Chapter 8
gaping face hole
Hannah
Here lies Hannah James. Time of death: I don’t know…afternoon? Cause of death: Concussion by way of a glass door pummeling her in the face with the force of a thousand winds. Or maybe it was the snapped neck, head flung back from the impact that did her in.
Nope. I think it’s the tall, dark, handsome stranger I shared a bed with five years ago staring down at me with a shit-eating grin that stops the heart in my chest.
God, he is as disarmingly handsome as I remember.
Broad shoulders and a muscled chest. Gray T-shirt pulled taut in all the right places, tattoo sleeves on full display. Dark brown hair, well-kept but a little wild at the edges, curling from underneath his Army baseball cap. Scruff along his jaw on its way to becoming a full beard.
And those eyes. Cobalt blue. Piercing and hypnotic.
“What should I tell them?” a female voice says somewhere deep inside my skull, but the words flit away as fast as they came.
I should say something. Yeah, words would be good.
The air catches in my lungs when I open my mouth to speak to the soldier unashamedly flashing those dimples down at me.
“Ms. James? Are you there?” the voice in my head interrupts again.
Rowan’s smile softens—at the cuckoo look on my face, I’m sure.
“Huh?” I say. To who, what, or why I don’t even know. Maybe I really am concussed.
“What should I tell the reporter?” Geez, if this is my conscience talking, I want to file an appeal for a different narrator. Her voice is so annoy—CRAP!
My phone. There’s a phone in my hand and somebody is talking to me through it. A client. I’m a business professional with literal clients saying literal words through a literal phone held up to my literal ear.
I blink out of my stupor. “Yes, um…right…sorry, Mrs…” Wait, who is this? Oh my god, what the hell is her name? “Upton!” Woah, chill, Hannah.
“Sorry.” I clear my throat. Take a breath and steady my voice. Not my heart rate though, that’s still spiraling out of control. “Mrs. Upton, per my last email, all media—”
Rowan closes the already small gap between us and my words vanish. Poof, gone. Eyes narrowed on the spot where the door hit me, his fingers move softly over my temple.
Keep talking, Hannah. I swallow an ungodly amount of saliva. “All media requests need to go through me. So tell your team to—”
“Are you okay?” he mouths, but I feel the bass timbre of his voice in my bones. It’s smooth and husky and warm and…how is he here?
I can’t believe this is happening. I also can’t believe my lack of functioning brain cells and my inability to speak in complete sentences.
It’s awkward now, I have to say something.
I open my mouth to attempt human speech when something tumbles out of said mouth.
My eyes instinctively follow the unknown object as it makes its slow-motion free fall to the sidewalk.
My sucker. Food, quite literally, fell out of the gaping hole in my face while I’m standing in front of the most objectively beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
And I probably have a rapidly swelling lump on my forehead to boot.
I. Am. A catch.
Alas, my love of strawberry Dum-Dums overrides every fiber of dignity in my body. I stare at the ruins of my sugary treat on the hot sidewalk for a few mournful beats. Teeth clenched, I take a long, slow, centering breath, then arch back, why God why arm flailing toward the sky.
My gaze catches with Rowan’s again. Amusement pulls at every corner of his handsome face. “Cute,” he says, donning a smirk that means trouble.
I spear him with a flat look that only makes him smile harder. An embarrassing flush sweeps across my cheeks, and I dip my chin to hide it.
Kristen approaches over Rowan’s shoulder as I’m tossing the sucker in a nearby trash bin. It’s the sight I need to pull myself together.
“Sorry, Mrs. Upton,” I start in again. “I cut out there for a moment. Please tell your team to direct all media requests to my office.”
My best friend steps into the third slot of our little triangle as Mrs. Upton disconnects the call. I keep the phone over my ear as the last line of defense for my pride.
Rowan gestures toward my forehead. “You probably should put some ice on that, Hannah.”
He meets my wide eyes with a slutty little wink so subtle Kristen doesn’t catch it. Ope. Here come the flutters.
She divides a worried glance between him and me. “Wait, what? What happened?”
I wave her off, gesturing to the phone in my hand housing the urgent, non-existent call. I am an uninjured, unfazed, stoic, professional woman on a work call dammit.
Before Rowan can pull her into an explanation as to why my head is swelling to the size of a basketball while I keep up this cell phone charade, I tug Kristen by the elbow and hoof it down the sidewalk. Rowan gets a swift goodbye stranger whom I’ve never met wave over my shoulder.
Nothing makes sense. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Once there’s a suitable distance between him and my retreating form, I drop the phone to my side.
“What the hell was that?” She turns to look back and I pinch her arm. “Ow! Jeez!”
“Sorry,” I supply just as my stiletto lodges itself in a crack on the sidewalk. My ankle tweaks inward, and I catch myself on Kristen’s shoulder to keep from face-planting on the brick path.
“Damn! Your Jimmy Choos.”
Coming to a stop, I brace myself on my friend’s frame and swivel my upper body to check the heel for damage. Damn the goosebumps breaking out over my neck that tell me Rowan is still watching.
Do. Not. Look. At him.
I look right at him. Him with his boyish grin, tattooed arms crossed over his chest, head cocked to one side. I’d be amused too if I just watched someone nearly bite it and drop food from their mouth and almost die from blunt force trauma all in the span of two minutes.
This is all his fault.
My smile has a mind of its own this time, and he witnesses every second of it. I shake my head in exasperation, fix my heel, and resume down the sidewalk.
Kristen hits me with a look. I could ignore it if it weren’t for Rowan’s deep voice, commanding and strong enough to rise above the fray of the passing cars and foot traffic. “Need help with those buttons later?” he shouts.
A hearty laugh big enough to make me almost stumble again tunnels up from deep in my chest. My friend’s face is all sorts of confused. I chance another look over my shoulder.
He calls out again. “I see the nickname still fits!”
I spin on the ball of my foot to walk backward through the crosswalk.
Pedestrians weave in and out of the space between us, flickers of Rowan standing guard between the bodies as they cross back and forth.
When an opening appears, I pin him with a flirty smirk and give him an official soldier’s salute.
His shoulders bounce, but his eyes never leave mine. “Later, runaway!”
Kristen tugs me forward. I have no doubt my cheeks are blushing full-on crimson when she says, “Oh, you have some explaining to do.”
“Alright, spill,” Kristen declares as she drops into the chair in my office.
My bottom lip pulls between my teeth behind my smile. I turn the ice pack over in my hands, eyes pinging from her to my desk and back again.
“Hannah!”
At least fifteen employees hard at work in their cubicles sit beyond my open door. I grimace when the cold makes contact with the sensitive spot near my hairline. Kris just stares, waiting.
No way out of this conversation now. I lean forward and lower my voice to a whisper. “You remember the guy I ran off with at my wedding?”
She gasps and at least five heads turn. “No freaking way!”
“Kris, keep it dow—”
“G.I. Joe is your knight in shining Ducati?”
The ice pack lands on my desk, and I hide my face behind my hands.
“Oh my god,” she squeals, and I wince, ears ringing from a sound I thought only dogs could hear.
She bounces on her feet, unceremoniously closes the door, and returns to her seat. Elbows on the desk, she rests her chin on her hands, eyes fluttering. “Tell me everything.”
“You already know.” I set the cold press back to my temple.
“Um, no, ma’am. The G-rated tale you spun me five years ago does not match up with whatever that was out there. He remembered your name! Gimme the goods, girl.”
The cold bag in my grip does nothing to cool the fire buzzing up my spine as though his fingers are back there again.
Snapshots of gas-station hot dogs, Target dressing rooms, cheap beer, jukeboxes blaring classic country tunes, a tired old chess board, and mugs of hot chocolate under the stars flash in my mind.
A million tiny, nothing moments that added up to the perfect night.
I look back to Kristen whose hopeful expression hasn’t faltered for a second. “I’m waiting.”