Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight) (40 page)

She knew exactly what he meant.

Nora was upstairs showering, the water running through the house’s old pipes. Miles sometimes worried that something big would go wrong with the house, something to do with plumbing or electricity, two categories of fix-it he’d vowed never to touch. He didn’t have the funds to deal with something big like that. Not the furnace or the roof or any kind of systems failure. Without an income, he could make ends meet for only another six months or so—yet another reason he didn’t feel like a good candidate for a relationship.

He felt “unfit.” That was the word that kept running through his head.

He hadn’t
meant
to ask her how long she was staying, but a thought had risen to the surface as he’d sat across from her, watching her eat her sandwich.
I want to keep her
.

Not a well-formed thought, just the sort of thing that bubbled up from your gut when you were unguarded and couldn’t help it. Almost ugly, the idea of
keeping
, but that was what it was. And she’d said he could, until tomorrow afternoon, and for a brief moment it had felt like enough.

But he was unfit. A suspect, not in a position to support himself if this went on much longer, not in a position to introduce someone else into his half-assed existence.

He made up his mind. Monday morning, he would begin to look for a new job. For a long time he’d kept hoping that things would happen fast, that he’d be cleared and would be able to resume his old life. The lawyer had kept telling him to hang on, not to do anything rash, that he’d have his life, his old job, his sense of self, back soon. But that hadn’t happened. The investigation had moved glacially, leaving him caught in this peculiar limbo for weeks and then months. A few days ago, he’d passed the one-year mark.

It was time for him to figure out how to build a new life in his reshaped reality. It wouldn’t be easy to get work, with the shadow of an investigation hanging over his head. He wouldn’t find anything that reflected his skill and experience level, but the economy had rebounded, and there were houses going up again—maybe he could do handyman jobs. Something, anything, to begin the process of making room for Nora in his life.

The water was still running upstairs—he imagined her sliding her soapy hands all over
her body. He wanted to go up and get in the shower with her. Enjoy her, the sweetness of her mouth, the heat of her body, the restless hunger of her fucking, the way he could watch her mind work during the silences in their conversations, sometimes to the point where a private smile crossed her face. He wanted to know exactly what was behind those small hints at her inner world. If he could, he’d get inside her head and listen to her thoughts.

He stopped to pull another condom from the box in her messenger bag, took the stairs two at a time, knocked on the door, entered on her invitation. She was behind the glass door, behind a veil of steam, but Miles could make out her rosy curves and the dark circles of her areolae and the triangle of red hair where her thighs met. He was hard before he had his clothes off—he’d been on his way before he left the kitchen.

“Good,” she said. “I was feeling a little miffed that you didn’t want to get in here with me.”

“I want. Give me the soap.”

She handed it over without protest, and he soaped his hands and washed her. Not carefully. Not lovingly. Just to feel the unfettered slip and slide of skin over skin, everywhere. So few things moved like that—frictionless, slick—and it was like sex in another guise, as if you could unhitch sex from the specific body parts he’d always associated it with and turn it into a full-body, all-over experience, as if the palms of his hands were as sensitive as the head of his cock. He’d somehow gathered her into his arms and was kissing her hard, rubbing his whole self all over her, her breasts with their taut nipples slipping back and forth over his chest, her belly against his, her thighs against his, his leg between hers, his cock moving against her skin with the pressure of his body and the pressure of her body on either side, her moaning into his mouth, and—

“Give me a sec.”

He stepped out of the shower and got the condom he’d brought up, rolled it on. Stepped back in.

She smiled coyly at him, then turned and faced the shower wall, her palms against it, and he almost came right then and there. She pushed up on her toes, her ass tilted up to give him access, her flesh blotched pink from the heat and arousal, and he could see her inner lips, red and wet and ready.

He failed again at careful. At respectful. At anything you’d do to woo someone you
wanted to impress. He just—he banged into her, really. A nudge to position himself and a mad thrust as deep as he could go, and,
fuck
, she was thrusting back against him. Making low, harsh noises punctuated with little squeaks. He tried to figure out how to maximize the squeaks for her, but she reached back and grabbed his hip and said, “More,” so he threw all the rest of his restraint away and gave it to her, and—“Oh, Nora, sorry!” he said, because he was coming, whole body spasms gripping him, and he had to brace himself against the wall, too, and even so he almost blacked out.

He had some trouble restoring his sense of which way was up.

“Sorry,” he said again, when he could. “Neanderthal.” He wasn’t yet to the point of being able to form sentences. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I came.”

“You
did
?”

“Uh-huh. Before. When we were all soapy.”

“Je
sus
.”

“I know. That has never happened to me. It was right after you shoved your leg between mine. Everything was so slippery. And your chest hair kept rubbing against my nipples. You were kissing me, so you probably didn’t realize how much noise I was making.”

“Nora?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You’re turning me on again.”

“Sorry!”

“No, not a bad thing. Just … give me a few. I’ll be at your service.” She laughed. “I’m not worried.”

She poured some shampoo into her palm and rubbed it into her hair. She handed him the bottle so he could do the same, then stuck her head under the nozzle and rinsed. “I swear, I am also capable of having sex not standing.”

“Sure you are.” She rubbed her fingers over her hair, and it emitted a squeaky sound. He took her place under the shower, rinsing his hair. “I’m taking you out tonight.”

“What, like a date?”

“Yeah, like a date.”

“A first date,” she said, almost reverently.

He wasn’t as sure about that. A first date implied a string of other dates, implied
a future
, and he … he wasn’t sure he had a future, let alone one in which he could include her. “I guess.”

“Because we never had a first date. Right? We can’t count the party, because we were both already there. That was where we met. We can’t count the phone, because, well, it was the
phone
. And can’t count any of this, because it’s not a date. We’re at your house.”

“True. So tonight. Dinner and live music.”

“I can
totally
deal with that,” she said. “I even brought a skirt and nice top. Not that—I wasn’t thinking—”

He grinned. “Cut the bullshit, Nora. You called my friend to get my address. You
flew
a thousand miles. You’re allowed to admit you had some … expectations.”

She laughed. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s call them
hopes
, though. Sounds a little less stalkerish.”

They got out of the shower and he tossed her a towel.

“Hey, Miles?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to help you work on the tile project. Before we go to dinner. I don’t want you to waste this weekend.”

That made him laugh. “This weekend is the furthest thing from a waste I can imagine.”

“But you were going to get that done, and then I
showed up
. Torpedoed your real life.”
This is way better than my real life
.

But it reminded him that he had a real life, and he couldn’t pretend he didn’t. And if they were going to do something as official as have a first date, he had to make sure she knew what she was getting herself into.

“Get dressed,” he told her. “I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

* * *

He’d left her alone in the bathroom to get dressed. Who said, “I’ve got something to tell you,” and then fled the scene? That was bad manners.

In the empty, echoey bathroom, her feet cold against the ceramic floor tile, Nora’s vivid imagination had a field day.

I’m married. I’m an alcoholic. I’m a recovering ax murderer
.

Maybe he had a few kids by a previous marriage. She could handle that.

But if it was really bad, she could still walk away, right? A midnight kiss, a few phone calls, some phone sex, plus the sex on the floor of his front hall and in the shower—surely she was not in so deep that she couldn’t extricate herself.

Surely.

She shook her head at herself.
If it’s really bad, Nor, you need to walk away
.

But all the other bits of her brain, the ones that should have said,
Uh-huh! Yeah! We hear ya! We will!
, were silent.

She stepped out of the master bath and into his bedroom, which occupied most of the upper floor of the house, under the eaves. Skylights everywhere, a low platform bed against the far wall. His quilt was black and white and the walls were gray, and—maybe it was the faint masculine scent of soap and aftershave—the room reminded her of men’s dress clothes. Of the excitement of seeing a finely dressed man appear before you when the last time you’d laid eyes on him he was a grubby guy in jeans.

Being with Miles felt that way all the time, she realized. The treat of his physical beauty, the way he was so assertively male. A lean grace to how he moved, how he spoke, how he treated her, his demeanor as pleasingly hard as male muscle.

Right now he was standing in the middle of his bedroom, wearing a pair of jeans low on his hips and nothing else, and that would be how she would fantasize about him tomorrow night when she was back in her bed by herself. Flat abs, the slanted ridge of muscle at his hips that dove under his waistband, the trail of curly dark hair that directed her gaze downward. And when she tore her focus from his crotch and looked back up, the planes of his pecs with their dusting of half curls. Her own nipples tightened, remembering how that hair had felt.

When her eyes finally met his, she found that he’d been watching her watch him, and her breath caught. But he shook his head, as if to say,
Not now
.

His face was so serious, it made her stomach hurt.

“I’m a suspect in a criminal investigation.”

Her vitals went nuts then, a flurry of manic heartbeat and tight chest and shallow breath, while her brain made fight-or-flight calculations. Door that way, large, well-muscled male between her and all exits.
Oh, my God, what kind of self-destructive lunatic flies from Boston to
Cleveland and enters a strange man’s house on her own?

“Nora, wait. Embezzlement. Embezzlement. I should have said that—”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t
do
that! I was thinking rape, assault, battery, serial murder of girls in shower stalls, where you scalp them and hang the scalps from your shower rod and—”
Embezzlement
. “Is embezzlement a felony?”

He pulled his shirt on, and his face popped out, grim.

“What they suspect me of is, yes. They suspect me of embezzling more than three hundred thousand dollars from the organization I work for.”

Three hundred thousand dollars
. That was quite a hunk of change. Not murder or rape or assault, but a serious crime.

“Did you?”

She was surprised by how calm she felt, now that the painful adrenaline rush of a few moments ago had passed.

He’d looked away from her, into a far corner of the room, and there was a struggle behind his expression as he said, “No. But it’s messy. That’s why I’m taking the leave of absence. It wasn’t voluntary. I was suspended without pay. I had the best access, and the time frame of when I bought this house is suspicious. For a while my lawyer’s primary focus was on clearing me, but we’ve shifted to working on my defense, because he’s pretty sure I’m going to be charged, by the beginning of January at the latest. Unless they find another logical suspect.”

He said it matter-of-factly, but she saw in his eyes that this was the source of the sadness. There was nothing matter-of-fact in his feelings about the situation.

She felt a rising sense of outrage on his behalf.

You don’t know he didn’t do it
.

—He said he didn’t
.

You’re too trusting
.

—Bugger off, Henry
.

“You have a good lawyer, right?”

“An excellent lawyer, but … the way the money was taken, it’s called vendor fraud. We have a
lot
of programs, and we pay many vendors, and someone managed to create a large number of invented vendors. I’m the most logical someone.”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“Without knowing who
did
do it, it’s hard to clear suspicion from me. So it will probably go to trial.”

“But they’ll get you off, right?”

“It’s possible—my lawyer says probable, even, that they won’t get a conviction, if I’m lucky—but the point is, I would understand if this turned you off. I’m damaged goods. No job, the possibility of a criminal conviction, jail time. I’m low on funds. I’m going to look for other work, but my name’s been in the local papers, so I don’t know if I can even get it. Your friends would tell you to run the other way. Stat.”

Nora tried to imagine what Rachel would say.
Back away from the possible criminal, Nora. Turn and run now. Don’t look back
. Yeah, that was about right.

But she didn’t. Couldn’t. She’d known before he’d told her, as soon as she’d known there was something he wanted to tell her, that very little he could say would make her turn and run.

Probably Henry was right. She was too trusting. Too lacking in all the skills necessary for self-preservation.

In too deep, too fast.