Penny said, “My friends and I had crushes on him for months after this.”
Yes, he was a teenager’s dream, with all that tragedy surrounding him, and those dark eyes and slightly hollow cheeks.
“Well,” Ellen gave one last feeble effort, “he dines out on it now.”
Penny let out a growl of impatience. “Half his board resigned, Ellen. They didn’t want to work for a kid right out of college. They wanted his family to sell, but he wouldn’t. He knew if anyone else took it over, the mills would all be gone within five years.” She gestured to the still of him. “Why are you so against him?”
Ellen looked at her sandwich wrapper, now twisted into a rope in her hands, then up at Penny. “’Cos I’m a judgmental bitch?”
Penny laughed. “Well, yeah, you have been a little,” she said.
Ellen put her head into her hands, tugging on her hair. “I’ve been such a bitch,” she said.
“One thing I know about guys,” Penny said, gathering up the remains of their lunch. “They can’t resist a pretty face. And an apologetic pretty face, oh mama.”
• • •
She had so much to do. She should be inspecting the carpet of the ballroom for weird and funky stains from the annual conference of chemical biologists, or biological chemists, or whoever it had been. She should be checking the roster for reception for Saturday night, to make sure Penny was on, because she’d said if she wasn’t, she would be coming for Ellen in her sleep. She should be making an appointment to get her hair done for the ball. She should be contacting bloody Claire Holland with her top three location requests. She certainly should not be sitting on this bench for the third night in a row, bundled in the warmest coat and gloves she had, pepper spray in one hand and keys poking between the knuckles of the other, waiting for someone who might not come.
She was going to have to give up after tonight. Tomorrow was Friday: she would be up most of the night, getting everything into the ballroom and making sure it looked right. She couldn’t skip out on that.
It was nine o’clock; she would give herself one more hour. She hid her face as much as possible in her scarf and looked beyond the light from the streetlamp above her.
It was ridiculous to imagine that she already knew which outline was his in the dark, but she was standing before he got into the pool of light.
He slowed down as soon as he saw her. She pushed her hood off and pulled down the scarf so he could see it was her. Her heart was lodged in her throat, or she would have said his name.
Kane stopped altogether, still several feet away from her. “What are you doing out here?” he said, his voice quiet but carrying in the cold air. “It’s so late.”
Aware that she was changing many things about herself with each step, she walked up to him, dropping her pepper spray and keys into her pocket as she did so. “I couldn’t call you through Anna,” she said. He was in a sweatshirt this time, and he still smelled delicious to her. “And I couldn’t think of any other way to see you.”
Even sitting here, alone, in the dark, had broken her self-imposed rules. And she had been afraid. She’d been on high alert for every minute of those two hours a night. But this was more important: standing in front of him, accepting that looking up into his eyes was about the most exciting thing she could do, that the heat coming off him was curling into her chest and making her want to lean into him, to be the one to push that forelock of hair out of his eyes.
She needed to apologize. Everyone made fun of her for how easily she said sorry. But she just stood and looked at him, and breathed him in, and inside she trembled with how badly she wanted to kiss him.
Instead she said, “Can I buy you dinner?”
“Now?” He looked down at himself.
With his head down, his hair was right in front of her. She lifted up one hand to touch it, but he’d already raised his eyes back to her. “Just...” she said, leaving her hand in mid-air. “Just to a pub, nothing fancy. I... I meant to pay for half the other day. So I owe you.” For more than a meal.
“All right,” he said, still looking at her very hard. Then he took her hand and tucked it through his arm. “All right?”
“Uh huh,” she answered, giddy with the pleasure of letting herself be next to him. They walked a few steps out of the light, toward the street. This was the first time in four years that she’d been completely alone with a man, the first time in forever that a man had made her legs feel like noodles just from the smell of him.
In for a penny, in for a pound. She turned to face him. As Kane gave her a puzzled smile, she reached up and pulled his mouth down to hers.
His hair was damp under her fingers, his skin cool in the November air, but his lips were warm and soft, and Ellen moved hers slowly over them, learning him.
She opened her eyes—she hadn’t realized she’d closed them—and he was looking at her, his dark eyes and obnoxiously thick lashes an inch from her. One of his arms went around her waist but the other rested on her arm, as if he was about to push her away.
Put your arms around me,she begged silently. Every bone and muscle strained to be held. It had been so long... She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the simple pleasure of being enveloped in a strong man’s arms.
She was even more dizzy now; he smelled sweaty and forest-y, and she could give two shits that he smoked, because somehow the scent of him altogether went straight to her gut. She put both hands in his hair and kissed him again, and now Kane got with the program and wrapped his arms around her, which made her legs buckle with relief. The heat of his tongue against hers made her shiver, and she turned her head to deepen the kiss, while Kane groaned and braced her against the full length of him, leaning back against a tree.
This wasn’t the kind of kiss she remembered having with Edward, or any of the handful of men she’d gone out with before him. She was hot from her feet to the top of her head; her cheeks were on fire as she pressed herself more closely into him. She forgot that he was not safe, or maybe she remembered, and that was what made him so exciting. She forgot that she was the epitome of poise and calm, that she hated being around men, that she had eliminated passion from her life because it led to a lack of control. She was in control despite the passion; when she changed the kiss, Kane followed. When she grazed her fingernails against the back of his neck, she made him groan again, and her fire flamed higher.
A few minutes, or a century or two, later, Kane slowly broke off the kiss. “Look at you,” he said, running a finger down her cheek, giving her a sweet smile that made her melt even more.
She blushed some more, aware, now that there was a tiny gap between them, how well she’d glued herself to him. When she backed up and put her weight on her own feet, Kane took her arm in his again and they began walking, though they were much closer now than before.
But when they reached the crossing, she thought, Don’t make it so easy for yourself, and pulled away. “I shouldn’t have said all those things I said.” There was something in her throat. Shame, probably. “And I shouldn’t have chopped you in the neck like that.”
Kane laughed loud enough to echo down the street and tucked his arm around her more closely. “Ellen, honey, it is not even funny how thoroughly you are forgiven. Come buy me a burger.”
