Chapter Twenty-OneFischer #2
“Yeah.” I grab both food containers from her lap and slip out of the car after making sure the woman is far enough away to not pose any threat. “Thanks for helping me avoid Kale.”
Micah slips her arm through mine and leads me to the stairs. “I want to meet Kale.”
“Uh, I think you already have.”
“When? I don’t remember anyone named after a superfood.”
Why did I bring it up? I don’t even have any of the details. “He said you went on a date a couple of weeks ago. Met you at the grocery store.”
She gasps and nearly trips on the steps.
Her tug as she falls almost knocks the food out of my hands, and I’m so glad I’ve built up enough arm strength that I can hold her up.
I’m too hungry to lose my dinner. “Brock is Kale?” she says.
Then she snorts. “Oh my gosh. Like broccoli! ’Cause they’re related! ”
That gets a groan out of me, but I have to laugh too. It’s actually pretty clever. “Apparently he wanted to know whose texts were making me smile.”
Micah gasps again, and thankfully we’ve reached the landing so there’s less risk of our food going flying. “You’ve been smiling this whole time ?”
I can’t help it. I grin at her, and the gesture seems to take a weight off my shoulders. Especially because of the way it makes her smile right on back. “You can work miracles, Micah.”
When her hands find my cheeks, the air around us stills, like the world has paused for this moment so I pay attention. “Maybe you just needed someone to remind you how,” she whispers.
I could kiss her. She’s right in front of me, and she’s looking at me in a way that seems to be begging me to kiss her. But instead, I squeeze the food containers in my hands so the Styrofoam crinkles and distracts her.
“My door is this way,” she says, moving to the first apartment on the left.
As she lets me inside, I take it all in quickly.
Everything is clean and looks fairly new, with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops above hardwood floors.
A sewing mannequin sits in the corner with a half-finished dress pinned to it, while a massive bookcase dominates the far wall with more books than Micah could possibly read.
Plants are everywhere—windowsills, the bookshelf, above the kitchen cabinets—and the whole place feels so very alive. It’s very Micah.
Based on the size, I’m guessing it’s a two bedroom, and this part of the city is nicer than where I live. I can’t imagine the rent is cheap.
“How can you afford this?” I ask, even if that question might be rude. “I doubt Lila pays you any better than Grant pays me.”
Micah giggles and takes the food from me, setting it on the coffee table in her living room. “Okay, so when I said I don’t ask for help from people, that’s true. But I also lived with my dad until he and his wife moved to Diamond Springs just a few years ago. So I had a lot saved up.”
“I used to live in a penthouse downtown.” As soon as those words leave my mouth, I want to take them back. She doesn’t need to know about my life before Bradley Properties.
Maybe she does , a voice says in the back of my mind. It sounds eerily like Kale. Maybe the reason you can’t tell if she’s interested is because you won’t let her actually know you.
Feeling Micah’s eyes on me, I step to a display of dried flowers on one of her walls and pretend to be engrossed as I talk. “I was starting up an investment company with my business partner, and we had a lot of good clients. Things grew quickly, and my salary was…not small.”
“What happened?”
I don’t want to give her details. Not about Miranda, anyway. “My business partner decided she didn’t want to share the income we were getting, so she locked everyone else out, cleared the accounts, and tried fleeing the country.”
There’s only one of each kind of flower on this foam board, carefully dried and pinned in place. The board doesn’t seem complete, either, like she’s progressively adding to it when she comes across new flowers.
“That…” She seems to struggle for words. “Sucks,” she settles on. “Is that why you work for Grant?”
Tempted to touch one of the delicate flowers, I stuff my hands into my pockets.
“Turns out when you’re part of a company that steals millions of dollars, people tend not to trust you.
I didn’t get arrested with my partner, but my name has basically been blacklisted in Sun City.
I couldn’t get a job at Jamba Juice even if I tried.
” And I did try. They said I didn’t have the temperament they were looking for.
“So why did Grant trust you?”
“He’s my brother. He has to trust me.”
Oops .
Stomach twisting, I close my eyes and wait for her to react. That was a secret I was hoping to take to my grave, but Micah makes speaking the truth all too easy. What is she going to think of me now?
“You know,” she says, and her voice is so soft that I can’t help but turn to see her expression. She’s smiling, but it’s a pitying sort of smile. “A lot of things are starting to make sense now. That’s why you go by Price.”
I cringe. “He was going to call me that anyway. It’s a stupid nickname he came up with when we were kids.”
She bites her lip, probably trying not to laugh as she comes closer. “Why you sometimes talk to him like he’s not your boss and you’re not afraid of him firing you.”
“He can definitely still fire me,” I mutter.
“Why you guys look alike.”
“We look alike?”
She laughs. “Fischer. I thought you were him when we first met. I thought maybe he had just been working out lately and hadn’t put any new pictures on the website.”
I don’t know why that makes me smile, but it does. “So you’re saying I’m the fitter sibling?”
She slaps my arm, then slaps it again before running her hand along my bicep. Before I can recover from that tantalizing touch, she starts unbuttoning my jacket.
“What are you doing?” I choke, stepping back. My heel hits the wall, and I nearly fall into her display and crush all of her flowers. I catch myself with a hand on the wall.
Though she turns pink, she rolls her eyes at me. “Oh, relax, Fisch. I just want a better look at that muscle of yours before I pass judgment.”
Okay, maybe I overreacted, but I still feel slightly dirty as I slide out of my jacket. Which is ridiculous, considering I’ve still got my shirt on and an undershirt beneath that. “Maybe warn me if you start trying to seduce me,” I say, as if I know what she’s about to do.
Turning even pinker, Micah proceeds with surprising confidence, basically giving me a full upper body pat down, from my forearms to my shoulders to my abs.
I have no idea why she finds this necessary or why I’m allowing it to begin with, but a part of me wants to see what my limits are.
Since I was a kid, I’ve shied away from physical contact as much as possible because it’s never felt natural to me.
Yes, I’ve dated, and yes I’ve kissed a few women.
But things always felt forced. Slightly uncomfortable.
Like I was trying to superimpose expectation over reality.
I’ve never gone beyond those brief moments, and I always wondered if I ever would.
Apparently I was just with the wrong women.
Tonight, Micah’s soft touches leave a trail of fire in their wake, like my body is coming to life for the first time.
It isn’t like she hasn’t touched me before, but this is different.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t have to force myself not to react.
I’m just here, entirely focused on the way her hands move across the fabric of my shirt in their exploration until they come to rest over my racing heart. I don’t want her to stop.
“I think you definitely win,” she says breathlessly.
I press my hands over hers, leaning forward. “I like when you touch me.” That sounds more sensual than it is, so I try again. “You make me feel safe.”
“You make me feel safe too,” she whispers back and rises up on her toes, tipping her head back.
She’s asking me to kiss her, and I am absolutely going to do it.
And then my stomach makes the most horrendous noise in the history of gastrophonics. (That’s not a word, but my stomach just made that word’s existence necessary.)
Micah laughs so hard that she accidentally spits in my face and scurries backwards as if to put distance between herself and the monstrosity that is my digestive system.
Horrified, I do the only thing I can think of and start making jokes. “Was that my stomach or a fighter jet?”
That only makes her laugh harder, and she grips her stomach and sinks to the floor.
I run a hand through my hair. “Seriously, I didn’t think the human body was capable of that high a decibel.”
“I think you’re hungry,” Micah gasps.
“Obviously. My stomach has been replaced by a rocket engine. Or maybe a yeti.”
“Stop!” she begs, waving a hand at me. Then she fumbles for one of the food containers, finds a bread roll, and throws it at me. “Will you please eat something before it makes that noise again? I don’t want to go deaf.”
I sink to the floor beside her, settling in front of the coffee table and pulling my pork chops toward me. Maybe it’s a good thing we got interrupted. As much as I want to kiss Micah, I’m not sure it’s a good idea. “This food had better be good.”
“You think I would eat at a restaurant multiple times a week if it wasn’t good?”
I really didn’t want the reminder of her many suitors.
“Those flowers.” I glance behind me. “Are they all from dates?” I hope she says no. There are probably two dozen different flowers on that board, and I’m sure there have been many duplicates.
Micah lets out a little sigh as she scoots closer to the table and opens up her fettuccine. “Yeah. Sometimes they show up with flowers, sometimes they send them to my office.”
“What sort of guy thought to give you ranunculus?”
Her jaw drops. “There is no way you know what those are.”
I really should eat something, but her incredulity is a little too entertaining. Shrugging, I start cutting into my meat as I say, “The orange one between the poppy and the tulip?”
She grabs my arm even though I’m still attempting to get myself a bite of food. It isn’t easy with a plastic knife. “Where in the world did you learn about flowers?”
I chuckle. “You could say mine was a more…classical…education.” In other words, I learned ballroom and flowers alongside calculus and literature.
New Mexico isn’t the debutante South, but my parents found a way to pretend we were classier than we were.
“In my defense,” I say and pop a bite of pork into my mouth so I can talk around it like a pig, “I didn’t pay much attention to the gentlemanly lessons, so I only have bits and pieces. ”
“Like ranunculus,” she says with a grin. “I do like buttercups.”
Nodding, I scoop some potatoes into my mouth and look at the foam board again. With the sheer number of flowers on there, one of them has to be her favorite. Or maybe not? “Which one is your—”
“You have to guess,” she interrupts with a sly smile. “You don’t get a free pass just because I like you.”
Wait, does that mean this is a date? Is she giving me a chance to convince her to love me? Swallowing, I look from her to the board and feel itchy under the pressure of this task. Do I only get one shot? Or can I keep guessing until I get it right? “This feels like a trick,” I mutter.
“Maybe it is.”
“What happens if I guess it right?”
She doesn’t answer, moving her focus to her food. But a blush slowly rises up her neck and into her face, and I can’t help but smile.
“So, no pressure,” I say and get to work cutting myself another piece of pork chop.
I spend the next ten minutes naming each of the flowers on the board and gauging her reaction, but she gives me absolutely nothing.
She really wants me to guess. Maybe it’s her way of testing fate, but I don’t think so.
I think whatever her favorite flower is, it speaks to her in a way nothing else does.
The man who knows her flower knows her .
When our food is gone, I run out of excuses to stay. Good excuses, at least. We both have a lot of work to do this week, and the last thing I want to do is keep her up too late so she doesn’t get enough sleep.
“I should go,” I say, hating every word.
Micah clearly hates them too. Her eyes widen, eyebrows pulling down, and she looks ready to grab onto me and never let me go. As flattering as that is, I meant what I said. “But you haven’t guessed my favorite flower,” she says when I stand.
I smile down at her. “I will. Eventually.”
I make it all the way to the door before she says, “Why don’t you want to date me, Fischer?”
I freeze. “What?”
She’s on her feet, though she doesn’t come any closer.
It’s like she’s afraid to scare me off if she does.
Ducking her head, she wraps a hand around her elbow in that same closed-off stance she had when she left the restaurant.
“We’ve known each other for two weeks now, and you haven’t asked me out.
I’m not… I’m not trying to be vain, and I know not everyone is going to be interested in me.
But you do seem interested. So why don’t you want to date me? ”
This is not what I expected from tonight, but I appreciate her directness. It almost makes it easy to answer. “Because you deserve someone who’s perfect for you, and that isn’t me.”
She clenches her jaw, folding her arms now. “That’s not a reason. Try again.”
Does she really want me to answer? I think she does, and even though my first response was true, I give her the one that scares me the most. “I don’t know if I’m capable of love.”
She doesn’t have a response to that. I didn’t expect her to. And though it’s probably a bad idea, I step forward and pull her into my arms, telling her with that embrace that I want to be capable of being that man she deserves. “But I’m trying to be.”
I just hope it’s enough.