U ME
I scramble to unsend the message, and for a few, blissfully quiet moments, I think I’ve managed to do it.
Until my phone lights up with rapid-fire messages.
Charlie: Too late, bitch. I already saw it.
Dorothy: Where are those little pictures you can send?
Aubrey: GIFs?
Dorothy: No, the little yellow guys.
Aubrey: Oh, emojis. Push the little globe on the bottom left.
Lauren: I’m going to bet she meant that to go in a private message to me.
Aubrey: What message? I didn’t see a message.
Charlie: About how she has the hots for the mayor.
Harrison: Ladies, where’s the fire?
Harrison: Oh.
Harrison: GROSS.
Lauren: Do you need me to call you? This sounds serious.
Harrison: Get me out of this group chat. I do not need to know anything about my sister’s love life.
Charlie: But consider all of the things you can do with this information, H.
Harrison: *barf*
Harrison: Oh, that’s a good point.
Aubrey: Are you okay, Cora? Do you need us to come get you?
Lauren: Everyone, chill out. Cora, I’m going to call you.
Just before Lauren’s call pops up on my screen, I see a string of emojis from Dorothy, most of them involving vegetables that are longer than they are wide. I grimace as I answer Lauren’s call and press the phone to my ear.
“Well, my day just got a lot more interesting,” she says by way of greeting.
I groan, but before I can say anything, a rapid banging rattles the door. I lurch to my feet and yank it open, revealing a balding man with squinty eyes I recognize from the session I was just in. He shoves past me holding his stomach and looking like he ate too many bean burritos at lunch. As I rush to move out of the way so he can close the door, an almost cartoonish pfft sound squeaks out, followed by a noxious smell. I get as far away as I can and tuck myself into a corner.
“Hello? Cora? Are you there?” Lauren is saying. “What’s going on? Did you lose a bet or something? Have you been kidnapped?”
I perk up with an idea. “Ha ha,” I intone, playing it up to sound convincing. “You got me. I lost a bet to Adam and had to text everyone I know that he’s good looking. You know him. Always looking to stroke his ego.” I fake-laugh to really drive it home.
Lauren is silent for a few seconds before she says, “God, you are a terrible liar.”
My shoulders slump forward, defeated. “I know,” I whine. “I absolutely did not mean for that to go to the group chat.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says as if brushing this away. “I’ll distract them.”
“What is possibly going to distract them from the fact that I admitted that my archnemesis, Adam Sullivan, is hot?”
“I’ll think of something.” She pauses. “Or I’ll bring over like twenty bottles of wine and get them all drunk. Now, can we please get to the important topic at hand? What is going on with you?”
“I don’t know,” I hiss. “We got all dressed up for cocktail hour last night, and he was funny and kind. And then he fed me pizza and we watched House Finders —”
Lauren whistles. “That is a sexy show.”
“Not you, too,” I say, disgusted.
“Agree to disagree. Continue.”
I breathe out and start talking a mile a minute, as if saying it faster will make it hurt less. Like ripping off a bandage. “Ugh, fine. He came out of the shower without a shirt on, and holy fuck , those abs. So I must have been dreaming about them last night because when I woke up, the pillows were all moved, and my hand was on them, and—”
“Wait, you slept in the same room?” Lauren interrupts.
“Yes. His assistant neglected to book me my own.”
“In the same bed ?”
“There’s only one in the room. Keep up, Alcott!”
Lauren cackles maniacally, and I tap my foot as I wait for her to calm down and actually be of assistance in my moment of crisis. Thankfully, she recovers quickly. “Oh, you are in deep shit, my friend.”
“I mean, I probably just need to get laid, right? It’s been a while. Seeing any man shirtless would get the imagination going at this point.” Just then, Mr. Bean Burritos exits the bathroom. An older woman tries to enter behind him, takes one whiff, and turns the other way. “Well, not any man.”
“Oh, you sweet summer child,” she sings. “I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come around.”
People are still filing out of the ballrooms after their sessions, and the hallway is starting to get loud, so I turn to face the wall and plug my ear with my finger. “What are you talking about?”
“Adam Sullivan is hot, and he has had a crush on you for a long time.”
“Stop it,” I insist, even as my insides flip at the very idea that these feelings might be reciprocated.
“Cora, you’d have to be blind not to see it. The smirks, the taunting, the way his eyes get all glinty whenever you’re around. The offer to drive you to this conference for an extra hour with you in his fancy car.”
“He drove because he has all-wheel drive.”
“Sure.” She doesn’t sound convinced.
I rear back as my brows pinch together. It feels like a pinball is bouncing off bumpers in my brain as I try to piece together what she’s saying to me. “He taunts me because he hates me.”
She hums skeptically. “The taunting reads much more like a middle school boy who doesn’t know how to act around the girl he likes.”
“That’s ridiculous.” But is it? The highlight reel in my mind is on overdrive, and I don’t know if it’s reality or the power of suggestion, but maybe his teasing has been edged with humor. Maybe those gray eyes of his have been sparkling with more than just ire.
As if she can tell that I’ve come to a similar conclusion, Lauren’s self-assured “Mmm-hmm” comes over the line.
“Okay, let’s say you’re right. What do I do ?”
“Have fun. You’ve got one more day of this conference, and one more night of sleeping in the same bed together.” I can practically hear her eyebrows waggling from here. “Make the most of it. Or don’t. But don’t worry so much. Try not planning every move for once.”
I blink several times as her words settle in. “I feel like that was a thinly-veiled insult.”
“Oh shoot, there’s a wine emergency,” she says, not at all persuasively. “Gotta go! Good luck! Call me later!” And she hangs up.
I’m left blinking at my phone for a moment, no better off than I was before she called. My back is still to the hallway, though it has gotten a lot quieter. Everyone must have gone up to their rooms to prepare for more networking and drinks tonight. I should probably get up there, too, or Adam will wonder where I went. Still dazedly staring at my phone, I turn around. I don’t even take two steps before I run right into a very hard—very familiar—set of pecs.
Adam’s spiced cologne washes over me, and I stumble backward. He reaches out to cup my elbows to steady me, but all that does is make my knees weaker than they already are.
“Woah, Cora. Are you okay?” His deep voice rumbles straight to my core as the warmth of his hands seeps through my sleeve.
I don’t know what sensation to focus on. My senses are completely overloaded with everything that is Adam. He’s everywhere and all around me, and I can’t think of anything but him . So, I blurt out the first thing I can think to say.
“How long have you been standing there?”
His low chuckle should be disconcerting, but instead it soothes me, like a balm to my jittery soul. “I’d never eavesdrop on a private conversation, if that’s what you’re implying.”
I take a step back from him, immediately regretting the loss of his hands on me, even though I’m glad for the space that allows me to think a little more clearly. “I’m not implying anything.”
He eyes me up and down, and there’s that smirk again. Was Lauren right? Is that expression loaded with more than his characteristic brashness?
“Okay,” he says slowly. “You ran out of the session so fast, I thought you might have had too many of those bean burritos at lunch. I came to check on you.”
I wince at the memory of Mr. Bean Burrito’s bathroom visit. “My burrito intake was responsible and appropriate, thank you.”
A genuine laugh falls from his lips, and the sound of it is decadent like hot chocolate. I shiver despite the warm gooeyness taking over my insides.
“Well, the conference food sucks,” he says, “and if I have to do more schmoozing at cocktail hour tonight, I think I might combust.” He hooks a hand around the back of his neck and rubs there, suddenly looking almost sheepish. “I was thinking… would you want to go out to dinner tonight? I know a great Italian place nearby. Easy to get to, now that the storm has cleared up. And I promise, no talking about work.”
“Oh, um…” I trail off. Between my revelation and Lauren’s suggestions, I’m completely off-balance. A probably romantic Italian dinner sounds lovely, but also dangerous. Then again, so is his hand at the small of my back and the useless barrier of pillows we’ve tried to set up between us. I straighten as I tug at the hem of my shirt to adjust it. “Shouldn’t we do some more networking? That is why we’re here, after all,” I say with much more confidence than I feel.
“We’re here to learn about leadership and downtown beautification, which we did today. A lot. Come on, Cora. Don’t you ever break any rules?” He winks at me then, and the motion that usually irritates the shit out of me now feels special. Like a private, inside joke.
Trying to keep up my facade of being unaffected by him, I roll my eyes. “Fine. But dinner and drinks are on you.”
La Dolce Italia is an adorable little place with a red awning over a large, oak door. The inside of the restaurant is made to look like a patio in Venice, complete with a mural of gondolas floating on the Grand Canal.
We are seated right away, and Adam orders wine for the table almost as quickly. The wine list is extensive, so I’m glad he seems to know what’s good. I wouldn’t have the first clue where to start.
We study the menu for longer than necessary, the only noise the clatter of silverware against the plates of the other diners. We order our food, then sip our wine—something rich and dark red—in silence for a while before I inevitably break.
“So, what got you started in risk analysis?” I ask.
Adam pins me with a look over his wine glass. “I promised you we wouldn’t talk about work.”
I scoff. “I figured you meant our work. Not what you do outside the mayor’s office.”
He shrugs at this and swirls the liquid in his glass. He studies it while humming softly. “Work is work.”
“Fine.” I huff. “What do you do for fun?”
“Torture you at city council meetings, mostly,” he quips. At my cocked eyebrow, his full lips tug into a half-smile, and he takes a piece of bread from the basket at the center of the table. “I ski, sometimes. And, uh…” He tears the bread in half and pops a piece into his mouth. “I write,” he says around his mouthful.
The sip of wine I just took gets stuck in my throat, and I cough to dislodge it. “I’m sorry,” I say, lightly hitting my chest. “You write?”
Adam’s mouth forms a thin line, but his gray eyes sparkle with humor. “Don’t act so surprised.”
“Okay, but ‘write’ is a pretty broad term. What do you write? Poetry? Novels?” My eyes widen, and I lean forward. “Do you write steamy MM romance under a secret pen name? I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
He chuckles, popping the other torn piece of bread into his mouth and chewing. “No, nothing exciting like that. I mostly write op-eds for newspapers. But I did have a stint in college where I wrote some truly terrible poetry.”
Our food is delivered, temporarily interrupting the conversation. The waiter tops off our wine, and we both take a quiet sip before I say, “I’d pay a lot of money to read twenty-year-old Adam Sullivan’s poetry.”
“Mmm,” he hums as he swallows some pasta. “I bet you would.” A bit of sauce lands on his lips, and I have to fight the urge to reach over the table and wipe it off just to feel if his lips are as soft as they look. Luckily, he catches it with his napkin.
A piece of fettuccine slips off my fork as I twirl it around. I gently push it back, conveniently avoiding looking at him for a moment to gather myself. “What got you started writing?”
“We moved around a lot when I was a kid. Military brat,” he explains. “I spent a lot of time with my mom. You might have guessed she’s really special to me. I told her all my thoughts. She was basically a saint, listening to me talk and talk.”
“I can relate,” I remark sardonically.
He purses his lips and narrows his eyes. “When I was about ten, she bought me a notebook and a pen, and the rest is history.”
“What do you opine about?” I cut a piece of chicken and sweep it, along with more fettuccine, onto my fork.
“Lots of things.” He pushes some of his pasta around his plate, seemingly unwilling to look at me. “Most recently, the importance of roadway infrastructure improvements.”
I can’t tell if that’s seriously what he writes about, or if he’s just trying to irritate me. Either way, my annoyance overtakes my libido. I run my tongue over the grooves of my teeth as my gaze lands pointedly on him. “Are you ever going to let it go?”
Shrugging, his gray eyes meet mine again. They really are a gorgeous shade—crystal clear and shimmering in the ambient light in the restaurant—but it’s hard to think about that when he insists on needling me.
“I’m just saying, it’s something our town needs. Maybe not now, sure, but it has to happen sometime. We need to be constantly thinking about the future of Heartsong.”
“I am thinking about the future.” I stab another piece of chicken with more force than necessary.
“We both are.” Adam reaches across the table and lays his hand on top of mine. As much as I hate to admit it, the warmth of his palm on mine is nice. No, more than nice. It’s like a salve, soothing the raw edges of my annoyance, though not making it disappear entirely.
I study the way his big hand envelops mine and swallow hard before dragging my gaze to meet his. If I didn’t know any better, I would think his gently parted lips and intense focus mean he’s fighting the same war about me that I am about him.
But, no. That can’t be true. Can it?
Honestly, it doesn’t matter. I can admit he’s an attractive man. And now that I’ve seen him with his shirt off, I’m comfortable stating that’s just an objective fact. But we work together, and most of the time we can’t stand each other. Physical attraction can happen anywhere. I’m attracted to a young Paul Newman, for example. Doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep with him. The same can be true for Adam Sullivan, even if he is available and flirting and sitting right in front of me.
I remove my hand from under his and wipe it on the napkin in my lap before returning my attention to my food. Nothing can happen between us on this trip, and I would do well to remember that.