Chapter 7
Thanks to light traffic, Blake arrived early at the multi-unit complex where Vi lived. It was a nice area made up of newer townhouses. With spring in the air and the days growing longer, people were outside gardening in their small yards and visiting with each other or walking their dogs.
He passed a playground where kids played on the jungle gym and swings or shot hoops around a basketball court. Parking near Vi’s place proved impossible. He soon found the guest parking area and pulled into a slot. Minutes later, he knocked at her door.
She answered, her eyes wide with surprise. “I was planning to come out so you didn’t need to park, but you’re early. Come in.”
“There wasn’t much traffic.” Her dress highlighted her slender body. Tights and ankle boots showed off her nice legs. Damn, she looked good, good enough to kiss. As if. Theirs was a relationship borne out of a shared goal to stop their grandparents from making a big mistake.
That hadn’t stopped him from wondering what she tasted like. It’d been on his mind since this morning. There were times when he was a real jerk. He stifled his smirk.
“Is there something wrong with my clothes?” she said.
Hadn’t realized he was staring at her. “I like that outfit,” he answered, careful to mask his attraction with a casual tone.
She brushed off the compliment with a shrug, as if she didn’t believe him. “These are work clothes.” She nodded at his long-sleeve tee and pants. “I’m not the only one who changed.”
“Felt like I should.” He glanced around the main floor. “This is nice. From what I’ve seen so far, the whole complex is.”
“I enjoy living here. The neighbors are friendly. My house isn’t big, but it’s just right for me. One of the few one-bedrooms here.”
“And two stories.”
“The bedroom is upstairs and there’s a tiny second room I use as a home office. The rest is what you see.”
Kitchen with eating counter and a small living room, all spotless. A large black cat strutted in the direction of the kitchen as if he owned the place.
“Who’re you?” he asked, crouching down to greet the animal.
“That’s Mr. T, come to check you out.”
“Do I pass muster?” Blake asked him, running his hand down the shiny black fur. The cat began to purr, and he grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Let me grab a jacket, then we’ll go. Behave yourself, Mr. T. I don’t see the truck,” she said with a slight frown as they reached the visitors lot.
“I drove my car instead.” He gestured at his red Lexus sedan.
“Cushy,” she murmured.
“I like it.”
“It wasn’t in the parking lot this morning. The truck was the only vehicle I saw.”
“I use that for business, this morning to bring in the stack chairs and little table so we’d have a place to sit. Ruby is for pleasure.” The word flowed from his throat in a husky voice he hadn’t intended. Maybe she hadn’t noticed.
She glanced down, but not before he noted the sudden color in her cheeks. She’d noticed, all right. What was his problem? Best put the brakes on his attraction to her. Now.
“Ruby?” she asked.
“First time I’ve named a car. For some reason the name popped into my head. It fits. I bought her used after the bike shop’s one-year anniversary.” After months of pouring everything he had into succeeding. “I netted more than I anticipated and figured I deserved a reward.”
“Must’ve been a very good year for you.”
“Demand for bikes, whether to buy or rent, is huge. I bought Ruby from a customer’s great aunt who’d given up driving. She’d owned it four years and had driven it only fifteen thousand miles.”
Finally, a smile. “Lucky you. When I was promoted to sales manager a few years ago, I rewarded myself by buying this place. Dinner tonight won’t be for pleasure.”
“Believe me, I know. I keep forgetting to mention that Grandpop is planning to pay for the whole new unit himself as a surprise wedding gift to Caroline.”
“She won’t like that. She’s too proud to take his money.”
“It’ll be interesting to find out what happens. Don’t say anything to her.”
She didn’t appear to hear him. Too antsy. “You’re nervous, huh?” he asked.
“I’ve been trying to hide that. What gave me away?”
“Your compressed lips and the way you keep fussing with your hair. By the way, that ponytail suits you.” He liked it way better than her tight hairdo the other night.
“I wear it this way when I’m not at work. While we’re at the restaurant, I’ll try harder to pretend I’m calm. Without a plan, you should be nervous, too. We’ll steer our way toward what we want to achieve tonight. If we do that, we might have a chance of reaching our goal. Otherwise, if we bring up the prenup point blank without easing into it, we risk them shutting down and leaving. We both heard Malcom’s threat to do that, and I don’t doubt he will. Tell me you’ve come up with something and help me relax.”
“We have a goal. I don’t think we can plan how we’ll get there. It doesn’t work that way and depends on the conversation.” Now she was fidgeting with the sleeve of her dress. “Why does that stress you out so much?”
“I grew up in total chaos, and organizing my life as much as possible makes me feel more in control.”
That explained the spotless townhouse. “Tell me about the chaos,” he said, curious about her childhood.
“I already shared things about my parents. You really don’t want to know more. We should spend our time strategizing.”
“I’m genuinely interested. We have time—it’ll take us a good twenty minutes to get to the restaurant. I know your parents are divorced and they both like to party. What else?”
“Now who’s playing therapist?” she teased, then blew out a sigh. “All right, since you asked… I don’t remember my parents ever not fighting. Even when they went out together they were at each other’s throats. It’s a wonder they ever conceived Rose and me. They both worked, of course, and didn’t have the time or energy to do much around the house. Rose is five years younger, and I pretty much took care of her. Meals, packing our lunchboxes, dinner… It was a lot.”
Blake shook his head at that. “Sounds to me like you raised her. You carried a heavy burden on those young shoulders.”
“I really did. Gran and Gramps helped when they could, but they worked, too. I was glad when my parents split up. Things got a lot quieter at our house. Then, when I was fourteen, Gramps passed away. Mom was juggling two full time jobs to pay the rent, buy groceries, and party when she could. Which wasn’t as often as before, as she was dead on her feet.
“Gran needed a place to live and Mom needed help, so she moved in to take care of us. She did her best, took over some of the cooking and helped with the laundry, but being a waitress, she also worked long hours. For as long as I can remember, I was in charge of the house. I learned at an early age that making a schedule and a plan helped me feel in control. Now, aren’t you sorry you asked?”
“Not at all.” He felt for her. Before his father had died, his life had been great. “Your childhood sounds truly chaotic and you had way too much responsibility. That sucks. But there are times when having a plan doesn’t work. Like tonight. As I said, we have a goal, and that’s enough.”
“But if we have a plan to reach that goal, we’re less likely to fail. We can’t be sloppy about this, Blake. It’s too important.”
“I hear that, but there’s no way to predict what Malcom and Caroline will say or how they’ll act. The only thing to do is wing it.”
“You may be good at that kind of thing, but I’m not. Tonight is really important. Too important not to have a plan. How can you be so calm?”
“This is the way I am when I’m stressed.”
She gaped at him. “I’m jealous. What’s your secret? How do you do it?”
“I don’t know. Somehow I figured out that in times of stress, keeping my cool helps me think clearly. Sure beats driving myself nuts. Plus, it helps lower the anxiety levels of people around me.”
“Not mine. I can’t help how I’m wired. Give me an example how playing it by ear works for you.”
“Think about dinner at the 709 the other night. We didn’t have a plan then. We had no idea what was coming.”
“Oh, I had a plan.”
“How could you possibly? They sprung their marriage idea on us.”
“My plan involved Gran and no one else. I’d tell her what’d happened at work and offer her an alternative to being out on the street.”
“Moving into the extra room upstairs.”
“That space is too small, plus there’s no bathroom up there. I can’t imagine her waking up in the night and having to come down the stairs to use the toilet. She’s still steady on her feet, but what if she fell? My sister has a place with enough room, but her husband wouldn’t like having Gran as a guest. Gran wouldn’t like it, either, so it’d be a place to stay in the short-term. That was my plan.”
“Then when Malcom and I were sitting with her at the same table, your plan went out the window. Yet you survived.”
She exhaled a grudging breath. “True, but I was very uncomfortable. And I did follow my plan, just not at dinner. I told Gran when we talked later.”
“That was an uncomfortable evening for all of us. Tonight will be different because we know what they want and what we want.”
“Yes, but how do we lead them to agree to what we want?”
“You’re a sales manager. Surely you know how to move the conversation toward a sale.”
“With an internet or cable plan, yes, but using some of those techniques on my grandma… I’d feel dirty.”
“You shouldn’t. We’re talking about a serious issue that has to be addressed and taken care of, no holds barred,” he said.
“Until they walk out.”
“There is that.” She chewed on her lower lip, then clamped it between her teeth. Not having a plan for the evening was really doing a number on her. “If you bite your lip any harder, you’ll hurt yourself,” he warned. She needed to loosen up or tonight would be off to a bad start. But how to calm her down?
As he signaled to turn into the restaurant parking lot, he figured out exactly what she needed.
By the timeBlake turned into The Sea Captain’s parking lot, Vi was so nervous she felt sick.
“Hey,” he said and reached for her icy hand. His fingers were warm and the reassuring squeeze comforting. “You’re freezing cold. Why didn’t you turn up the heat? Never mind. Listen, no matter what happens tonight, no one will die from it.”
The instant he released her, she missed his grasp. “No, but the consequences could be?—”
“Survivable,” he cut in. “Ease up on yourself, okay? I can help with that.”
Desperate to relax, she glanced at him. The steady strength she saw on his face soothed her nerves a fraction. “How?”
“Would you mind if I massaged your neck and shoulders?”
Rose swore by massages, but Vi had never had one. She wasn’t sure what to make of the offer. “I hardly know you.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of me. I’m not a big, bad wolf, I swear.”
“I know that. You can’t exactly give me a massage in a public parking lot or inside the building. It won’t be dark for hours yet, and people would see us.”
He drove around to the far side of the restaurant where there were no other vehicles. “Now, we’ll be out of sight.”
Still undecided, she nibbled her lip. “Is it okay to park here?”
“I don’t see any no parking signs.” He drove past any windows and pulled to a stop.
Blake seemed like a decent guy, but for all she knew, he was a person who changed quickly and could be trouble.
“Hey, you need help and you need it now. Let me take your mind off your troubles. If what I’m doing hurts or scares you, say so and I’ll stop. You have my word on that. No matter what, I’ll finish by five.”
He looked straight into her eyes with such earnestness, she gave in. “All right.”
“Great. I can’t do this in the front because of the center console. We should move to the back.”
“This sounds like the old teenage excuse to make out.”
“Does it?” His lips twitched. “The thought never crossed my mind.”
She laughed at that and felt better. They climbed into the back, and she slid smoothly across the leather seat. “Now what?”
“Take your jacket off so I can do this right.” She did, and he spoke again. “Now turn your back to me and let your head fall gently forward.”
“Like this?” she asked, glancing at her lap.
“Perfect.” His hands felt wonderful, so good she actually groaned. Instantly he stopped. “Does it hurt?”
“The opposite. Keep going.”
“Your muscles are all knotted up,” he said after a minute. “When was the last time you had a full body massage?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
She had no answer to that. “I don’t know. I just haven’t.”
“You ought to get them periodically for health purposes. I do. You won’t regret it.”
All too soon, his watch beeped. “Time to stop.”
Wishing he could keep going and grateful for what he’d done, she pivoted in the seat to sit beside him. Just the two of them in the car felt dangerously intimate. “I feel so much better,” she said. “If you ever decided to give up the bike stores, you’d make a great masseur.”
He chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Already, I see a change in you. You’re much less tense. Repeat after me, ‘whatever happens tonight, we’ll all survive.’”
“Whatever happens tonight, we’ll all survive. Maybe I will schedule a massage.”
“Atta girl.”
He lifted her wrist and kissed the sensitive underside—a first for her. Her heart thudded and her body reacted with longing. She let out a small sound of pleasure.
“Was I out of line? I didn’t think about what I was doing, just did it.”
“I don’t mind at all.” Overcome with gratitude and desire, she leaned up and kissed him on the mouth.
He pulled back and eyed her. “What’s that for?”
“I guess I shouldn’t have?—”
He silenced her with a kiss of his own. She lost her train of thought and cupped the back of his head, urging him closer. His body was fit and hard, and he kissed like a dream, his lips tender and firm at the same time. And his hair, soft and thick… Shaggy wasn’t so bad. She was really getting into it when he let go of her and pulled away.
“Why did you stop?” she asked, confused.
“Believe me, I didn’t want to. We should go inside before they wonder where we are.”
The dinner. She’d momentarily forgotten about that. She touched her hair. “Is it a mess?”
“A little. Do you have a mirror in your purse?”
She nodded. “It’s in the passenger seat.”
He reached between the front seats and retrieved it. One glance in the mirror—so many strands gone astray—and she pulled off the scrunchie, brushed her hair, and redid the ponytail. Much better. She glanced at him. “Yours could use smoothing as well.”
She felt dazed, and while he set his hair to rights with his palms, tried to make sense of what they’d done. She’d never meant to kiss him, let alone get so involved in him. In them.
The whole thing was her fault. How could she have let this happen when she knew better?
Simple answer, he was irresistible. His skilled hands easing the painful knots from her neck and shoulders. The smell of him, a mixture of man and fresh air, his deep, soothing voice… All of it had seduced her. She hadn’t meant to let things go this far, wasn’t pleased with herself. Never mind, she’d put it behind her.
Blake was silent, no doubt regretting it as much as she did. “Okay now?” he asked.
She managed a nod. Neither of them spoke on the way to the restaurant entrance.
Once inside the door, he laid his hand on her upper arm as if reassuring her, then quickly let go. “We got this.”