As for her? She has an older brother, ten years her senior, but she pushes us away from that with a comment about her drink. I know she grew up in Texas, but as to where exactly, we manage not to get into it. I observe that she loves an espressomartini and leans salty over sweet. Beyond that, she remains a mystery.
The moment she takes a bite of the cheesecake we agreed to share, I ask a question that's been burning in the back of my brain for hours now. “At the bar, you said you needed a big change. Why?”
Toni's eyes widen a bit, and she chews a little longer than necessary. I don't do anything to break the silence. Just let it hang.
Please, give me something real. Let me see you.I beg silently, keeping my foolish mouth busy with the creamy sweetness of the dessert.
She licks her bottom lip. It makes me want to bargain, tell her she doesn't have to answer anything as long as she lets me know what that mouth tastes like.
Before I can give in to my lesser self, she answers. “I had been with someone for a while. We broke up. And...” She trails off, but I don't dare interrupt. “And the opportunity to get away from it all presented itself, so I took it.”
“Recently?”
She shrugs. “End of last year. I don't know if seven-ish months ago is recent.”
“When the hurt is big enough, it is.” I know all too well how long it can take to heal from a breakup, especially a bad one. “How’d Somerville, of all places, become your getaway?” I love my hometown, but it tends to get overshadowed by its more prestigious neighbors, Boston and Cambridge.
This earns me a tiny smile, and even that is enough to set my gut fluttering. “A woman I knew from the co-working space I used had a cousin who needed someone to take over her lease. Figured two thousand miles was enough distance between me and my problems.”
“And you'd never been here?”
“Never even set foot in New England,” she admits.
I don't try to hide my surprise. It's one thing to move to a place you're at least a little familiar with, another entirely to dive headlong into the unknown. “That's bold.”
“One way to put it,” she says with a sardonic laugh.
“How would you put it?”
“I don't know.” Her focus slips to somewhere in the middle distance, her teeth catching her bottom lip. “I've heard variations on reckless. Crazy. Unreasonable.” She spits the last word like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
“Most brazen decisions are a little of all those things.” Her expression softens. “But that's what other people have said. I don't care about them. I want to know how you view it.”
Toni opens her mouth only to snap it shut. She lets out a deep sigh. “Necessary.”
I nod, lifting my glass. “To necessary changes.”
“To brazen ones.” She hesitates before touching her glass to mine. “Sláinte?”
I couldn't stop the smile that question summoned if my life depended on it. “Sláinte.”
CHAPTER 4
Toni
“Why'dyou ask me to dinner?” The words fly from my lips before Cillian can swallow his whiskey.
His visible surprise makes me want to pull the words back, throw cash on the table, thank him for a nice evening, and run. At least if I did that, I'd be in control of ending this situation. Detonating it all before it goes too far.
As if sensing my latent flight response activating, Cillian's fingers slide from where his hand rested on the table to tangle loosely with mine.
“Honestly?” he asks, almost an echo of my earlier question.
“Always.” Truth, even if it stung, was better than convoluted lies or half measures.
He looks down to where our hands touch, tightening his grip ever so slightly. When he raises his gaze, I barely breathe. “I asked because you're not the kind of woman who comes around often.”
“Are you trying to tell me there's a shortage of abrasive redheads in Boston?” I ask, desperate to downplay the way his answer is making my heart crawl up my throat.
