Breathe Me In

  Maybe she should’ve gone in to meet him—

  Too late. The side door opened, and she watched as he came out and locked it behind him.

  So not her type. Seeing him now in the dim light from the overhead lamps, it struck her again. But what struck her more—and this had been true the very first time she saw him in Dermamania with Candace—was his broad shoulders. That mouth. Though she couldn’t see it from her angle right now, she could never forget it. Sitting in the waiting area of the parlor while Candace had gotten her first tattoo from Brian, Macy had stared at this guy’s mouth and thought it could eat her alive. Something about him made her weak in the knees, despite the shaved head and tattoos and piercings and the crass way he spoke. She’d never really been attracted to any of those four things in her entire life.

  But here she was.

  Meeting him. Alone. At night. A wild, party-hungry tattoo artist. The very thing she’d been trying to warn her best friend away from.

  Hell, her hypocrisy alone should’ve been reason enough for her to stay at home. How could Macy tell Candace to run from a guy like Brian when she was meeting his friend in the dead of night?

  He turned and saw her, a grin breaking over his face, and it was too late for any second thoughts. If he looked good when he was brooding or concentrating, he looked twice as good when he smiled. Hot. Dangerous. Full of mischief. Those dark brows pulled low over equally dark eyes that crinkled at the corners. He trotted over to her and she rolled down her window.

  “You came,” he said simply, not losing that smile.

  Yes, hopefully I will.

  The thought came from nowhere, and everywhere, and she hoped her physical response to it didn’t show all over her face. A slow burn began in all the places that didn’t need to burn. Not now. Not for him.

  “I wi—I mean, I did. I’m here. Looks like I’m here.” Shit! She took a breath, drew it deep down into her lungs and tried not to show the effort it cost her.

  What the hell was it about him? The sexiest cowboy she’d ever met—and she’d met plenty—had never left her this tongue-tied.

  Probably because she was in her element with guys like that. She was in her world. With him—whoever he was—she was out on Neptune. Starving for oxygen and a coherent thought where there was none to be found.

  This had been a bad idea. She even opened her mouth to say so, but he was opening her car door. “Come on.”

  “Um, where?”

  He shrugged those broad shoulders. “I don’t know. Don’t care. We can go for a ride if you like. Or we can go inside, or we can just sit out here and talk.”

  Going inside wasn’t her favorite of the options; the tattoo parlor freaked her out. She decided right then, before this went any further, that she needed to bite the bullet. “I’m sorry, but…what is your name?”

  The grin came back. “Call me Ghost.”

  “Ghost?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Well…I guess I just expected a…real name?”

  “How conventional.” He jerked his head toward the black car parked a few spaces away. “You coming out? Or you wanna do something else?”

  “Just a second.” She took a moment to roll up her window and grab her purse, then she slid out of her safe zone and stood with him in the night. For a moment, the only sound was the faint buzz of the streetlights overhead.

  What would they even talk about? She scuffed her boot on the asphalt and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She’d changed clothes before coming here, opting for jeans and a long-sleeve sparkly tee with her cowboy boots. Something to remind her of who she was and, well, something not quite so revealing. “There’s nothing much to do at this time of night on a Sunday, is there?”

  He chuckled. “You must not go to the right places.”

  “Well…I’m not really in the mood for shenanigans.”

  “Shenanigans. I like that.” He grabbed her hand. His was big and warm and she clasped it back without a second thought. “Let me introduce you to my pride and joy.”

  The car. Oh, yeah, she could see how it would be. A GTO, sleek and shiny black, practically glistened under the lights. “I love it. What year?”

  “’69.”

  She shot him a glance only to see him biting down on a grin. “Let me guess. Your favorite number.”

  “Macy!” he said with mock offense.

  “Come on. You were dying to say it.”

  “We practically just met, and you already think you know me so well.” He popped open the passenger door and gestured inside with a sweep of his arm, that smile promising all sorts of wicked adventures. “Hop in. I’ll show you what she can do.”

  “You’ll get me back in one piece, right?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Naw, you’re in excellent hands, love.” He nodded toward the car’s shadowy interior. “Let me prove it.”

  The endearment made her weak in the knees. Too many more of those, and she might let him prove it beyond his wildest fantasies. Though a guy like him probably had fantasies she couldn’t even fathom.

  A final moment of decision, and then she was walking toward him, feeling as if she was leaving behind everything she’d ever known…and it was okay.

  Five minutes later, as she white-knuckled her seat with one hand and tried to keep her hair attached to her head with the other since he’d dropped the top back, she was rethinking that. This was anything but okay.

  “We’re gonna die!” she screeched over the roaring wind and the hard-driving metal song blaring over the speakers.

  Laughing, he dropped his head back and howled.

  Crazy! He was absolutely crazy, but she’d known that, hadn’t she? They had to be doing 90, and nothing existed between her and the dark, rushing landscape and the ribbon of divided highway except this hunk of metal and a lap belt. Her heart thudded in her throat, and she was two seconds from covering her eyes when at last he eased off the accelerator. She glanced over to see him smirking at her. “Yeah, sorry. I just get caught up. Runs like a scalded dog, doesn’t she?”

  Her dad said that all the time. Macy smoothed her hair down and caught her breath. “Yeah. Do you have a glove compartment full of moving violations?”

  “Not currently.”

  After a somewhat mellow chorus, the song kicked back into overdrive. Thank the stars above that he didn’t. She had a sneaking suspicion his driving habits matched the speed of whatever music was playing. “God! What is this song?”

  “That’s Avatar, dude! ‘Smells Like a Freakshow.’”

  “That doesn’t help me any, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected it to.”

  And he’d called her dude. She liked love better.

  As soon as he steered back into the Dermamania parking lot and braked to a halt, she threw open the door and scrambled out.

  “Hey!” he protested.

  “Sorry, I’m just going to fall down and kiss the ground.” Seriously, her knees were shaking. But as she turned around and looked at him practically lounging in the driver’s seat of his hotter-than-hell car, she wondered if maybe she was only blaming their tremor on his driving habits when in reality it was something far, far more disturbing. The lingering adrenaline had to be the reason she could only think about crawling over him, straddling him there and—

  “I told you I’d get you back in one piece. I keep my promises.”

  “You actually didn’t promise that.”

  “Well… I said you were in good hands. I meant it.”

  It was too much. He was too sexy. She turned and fled toward her safe, secure Acadia, which she’d never pushed over the speed limit on any given highway.

  “Macy!” The sound of him getting out and slamming his door reached her just as she settled into her own driver’s seat. She didn’t know what she was thinking—she didn’t want to leave yet, but she didn’t want this attraction either. Before she could make any sort of
move whatsoever, he’d gotten in on the passenger side. “Hey, did I scare you that bad? Jesus. I’m sorry.”

  Yes, you scare me that bad. You. Just you.

  “It’s all right. It’s…” She didn’t want to explain. Speed, any sort of speed—it was another somewhat freaky thing for her ever since her horse-riding accident. But she didn’t want to tell him about that. Usually it didn’t affect her to this extreme. Usually very little affected her. Until now.

  “So what are your real thoughts on Candace and Brian?” he asked, and she appreciated the turn of the conversation. Macy, striving for normalcy herself, grabbed a ponytail holder from her gearshift and tied her hair back since it was probably a mess.

  “I don’t know him. I know she likes him a lot.”

  “Yeah, he seems pretty serious about her too.”

  “They have a tough road ahead, you know. Especially if her family blames him for her skipping out on that wedding yesterday, which they will. I know them as well as I know her. I was supposed to go to the wedding myself, but we had a horse down at my parents’ ranch and we couldn’t make it.”

  “They can’t blame him for that. He didn’t put a gun to her head.”

  “I don’t know what happened. I need to call her.”

  “I can promise you, he didn’t kidnap her. Or even twist her arm. If I were you, I’d leave them alone right now. It’s like they’ve been in a little cocoon since last night.”

  Macy chewed her thumbnail for a second. Poor Candace. “So what exactly happened last night?” she asked.

  “All I know is she came with us, we all went to the concert, and the two of them went off together alone all night. I guess they got a hotel room. We stayed at a friend’s.”

  Candace had spent the night with Brian. Macy sighed and let her head meet the back of her seat. Ever since Brian had come around, their friend Samantha had been joking with Candace about handing in her “V-card,” and it looked like she’d done so. Well…good for her. Really. It was about time. The girl was twenty-three and for whatever reason—probably fear of her parents’ disapproval or just their hassling her—she’d rarely dated. Macy had been waiting for the guy to come along that Candace would stand up for…she just hadn’t expected it to be a guy like Brian Ross.

  “So they went off. What did you get up to last night?” she asked on a whim. He chuckled and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Nothing. I’m a saint.”

  “Right.”

  His cell phone buzzed from his jeans pocket and he dug it out, giving a frustrated growl. “Dammit, I don’t know who this is.”

  “What is it?”

  “I keep getting texts from this person. They obviously know me but I don’t know them.”

  She made a move to pluck it from his hand, not really meaning to succeed, and laughed when he evaded her.

  “Hey! These are my private affairs.”

  “How many private affairs do you have? Are they private to each other too?”

  “Apparently they’re private to me. Like I said, I don’t know who the fuck this one is. Someone I talked to last night, I guess.”

  “While imbibing mass quantities, I take it?”

  “Well… I didn’t get laid last night. I do know that.”

  Wow. This was a suitable conversation for a…what was this? A semi-date? No. It was nothing. It was just two friends of friends getting to know each other.

  “But it’s a girl?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a girl. If it’s a guy I’m gonna be pissed.”

  “What’s she saying?”

  He thumbed his phone, scrolling back through messages, then began to read. “‘Hey you, did you make it home?’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Not gonna talk to me now?’ ‘Okay, I’m worried now! lol’ ‘I really hope you’re not dead in a fuckin’ ditch somewhere, that would suck, lol’ ‘Wasn’t that a good time last night? I hope we can hang out again next time you’re here!’ And this one just now: ‘You DID say you’d call me.’” He shook his head with a little scoff. “Damn. I always get stuck with the crazy.”

  “Have you responded?”

  “Hell no. ʼCause like I said, I always get stuck with the crazy.”

  “You must make quite an impression.”

  “Well...yeah.” He said it as if it should be patently obvious, and she laughed.

  “Hmm. Well, let’s just fix this right now.” This time when she tried, she succeeded in taking his phone from him, and he looked at her with a startled frown.

  “The fuck are you doing?”

  Macy grinned. She might try to avoid drama among her friends, but she didn’t mind it among complete strangers. It could be fun, in fact. And...oh hell, just like with this entire night, she didn’t know what had possessed her. She hit the Call button on the message and brought the phone to her ear.

  “Oh my God. You’re fucking crazy,” Ghost said, but the admiration in his eyes was obvious.

  “I have my moments—” She cut off abruptly as a feminine voice purred a hello, then forced steel into her own words. “Who is this, please?”

  The voice on the other end of the connection rose several notes. “Who is this?”

  “I asked you first. Is there some reason you’ve been texting my boyfriend all day?”

  After sputtering a few seconds, the girl seemed to find her spunk again. “Your boyfriend said he didn’t have a girlfriend last night, just so you know.”

  “That is good to know. Thank you for that. But that didn’t mean he wanted you to try to get the job, I’m sure, or he might have answered you by now. Don’t you think so?”

  Seething silence met her sugar-sweet question, then the connection went dead. She tossed the phone at him, and he barely managed to catch it as he stared at her in open admiration. “Problem solved, I think,” she said with a wink.

  “You’re awesome. She didn’t tell you who she was, though? It probably wouldn’t have rung a bell with me anyway.”

  “She didn’t. But if you need me again to help clean out the crazy, just let me know.”

  “I will. I definitely will. In fact I have an ex I’d love to see you go up against. But we won’t get into all that. It just puts me in a bad mood.”

  “No exes. Okay.” She didn’t much like discussing hers, either, but she was enjoying the hell out of this. “What else is going on in your life? Anything I can help with right now?”

  “Nah. No quick fixes.” He gestured toward the darkened building in front of them. “Just whatever’s going on in there. And I’m in a band…we’re on a bit of a hiatus right now. My family is mostly in Oklahoma. My grandmother’s not doing so well. I’ve been going up there whenever I get a chance, which isn’t often enough lately.”

  “Oh? Do your parents live there too?”

  “Both my parents are dead.”

  “Oh. Oh…God, I’m sorry.” She leaned forward a little to get a better view of his face, since she could only see him in profile. “Really, I’m so sorry.”

  He’d busied himself tracing his thumb around the edges of his cell phone. “Car wreck when I was six. Nah, it’s all right. It was so long ago, I barely remember them.”

  “Still, though. I can’t imagine the pain being any less. Seems…seems it would hurt just as much to not have many memories of them.” She thought of her own parents and couldn’t even imagine.

  He shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t know. I remember the wreck, though. I was in the car. I have no idea why it was only me with them—I have a brother and sister too, but it was only me. Probably because I was being a little shit and wouldn’t stay with a babysitter or something.”

  God, what did you say to something like that? Did he even want to talk about it? She was at a total loss, so after a moment she said the first thing that came to mind—probably not wise, but it was all she had. “All that, and still you like to live close to the edge, huh?”

  He looked at her then. “I do?”

  “Well…compared to someone l
ike me, yes, you do. At least…me the way I am now.”

  “So...you weren’t always the way you are now? Interesting.”

  Now they were skirting the borders of her taboo. “I used to be different. Yeah.”

  “How so?”

  “A little wilder, maybe? More...I don’t know, invincible. Or at least feeling like I was.”

  “And now you’re just a killjoy,” he teased. She laughed and gave him a little shove. “Nah. Are you sure you’ve change that much? You did just call up a chick you’ve never even met to lie for me. Not everyone would do that.”

  “Oh, I’ve changed.” She tried to keep the bitter note out of her voice, but it crept in regardless.

  “Why?”

  “I just…decided to.” That was it. That was all he got. For now.

  He didn’t look convinced, and she hadn’t expected him to, but hopefully he would drop it anyway. “I think we’re both doing a lot of dancing around each other right now, Macy.”

  Starting with the fact that he hadn’t given her his real name. She wasn’t about to dredge up any deep, dark secrets from the basement of her soul when he hadn’t even put that much on the table yet. No way. He was an intriguing guy; that much she knew. Maybe that was all he needed to remain to her. A cool guy with mystique. She didn’t need to be the one delving behind those dark, enigmatic eyes.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  He sat staring thoughtfully ahead, his elbow propped on the door and his hand near that enticing mouth. She wondered what he’d do if she drew it away and put her lips on his. Hard to believe this man who seemed to exude raw sex hadn’t made one move to get into her pants yet. He hadn’t even really put forth any innuendos.

  Macy fought desperately against the little part of her that was disappointed. An achy, needy little part. God. It had been a while for her. Too long.

  The million dollar question was, if he made a move, would she let him? Really?

  It almost reminded her of high school…sitting in the car in the dark with a guy, will-he-or-won’t-he scenarios running through her head, along with her imagined responses. Her gaze strayed to his hand, and she pictured it on her thigh, its weight, its warmth pressing through the denim.