“I don’t like action flicks,” he finally said. “I hate them. Whatever you like. A romantic comedy is as good as anything.”
I thought that was promising.
“And where would you like to eat?” he asked.
“Surprise me. No fast food, though. I do expect a sit down meal.”
He took in a deep breath, let it out. “I’m just going to pick wrong. If you could tell me where you want to go, we’d both have a better evening.”
I studied him. This was a foreign process to him, I could see that. And so I made it easier on him.
“Okay. I’ll find the right show time, and I’ll pick the restaurant. But you’re driving, mister.”
He flashed his teeth at me in what could only be called a sinister grin. “Of course I am. That was never a question.”
I’d suggested it, but the way he said it was a bit infuriating. I wasn’t the least bit surprised by his statement, though. He would be the type that always had to drive.
He hadn’t even let me hold my own dog’s leash on this walk.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
I’d taken my cell phone with me on the walk as there were a few clients I was expecting calls from. When it started buzzing, though, and I saw who was actually calling, I cursed.
My fucking ex.
He would call today. Talk about the worst luck in the world.
Or worse, had Deborah already called and told him she’d seen me and Heath?
Dammit.
“What’s the matter?” Heath asked tonelessly. His eyes were on my phone, and I had this strange thought that he knew who was calling.
The lock screen had lit up with EDUARD CALLING, and it was likely he could have read it from where he was standing.
Instead of answering, I was studying him.
He was fascinating to me. Expressionless, toneless, but all of it somehow telling me that he was agitated.
I tried to shake off the suspicion, but it just wasn’t working.
“So how much do you know about me?” I asked him slowly. “How much did you uncover in your . . . background check?”
“I know that’s your ex-husband calling. I know you divorced him because he’s a cheating piece of shit.”
Wow. He’d apparently done his research. I was torn on how freaked out I should be about that.
“Why’s he bugging you?” he asked, through his teeth. “I know you don’t have anything to do with him anymore. What does he want?”
I grimaced. I really hated to talk about this. “He does this every so often, calls to chew me out. He thinks it’s my fault that his sons don’t want anything to do with him anymore. But if I had to guess why he’s calling right now, I’d say it’s because of Deborah, that neighbor you noticed I don’t like. Remember how I said she’d tell my ex about seeing you and me together? I didn’t think she’d work this fast, but here it is.”
My phone started buzzing again. Irritated, I answered with, “What do you want, Eduard?” My tone was biting.
My ex-husband took immediate exception to my tone. “Is that any way to greet the father of your children?” he shot back.
“What do you want?” I repeated.
He cut right to the chase. “How old is he?”
Ugh. He was so predictably unpleasant about everything. Divorce brought out the worst in everyone, but Eduard had sunk to new levels of low over the past year. “Have you been talking to your good friend Deborah?”
“At least older than our sons, I hope?” He was in a mood. Usually he didn’t escalate this quickly into straight asshole when he called. Generally he tried cajoling first.
“Not doing this,” I bit out, already thoroughly annoyed.
“I had no idea you were such a cougar, Lourdes.”
“Not doing this,” I repeated, about a second away from hanging up on him.
“Maybe that’s why we didn’t work out. I was too old for you.”
That was too much. “It’s not a mystery why we didn’t work out. You were sleeping with my ex-best friend.” I caught myself, just barely, from resorting to name-calling.
“You never even let me explain about that!” His voice was close to a shout in my ear.
Oh. Ugh. This man. How had I been fooled by him for so long?
“None of this matters,” I said, voice going very blank and cold. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I was starting to suspect that he enjoyed our hostile interactions. Why else would he go out of his way to make them happen?
“Tell me why you’re calling,” I said slowly. “And it had better be productive, or I’m hanging up in exactly five seconds.”
“You’re lucky, you know. I could have pressed assault charges against both you and Rafael for what you did to me.”
Ugh. This man. Grrr.
He rendered me incapable of coherent thoughts he was so frustrating to deal with.
“Are you threatening to press charges against your own child right now?” I shot back, astounded that Eduard was even capable of disgusting me more than he usually did. “Is this a joke?”
“If I had known, if I’d had any clue, that you were vindictive enough to turn my children against me—”
I hung up in the middle of his tirade.
“Assault?” Heath’s tone was sardonic.
I looked up at him, smiling ruefully. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m here all day.”
I sighed, and let it spill.
“For the record, I’m normally a pacifist.”
“Noted,” Heath drawled.
“But, and I guess you know this, or at least part of it, I caught him cheating on me. He butt dialed me while he was having sex with my ex-best friend. I heard enough to be certain that it was them and what they were doing.”
I paused, trying to read his expression. “My reaction, more than anything, was fury. I became so furious that I did assault him.”
“How?”
I always felt like a psycho retelling this story, especially now that I was so completely free of my ex. But I told him. If you wanted someone to open up to you, of course you had to reciprocate.
“I waited until he got home, honestly not knowing what to say to him, and he acted like everything was normal when he greeted me. He went right away to take a shower, and that was when I lost my temper. You see, he’d done that a lot, come in from wherever and gone immediately to shower. He must have been stepping out on me for ages, and I hadn’t a clue.”
I studying him a while, trying and failing to gauge his reaction, and finally continued, “I grabbed the Fabuloso and his belt.”
“I like where this is headed,” Heath noted, and it made me smile. At least he didn’t think I was a complete nutcase. Yet.
“I sprayed the ground right in front of the shower. It’s very smooth marble. The second he stepped out, he slipped, cracked his head hard on the counter, and landed on his ass.”
“Good,” Heath said succinctly.
I smiled. I should have known this wouldn’t remotely shock him. “That’s when I took a belt to him, buckle first.”
“Good,” he repeated.
“I beat the shit out of him, beat him until he ran out of the house, naked, just to get away from me. Then I locked him out. Filed for divorce as soon as humanly possible.”
“That doesn’t explain why he’s threatening your son with assault charges.”
“Rafael, my oldest, beat him up rather severely when he found out what his father had done. Still, I can’t believe Eduard would threaten his own child like that.”
“He’s a scumbag. Want me to take care of him for you?”
I felt my eyes growing wide. If it were anyone else, I’d have assumed they were joking. “Do you mean . . . ?”
“I’m not talking about killing him. I guarantee I can get him to leave you alone without resorting to that.”
Now that was half tempting. But I restrained myself.
“He’s nothing I can’t handle. To be
perfectly honest, he just annoys me at this point. And the assault charges are bogus. If he was going to do that, he’d have done it ages ago, when he could’ve proven it.”
“Why do you think he’s still harassing you? And why is he so concerned about who you’re seeing? Do you think he’s trying to get you back?”
“God, no. But, you know, it’s started to occur to me that there’s a motivation behind it, and it’s not that he wants to see more of our sons.”
“What then?”
“I . . . ” God, I hated talking about this. “Well, you see, I’ve always had I guess what you could call a trust fund, for lack of a better word. From my father. And I’ve had a few successful careers over the years. Long story short, I’ve got a bit of money saved up.” Several hundred thousand, to be exact. “And my ex knows it. He thinks he can use this to somehow get more money from me.”
“Motherfucker.” Heath’s voice was low, and his tone managed to achieve a rather intriguing combination of being both blank and succinct. “You let me know if you change your mind, okay? I’d have no problem whatsoever putting that guy in his place.”
I nodded, wondering what to do with him.
We started walking again.
“You should show me your house. Didn’t you say it was around here?”
He took a deep breath, and I just knew he was about to lie to me. “It’s a mess,” he hedged. “I’ll take you there on another day, after I’ve straightened up.”
“Are you telling me that you’re a slob?”
“Yeah,” he said, no hesitation.
I didn’t believe that for one second, not any of it. He either didn’t live around here, or there was another reason he wasn’t bringing me back to his place.
Dammit. And we’d been doing okay, making progress. But at this simple lie, some seeds of suspicion were planted.
What if he had a live-in girlfriend?
Fuck. What if he had a wife?
“Do you have a girlfriend . . . or a wife?” I asked him point blank, watching his face carefully.
A look of very pure annoyance crossed his face, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. He was genuinely offended at the question, and I found that boundlessly reassuring.
“No. Of course not. I wouldn’t be with you now if I did. Is that what you think of me?”
Now I was on the defense. Oh, he was good. “No,” I said carefully. “It’s just never bad to be clear, I figure.”
He grunted (this one was annoyed, I thought), and we started walking again.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Next, I took him to my gym, because he asked what I liked to do on my day off, and my first and favorite choice, spending time with my boys, seemed inappropriate. I didn’t even want to guess what my sons would think of Heath and our age difference.
My next few choices were shot down emphatically. Shopping was not his thing, and I had a good feeling that I wouldn’t be changing his mind about that.
And no, he hadn’t changed his opinion about me photographing him.
So we settled on a plan. We’d hit the gym, then I’d head back to my place to shower, and he’d go grab a few things from his place, make a few phone calls (for work), then come to pick me up for our date.
We actually went over all of this, every detail. Heath seemed to think the day needed to be handled with a well thought out strategy. I figured this was just another one of his quirks.
“I’m guessing you’ll head straight to the free weights,” I said, after I’d checked us both in. I got a few guest passes every month, so Heath had been able to accompany me without a hitch.
“I’m guessing you’ll start out with cardio,” he returned.
We smiled at each other. So we did have a few things in common that didn’t involve a bed.
I found a treadmill with the best view of the free weight area, tossed my hand towel across the top, and started stretching, my eyes on Heath. I figured that watching him workout would be a treat.
And he did not disappoint.
When we’d been going over the day’s plans, he’d mentioned to me that he didn’t have a gym membership anywhere, or even a home gym, and I’d had a hard time believing it. He was in perfect shape. Beyond perfect into mind-blowing, to be precise. No one got that way without work.
But, watching him work out, I quickly caught on why it made sense.
I’d clocked him as military, and his workout was surely proof of it. It was grueling, but called for little beyond some room on the floor and a pull-up bar that took a lot of weight.
I didn’t even realize I was counting his pushups in my head until a voice from the machine next to me started counting off the numbers in a mutter. They were that impressive.
I was running by then, but I shot a glance to my right, taking in the other woman who was shamelessly watching Heath go through his routine.
She was pretty. And at least ten years younger than I was. And clearly into Heath.
I started looking around the room, noticing all of the female attention he was getting.
I could certainly see why.
He didn’t pace himself at all, going through his routine at full speed, and in a way that could only be described as punishing. Even in a large building full of people in excellent shape, his body and methods caught the eye.
When he got to the pull-up bar, I even heard one of the fawning women gasp, and I couldn’t really blame her.
His pace was astounding. If this was the end of the world, and the only way you could save humanity was to do as many pull-ups as possible, Heath was definitely going to save us all. And it wasn’t just the pull-ups. This was how he approached every new maneuver.
I had to squint and do a double take when I saw the size of the weights he used for a long round of surrenders.
At one point, a very hot young brunette approached him, smiling, flirting from across the room.
Oh wow. I was jealous, and it was awful.
I was not the jealous type. I’d always been very confident in myself, had felt secure even with my cheating husband, until of course I found out he was a cheat and my best friend was a home-wrecking whore.
But even then, rather than getting jealous, I’d gotten rid of the dead weight that was my loser of a husband. I’d known it was he that was flawed, not me, and I’d moved the hell on with my life.
I was not a jealous soul.
Or so I had thought.
But then Heath did something that I found made me feel kind of wonderful.
He blew the girl off rather aggressively, with a less than friendly go away motion of his hand, and a sharp, short shake of his head.
She went away, looking baffled.
It was hard not to smile about that.
I wrapped up my cardio at the fifty-minute mark, and he was still going strong, so I hit some of the lighter weight machines, doing lower body reps and mourning the loss of my perfect view of him.
I only had two machines left in my rotation when he showed up at my side, looking oiled up with sweat and good enough to eat.
“You finished?” I asked him on an exhale.
He jerked his shoulder up in a half shrug. “Whenever you are.” He was studying me intently. “We’ve been at this for hours. How do you never sweat?” As he spoke, his eyes raked over me.
I did sweat, it was just minimal, and what was there was hard to see, but there were a few spots: Into my hair, but the dark color hid it well. And strangely, the outsides of my elbows.
I showed him said elbows. He traced a finger over the slight bit of moisture there.
“That’s it?” he asked.
I nodded.
He opened his mouth to say something, I’ll never know what, because he was interrupted by another hot young thing brushing up beside him.
“I saw you working out,” she told him, smacking her gum. She had one of those Kardashian accents that made me cringe, and she was acting like I wasn’t even there or like she assumed he wasn’t
with me. It was infuriating, and I felt another hot stab of awful jealousy.
But his focus was so sharply on me that the feeling went as quickly as it came. He didn’t even notice, let alone care about all of the attention and admiration being sent blatantly his way.
“Do you mind backing up?” he said tersely, not so much as glancing at her. “You’re in my personal space, and I don’t even fucking know you.”
She sent him a dirty look and stalked away.
I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh. He was brutal.
“I hate your gym,” he told me. “It’s a fucking meat market. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
I bit my lip, again to stifle a laugh. I couldn’t really blame him. I got more than my fair share of male attention on a pretty regular basis, but it was never anywhere approaching what he’d been put through in a few short hours.
“Let’s get out of here,” I responded.
We went for coffee next door to my gym.
“What kind of music do you like?” I asked him.
Of course he turned it on me. How very Heath. “What kind do you like? I bet I can guess.”
It struck me at that moment how we were looking at each other, with near twin expressions, if you could discount his broken, lifeless eyes. We were smiling at each other like old friends, neither of us hiding our obvious affection for the other.
What strange things we brought out in each other. Strange, wonderful things.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “Guess.”
“You like everything. You’re a moody listener. Whatever strikes your fancy.”
Dammit. “It’s like you know me.”
One of his big, rough fingers stroked feather light over my cheekbone. “I want that. To know you. I really want that.”
Sweet, strange man. “My turn.”
His smile widened, and it nearly took my breath away. I’d never seen him do anything quite like it, all of his inherent meanness gone from his face, the ever present tough guy gone for one brief moment.
He looked happy. God, he was gorgeous. And so young. It was easy to forget.
“Go for it,” he prompted. “I can’t wait to hear what you’ll come up with.”