Ariel was a nice person. Nate
was, too. And if they slept together, Shannon would shatter like spun glass
rolling off a table.
It didn’t matter that he’d never
be hers, that wanting him made no sense at all, that she was being
ridiculous. She didn’t even know him well enough to like him this
much.
Hmm. Maybe she’d gotten it
backward, and it would be easier to think about the business closing down.
At least that sadness made some sense.
* * *
A
SPLASH
OF
LIGHT
ACROSS
her eyes woke Shannon with a start. She was shocked she’d fallen asleep at
all, let alone ’til morning. But there was no denying the very loud buzzing
of her alarm, which she ended as quickly as she could.
Her eyes felt gummy and her
mouth awful. Ah, she hadn’t brushed her teeth. She never went to sleep
without brushing her teeth. And, if the evidence were to be believed, she’d
wept.
She ought to have remembered
that part, no? Given the state of her bed, there’d been lots of tossing and
turning. Regardless, it was past 6:00 a.m. and she wanted to make it out of
the shower in record time. She planned on grabbing a bite to eat on the way
to work, and if the coffee wasn’t ready, she’d buy a cup, too, even though
it was a terrible waste of money.
What mattered was leaving the
house before she had to face Nate. She should stay, show him Ariel’s
picture, talk her cousin up, smile, act like the friend she was pretending
to be. But not with puffy eyes. Not this early. She’d send him the photo.
That’s what cell phones were made for. Sort of.
Didn’t matter, she was out of
bed, had her clothing ready to go, her robe on, and she practically ran to
the bathroom. The lock clicking into place was a very welcome sound, and the
hot water pouring over her eased some of the tension that had become a
regular part of her life. At this rate, she’d have an ulcer by
thirty.
She didn’t waste another moment,
though, and went through her routine double time. She was glad the mirror
was fogged, because she needed to prepare to face herself. Maybe she
wouldn’t turn on the lights on her bedroom vanity. No, that wouldn’t work.
She needed the makeup too much.
As soon as she made it back to
her room, she got dressed, got her iPod out and set it to shuffle. Then she
turned that sucker up loud. She planned on listening all the way to the
plant and only when her workday began would she let herself think a single
thought.
It was an extremely effective
technique up until the moment she bumped into Nate in the
kitchen.
“Sorry,” he said.
She didn’t hear him say it but
even she could read those lips. Tempted to throw up her hands and run, after
a moment’s thought, she put the idea aside. She’d have to face him sooner or
later, so why not now? The silence when she turned off the music was
profound.
“You okay?”
She made a small production of
taking out the earbuds. “Didn’t know you were here.”
“So I imagine. You must be
pretty serious about your musicals to listen that loud.”
“Musicals are
important.”
“So’s your hearing.”
“Thank you, Doctor, I’ll take it
under advisement.”
He raised a sardonic brow. “I
was getting some coffee.”
The empty mug in his hand had
clued her in, but her snarky comeback stalled in her throat as she got a
load of him in his pajamas. Spider-Man had been replaced by out-and-out
elegance. They were glen plaid, with blue piping, covered by a plush white
robe, like something she’d expect to see in the movies, not in their
brownstone. The sartorial splendor was damn near dazzling. T-shirts and
boxers were the ongoing trend with her brothers, and her father was a
flannel man all the way. Nate looked sharp. Sexy.
Shannon went for the cupboard
with the mugs before things got out of control. More out of
control.
“You gonna take a lunch to
work?” Nate asked.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she
said, busy, very, very busy with her to-go cup.
“I could put something together,
if you want. I was kidding about the chopped liver. I wouldn’t do that to
you.”
She tried to laugh, but had to
switch to a cough midway. “Nice of you to remember.”
“Nice of you to set me up with
your friend.”
“Cousin.”
“Right. Cousin. Ariel, is
it?”
“Yep.” She kept her voice peppy.
Making sure to smile as she said the word. That really did work.
“I’ve tried, but I don’t
remember her from the wedding.”
“There were so many people
there.” Shannon filled her cup from the big old urn, then focused on
stirring.
“I stopped noticing after I saw
you.”
Her spoon stilled. Her heart
raced. She didn’t dare look up. If she looked at him, she was going to fold.
She would confess to everything, even if she didn’t know what she was
confessing about. One look, and she would get herself into a mess she
wouldn’t be able to get out of.
Instead she laughed. The smile
trick worked with laughter, too. Well enough, at least. “You were just
surprised I wasn’t wearing a tiara.” She kept her head down as she went to
the sink. “I’ve got to dash, but—”
Shannon glanced up. It was a
mistake, a reflex, but Nate was standing right there, directly in her line
of sight, and the way he was looking at her stopped her
midsentence.
She felt a punch to her heart,
an ache of need and want and
please.
But only for a second. “I’ll send you her picture,”
she said, turning away, pulling down the curtain. “You guys will have a
great time, I know it.”
But she got the hell out of the
kitchen. Fast. She put on her coat, grabbed her purse and her briefcase and
she was out the door. It occurred to her as she reached the subway that it
would have looked more natural if she’d said goodbye.
No matter. She’d let down her
guard for only an instant. He’d probably thought she’d been making a face
about her coffee.
7
A
T
TWO
-
THIRTY
, N
ATE
CAUGHT
a cab and told the driver to take him to Fitzgerald & Sons. He hadn’t been there since high school, but that didn’t matter, he knew the address. It was a huge building, half a block long, and the smell of it—hot-melt glue and the emulsion they used for the lithography—was unforgettable. The noise was crippling, and he and Danny had been under a mandatory earplug rule.
As the cab inched its way through the omnipresent traffic, he made a couple of phone calls, then spun the phone around for texting.
Where are U?
She might not answer him. She’d know the text was his, and she could just not reply and he’d never know if she had turned her cell off for a meeting, or left it in her desk, or if she’d glanced at his name and thought nothing of putting the phone away. But he stared at his screen anyway.
Three very long, slow blocks later, the phone beeped.
At the plant. Why?
U real busy?
Just the usual…
Mind if I stop by?
Anytime. I’ll be here.
Nate clicked out of his phone and put it in his coat pocket. He’d have been in trouble if she’d told him she wasn’t busy. That hadn’t been likely, though. According to Danny, according to everyone who knew Shannon, she was in perpetual motion, if not working on marketing for the plant, then putting together some special event at the church or at a park or coordinating a fundraiser for something or other.
Everyone who lived between Midtown and SoHo knew Shannon Fitzgerald. It wasn’t a surprise she edited the online Gramercy newsletter. She wasn’t involved with the kid pageants anymore, but she did help out with an amateur theater group and a dance studio. Danny hadn’t told him that. Mrs. Fitz had. In fact, Mrs. Fitz had a hell of a lot to say about her only daughter.
None of it had been unkind. Shannon was a blessing to the family, but she was working too hard, doing too much, and for what? Mrs. Fitz had sprayed cabbage soup across the kitchen counter as she waved her spoon during that discourse. Nate had picked up a sponge and followed her around, nodding when appropriate and smiling at how Mrs. Fitz hadn’t changed a bit.
Shannon had, though. He couldn’t think of her anymore as that child he’d known. The pictures of her back then had been replaced by current images, mental snapshots he’d collected since the wedding.
The best part of New York so far? Mornings over coffee, when Shannon was there. Molly’s, with her laughter high and sweet over the noise of the crowd.
He’d spent today with attorneys, nitpicking their way through a contract so complicated it made his head spin. He’d had enough of maneuvering and tricky language. Ever since Shannon had bowled him backward with that look this morning, he’d had a low-grade fever that needed attention. He’d felt as if he’d seen her naked. Want had been clear as day in her eyes, and her heat had singed him from across the room.
She was at the plant. Being four blocks away, if the traffic didn’t ease up, he was gonna get out of the cab and walk. Because he needed to know what the hell. That’s all. Just what the hell.
* * *
S
HANNON
LOOKED
UP
AT
B
RADY
,
who’d stopped talking. Shouting, actually, as they were on the floor of the plant and the noise was ridiculous with three of their biggest machines running. He wasn’t even looking at her, and he seemed surprised.
She turned, expecting to see Nate, but not the effect he’d have on her.
Her whole body reacted. Heat raced up her neck and into her cheeks, her heart could have jump-started a stalled car, and even the small hairs at her nape stood as pure adrenaline replaced all the blood in her veins.
He knew. He knew that she wanted him, that it was killing her to give him to Ariel. He’d seen it this morning, maybe before this morning. He knew she wanted him, and that she thought of him naked, and that she’d masturbated twice while she’d pictured him, and oh, God, maybe she’d blurted out something in her sleep and he’d heard her because the wall was so thin, and now he was coming to tell her to stop. To leave him alone. To quit thinking of him as anything but a friend of the family; for God’s sake, what was she, some kind of animal who couldn’t control herself?
Even the pounding of the pressrun and the offset rollers couldn’t compete with the hammering in her heart as Nate approached. He nodded at Brady, then caught her eye.
She knew she should smile. It was only polite. She managed a delayed blink instead.
He pointed to the offices—to her office—and she stumbled forward, got her feet steady and led him, squeezing her hands into tight fists until she held her door open, waiting for him.
As he passed, his hand brushed the back of hers, the clenching hand flexing open, reaching, but for only a second. She closed the door, automatically pulling out her earplugs and dropping them in the small ceramic bowl she used only for that purpose.
Nate slipped his coat off, hung it on the hook on the back of the door. She used the time to move behind her desk. When he turned to face her, he seemed disconcerted that she’d crossed the room so quickly.
“You know, I think I recognized a couple of people out there,” he said. “Discounting Brady. But it’s been years since my last visit. I was in high school, I think, working that summer before I went to NYU.”
“That makes sense. Some of our employees have been with us over twenty years.”
“I seem to remember there were more of them.”
She wet her bottom lip, wished she had a bottle of water in the office as her throat felt parched. “We’ve had to downsize. Like most of the businesses around here. It’s tough out there these days.”
He took a couple of steps, but didn’t head for a chair.
She wasn’t sure if he was waiting for her to sit first or— “What are you doing here?”
He got that startled look again. Eyes widened, lips parted, a tiny little jerk of his head. Then he smiled, and he went back to looking like regular Nate. Calm, confident, as if he knew something she didn’t. “I was hoping to talk for a few minutes, if that’s okay with you.”
All she had to do was say no. That she was due in a meeting, that it wasn’t a good time. Then she remembered his text, and her response.
“Well, it depends what you need because I’m not off-the-clock yet. But I did think that condo was a good deal.”
“I’m not here about real estate,” he said, taking yet another step.
She pulled her office chair closer, as if the desk weren’t enough of a barrier. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve canceled my date with Ariel,” he said. “I thought you should know.”
Shannon hadn’t expected that. Not even a little. “Why?”
Nate grinned again. “I hope it doesn’t make things uncomfortable between the two of you. It was nothing to do with her. I told her that, and I think she was fine. It wasn’t as if there was much for her to be disappointed about.”
“What are you talking about?” Shannon stepped away from the chair and rounded her desk. “You’re great looking, you work for Architects Without Borders or whatever, but the bottom line is you’re a hero who is helping all kinds of people who’ve just gone through the worst thing living can throw at them, and you’re funny. Not how you used to be—you and Danny, God, you were awful when you were kids with all that bathroom humor—but now there’s wit there which I wish I could say about my brother. So don’t go saying you’re not much, because that’s not true at all. She’d be lucky to go out with you.”
Nate’s stare was a mix of wonder and bewilderment, at least that’s what it looked like from her end. She had gotten carried away a little, but it was because she was nervous, and when she got nervous things got jumbled if she didn’t have a script or a routine or prepared answers to questions she’d been asked a hundred times.
“I meant,” he said carefully, “because we didn’t know each other. Me and Ariel. For all she knew I could be the worst date in New York. I don’t think I am, but that’s pretty subjective.”
She inhaled. Exhaled. Stared at his hazel eyes, at the gentleness of his smile. He had great teeth, just great. White and even, and his lips, they were exactly the right size for his face. He was really good-looking, but in a nonthreatening way. He didn’t beat you over the head with it. In fact, he made her relax, when she wasn’t being an idiot and thinking about what his body looked like under that suit. “Well, okay, then. Thanks for telling me.” She turned, walked back around the desk and pulled the chair in front of her once more.
* * *
N
ATE
BURST
OUT
LAUGHING
,
BUT
caught it fast with a quick fake cough covered by his hand. But damn, it was hard not to just let go. His head had been spinning since the minute he’d seen Shannon’s face when he’d walked into the plant. She’d seemed paralyzed and frantic at the same time. He couldn’t hear shit, but maybe that had made him notice the way her eyes got huge and her breathing quickened, and how she looked like she was waiting for the starting gun to go off.
The fists had made him doubt the wisdom in coming to see her. He never wanted to make her anxious, and if clenching her hands so tightly her knuckles paled wasn’t a sign of anxiety, he didn’t know what was.
The big giant question was what she wanted to run from. Him? Had he said something horrendous and not known it? Did something happen between the condo and the taxicab that had fundamentally changed her attitude toward him? Maybe it was a memory, an awful thing he’d done as a kid that she’d repressed until the moment he’d mentioned knishes.
But if she suddenly had realized he was someone to run from, what the hell was all that about his being a hero, and how he was great looking—
She thought he was great looking. That was cool. It wasn’t what he lived for, but it was nice to hear, especially when she was such a knockout.
It didn’t matter. Because knockout or not, he couldn’t do anything about it until he understood what her deal was. He waited until she was looking at him again, and when their gazes met, he said, “What’s going on, Shannon?”
She froze again. “What do you mean?”
“The cab yesterday. This morning. Have I done something? Said something to offend you?”
“No!” she said, way too loudly for the room. About an octave too high, as well. “No, don’t be silly.” Her cheeks had started to get pink and as she kept looking at anything but him, plucking at the top of her chair, moving sideways, away, a quarter-inch at a time— “Of course not.”
Nate turned his head, looked behind him, expecting a person, a camera, something that would explain this completely insane sketch-comedy routine of hers. As far as he could tell, it was the two of them, alone, and she’d gone off her rocker.
“Did you want coffee?” she asked, brightly. “I think we have doughnuts left, but they won’t be the good ones. Nothing cream-filled or glazed. Everyone goes for those first.”
“Nope, I’m good,” he said.
“So no coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
She continued to pluck at the back of her chair. Gave him a disarming smile when the time had stretched past the awkward stage. “Tea?”
“Shannon. Please? You’re my…” He hesitated, uncertain what to call her. “I admit we weren’t very close when we were kids, but we’re not kids anymore, and I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Getting to know you now. As a friend.” He stepped a little closer, afraid if he moved too far too fast, he’d spook her and she really would make a run for it. “As a woman. The other night at Molly’s, that was a good time, wasn’t it? And in the mornings when we’ve had coffee? I mean, you came to the rescue yesterday about the condo, and then, I don’t even know what happened. I must have upset you somehow, and if I did, I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional.”
“You didn’t.”
Her voice was so low he wasn’t completely sure he’d heard right. “What?”
“You didn’t. Upset me.”
“Then why am I making you so nervous? I don’t understand.”
She looked so uncomfortable, it made him want to do whatever it took to relax her. But he had no jokes at the ready, nothing, in fact, that would change things. Except to leave, and he wasn’t going to do that. It would drive him insane for this to continue, to not know. If it truly was his interest in her that was at the heart of things, he’d stop. He wasn’t sure how, but he would. He wouldn’t let himself linger over thoughts of her, would turn away when all he wanted to do was drink her in like champagne.
“It’s not you,” she said, and then it seemed as if she were going to explain everything. But she didn’t. Instead she lowered her head a fraction. “It’s work. There are so many people doing their own printing now, and we’ve had to make adjustments. The employees are having a difficult time. We’ve had to end the medical plan here, which is a blow to everyone. But it was bleeding us dry. I’m going to get new customers, though. Before you know it, we’ll be right back to full capacity. In fact, I’m meeting with a rep from Carnation foods. Printing can labels is a very lucrative market that we never pursued. And then there’s print-on-demand for novels, that’s a whole new field.”