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“I want you to tell me about your father,” he said.

“This has nothing to do with my father.”

“This has everything to do with your father.”

He looked fierce. So much for the softer Jeff. He was all boss today. And, well, she liked him that way.

She took a deep breath. “I told you my parents split when I was ten.”

“Yeah.”

“What did I tell you about it?”

He tilted his chin up. “Not much. You told me he was a colossal jerk.”

“Yeah, that’s about the shape of it. Only I probably told you the abbreviated version.”

He nodded.

“The first time he left, I was ten. I don’t know absolutely every detail, but she caught him cheating and kicked him out.”

Amy remembered the day he’d left. He’d found her playing paper dolls on the floor of her room. He’d loomed over her, a tall, beefy man in a red plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans. A fixture of her life, not threatening. Not someone whose presence she’d ever questioned until that moment.

I’ve gotta go,
he’d said. Only that. Nothing about how long or how final, just
I’ve gotta go.
A kick in her gut, and that was before she’d felt the full weight of fury at her mother. The real anger hadn’t started until ten-year-old Amy had realized that if her mother had been more forgiving, Amy would still have a dad living in her house with her, making Saturday-morning pancakes.

Breakfast had always been her favorite meal. The only essential meal in a day. Jeff had known it so well that he’d developed a policy: He never went to bed until he checked to make sure the apartment was locked, the dishwasher loaded and primed to run, and a healthy supply of Wheat Chex and two-percent milk—her favorites—on hand. More than once, he’d made a late-night cereal run over her protests, so she wouldn’t have to wake up without.
For me, it’s coffee,
he’d said.
Everyone’s got a morning addiction.

He’d made it a casual thing, but every time he did it, she got a little teary. A cigar wasn’t always just a cigar, and breakfast wasn’t just breakfast to Amy.

“He was gone about six months—he was living with the woman he’d been cheating with. Then he came back and wanted another chance. He begged. I overheard. I had just read
Harriet the Spy
, and I had a spy notebook, and I hadn’t figured out yet that eavesdroppers never hear anything good. He said he wasn’t in love with this other woman, that he was in love with my mother, and that he couldn’t bear to live without the two of us. He was very persuasive. I think he’s probably technically a sociopath, you know, charming and totally devoid of conscience? Anyway, she agreed to give him a second chance.”

Amy had forgiven her mother and welcomed back her father. Saturday mornings were Saturday mornings once again, the Bisquick box and Aunt Jemima and the feeling that everything was right in the universe. A parent on each side.

“We were all together another eighteen months, and then he left again. All told? I think he came and went five or six times. Finally, he emptied our bank accounts and took off for good.”

His knuckles were white, his mouth a tight line. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Other guys I dated had this way of using that story against me. ‘Oh, you have daddy issues. Trust issues.’ Whatever. Maybe I do, but I got tired of hearing about them.”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t have—”

She went on, her words overlapping his. “My mother said it was her fault for not trusting her instincts. She said she shouldn’t have even let him talk to her. She used to say once she’d let him onto the porch, it was inevitable that he’d manage to sneak into the house, and once he was in, it was only a short distance to the bedroom.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” She finally turned and looked at him full-on. “So now you see.”

As she’d gotten older, she’d stopped blaming her mother for sending her dad away and started blaming her for being weak enough to readmit him, not once but many times.

“Well, here I am. I’m in the house. Metaphorically speaking. And I’m not your father.”

It would almost be better if he were. If he were as much of an asshole as she’d convinced herself he was. Because then she wouldn’t be sitting here, her face close enough to his that if he only leaned a little closer—

She turned suddenly and looked out the window.

Behind her, she could hear his breathing, ragged, uneven.

“I’m not your father,” he repeated. What a gut-wrenchingly bad story she’d told. The original asshole had been a true original.

“You took an awfully long time to come looking for your second chance.” Her words were almost lost in the soft
shhh
of the train.

Everything made sense now. Why she’d been so quick to anger, yes, but more to the point, why she’d fled instead of giving him a chance to explain.

“I was angry too. That you’d walked away so easily.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

He leaned closer, catching the lemon scent of her hair. His fingers and lips tingled with longing to reach out and touch. Comfort, apologize, forgive. “It happened so suddenly. And being angry was easier than feeling hurt.”

She nodded.

“I let my anger make me stubborn about coming to find you, even though I knew I’d behaved badly. I tried to get in touch, and—”

“And I blew you off.”

“But I understand why. I do.” He spoke almost into her neck now, and if he leaned a little closer, his lips would touch her. Could she feel his breath, moving across her skin?

She made a small, incoherent sound. A whimper.

“Amy.” Her name was barely more than a puff. He reached for her, put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off, and he felt her warmth through the thin blouse. Felt the sharpness of her bones and a slight tremor. That, more than anything, set him off. He leaned closer, anticipation gripping him around his chest and in his groin. His balls tightened, and his cock hardened. He pressed his lips to the juncture of her neck and shoulder and to the smooth, hot skin there, the feel of her electrifying.

They’d been together almost a year, and in that year they’d made love hundreds of times, but this was like brand new—this was like before they’d ever touched, that crazy-prickly, whole-body wild desire that made you do things you shouldn’t.

Another tiny sound slipped from her lips. A groan that caught him off guard and was like a touch, almost pushing him outside the bounds of control. He groaned too, and several things happened at once, then. She laughed, turned toward him and shushed him loudly.

“We’re on a train,” she said.

“I don’t care.” He leaned in. It was awkward, but he managed to find the V of her blouse with his mouth. She groaned again, a little louder than last time, and without lifting his head, he said, “Doesn’t sound like you care, either.”

“There are a million people on this train.”

“There’s no one sitting across from us.”

“Yet.”

“Then let’s not waste any time.” And he kissed her for real this time. A puzzle piece fit into place, like a tiny internal click deep inside him. It took only a second for her to open to him, for her tongue to find his, for her to begin to make those familiar little whimpering noises that had driven him completely wild in bed from the very first time they’d made love.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever told her this, but it was those noises that made him come, every time. Sure, there was all that heat and friction and wetness, all the grappling and groping, her fingers reaching into the space between where their bodies met to move slickly over his balls, his thumb finding her clit, and all the kissing, endless hot, wet and hungry—but every time, those little whimpers were the final straw, picking him up and hurtling him into mindlessness. He guessed it was how helpless they made her sound, like she was awash in what was happening to them.

He had to wrench himself away, or he was going to make a spectacle of himself, of them. When he broke apart from her, she was panting, and so was he.

“Don’t stop,” she said.

“We’re on a train.”

“I don’t care.”

He sank into kissing her. He skimmed the lace of her bra under her blouse, and beneath it, the hard, tight knot of her nipple. They were superconnected, and touching her set off a chain reaction in him, like he wasn’t in control of anything he was doing or feeling, caught in the spiral of their need. She arched up into his hand and made another sound, a different, rawer sound, as he brushed his thumb back and forth.

He slid his other hand to the seam of her slacks, where heat radiated. He rested the palm of his hand there, not willing to push her too far, but she slid forward to meet him and ground herself against him, hard. “Christ,” he breathed, and she whispered, “Please don’t stop,” and you couldn’t have paid him to, nothing could have made him stop touching her or kissing her. He felt the tension in her body growing to match the tension in his. He moved his hand against her needy grinding, closing his index finger and thumb over her nipple, and felt, rather than heard, her yell her release silently into his mouth as the train clattered to halt in a station somewhere in Westchester County.

The doors opened. A new batch of people climbed on, and a middle-aged couple sat down across from them.

Chapter Four

Amy turned her whole body toward the window to hide the physical signs of what had swept through her. Also, there were tears of release—and relief—in her eyes. Behind her, Jeff said, “Impeccable timing.”

“For me,” she murmured. “Can’t imagine it’s going to be a very comfortable rest-of-the-train-ride for you.”

“No. God, no. Ouch.”

“Wish I could help you with that.”

“No, you don’t. This is your revenge.”

“Well, there is that.”

Gradually her breathing returned to normal. Gradually the heat in her face retreated. But her nipples were still hard little peaks, and she was swollen and damp where he’d rubbed her with the big, strong palm of his hand. God, she was shameless. They were on a
train
. This was her
commute home
. Which brought her abruptly back to reality. This was crazy. They lived on opposite sides of the country. He was a workaholic, and all the promises he’d made wouldn’t change that. The fact that he was the indisputable master of her body, that he could bring her to climax faster than she could bring herself—and that was saying something—shouldn’t enter into things a bit.

And yet entering into things—his entering into things—his entering into her—was precisely what she could not stop thinking about. Sex had a way of screwing everything up. All one’s best laid plans. All one’s best intentions.

“You know,” he murmured behind her. “I can’t think about anything right now except being inside you.”

Her body should’ve been taking a break, but she felt a sharp jolt of renewed enthusiasm. Which scared her. She could keep going. They could keep doing this. It could spill off the train and into real life, and then what?

“We can’t do this,” she said.

“Why not? I think we’re pretty amazing. I’ve always thought we were pretty amazing.”

For a moment, she let herself think about it, really think about it, and then she realized exactly how much of a complete and total mess she’d made of everything. “How would that work? I live in New York—well, Connecticut—and you live in Seattle.”

“Come home. Come home with me.”

She got itchy with anger then, all of a sudden.

No, it wasn’t all of a sudden. She’d been angry the whole time, and what he’d done to her body had been a fabulous distraction, but here it came, roaring back, anger and hurt. “I won’t. I can’t. Not until you realize how ridiculous it is for you to say that. Why is Seattle home, just because you work there?”

“It was home first. It was our home.” Now he sounded angry too. “I took that for granted. Maybe that was crazy of me, but we were living there together, and it didn’t occur to me that you would just upend that.”

“I didn’t just upend it. I tried to have a conversation with you, and you wouldn’t have it.”

“It wasn’t a conversation! It was an ultimatum!”

They were both silent for a moment. Around them, unfazed by their anger, unfazed by their distance, their attraction, their needs, their desperation, the passengers on the train continued with their low chatter, the clattering of keyboards, the buzzing of cell phones.

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said finally.

He sighed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You should have, if you meant it.” There was a part of her that wanted to reach out. That wanted to stroke his cheek, to feel the rough texture of his skin, slightly blotchy from arousal. But she kept her hands to herself.

“I thought at the time— It seemed like maybe you were…trying to push me into proposing.”

She couldn’t help herself; she laughed out loud. “Really?”

“Weren’t you?” It was framed as a question, but his body language, his crossed arms, his stern face were all accusation.

Had she been? Not consciously. But she was well aware that very little was done consciously. She turned to the window.

“Whatever I was doing,” she said, finally, “I seem to have put us in an impossible situation.”

“Not impossible. Challenging.”

She experienced a brief, almost blinding surge of hope.

His phone rang again.

He looked at her. She gazed steadily back. Her eyes stayed on his through eight rings. Then silence.

She liked that, but she didn’t entirely believe it.

He was still staring at her. “Can I—?”

His expression was pained. Whatever he’d been about to ask, it wasn’t coming easy. Served him right.

He sucked in a deep breath. “Can I get off the train with you?”

She knew what he was asking, both the little question and the big one. He wanted to go home with her, make love to her in her bed. He wanted to step outside this perfect, protected realm and bring cold, hard reality into their peaceful interlude. He was asking her to be with him in the bigger, realer world.

Could she?

She had loved Jeff in the bigger, realer world. She had loved the little private things, the hummed lullabies and the ever-ready breakfast cereal. But she had also loved the way he was with other people, relaxed, at ease. The power he had to convey his own confidence, to make other people open up and spill themselves into the room. At parties, he could get anyone past small talk in under five minutes, a steady unreeling of questions that drew out a person’s essence while she stood nearby and listened. While she watched him, the strength in his face, the regularity of his features, and that gift he had for making people enjoy themselves from the inside out.