Authors: Amy Jo Cousins
“Just a second, George,” he paused and put his hand over the phone. “Sorry, do you
mind coming with me? That damn cat was dropped off at my place this morning by the
kitty day care people and I don’t know if she’s about to pop. Can you check her out?
I’ll have the driver take you home right after.”
Rock. Hard place. Sarah.
All she wanted was to get back to her place, crawl into some flannel pants and a sweatshirt,
curl up on her couch and figure out what her odds were of getting divorced from her
brother’s best friend without said brother finding out.
Slim to none, she was willing to bet, but she knew it would at the very least require
the plotting skills and mental acuity of Machiavelli.
The fact that her brain turned to mush around J.D. meant that the sooner she got herself
out of his presence, the better.
“Sure,” she heard herself answer. “No problem.”
See?
she scolded herself.
Mush.
When they reached J.D.’s warehouse of a home, she strode through the door, med bag
over her shoulder, as soon as he unlocked it. No sense dillydallying. Find the cat,
give her a quick exam and get out. She heard J.D. talking at the door with the driver,
who would no doubt spend the next ten minutes entertaining himself with the
Wall Street Journal
or internet porn until she emerged for her ride home.
She got as far as the enormous leather couch in front of the fireplace without spotting
the cat. Hesitating, she took another step into the room and then stopped again. She’d
only been in J.D.’s home that one evening, and she felt oddly awkward walking around
the cavernous space. Surely there was more to the place than this. Well, he’d told
her that his bedroom was up the spiral wrought-iron staircase. And all the photography
equipment piled in the entryway indicated that there was a studio, too, but she didn’t
feel like she had a right to go exploring and opening doors on her own. Not with J.D.
hard on her heels and sure to be watching her every move.
The realization brought her back to earth with a thump.
As much as she’d shut her brain down and insisted on thinking of nothing but what
the next legal step would be in untangling this mess she’d landed in with J.D., she
knew that a tiny little corner of her consciousness had spent the entire day imagining
a completely different scenario.
The dreamy, impractical part of Sarah that secretly wished fairy tales were true shivered
each time J.D. called her “Mrs. Damico” and insisted on picturing a Hollywood happy
ending for their weekend, where the hero and heroine rode off into the sunset together.
On a white horse. Through the rolling surf of a deserted beach.
Nowhere in this scenario, however, was the heroine stuck standing awkwardly in the
middle of a room because she didn’t feel comfortable enough to show herself around
her hero’s condo.
In the fairy tale, J.D. would have brought her here because he couldn’t stand to be
separated from her for one night. Not because he wanted her professional opinion of
his cat. She should have stuck with her gut instinct. Going home wouldn’t have made
her feel like an asshole.
“Hey.” The hands on her shoulder squeezed her out of her daze. She hadn’t heard him
come in behind her. “You look lost.”
Her laugh was shakier than she wanted it to be.
“Lost. Yeah.” She blinked hard. “That about sums it up.”
He gave her a little shake.
“Relax. We’ll find her.”
That he actually believed she was thinking about the cat was just a sign of how far
they really were from understanding each other.
She ducked out of his grasp and started circling the open space, a bright smile plastered
on her face.
“So, where do you think she’s hiding? Should I look,” she waved her hand vaguely about,
“anywhere in particular?”
J.D. had moved over to the open hearth of the fireplace and was crouching there. Pulling
sheets of newspaper from the stack held by an iron box, he crumpled the pages into
loose balls and pushed them beneath the waiting logs. A tall container of extra-long
matches stood next to him and he struck one against the bottom of the container before
he looked up at her.
“Don’t worry, she’ll come to us.” He rested his weight on one heel and grinned. “I’ll
deny it under oath, but I’ve gotten to know her pretty well. Two minutes after this
fire gets going, she’ll be curled up right in front of it. Worst case, we break out
the can opener, and she’ll come running.”
Great.
Without something to do, an active purpose to pursue, she was stuck standing there,
shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Taking off her coat and sitting down
implied a time frame for her stay that she didn’t love, but waiting in the middle
of the room while the man she’d accidentally married two nights ago lit a romantic
fire for an absolutely unromantic reason made her feel like an idiot.
Once again, he seemed to read her mind.
“But feel free to take a look around,” he said as he rose and brushed his hands off
against his thighs. He gestured to the far corner of the open room with his chin.
“The stairs go up to the bedroom and my studio. Watch your step, though. The construction
isn’t complete yet. They promised me three months, which would have meant they’d be
done by the time I got here. We’re going on six and it’ll probably take another six.”
In the corner he’d indicated, a delicate-looking twist of wrought iron curved up to
meet the half-wall of a second story.
Pleased to have something to do, she headed for the stairs, wondering if she could
manage to get up them in the dim light without breaking an ankle. Or her neck.
“I’ve got motion-sensitive lights over there. Just head up and they’ll come on. Thirsty?”
She glanced back over her shoulder to see J.D. in his kitchen, pressing a water glass
against the lever that dispensed drinking water from the front of his refrigerator.
“Yes, please. Airplanes.”
“Dry you out. I know.” She watched him as he answered without looking at her and picked
up the second glass he’d already set on the counter next to him in anticipation of
her response.
On the second floor, she found precision mixed with chaos.
Half of the loft space was unfinished, steel beams and bricks gaping through the walls,
piles of lumber and drywall sheets tumbled about in random locations. But along one
side of the building, an enormous bedroom suite had been enclosed and finished to
a level of luxury that made her raise her eyebrows in appreciation.
“You could throw a party in that bed,” she said under her breath as she stepped into
the place where J.D. slept. The sculpted-iron headboard echoed the curves of the stairs
she’d climbed to reach this hideaway. Enormous panes of glass that stretched from
the high ceiling down to chest height ran the length of the room, allowing a glorious
view of the city lights at night while leaving the resident a fair amount of freedom
to stroll around in his or her underwear without worrying about shocking the neighbors.
Not that the neighbors, if they were women, would be anything but happy to spot J.D.
in the buff, she thought. And then tore her mind away from that image as she entered
the en suite bathroom.
Heaven.
She let out a sigh of pure appreciation after flicking the light switch just inside
the doorway.
Wavy glass bricks replaced the clear panes from the bedroom, but the windows lined
the length of this room, too. A long, rough piece of black marble had been built into
the wall opposite the window and a gradually deepening trough ran the entire length
of the stone, two faucets positioned above it at equally spaced intervals before water
drained at the deepest end.
Both the glass-brick enclosed rain shower and the undoubtedly Jacuzzi-powered tub
were large enough to continue any party begun in the bedroom. The build-out might
not be complete, but what had been done was beautiful and had clearly involved much
thought and planning by the man downstairs.
Which made her wonder.
She hadn’t been saying anything other than the truth as she saw it when she’d told
J.D. in Vegas that he wasn’t a “stick-around kind of guy.” Ever since he’d managed
to leave home as a boy, he’d avoided returning to Chicago for anything more than blow-in,
blow-out visits to her brother. And from what she’d heard over the years, even J.D.’s
life after leaving his hometown was a peripatetic one. Although he was theoretically
based in California these days, spending more than six months at a time in one location
just wasn’t his style.
What was a man who moved from country to country, from project to project doing spending
a year of his time and plenty of money creating from scratch what could only be described
as a permanent home?
“Don’t go reading anything into it,” she warned herself again and headed back to the
stairs. “Maybe he’s just developing an interest in real estate.”
She kept her eyes on her feet as she stepped carefully down the spiral staircase—maybe
it became less unnerving with practice?—and didn’t see J.D. until she reached the
bottom.
He’d left almost all the lights off, a faint glow above the steel sink in the kitchen
the only illumination aside from the fireplace. Sitting cross-legged on the floor
in front of the fire, elbows propped on his knees, chin resting on the interlaced
fingers of his hands, he stared into the depths of the fire as if looking for the
answers to life’s big questions.
Or maybe just the question of what to do with yet another unsuitable wife.
As she neared, he turned toward her and smiled. And Sarah knew without question that
she’d give anything to have that smile be because of her. Not just a polite reflex,
but because he was deep down in his bones happy to see her walking toward him.
Damn. She was in trouble.
Time to go.
“Listen,” she said, pulling her coat tighter around herself, “it’s not imperative
that I see her tonight. I can always stop by during my rounds at some point over the
next couple of days, or you can bring her by the clinic anytime—”
“Sarah.”
She talked right over him. “And I really am exhausted. It’s been quite a busy weekend,
remember?” Her laugh sounded false even to her own ears. “So, if you don’t mind—”
“Sarah.” His voice was patient, as if he’d continue repeating her name until she shut
up and listened to him. He put his hand palm down on the floor next to him. “Come
sit. Just for a minute.”
And because she still couldn’t resist him, despite every good reason why she should,
she walked over to him, dropped her bag on the floor and sat. She kept her coat on
and told herself that it meant she was safe.
He’d turned to face her, gesturing for her to join him on the floor. She sat cross-legged
facing him, their knees touching. Wearing dark jeans and a lightweight black cotton
sweater, he looked casually stylish in a way that made her feel frumpy in comparison.
After a weekend of pretend glamour, returning home felt like leaving a glittering,
make-believe world to come back to the realization that her life, as much as she loved
it, was in no way dazzling. She stared down at her hands as she twisted them in her
lap.
J.D. rested his palms on her knees with the lightest of touches and waited without
speaking until she finally looked up and met his eyes.
“I think you should stay.”
Before she could open her mouth to protest, he lifted his fingers to her lips and
stilled her. “I can read you as easily as I can that cat. You don’t think it’s a good
idea, and you’ve been itching to get out of here since the second you walked in the
door. But I don’t want you to go just yet. And if I want you to stay, and you want
to stay, I don’t see why we should spend the night wishing we were together while
sleeping in separate beds.” Even the hint of his smile didn’t lessen the impact of
his words. “All complications aside.”
A lifetime of battling with an older brother had conditioned her to sarcastic comebacks,
and one spilled out of her mouth by reflex the moment his lifted his fingers.
“What makes you so sure I want to stay?”
He held her gaze as he reached for her knotted fingers. Turning one of her hands over
in his, he held it in his lap, his thumb pressing firmly over her inner wrist. Suddenly
aware of her own racing pulse, her spine sagged a little in defeat.
“Fine. So I want you,” she snapped at him, annoyed for no good reason except that
she couldn’t seem to keep anything to herself. In an instant, her irritation deflated.
He was being up front and clear with her. She could respond in kind. “J.D., don’t
you see that it’s just going to make things worse?”
He shook his head, the tips of his dark hair swinging against the side of his face.
“I don’t think it has to.”
It was suddenly urgent to her that he understand something. She barely noticed that
she was the one holding his hands now.
“J.D., I know it was just a kid’s crush, how I felt about you when we were younger.
But it was still something that took me a long time to get over.” It was painful,
this honesty, but she needed to say it out loud. If only to remind herself of what
was at stake. “And I did get over it. Crazy as the last few days have been, I can
walk away from you right now and I’ll be fine. Mistakes happen.”
“Mistakes happen. Ouch,” he said, a lopsided smile sparking and dying on his face.
“We both know this wasn’t something we would’ve done under any other circumstances,”
she said. She took a deep breath. It was like tearing a Band-Aid off and exposing
a fresh wound. “I can walk away now. But if I stay.” He just waited and that made
it easier to admit to the truth. “If I stay, there’s no way this…attraction I feel
for you won’t end up turning into something more.”
“Okay,” he nodded and a sharp pang of disappointment flew through her. But then he
dropped his eyes to their intertwined hands and looked right back at her. “That’s
okay.”