all-knowing-bartender with a twist of Jujitsu-grand-master nod. “Ah, so there’s no sexual chemistry, huh?”
Confused, Jessie could do nothing other than shrug. Karma’s eyes penetrated hers as if she could see far more than she let on. “I don’t know. Like I said, we never tested the waters.” When Karma threw her blonde head back and guffawed, Jessie’s face heated. Every customer stopped what they were doing and stared.
“Jessie, there’s a whole lot you don’t know about chemistry. If it’s there, nothing in the world would have made you think about not testin’ those waters. Strong chemistry gives you no choice in the matter. One minute you’re talkin’, and the next you’re exploring the other person’s tonsils and rubbin’ up against the bulge in his Wranglers. Thinking is not required.”
“Right, like I believe that.”
“Honey, if you don’t, you’re a fool. But that’s neither here nor there. So you were on the phone with your friend. Andrew, is it? Is he good-looking?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. He’s about six one, dark brown hair—almost black. Brown eyes. He’s smart and funny.”
Karma licked her lips and looked as if she were imagining the “Can’t Say No” sundae at Serendipity 3—Jessie’s favorite place to binge in New York. Karma must have had a very good imagination. “Good body?”
Jessie pictured Andrew in her mind’s eye. His face was clear, but his body was a bit fuzzy. “I guess. I never really paid much attention.”
“Yep, like I said—no sexual chemistry.” Karma walked her fingers across the bar and took the beer Jessie had all but finished without noticing. Karma grabbed a chilled mug out of the cooler. Without even looking, she hit the right tap and waited, her eyes never leaving Jessie’s. “Moving on.”
Talking to Karma was like trying to watch a TV show while someone flipped channels. “While I was on the phone with Andrew, I dug through my work email and opened up a pink slip—”
“You got fired? From where?”
“I wasn’t fired. I was laid off.”
“Sorry.” Karma looked anything but.
Jessie told herself that the newspaper business was shrinking, and she was the lowest female on an all-male totem pole. Getting laid off shouldn’t have been a shock. “I was a sports reporter for the
Times
. Andrew talked me out of jumping out the window—which, when you consider my fear of heights and the fact that none of the windows were even operable, greatly diminishes any heroism on his part. He urged me to sublet my apartment and move into his house here in Boise. I can stay as long as I want, rent-free, on one condition—”
Karma slid the beer to her. “What’s that? Does it have anything to do with testing those waters we talked about?”
“No.” God, what was it with people in Boise? They serve you a drink and expect information about your sex life? Or in her case, the lack there of. It had been so long since she’d had sex, she wouldn’t be surprised if her hymen had regenerated.
“Touchy subject, huh?” Karma wiped down the spotless bar. “Interesting.”
“Not touchy, really. I’m just not used to talking about who I sleep with.”
“No gal pals then?” Karma leaned forward and smirked. “I guess I’d better tell you, just in case you don’t know. Testing the waters rarely involves sleep—unless you test them and it’s so good you decide to wake up together and try it again to make sure it isn’t a fluke.”
Silence descended, well, as much silence as you could get at a bar as big as Hannah’s on a Thursday afternoon. Jessie figured it was time for a change of subject. She cleared her throat. “Um… about the whole gal pal thing. You see, all my friends are guys I play basketball or softball with, or professional athletes. You’re different from any woman I’ve ever met, Karma. Talking to you is like talking to a nosy guy with boobs.”
Karma spun around, taking the order off a waitress’s tray and pouring drinks. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She shook a martini, strained it into a glass as she twitched her nose, and then smiled. “It’s probably because I have three brothers and a cousin who thinks he’s my big brother—well, until he asked me to marry him that one time. Thank God he found someone else to drag down the aisle.” She feigned a shiver. “But that’s a whole other story—you see, historically, the women in my family have been grossly outnumbered by men. But don’t worry, I’m working on correcting that.”