I Found You

Jane Lark

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Contents

Jane Lark

Praise for Jane Lark

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Epilogue

Love Romance?

About HarperImpulse

Copyright

About the Publisher

Jane Lark

I love writing authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

I began my first novel, a historical, when I was sixteen, but life derailed me a bit when I started suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, so I didn’t complete a novel until after I was thirty when I put it on my to do before I’m forty list.

Now I love getting caught up in the lives and traumas of my characters, and I’m so thrilled to be giving my characters life in others’ imaginations, especially when readers tell me they’ve read the characters just as I’ve tried to portray them.

“Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards.”

Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews

"Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!"

Candy Coated Book Blog

"This book held me captive after the first 2 pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would."

A Reading Nurse Blogspot

“The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between.”

Best Chick Lit.com

“I love Ms. Lark's style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I've been looking for in romance lately.”

Devastating Reads BlogSpot

Chapter One

The beat of the music pounded through my earphones, drowning out the loud rattle of the subway trains. I was in the zone. My heart was racing, my feet striking the pavement with the rhythm of the bassline as I ran.

The monotony of city life swamped me in the day, but running brought me back from it at night.

God, I missed home, and fuck it was cold.

Too cold to snow. I heard the words Dad always repeated. I’d always thought it a myth. Was it ever too cold to snow? I didn’t know, but people had been saying it all day.

The pavement was dry, not icy. Dry with cold. There was no moisture in the air, only the cloud of my breath, as my lungs filled and then exhaled with the pace of my strides.

Maybe it was true. God, there were so many myths in the world. Like, New York City was the place to be. It still felt like new shoes to me, like it just didn’t fit.

The asphalt felt firm beneath my sneakers.

I looked forward, trying to increase my pace and energy, burning away the doubts and disappointments I’d felt since I came to the city.

At the end of the bridge there was a figure, caught in the middle of a beam of orange lamplight, like some illuminated angel. I generally only saw other guys jogging on the bridge path. It was rare to see anyone else.

It was Thanksgiving in little over a week and Christmas in a few weeks. Lindy was pissed I wasn’t going back home, but she’d made up her mind to come to me for Christmas.

Was that good or bad?

The figure was facing the Brooklyn Bridge, probably looking at the reflection of the lights glinting and shifting on the dark water. It was mesmerizing when you focused on it.

The Manhattan Bridge was never busy, probably because of the noise of the trains. The environment didn’t inspire pleasure, so it wasn’t a place for tourists. But it was a good path for running: long and straight, and normally empty.

I ran harder, my eyes focusing on the figure.

The person hadn’t moved. They held their hands up, gripping the metal grill above them.

The pose seemed odd. A little desperate. It wasn’t casual.

My imagination shifted, no longer picturing angels but a horror movie. The way the lamplight shone down on the figure was like they were in the sights of a hovering helicopter, or a beam from a UFO.

I thought of Christmas again, and ached for home. But I wasn’t going home. I had to conquer New York.

The light shining down on the stranger suddenly took the form of a Godly benediction once more. The person’s arms shifted, stretching out, similar to a crucifixion pose, hands wide and high as they looked upward.

I was getting nearer.

My fingers were numb with the cold, even inside my gloves, and my ears burned as the frost nipped beneath my hood. Running should’ve kept me warm, but it was twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, way below freezing point.

Fuck, now I could see the person ahead was standing in a t-shirt. Their outstretched arms were bare.

“Hey!” My heart rate thundered as I ran on, wondering what sort of sketchy city-nutter I was running toward. What were they doing wearing a tee in this weather? It didn’t look like a homeless dude, but…

My breaths grew more uneven.

The guy ahead hadn’t heard me.

I pulled my earphones out. “Hey!”

Still no recognition. It was like they were in some sort of trance.

My feet pounded on the concrete.

It wasn’t a guy, it was a girl. I’d seen the long hair way back, but hadn’t been sure. Plenty of guys had long hair. But now, I could see.

I knocked my hood back. I didn’t want to scare her. “Hey!”

Nothing. Not a single sign of recognition and I was only yards away. She was wearing skinny jeans and sneakers with her tee.

Her hands moved, catching hold of the wire like she was going to climb it, then her foot lifted, seeking a grip on the railing.

Her arms bracing her weight; her other foot lifted. What the hell was she doing? Trying to go over the wire? Did she want to jump?

“Hey! Wait!”

I ran harder.

Fuck. She looked serious and she carried on climbing, searching out hand and foot holds.

“Are you crazy? Stop it!”

As I ran the last few yards her gaze finally turned to me. I covered the distance in moments, watching her clinging on the wire, Spiderman style.

God knows what she saw in my eyes. I could see nothing in hers except maybe fear. They were huge, and dark, staring at me like I was the weird one.

I wasn’t the weird one.

My music continued playing muted sounds and air rasped into my lungs as I stopped. I lifted a hand, palm up, offering to help her down. “Come on…” My breath fogged the air around us. “Nothing’s that bad…”

She held still. Her eyes had no depth. It was like looking into mirrors, reflecting back the electric light. She looked a little mad.

“Let me help you.”

She was panting as hard as I was. She didn’t come down.

She was only a couple of feet off the floor, I could pull her down, but I didn’t want to scare her.

My fingers instinctively lifted and touched her lower back. I could feel the breath pulling into her lungs. “Look, seriously, you don’t want to do anything foolish.”

She didn’t move.

“What’s your name?” Shit. My heart was still racing like I was running. I looked along the bridge path, but there was no one else here to help.

“Honey, come on down. I can’t let you do it.”

She was just staring at me.

What the hell did cops say to persuade a person… “You must be cold, you can have my hoodie. I’m not going to leave you here.”

This was like some TV drama.

My hands were trembling from the blood burning in my muscles. I’d gone from running hard to standing still. A weight of responsibility fell on me suddenly. This girl’s life was in my hands. I’d been running wrapped up in my own world and now… Shit. “Really. Please… Come down.”

Pleading obviously touched some nerve in her, as one foot came back down onto the concrete, her cotton t-shirt catching on my glove and crumpling up, revealing the pale skin of her lower back. My gaze dropped to her plain white sneakers, as the next foot touched the ground.

Relief washed through me on a wave as I lifted my hand so her t-shirt slid back down. I looked up and met her gaze. It was still blank though, and her fingers gripped the wire.

I touched her shoulder. It lifted as air pulled into her lungs, before slipping back out. I didn’t know why I was touching her, but I just… I needed to know she was okay. She didn’t seem to know where she was, or what she’d been doing.

A dark smear marked her face, and whatever it was, it stained her hair too.

Every sermon I’d endured as a kid raced through my head. Help the needy; put others first; don’t walk past that mugged guy in the street. I hadn’t gone to church for years, not since I’d hit my teens, but religion was stitched into my DNA. No way could I walk past a person in need.

My shock dissipating, I stripped off my hoodie. The smell of my sweat permeated the cold air. She probably wouldn’t want it but she needed it. “How long have you been up here? It’s freezing.” She could have been up here half an hour. She hadn’t been here when I’d run over the bridge into Manhattan.

For a minute I didn’t think she’d take it, but then her hand reached out. “I don’t know?”

“You know it’s twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, right? You’ll get hyperthermia.” She looked at me, her eyes still dead. “I’m Jason… Were you trying to do what I thought?”

She didn’t answer.

I held out my hand. “Hi.”

She didn’t shake my hand, just looked at it.

“Look, nothing can be that bad. You’ll get over it, and be glad you didn’t jump.”

“Will I?” Her pitch was mocking, although maybe she was mocking her own thoughts, not my words, nothing in her eyes or her face told me though.

What now? I could hardly just run on and leave her here. Dammit. “I…” I could take her to emergency… What would they do? Check her over and spit her out. “Have you got any family locally?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“No.”

Her large eyes confirmed what she’d said. She had nowhere to go. Her full lips pouted a little. Shit. What did I do?

“Where do you live then? Is there somewhere I can take you?”

She was pretty. Her face glowed in the electric light, showing a clear complexion and perfectly even features, though her skin was yellowish in this light.

“No. Nowhere.”

Why was she here? What had made her life too hard to carry on?

She shivered, and pain etched its expression on her face, then tears suddenly glittered in her eyes, and the coldness in them became a lake of desolation. “I need to get away.”

“From what?”

She didn’t answer, but her teeth started chattering. I lifted the hood of my sweatshirt over her blonde hair.

“Look, obviously things aren’t okay for you. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

I took a breath, looking at her and hoping some magical solution would suddenly hit me. It didn’t, and I was getting cold now.

She shivered again and her arms crossed, her hands gripping the opposite elbows. She’d stopped looking at me. She was looking at the sky, like she was searching for answers too.

I sighed, my fingers running over my hair. She was nearly as tall as me, and I was six foot one. She must be at least five eight. But she was slender, like a model. My sweatshirt swamped her figure. She looked fragile.

Shit. There was nothing I could do. “What are you going to do, if I go?”

Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, but she didn’t look down.

My heart was thumping to the same rhythm as the bass beat now pounding out of the earphones dangling ‘round my neck

I couldn’t leave her out here…

“Have you really got nowhere to go?”

She shook her head, making her blonde ponytail sweep over her back.

Shit. What option did I have? What option did she have?

“Have you got any money?”

Her head shook again. But her stillness, apart from her shaking head, made me feel like she didn’t even care. I felt stupid then, of course she didn’t care. She’d just tried to end her life by throwing herself off a bridge. She obviously didn’t care about anything right now.

What to do with her? I could give her money… But I’d have to go back to my apartment to get my card and take her to a cash dispenser. And what would she do with it? Maybe she’d already taken something. Drugs or drink. Maybe that was why she was so dead looking. I’d be stupid to give her money.

I sighed again. I could call the cops and take her to a station. But what would they care? I found this girl and she’s got nowhere to stay. They’d say, yeah, right, join the line of a couple of hundred other homeless people in New York.

There wasn’t any choice. “I could take you home with me, if you’ve got nowhere to go. Just for tonight. It would give you chance to get your head straight, and get warm. If you want?”

“I … ” She looked at me again then, her eyes losing their depth once more and setting up shutters, locking me out.

“What do you think?” I got another shrug, but her eyes suddenly filled with depth, letting me see into the thoughts behind her gaze. They were asking me questions.

“What are you going to do if you don’t come back with me?” Another shrug. “Have you got any other options?” She shook her head, her ponytail swaying, but her gaze was clinging to mine now, like was she was considering me. Maybe she was trying to judge if she’d be safe.

This was surreal, like I’d been lifted out of real life, and placed in the middle of a fucking film. Question was; how was it going to play out? Taking her home was a risk, but sometimes risks had to be taken. Like coming to New York.

I sighed again. Sometimes taking risks didn’t pay off. But I still hoped they would.

She shivered and her hands gripped her arms harder.

I lifted my hands palm outward. “I swear. I’m the nice guy. And if you’ve got nowhere else to go…” Lindy would go mad, but this was devil or deep-blue-sea territory. How could I leave this woman here? She’d nowhere to sleep and it was twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit.

Her shoulders shook as she shivered again.

“It’s not far. I live in DUMBO.”

“Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass…” she whispered. “It’s such a cool name for a neighborhood.”

I laughed. She didn’t.

“Have you got any other choice?”

She shook her head.

“Then on my life, if you come, I’ll not hurt you.”

She said nothing just looked at me.

“My apartment’s warm. You can’t stay out here…” Shit, I was probably just as crazy as her, offering to take a stranger back with me.

“I…”

“I swear, you’re safe with me.”

She looked back at the wire, then down at the water.

“You don’t want to do that. Just give it a night, you’ll feel different in the morning.”

She shook her head, still looking at the water.

If zombies were real, they’d look like her. My sweatshirt swamping her, she stood like a sorrowful statue, her complexion as pale as marble.

I couldn’t just leave her. I rubbed her arms, gently, answering an instinct to put my arm around her, but I denied that. I didn’t even know her name.

“Look, you can trust me. Honest. When we get back to my apartment you can call my Mom, or my friends, and they’ll all tell you I’m the nice guy. Seriously, if you need references…” I smiled as she looked back at me, trying to convince her. “What do you say? Are you a gambler? Are you going to try trusting me?” Silence and stillness. This girl was messed up. But then I’d known that from the moment I’d seen her. She’d been standing in the freezing cold, in a tee, trying to jump off a bridge.

I held her gaze, trying to look inside her, as she looked back, trying to see inside me.

Once more there was a sudden pool of desolation and a glitter in her eyes, and she simply nodded, making the choice to put herself into the hands of a stranger––my hands.

Shit. I was taking her home. She could be a drug addict. I’d been so busy trying to persuade her, I’d forgotten about my own concerns. But I couldn’t leave her here alone; fragility and loneliness rang from her, like she was crying out for help. And the damned Good Samaritan story I’d been brought up on wouldn’t let me leave her in the street.

But what the hell was I getting myself into?

“This way.” My fingers carefully closed about her upper arm, and I guided her to turn and start walking off the bridge with me, like this was a normal thing to do––like every night of the week, I took a stranger home. My guts churned. This was crazy. But my fingers wrapped right about her skinny arm, and my instincts yelled at me that she needed protecting, and she needed safety. I could let her have a haven for a few days.

She was probably a size zero, she was so skinny.

Lindy would kill to be size zero. She would hate me taking this woman home. She wasn’t flooded with human kindness. She wouldn’t have felt any instinct to help this woman.

“You haven’t told me your name yet?” I prodded as we descended the steps onto the street.

She was moving robotically. I was a stranger to her, too, and she hadn’t questioned me verbally at all. She was going home with a guy she didn’t know.

Maybe she did this all the time.

Maybe her lack of concern should warn me off.

As if sensing my thoughts, she stopped and looked at me, hard, really looking into me, like she’d done on the bridge just now, maybe at last deciding she ought to check me out a little more. “It’s Rachel.”

“Rachel––pleased to meet you. My apartment’s in a block near here, it’s not far. You’re sure about this, yeah? I could still take you somewhere else, if you like?”

“I’ve got nowhere else to go. So I haven’t got any choice. You don’t mind?”

I do, really, but I’m not mean enough to dump you here. “No, I don’t mind.”

I pressed my code in when we reached the building, feeling guilty for covering it up, showing I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t know her.

“My furniture’s a bit sparse at the moment. I only just moved in a couple of months back. Don’t expect anything fancy…” We entered the elevator and I pressed the button. “I’m on the fifth floor.” That was obvious, the red light behind button five glowed, announcing it.

I turned and looked at her. What I’d thought was dirt on her face and in her hair, was dried blood. “Did you hit your head?”

Her gaze struck mine, questioning and cold, and in the white light of the elevator, I faced green eyes. They were a misty green, an unusual sort of green. I’d never seen that eye color before. She didn’t answer me though. She hadn’t spoken since she’d given me her name, and her fingers were curled up, hidden in the sleeves of my sweatshirt, as her arms gripped across her chest.

She looked down at my Adam’s apple.

“You don’t have to be worried.”

Those green eyes looked up again. “I’m not scared of you. You gave me your hoodie. People who are generally mean, don’t give you stuff they need themselves.”

It was an odd, but reasonable, logic. “Yeah, well….” I didn’t know what to say, yet all my friends in Oregon would say I was never lost for words. “Okay.”

The elevator bell rang, announcing that we’d reached the fifth floor, and then the doors opened.

I looked away from her. She was a little too beautiful for comfort. She had untouchable celeb-magazine beauty, the sort you knew you’d never have, so you never wanted. Lindy was pretty, but there was a quality of perfection in this Rachel. Yet she wasn’t perfect was she, or her life wasn’t, she’d been trying to jump off Manhattan Bridge.

I wanted to know what led her there, but I wasn’t going to make her feel like I was prying, I didn’t ask.

I pulled the key from the pocket of my joggers, unlocked the door and stepped back to let her go first, flicking the lights on.

“Chivalrous to a fault…” she whispered. “Do you stand up for pregnant and elderly women on subway trains?”

Actually I did. Lindy always said I was a dying breed. Mom always took credit. “And sometimes I even carry their shopping back.”

She looked at me again. “You don’t come from New York do you? Are you some hillbilly?”

“I’m from Oregon, from a small town there.”

“Out of college and flying the nest…”

She sounded like she was laughing at me, but there was no humor in her face or her eyes. What I saw was grief.

“Do you want some coffee, I can make a pot? It’ll warm you up.” I took her fingers. I could feel how cold they were even through my gloves. They were like blocks of ice. I rubbed them for a moment.

Her hands fell when I let them go.

I felt awkward, but the only thing to do now I’d brought her back here, was to act like I was completely comfortable with it.

I took off my gloves. They were damp. How’d they get damp?

There was no life in her eyes, once more, when her gaze met mine.

She turned and looked about the room. It was empty bar my TV, my Xbox and a beanbag.

I left her and went to make coffee. The kitchen was to one side of the living space.

“The bathroom’s through there, if you need it?” I pointed to the door leading into my bedroom. “There’s only one bed, or rather one mattress, I don’t own a bed. But you can have it tonight. I’ll manage on the floor in here.”

Those pale green eyes turned to me again. “You’re too nice, Jason…?” Her pitch asked for my surname.

“Macinlay.”

“You’ve Irish blood?”

“Two generations ago. Dad’s been back there once, kissed the Blarney Stone, driven the Ring of Kerry and stepped on the Giant’s Causeway.”

She smiled, but it was shallow. Yet I guessed she was doing her best to push aside the awkwardness of this too. “I have no reason to trust you, Jason Macinlay,” she breathed, “but I do.”

Again, I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged.

I’d left the bedroom door ajar; she pushed it wider and went through, her hand slipping off it, leaving a blood mark.

Fuck. “What did you do to your hand?” I was moving before I knew and she stopped and turned, but took a step away from me into the bedroom when I neared. “Don’t tell me you had a go at your wrists, too…” I gripped her forearm.

She had nowhere to run to in my bedroom. You could barely swing a cat in it. There was about a foot of space all around the double mattress which lay on the floor.

I pulled up the sleeve of the sweatshirt I’d given her.

Her wrists were narrow. They looked so fucking breakable. But they weren’t slashed. The blood had come from a jagged cut across her palm. It didn’t look like it had been done by a knife, and the blood had begun congealing.

I glanced at her fingers. I’d heard people injected heroin beneath their fingernails to hide the marks. There were no marks on her arms, and there seemed to be none under her nails. It was probably safe to guess her problem wasn’t heroin .

“How did you do it?” I’d been avoiding questions, I figured she wouldn’t speak, but I couldn’t help myself now. “What happened?”

She shrugged, letting my question slide away, as she’d been doing on the bridge. Her gaze, which had been looking at her hand too, lifted to me, but she said nothing.

I let her hand go. “Why don’t you run a bath? You can talk when you want.”

The cold had probably stopped her losing too much blood. “Don’t get your hand in the water, though.”

“What are you, a nurse?” There was that mocking pitch in her voice again.

“No, I work for a magazine.”

“And from your voice, you don’t like it?”

“Not at the moment, and I don’t like the city either. I’m new to it.”

“Well, I’m not. Maybe I can help you in return, then, seeing as you’re helping me.”

I didn’t want to give her any expectations, we weren’t friends. “You need to just get warm first.”

She turned away.

Jason Macinlay wasn’t like any man I’d known. He was considerate. I didn’t know what to make of him. I’d met guys on the street before, but when they’d taken me back to their place, it hadn’t been to get me out of the cold.

His place was minimalistic and his bedcovers were crumpled and thrown back. Yet he wasn’t untidy. It just suggested he took life as he found it. Like he didn’t need order.

I looked at the doors.

The first one I opened was a closet. It contained rough heaps of his clothing. The second was the bathroom.

I turned the water on and touched it with my bloody hand. A stinging pain burned in my palm. I must have left blood on the doors. I looked at the gash as blood dripped into the water. The warmth had made it bleed again. I saw the scarlet ribbons of blood spinning in the white porcelain sink back at Declan’s.

I didn’t want to think about how I’d cut it. I shut that out. I’d ended it. I was starting over. I had to find a job, find a life––somewhere to live.

I used the toilet as the water ran, and held the neck of Jason Macinlay’s sweaty top up to my nose. The fresh male musky scent was ridiculously comforting. I breathed it in. There was something about him that made me feel safer than I’d felt in an entire year, or maybe longer. Nothing in his eyes had said he’d brought me back here because he wanted sex. He’d said he was a nice guy. Those words were still swimming around in my muddled head.

Was I going mad again? Had I really injured Declan? My eyes shut for a moment as images whisked through my brain and swept away. I couldn’t grasp hold of them. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to get away.

But I had got away. I’d gotten here. I had nowhere else to go.

I was suddenly very aware of the pace of my breathing. It felt too fast. I remembered seeing people breathing into paper bags when they hyperventilated and focused on breathing in the same way, trying to slow it down. I stripped off Jason Macinlay’s top, then my t-shirt. Then I took off my sneakers and jeans.

I hadn’t put on any underwear in my haste to get out.

I got into the water. It was really warm and the heat absorbed all my pain, physical and mental.

Pictures of the black water I’d seen beneath the bridge, swelling and rocking, played through my mind. I imagined it absorbing me, a great dark, thick, fluid weight.

It would be so much easier to slip beneath the water. I didn’t have the courage or the strength to go on. How could I begin again?

A knock struck the bathroom door. Then it opened. Jason Macinlay walked in.

“Shit, sorry… You should’ve shouted.” His eyes skimmed over my body before he turned his back. He wasn’t so saintly then.

I sat up, the water swilling around me. “It’s just a body. You must’ve seen a hundred naked women.” He was too good-looking to be inhibited, surely. He’d probably had tons of women in his bed.

“I brought your coffee.”

“Yeah, I guessed.”

He held it out, without turning. He felt awkward about me being here, I’d seen that the minute we’d got to his front door. I knew what it was like to sleep on the streets, though, and he was right, it was freezing. But what I’d said to him in the elevator was true. I trusted him. Probably more than I’d trusted any other guy––no one had given me their sweaty top before, when I was cold.

I took the cup from him, and put it on the lip of the tub. Blood dripped into the water. “My hand’s bleeding.” It was shaking too.

He looked across his shoulder, at my hand, nothing else. “I’ll find something. I’ve got a first-aid kit. There should be a bandage in there.” He went again.

The cocaine I’d taken with Declan was still spinning through my nerves and my heartbeat lifted my breasts a little as it thumped, while my damp hair brushed the skin on my back and shoulders. I had a sense of déjà-vu, though I could never have been here before. But it was like I was meant to come to this place.

I picked up the coffee with my left hand, my good hand, and sipped from it. Warmth ran into my blood. The cold had got deep inside me.

“I turned the heating up,” Jason said, as he came back in. “Do you want to pull the shower curtain and just stick your hand out.”

I looked up at him and met his deep brown gaze.

He had large eyes, strong features, and broad lips, and his dark brown hair was cut close to his head but it wasn’t gelled.

He looked good. He’d probably broken a few girls’ hearts back in Oregon.

I didn’t bother with the shower curtain, I held out my hand as his gaze clung to my face, like he was trying desperately not to look down.

He needn’t worry. I was used to being naked with men. My body was just flesh and bone. I knew he wanted to look down, all men wanted to look, it was in their nature. Well, unless it wasn’t women they were into.

With a deep sigh his gaze fell to my hand as he gripped it. “Okay, I mixed boiled water with the antiseptic so it’ll take a moment to cool.”

He put the lid of the toilet down and sat on it, holding my hand and looking at the gash.

I couldn’t imagine Declan ever doing anything like this. He’d have told me to fucking get on with it and stop moaning.

But I hadn’t moaned had I? Jason Macinlay had seen the blood and asked about it. I shouldn’t feel guilty then that he was helping. But I did. This was my own fault. I should be fixing it.

“It could need stitches.”

“I’m not going to a hospital. I can’t stand those places. I’ll be fine.”

I took my hand from his and he looked up, his gaze caught on my breasts then lifted.

See, a man, he couldn’t help but look.

He met my gaze, and I knew he knew I’d seen him look. There was color in his cheeks. It made me want to laugh. He didn’t look like he’d had that many women when he blushed, but he was gorgeous, surely he must have had a few.

His brown gaze held mine. “Okay, no hospital.”

I gave him my hand again.

His touch was really gentle for a man. I bent up my knees in the tub and wrapped my other arm about them, watching him. He had some antiseptic in a cup and dunked cotton-wool pads into it, then wiped the blood from my hand, while he rested the back of it on his knee.

I couldn’t remember anyone ever paying so much attention to one of my hurts. “Did your mom do this for you when you were a boy; is that how you learned to treat wounds?”

His brown eyes looked up and said he didn’t appreciate the comment.

“Have you got a big family then, back in the hills?”

“The hills?” His eyebrows lifted, and then he answered in a dry tone. “Very funny… I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere, you know. It’s a small town, not a shack.”

“With a small town society and small town views––”

“And moms who teach you how to clean a wound if you get injured… What’s so bad about that?”

“Nothing…”

His brown eyes looked hard at me for a moment. But those eyes were easy to look at, and he had long dark, almost feminine, eyelashes.

“Right. So just let me get on with it, Rachel…” His gaze fell to my hand again, then after a moment he glanced back up. “Do you have a family somewhere?”

Yes, but not that I cared to speak of. I felt my lips compress.

His eyes hovered on mine for a moment, asking unspoken questions, before they dropped to look at my hand once more.

His touch was caring, as well as gentle.

He looked up and saw me watching, then smiled, suddenly. He had a nice smile too, a really open-hearted smile.

This was a genuine guy. Someone like Declan would eat him alive. “So you don’t like your job?”

“I don’t know. There’s so much frigging office politics, I can’t keep up with it. I think I need to be a bit more cutthroat, but I’m not that type. I can’t be bothered with all the backstabbing, and I have an asshole for a boss. So I spent three years in college, and now I’m the office nobody.”

Yeah, Declan would definitely eat him alive.

“Talk to me about it. I can teach you backstabbing…” I shouldn’t have said that, the image and sound of the mirror splintering pierced my mind, and I felt the shard gripped in my hand as it sank into Declan’s flesh.

I felt sick. I let my forehead drop onto my knees, while my hand still rested in Jason Macinlay’s secure grip, and my arm hung outstretched to him. My other hugged my knees.

“Where do you come from, Rachel…?” he prodded a moment later, as though he was sweeping the previous topic under a rug and moving on.

His hesitation asked my last name, I’d give him that, but nothing more. “Shears. My name is Rachel Shears.” I looked up again, as my lips compressed.

His brown eyes looked hard into mine, but he didn’t push for more.

He looked down at my hand. “It’s clean. I’ll bandage it up.”

When he let it go, I left my hand lying on his knee. His legs were parted and his sweatpants were loose, but his top was tight, it hugged his abs and the pectoral muscles of his chest as he leaned to the side and picked up a bandage from the first-aid box.

He was beautiful, but unlike Declan there seemed to be beauty inside him too, it wasn’t just a surface thing. He was helping me.

I wanted to turn my hand and grip his thigh. But that would be the wrong thing to do. I knew that. But I was really good at doing wrong things.

Voices inside me encouraged me to do it. I didn’t. The cocaine was still clouding my view.

He straightened and his fingers gripped the back of my hand more firmly. It sent tremors running up the nerves in my arm.

His other hand laid the bandage over my palm and his thumb pressed down on the dressing he’d used to cover my cut, securing it, then he began winding the bandage round my hand.

I shut my eyes.

His touch was doing stuff in my belly, making it clasp with need. I wanted sex. I hadn’t wanted it with Declan anymore, but I wanted it with Jason Macinlay. Sex was the best escape from the things going on in my head. It had never even really mattered who I did it with. I just liked it, and I’d always found a guy who’d give me a place to stay in return for it. They just generally weren’t the right guys.

I’d never even liked Declan. And the feeling had been mutual. But we’d connected in bed. He liked things wild, and wild played to my crazy. God, had I really done that stuff with him? I needed something better now.

I opened my eyes and watched Jason Macinlay concentrating. He wound the bandage round and round, pulling it tight to stop the blood; watching what he was doing, not watching me.

I felt hot, and the tingle in my tummy slid to the point between my legs. I was sitting naked in a tub beside this guy. When had I decided to undress? I didn’t know him. Really, my head was stupid.

Yes I did, he was Jason Macinlay, from Oregon, and he’d already given me more respect than Declan had done in the last year.

“How old are you?” I asked.

His brown eyes lifted and met my gaze again.

He was feeling more relaxed, I could tell, his breathing seemed more normal and his muscles less tense.

“Twenty-two. You?”

“Twenty-one.”

“That’s too young to want to end your life, Rachel Shears.”

I shrugged, my lips compressing.

Of course he wanted to know why I’d been there, but I didn’t want to talk and I couldn’t remember half of it anyway. His eyes said, ‘what happened?’ I didn’t answer.

He smiled, not his stunning smile of a few moments ago, but a closed lip smile that said, okay, so you don’t wanna talk, I understand.

No one understood me. I’d learned that the hard way.

Mom would’ve said she did, when I was a kid. She didn’t, and I hadn’t even seen her in years. I didn’t even know why I was thinking of her today. I hadn’t thought of her in months. I hadn’t spoken to her since I was fifteen.

Maybe I was thinking of her because I wished she’d been a proper mom and had taught me how to clean a wound like Jason Macinlay.

“Drink your coffee, and don’t get that in the water.” He stood up, letting my hand go.

I reached for the mug of coffee with my good hand. It was already lukewarm, like the water. I started to feel cold again, and shivered.

“Run some more hot water. I’ll leave you to it.”

He walked out then, and left me, shutting the door behind him.

I used my bandaged hand to turn the water on.

The bandage was neat and tight.

I lay back in the water, and let the heat seep into me. But it wasn’t just the warmth of the water which was penetrating my body. I could fall for this guy, Jason Macinlay. That was another thing I was good at, jumping from one guy to another. It was what I did best.

~

“Hey,”

“Yeah, I know it’s late. I’m sorry, I…”

I woke in bed, hearing Jason Macinlay whispering in the room next door.

He’d changed the covers on the mattress while I’d bathed. The sheet and duvet cover smelt fresh and felt crisp.

I’d rather he’d left the old sheets on, it would have felt more comforting. I’d missed his scent from his sweatshirt. He’d thrown that in the washer, too, like I’d marked it and he needed to wash me off it.

Declan must have washed all the blood off by now, mine and his. I was gone from his life. That poisonous relationship was over.

“Something happened, Lindy. I couldn’t call earlier. But I’m calling now.”

The door was shut between the bedroom and the living space.

“Yeah, I know.”

I rolled over and listened more intently, I could even hear him breathing between the words.

He sounded defensive.

“Look…” The pitch of his voice dropped. “I found a girl on Manhattan Bridge, Lind. She was trying to jump. I couldn’t just leave her.”

There was silence for a moment as he breathed. I imagined this Lindy speaking at the other end.

“I brought her home.”

Silence.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Lindy, leave it, she’s no risk.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, honest, I’ll take care. I can look out for myself.”

“I know this is New York.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Look, I’m going to go. I don’t want to wake her.”

“She’s sleeping in my bed. I’m sleeping on the floor.”

“She won’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Look Lindy, I’ll call you tomorrow, normal time. I’m going to go now, and don’t worry.”

“Yeah, I love you, too.”

“Yeah, tomorrow.” He sighed, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

I needed a drink. I threw the covers back and got up, then knocked on the door leading back into the living space.

He didn’t answer; he couldn’t have heard, but I didn’t like to just walk in. I knocked more loudly.

“Yeah?”

“You decent?”

He laughed. It was low and heavy. “Yeah.”

I opened the door.

He was sitting on the floor, gilded by the moonlight streaming through a floor to ceiling window which lit his living room. His arms were about his knees as one hand still gripped his cell and his head was bent a little forward.

He looked defeated.

“Sorry.” I didn’t even know why I apologized, I just felt as if I was intruding.

“It’s alright. Did I wake you? Sorry.”

“I want some water.” I moved to the kitchen counter and watched him as I ran it, waiting for it to run cool. He was wearing a loose t-shirt now, with boxers. His forearms and his shins were dusted with dark hair. I could see it even in the blue-black light in the room.

The clock on the TV flashed eleven-thirty. I didn’t feel as though I’d get back to sleep, and my hand was hurting like hell now; it was throbbing with the beat of my heart.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“Lindy? Yeah.”

“She’s back in Oregon?”

“Yeah.”

“Bet she feels small town, now you’ve gone all big city.”

“Ha. Ha.” His pitch was dismissive. Life clearly wasn’t all roses between them.

“I suppose you’ve been with her forever. What was she, the head of the cheerleaders while you captained the football team?”

“You think you know me so well, don’t you…”

He had been captain of the football team.

I bet they were best looking girl and best looking boy in their year, and they’d gotten together because it was what everyone expected.

“I was the kid who sat in the corner and never had friends…” I didn’t know why I told him that, I just thought it might make him feel better.

“And now?”

My lips compressed.

Turning away, I opened a cupboard and found a glass. “Do you want a drink?”

“No thanks.”

I filled the glass and drank, as again the images of the mirror breaking disturbed my thoughts.

I pushed the memory away. I was starting over and forgetting that.

I moved about the counter, and leaned back against it, facing him. “So what’s wrong between you?”

“Tonight? You. She thinks you’re going to either jump me in my sleep, or steal all my stuff, like I have anything worth stealing.” His hand lifted and swept forward indicating the virtually empty room.

“She might be right, though?” I did feel like jumping him in his sleep. It would be a great way to escape the blackness which kept threatening to swamp me.

His gaze focused up at me as he scanned my face. “She could be right, yes…”

Well, he didn’t know me, and I’d said nothing about myself, bar my name and my age. “She isn’t. You’re safe.”

“Phew, thank fuck for that.”

I laughed. He was a nice guy. There weren’t many of those in the world. I wasn’t used to them.

My eyes shifted to the white pillow on the hard floor behind him. Then I looked at him again.

“So anyway, seeing as I’ve promised not to jump you in your sleep, why don’t you share the mattress? If you’re safe, it seems silly you trying to sleep out here.” I’d be good. He deserved for me to be good. He’d been kind to me.

He looked at me for a long moment. I didn’t move, holding out against his assessment.

I wasn’t blind. I knew he liked what he saw. I was wearing his t-shirt, my legs were bare, and I’d nothing on underneath. It would be so easy to be bad. His gaze ran up my legs and my body then came to my face. But he wasn’t that sort of guy.

All men looked. It didn’t mean all men let themselves touch.

“Yeah, okay, I won’t get any sleep here anyway.”

He picked up his pillow and stood, then lifted the pillow indicating for me to walk ahead.

I went into the bathroom, while he lay down on the mattress, under the covers.

When I came back in, he was watching me, one arm behind his head.

I said nothing, walked to the other side and got in.

He probably wouldn’t mind if I jumped him, but he’d have a hell of a conscience the next day when he spoke to his Lindy.

I turned my back to him and felt him roll onto his stomach. My body was intensely aware of his, and all I could hear was his breathing as he drifted into sleep, while all I could smell was his shampoo, because he’d showered after I’d bathed.

This had been a weird day, I’d finally left Declan and within hours I’d acquired a stranger. My brain wasn’t on the same page as where my life had gotten to. I’d walked out on the life of rich egotistical playboys, and into an opposite extreme.

An ex had once called me a parasite––maybe I was. But maybe I didn’t want to be anymore.

Chapter Two

When I woke, Jason Macinlay was standing by the door of the bedroom, fully clothed, and looking down at me. He had on pants and a shirt and tie.

I had to think what day it was. Wednesday. It must be Wednesday.

Was he going to work? Did he want me to leave?

“I’m going now. Sorry to wake you, but I didn’t like to just leave…”

My eyes opened wider, and I met that brown gaze. It was even more distracting in daylight.

“Will you be okay if I go to work?”

“Yeah.” No. I didn’t know. I’d just woken up. I didn’t know how I felt. It always took a few minutes to gauge my mood.

He hesitated. He was a sexy guy with a tender heart. Where the hell had he come from? Oregon, I remembered.

“Are you sure? I could––” His voice was deep, and rugged with uncertainty.

“Stay home? Are you afraid I’ll steal your TV or your Xbox, after all?”

His hands slid into his pants' pockets as he smiled.

He’d looked good last night in sweatpants and a tight top, elemental. In his work gear, he looked sophisticated––but like he needed some girl to ruffle his hair and pull his tie loose.

I was tempted to be that girl and urge him back into bed with me. I’d feel better, but I didn’t doubt he’d be drowning in guilt after, if I got him to do it. He was too nice.

“You can go. I’ll be okay, and I won’t take your Xbox.”

“Right.” He laughed but still looked hesitant.

“Just fuck off, and go, if you’re going, I wanna go back to sleep…” My voice was dry, but I’d given him a half-hearted smile as I said it.

He smiled, too, though it showed no more enthusiasm than mine, and said, “Okay.” Then he turned, and went.

A few moments later, the front door shut.

Dammit. I couldn’t go out. There was blood all over my clothes. And I hadn’t any underwear. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to wear a bra and knickers. But then last night was now only a clutter of confused images in my mind. I couldn’t even remember getting dressed and getting out of Declan’s anymore, only him having sex with me, and me pushing him off, and then the breaking mirror, and the feel of it in my hand.

I rolled over onto the side of the mattress Jason Macinlay slept in and smelt his shampoo, and him. It was still a little warm with his body heat. It was comforting. I didn’t want to think about Declan, or about any moment of my life before now––before this good guy had come to my rescue on Manhattan Bridge.

I’d never been with a nice guy in my life. I’d always preferred the risks a bad guy brought. Or maybe I was just so down on myself, I needed the bad guys to mess me up. Declan had messed me up. But when I’d got with him it had been exciting, he’d made my heart race with adrenaline. I’d been flattered and thrilled by his domineering, debauched ways. By the end, he’d just made me feel sick. Declan was shallow, cruel and arrogant like the rest. Jason Macinlay had hidden depths, like the shifting water I’d looked down at last night. There was so much I didn’t know.

Perhaps I really ought to try a nice guy.

But not this one; this one had a perfect girl, Lindy, to go with his perfect self.

Maybe he had a nice guy friend he could hook me up with.

But then I’d feel guilty when it reached the point it all went horribly wrong, and I’d lose Jason Macinlay’s respect.

All my relationships went horribly wrong at some point. There wasn’t really any reason in trying to make them work. They all crumbled in the end.

I felt tears on my cheeks. I wiped them away, forgetting my bad hand. A sharp pain caught in my palm where the wound was healing beneath the bandage.

All I wished to do was curl up in a ball and shut the world out today. I was too deep in a dark tunnel; the room was only a pinprick at the end of it, but it was there to remind me there was something outside to reach for.

This was the sort of day which made me avoid nice guys, when I was in a black melancholy mood. They’d just piss me off, trying to cheer me up. At least bad guys wouldn’t annoy me with any misdirected kindness when I felt like this.

I rolled onto my stomach and lay as he’d lain in this space, smelling his scent and crying, like a child. I was so tired of life.

I’d been nervous about coming home all day. I was nervous about opening the door. My key seemed heavier, as it turned the lock.

A part of me wondered if she’d still be here.

I’d told the only person I’d call anything near a friend at work, about the woman I’d found on Manhattan Bridge. Justin’s response had been to tell half the office, and start them laying odds on whether or not, when I got back, my Xbox, my TV, and Rachel, would be gone. Someone else had implied she might’ve simply changed all the locks and shut me out.

I didn’t think she’d do either, but now I was opening the door, the air stuck in my lungs.

The noise hit me first. She was playing my Need for Speed game. There was a screech of wheels as she turned the car. She didn’t look up.

I’d forgotten just how stunning her figure was though, her long pale legs were stretched out in front her, bent up a little, and she was wearing a pair of my socks, with one of my shirts covering her upper body to the top of her thighs.

I remembered seeing her naked in the bath last night, lying in the water like some sultry model striking a pose. She hadn’t even seemed to care that I looked.

Lindy hated me looking. She always covered herself up whenever she could.

But I shouldn’t have been looking. I had a girl. And Rachel needed me to help her, not lust after her.

She still hadn’t looked up from the game. She was concentrating over-hard. Her knuckles were white as they gripped the controller.

I wondered if she even knew I was there, she seemed to have screened my presence out as she’d done last night on the bridge.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

“Hey.”

She did know I was there then, just hadn’t been willing to speak.

“Did you have a good day?”

She glanced up. The car crashed. “Shit.”

“Have you been playing that all day?” I walked over to the counter and put my keys down then went to the fridge and took out a bottle of beer. “Do you want one?” I held it up as she looked at me.

Her eyes were bloodshot, swollen and red. She’d been crying, probably most of the day. She’d not cried last night.

She shook her head.

I popped the top off my beer then left it on the counter as I took off my scarf and coat and went to hang them on the hook beside the door.

She hadn’t got up, or restarted the game.

I walked back over to the counter to collect my beer, and loosened off my tie. “I’ll take you out for dinner, where’d you like to eat?”

“I can’t go out. I’ve got nothing to wear.”

Right, duh, of course she hadn’t. I knew what she’d been wearing. I’d put her stuff in the washer-drier before I’d gone to work. There had been one thing lacking though. There had been no underwear among the clothes she’d stripped off. But I didn’t want to think of that right now, not when she was sitting there wearing one of my shirts, which barely covered anything.

I’d been physically aware of her in bed, all last night. I didn’t need my mind heading in that direction again. “The mall will still be open. Let’s go and get you something then.”

“I haven’t any money either.”

“No, but I have. So we’ll get you some stuff and something to eat. No point sitting here moping about what you can’t fix, let’s fix what you can.”

“You don’t know I can’t fix things?”

She was strange. I’d never met anyone quite so guarded before.

Her lips compressed in a thin line, like they’d kept doing every time she’d clammed up last night.

City folk. That’s what Mom had said when I’d called her on the way to work. Like no one had ever got into trouble and needed help back home. And our town wasn’t even that far from the city in Oregon. Portland was only a short drive away.

Mom hadn’t liked the idea of Rachel Shears being in my apartment any more than Lindy. But she was the one who’d taught me to help people and look for the best in them. I didn’t know Rachel, but I did know she’d got herself in a mess, somehow, and she needed help. I was going to give her the chance to prove Mom, Lindy, and everyone at work, wrong.

“You going to get dressed then, and let me help you out? Whether you can fix whatever led you to Manhattan Bridge or not, you need some clothes to do it.”

“And what am I gonna wear to the shops?”

“What you wore last night. I put your stuff in the washer-drier. Did you not think to check?”

“God, you’re so domesticated,” she mocked as she stood.

I held her gaze for a moment, that oddly deceptive green, and then turned to collect her stuff from the machine. “We can walk down to Fulton Street.”

When I turned back, she was behind me.

I held her clothes out.

Her blonde hair hung thin and straight. It was the definition of her cheekbones, her large eyes and broad lips that made her beautiful. Lindy was pretty too, but Rachel Shears’ beauty was haunting. Her image had hung in my head all day, in a way Lindy’s never did.

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to reach out and grip her nape and bring her mouth to mine. I didn’t. I shouldn’t even be thinking about doing it. Maybe it was a good thing Lindy was coming for Christmas. Maybe I’d just missed her, and things would be okay when she came.

“Go get ready. Borrow a sweater from the shelf in my cupboard, in fact take two, I’d layer. It’s freezing out there still.”

Rachel took her clothes from my hand and her lips twisted sideways in a mocking smile, then she said, “You sound so like a mom,” just before she disappeared.

I could be hurt by her teasing, but I wasn’t. I had thick skin.

My conscience pricking, I crossed the room, pulled my cell phone out of my coat, and then brought up my contacts. Lindy. I pressed my thumb on her number and called. “Hi.”

“You’re calling early.”

“I’m not going to run tonight, but I’m going out, I thought I’d call before I left.”

“Going out where, Jason? You haven’t still got that girl there have you?”

“Yep.”

“Jason! And I suppose you can’t talk ‘cause she’s listening.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t doubt Rachel could hear me in the other room; she’d heard last night.

“Where are you going?”

“Taking her to buy something to wear. She’s only got the clothes I found her in, and––”

“And you’re paying. She’s ripping you off. I told you last night. You’re too gullible. You shouldn’t let people take advantage.”

“I’m just helping her out.”

“Yeah right, like she’d help you back if you needed. She’s a stranger you picked up on the street. You––”

“Look Lindy, you weren’t there last night, and you aren’t here now. You can’t judge. You don’t know her.” But I didn’t know her either.

At that moment Rachel came back into the room, pulling on a sweater. She made a face at me. I made a face back. She actually laughed. That shocked me.

“Is that her? Just watch out, Jason. I wish I was there. If I was, I’d stop her taking you for a ride.”

“That isn’t what’s happening, Lindy.”

“Yeah, right.” Lindy’s voice had turned caustic. She could be catty as hell when she wished. A bitch at times. I’d only recently discovered the truth in that. Now I wasn’t certain if it was me Lindy loved or the life she’d thought I could give her. She’d always had a competitive, aggressive edge, but since I’d told her I was moving to New York, her aggressive edge had turned on me.

She hadn’t liked me leaving Oregon. She didn’t want to live in New York. Yet we were meant to be getting married next year. I think she still hoped I’d grow out of my big city ideas.

Perhaps I would, New York hadn’t been what I’d imagined yet, but the thought of going back home and admitting I’d been wrong, and other people were right, well, that would be tough. I didn’t want to fit in the box everyone had labeled for me.

“I’ll call you again later, when I get back. Okay? Bye.”

“Alright… I love you.” The response was terse.

“And me you.”

We said it every night but I wasn’t sure it was true anymore, for her or me. I was getting the impression that unless I fitted in my box back home, she didn’t want me. And if she didn’t want me for who I was, I didn’t want her.

When she came to visit, in a few weeks, I had a feeling we’d exchange some strong words. They’d either make or break us. But the idea of not having Lindy was a little scary. Lindy was all I’d known.

My gaze caught on Rachel’s again and I realized she’d been busy analyzing my expression.

“Did she accuse me of wanting to jump you again?”

“No, just ripping me off.”

“You don’t have to take me shopping.”

“I do, you’ve got nothing but the clothes you’re standing in, and they don’t even include underwear.”

“You noticed…” She laughed, again, and her voice seemed lighter, and her eyes were definitely more expressive, they seemed bright, burning with as many unasked questions as my mind longed to ask her. She didn’t speak though. And surely her laugh should have sounded awkward and nervous, but it didn’t.

She shut up who she was as tight as tight and yet lacked any inhibition over what she did. She was an odd girl. I didn’t get her, she wasn’t like anyone I knew back home. “You needn’t worry, I’m not asking why.”

“I never thought you would, it would be an ungentlemanly question. And you’re far too much the gentleman for that.”

“Yeah, right. You’re mocking again.”

“Actually, no, I’m counting my blessings. You ready?”

“Yep. You?”

“Yep.”

“Right then.” I reached for my scarf, but instead of wrapping it about my neck, I wrapped it about hers, then grabbed my coat as I offered, “You can have my gloves and hat, too, if you like. I’ll manage without.”

I got them out my coat pocket and held them out to her.

“See, such a gentleman.” She mocked me again as she took them from my hand, flashing me another rare smile. The first smile had seemed merely muscles moving in her face but now there was a glimpse of it in her eyes, showing genuine appreciation. I knew the difference. Lindy had used to smile tons when we were at school, she’d laughed all the time, but in the last year any smile she’d given me was forced.

I cast all the trash in my head aside and lifted a hand. “Come on then Rachel Shears, let’s get you fitted out.”

His fingers touched my shoulder as I went out the door. It made me jump. They fell away. But I hadn’t jumped because I didn’t like it. I just wasn’t used to being touched in anything beyond a sexual way.

He was silent in the elevator, watching the closed doors. I sensed a lot going on in his head. But I felt a lot going on in mine too; my mood was shifting, I could feel it like pressure trapped inside a capped bottle of fizzy drink, waiting for a point to explode.

“What did you do at work today?” I asked him, to secure the other one hundred irrelevant questions my brain was suddenly bursting to ask.

His brown eyes looked at me and into me all at once, asking his own unspoken questions. But he answered, hesitantly. “It was all a little manic.”

“Did the office politics piss you off?”

“The office politics always piss me off, but they weren’t so bad today. People were too busy betting on whether or not the girl I’d found would’ve left with all my stuff when I got home.”

“You told them about me?” I didn’t know what to think. I’d spent over a year with Declan who’d hidden me away most of the time; unless it suited him to play some trick and show me off, for business meetings, or to flaunt before his wife.

I hated admitting it, but what I’d disliked most were the periods he left me alone. I could never take being ignored and here was a stranger telling everyone I existed.

“You don’t mind me talking about you? I just thought if everyone knew. If you needed to call me…”

The elevator doors opened.

I glanced at him as we walked out. “I couldn’t have called, you never gave me your number and I don’t have a cell phone.”

“Foolish of me, right? Sorry, I’m just so used to Lindy always calling if she needs anything.”

“But you thought about me when you were at work.” I was touched; his thoughtfulness eased a little of the tension gathering in my head.

“It’s not every day you come across a woman trying to jump off a bridge, Rachel. I’d have been hard pushed not to think about you.”

“Yeah.” Of course. Now I felt a fool.

He opened the door onto the street and the cold hit me. I pulled his woolen hat down over my ears and lifted up the hoods of his two sweat-tops, which I wore. Even so, cold seeped through my clothes as we started walking.

It was dark already and the streetlights glossed his brown hair.

He was really good-looking. I hoped his Lindy knew how lucky she was. But Lindy wasn’t here, and I was, I gripped his arm with the hand he’d bandaged, and walked close to him. He didn’t seem to mind as he looked sideways at me.

Then he said, “Things ’ll be okay, Rachel, you just need to work them out.”

“You might need to work them out. I need to start again. I’m not going back.” Ideas, things I should do, had begun spinning through my head ever since the moment he’d told me to get dressed, like someone had flicked a switch inside me and turned my energy back on.

“Going back where?”

He was quick, I’d give him that. I just made a face. I really wanted to possess this guy. I’d felt like crap without him all day. Jason Macinlay, savior of the world. Well, of my world at least. I was glad he’d come along last night, and taken me home, like a stray. I was a stray.

“There’s that closed lip look again. I get it, you don’t want to say. But you can’t pretend what happened didn’t happen, and talking about stuff is better than holding it in.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to think about it ever again.

He shrugged.

We walked in silence for a bit. He had his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Mine kept a hold of his arm. I felt like we were perfectly paired; he was only a little taller than me.

I’d never walked anywhere with Declan, in all the time I’d been with him.

When we reached the mall, Jason Macinlay held doors for me, and then watched quietly as I picked what I liked, encouraging me not to fret over the money. I flashed the skimpy satin underwear I picked at him to wind him up, but he didn’t seem the sort of person who could be wound, he was so easygoing.

I chose the cheap stuff though and only what I needed. A black skirt and white shirt, in the hope I’d get some work somewhere. A pair of black cotton jeans, two long sleeved tops, a white blouse, one jumper, and he insisted I bought a coat, a scarf, hat and gloves. I hadn’t wanted them; I liked wearing his, it made me feel wrapped up in him.

We stopped at a pizza place on the way back, piling my bags into the spare chairs and then shared one large thin-crust Hawaiian. We laughed. He told me more about his home town, and what the magazine he worked for did, how his parents helped him get his apartment here, and what Lindy was like, when I asked.

I had an ulterior motive. I watched the look in his eyes when he spoke about her, trying to spot love. I saw affection, and thought, and a little indecision, but, love, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t doubt he was close to her, or that he cared for her. Caring seemed ingrained in him. I did doubt that she was right for him. I had an itch to meet Lindy.

When we got back to his apartment, he put coffee on and then said he needed to call Lindy, and asked me to forgive him if he went outside.

I did forgive him, I understood––he was nice. He’d been giving me his attention for a couple of hours and now he needed to straighten things out with his girl.

I began pouring the coffee, while he disappeared.

“Hey, Lindy.” I called her on my cell when I got back down to the street, and then walked toward Manhattan Bridge.

“Hi. You just got back?”

“Yeah, she got some clothes and I took her for a pizza.“

“Then you’re a fool––”

“I’m not a fool. She needs someone to help her out.”

“So she’s tagged on to you––the gullible guy from Oregon.”

Rachel had asked me about work, Lindy never asked. “Look Lindy, that’s enough, it’s awkward when you run her down. She bought some clothes so she can look for a job. She’s not taking me for a ride. She’s just hit a tough time. So, shut up, don’t keep condemning her.”

She was silent for a bit, then she said, “You’ve never told me to ‘shut up’ before.”

Maybe I should have done––it worked. “Don’t take it personally. I’ve just got too much stuff going on here. I don’t need you dragging me down.”

“Dragging you down?” She sounded hurt, like she hadn’t known that’s what she did.

“That came out wrong. Just tell me what you’ve been up to today. Did you see anyone at work?” She worked in Dad’s store, the business he had built up for me to take over and run. The place where I was supposed to settle down and work. I’d never been enthused about selling hardware. But the store was like a second home to me. I’d grown up running around it.

“Billy came in.” That sounded like she wanted me to wish I’d been there. “He asked how you were doing.” Billy had been my best friend since school. We’d gone to college together, too, all of us.

“And you said…”

“You were doing okay. He asked me to say, hi, to you. I said I was going to visit you soon. He said maybe he’d come and see you, too, sometime. If that’s okay?”

“It’s okay. Get him to call me.” I could have suggested he travel with her, but I knew she wouldn’t welcome my attention being distracted by Billy when she was here. She’d always wanted all or nothing. No wonder she hated me leaving her behind. But she was the one who’d chosen not to come. She’d said she’d follow, once I was sure about staying in New York. Every day I doubted more and more, she ever would.

“Yeah.” She drifted into silence again.

I climbed the steps which led from the street up to the opening on to the footpath across Manhattan Bridge, and thought of Rachel standing there last night. Where the hell had she come from? Why had she wanted to jump?

“Jason? You’ve changed, you know that.” It was half statement, half accusation. But she was right, I had. Leaving her behind was giving me the chance to find out who I was––not who Lindy and Jason were. Since school I’d done nearly everything because she wished me too. I’d picked my college because it was where she wanted us to go. I bought clothes because she liked them. We ate what she wanted. We did the stuff she wanted. Now I couldn’t even remember what I did or didn’t like.

You pick, Rachel had said in the pizza place, before going off to the restroom. Like it didn’t even matter if I picked what she hated.

“Possibly, it’s different living here.”

“But you don’t have to live there.”

“No, but I want to.” I wasn’t even sure I did want to anymore though.

“And what are you going to do about this girl?”

I sighed. “I’m going to let her get back on her feet and then she’ll find somewhere to live, and I’ll know she won’t be tempted to jump off a bridge again. She was standing out here, in twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit last night, Lind, in a t-shirt, and she didn’t even notice the cold.”

“Just be careful, Jason, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Ah, Lindy did still care, then, in some way. “I’ll take care. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Well I do. I worry a lot. I wish you were home.”

I rested my hand on the cold stone and looked along the bridge and then down to the black shifting water. I didn’t know what to say to that, I didn’t wish I was home. But I wasn’t sure what I did wish right now. “I love you.” The words slipped from my mouth, out of habit, yet there was no feeling of love in my chest anymore. I wasn’t even sure there ever had been.

“I love you too. I can’t wait to see you.” She could wait. She didn’t even want to come here for Christmas. We’d had a long argument about that too. She’d wanted me to go back there. I’d refused.

“I’ll call you tomorrow evening, alright?”

“Yeah.”

“Say, hi, to Dad in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Night.”

“Night.”

~

“Everything fine in paradise?” Rachel mocked when I walked in, her hesitant smiles of earlier now transformed into a wide teasing grin, after a couple of hours shopping. I smiled.

Considering she’d attempted to throw herself off a bridge just over twenty-four hours before, she was fun to be with, I found her easy company. She didn’t seem to think highly of herself. She didn’t seem to care what I thought of her either. She just was. Take her or leave her. I couldn’t imagine anyone disliking her though. Yet why then, would she have ended up alone on Manhattan Bridge?

The microwave pinged, and I realized she’d put my coffee in there to warm it back up.

She handed it to me. “You look like you wanna talk?” I met her green gaze. “She wants you to throw me out, right?”

“No, she doesn’t want me here at all.” I sipped the coffee, then sighed. “You don’t need my burdens.”

Her fingers lay over mine as they gripped the cup. Her good hand, not her bandaged hand. They were cold, and the sensation stirred male instincts I’d always found it relatively easy to keep at bay with anyone else.

It was only because we were alone in my apartment and I’d been away from Lindy for a few weeks.

Her hand fell, as though she’d sensed my discomfort, then she turned away. “Some people say talking about problems makes you feel better.” She started running water to wash up the few odd cups and things on the side.

“Ha, ha, very funny.” She was quoting back what I’d said to her. But if I spoke, it might encourage her to speak too. I leaned my elbows on the counter, and sipped my coffee.

She flashed me a smile over her shoulder.

I lifted my eyebrows and smiled too. “Okay, I’ll talk…” So while she washed the few bits of crockery and stuff, wiped it up, and put it away, I leaned on the counter and poured out my troubles.

I told her how Dad was disappointed I didn’t want to take over his business one day. He was annoyed I hadn’t stayed at home and become store manager in his stead. I told her about Lindy too, about how she always wanted me to be doing this or that, and I’d tried to be what she wanted, but being what she wanted didn’t seem like me.

“…She wants a box-shaped house in a cul-de-sac, with two point four kids.”

“And you want?”

God, no one ever asked me that, everyone in my life had always told me what I wanted. “Now there’s the tricky thing, I don’t know anymore. I always thought I wanted to be here, doing what I’m doing, yet I feel lame. I just don’t feel right. I’m working for an asshole. I hate being at the magazine. All I am is a lackey. I’m learning nothing I wanted to. And I’ve only made one sort-of friend, Justin. But I can’t go back home and be a failure.”

“You wouldn’t be a failure, you’d be a trier. And you’ve made two friends. There’s me, too.”

“There’s not much reward in trying though is there? It’s success and achievement that makes you feel good.”

“You don’t feel good?”

Her green gaze met mine, questions and concern there.

“I don’t feel great, but I’m not so down I’d jump off a bridge. I’ll work it out. What about you?”

Her lips twisted to a smirk. “Clever, but you won’t get my story out of me that easy. I don’t want to talk…”

I laughed. She did too. Which was crazy seeing as just over twenty-four hours ago, she had wanted to jump off a bridge, and the thing that had led her up there was what she wasn’t talking about. I had a feeling one day she’d tell me what took her to Manhattan Bridge. But it wasn’t going to be today, she wasn’t ready yet.

She put the last cup in a cupboard. “I’m going to go to bed. If that’s okay?”

“Yeah.” I straightened up.

“Are we sharing the bed again tonight?” she asked.

Fuck, something lurched low in my stomach, but I swallowed back the jolt of awareness, and hid it with a smile. “Yeah. If you’re okay with it?”

“It’s okay with me, if it’s okay with you?”

“It’s fine. We’re both adults.”

“Except sometimes, don’t you feel just like a kid trying to be an adult?”

I held her gaze and I knew for the first time, she’d opened up to me and said something of the truth, of what was going on in her head. But I knew what she meant. “Yeah, I often feel entirely out of my depth, but you just have to take a breath, keep calm, and carry on.”

She smiled, weakly this time, but then it dropped away. “Or start again. I’ve gotta start again.”

“Well, you can sleep before you do.”

Chapter Three

I’d slept well. I felt good, much better. Jason had gone to work before I woke, but he’d left me his spare key on the counter, so I could go out, and a note giving me the building access code and saying he might have to work late so don’t wait to eat.

He was probably gonna try to work overtime to pay for the stuff he’d bought me.

I needed a job. I wasn’t gonna let him keep me. He deserved better than that. He wasn’t Declan.

I bathed using his shampoo and soap. I liked smelling like him. Then I dressed. When I put on my satin underwear, I remembered how I’d waved it at Jason in the store and his half-smile. I put on the black skirt, some stockings and a white blouse, then the scarf and coat, and I felt cared for, like no one had ever cared for me.

Lindy really didn’t know how good she had it, and she was pushing him away. That woman needed a talking to, and if I got her on the cell I’d tell her.

I hurried out the door. It was already eleven, the perfect time to start knocking on restaurant doors. I could serve okay. Someone would take me on. I hit the streets. There were a few restaurants I tried around the DUMBO area but none were hiring, so I headed into Brooklyn, I didn’t want to go to Manhattan. If I worked back over the bridge I might bump in to Declan, I didn’t want to do that.

I got a job in a restaurant, in Henry Street. The mainstay of their menu was burgers, but I wasn’t a snob; the food looked nice, and it wasn’t too far to walk from Jason’s. I’d be fine there until I’d earned enough for a deposit for a room somewhere. Probably not in DUMBO or Brooklyn, the rents here would be a bit steep for a waitress salary, and I didn’t have parents to help me out like he did. But it was a beginning to my new life.

They wanted me to start work that night. I said okay. I thought I’d better start before I had the chance to change my mind. I walked up to the Brooklyn Bridge Park after the interview, and sat on a bench there, for a moment, looking at the bridge and traffic on the river.

Then I got up and walked down by the water. It reminded me how I’d felt when I’d gone onto Manhattan Bridge. I’d just needed to escape everything, myself, as well as Declan. I hadn’t wanted to keep fighting and trying anymore, or to be who I was any longer.

The water had called to me. Deep and shifting and promising escape.

It promised me escape again, as I gripped the rail. I could jump and just not swim…

But I had a new life now. After just two days. I had somewhere to stay, with someone I liked, someone kind, and now I had a job. Why would I give in to the water’s call now? I’d be foolish to listen. I watched instead as the water shifted and swelled, when boats swept a v in their wake, out across it.

~

When I got home I was surprised Rachel wasn’t in the living room. My heartbeat slipped up a gear. Had she gone without saying goodbye? My TV and Xbox were still there. I looked and saw her coat on the hook by the door. She hadn’t left.

I stripped off my coat and hung it up, then got a beer out the fridge.

I checked in the bedroom. Some of her clothes were thrown on the mattress and a bag still stood in the corner containing the other stuff we’d bought yesterday. I could hear the shower running.

I went back into the living room.

I was drinking my beer when Rachel walked in, wearing a towel tucked closed over her breasts and another as a turban on her head. Her slender arms raised and she began rubbing her hair with the turbaned towel. “Hey, I thought you’d be later…”

“I didn’t have to work late after all.” I’d suggested a subject for an article today. The sub-editor, Hilary, had liked it, the editor, Keith, had even shown some interest. The asshole owner of the magazine, who’d happened to be in today, had thrown my idea out, saying it was stupid. He didn’t even know anything about editing. He was only the money behind the magazine. It was like a game to him. I’d been put straight back in my meaningless place.

“Well, if you were seeking money to pay the bills I ran up on your card last night, don’t panic, I’ve got a job, your investment was worthwhile. I start my first shift in an hour. It’s only a few hours tonight but If they like me they’ll give me more.”

She looked so pleased with herself, her expression touched something in my chest. I smiled. She smiled back. A full, genuine, bright, wide smile.

I lifted my beer a little. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. It’s a restaurant, on Henry St. Why don’t you eat there tonight? I could serve you.” She gave me the cheeky grin she’d given me last night when she’d been asking my opinion on her satin thongs. She had a wicked streak. I’d learned that yesterday.

The conversation I’d had with Mom on the way home from work repeated in my head. “Darling, Lindy is worried. Are you sure you know enough about this girl, you don’t know where she’s come from or why she was even on that bridge. She could have done anything.”

“Mom, I think she’s a good person. She needed help. I’m giving it to her.”

I couldn’t believe Lindy had panicked Mom so badly. When Dad complained and discouraged me, Mom would convince him to give me a chance to try things out. That’s why they’d helped fund my apartment. She’d wanted me to stay at home, but still she’d encouraged and helped me to come to New York. She was selfless, and she’d brought me up to be like that. Coming to New York was the first thing I’d done just for myself. And look where it was getting me; even Mom was taking sides against me now.

I sipped my beer, then nodded. I never went out. It would be good to get out again. “When does your shift end?”

“Eleven.”

“Then I’ll run first and come in at the end of your service. I can walk you home.”

A soft look added depth to her green eyes for a moment, and her smile turned from bright and sunny to warm. “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome.”

She walked forward, and then her index finger came up and flicked my tie. “You know, your Lindy should appreciate you a little more.”

I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do, because, actually, I was seriously turned on as she swiveled round and walked away. She had nothing on beneath those towels and I knew her body was hot as hell; I could remember every detail of it from when I’d seen her in the bath.

Fuck, I was going to have to keep a tight hold on my libido. Perhaps we should stop sharing a bed. I was physically constantly aware of her near me, even though I slept.

I heard her getting ready, she sung to herself the whole time. I doubted she even knew she was singing. She just sounded happy, almost carefree.

I got a snack to go with my beer, to give me some energy to run on. Then she was in the living room again, wearing her tight black skirt and white shirt.

She looked great, really good. “You look beautiful. You’ll knock ‘em dead.”

It was the first time I’d commented on her looks and instantly a pleased expression crossed her face, implying she was glad I thought her pretty. I wondered for a moment if I’d made an error, if I’d been misleading her by being nice, and she was taking this all the wrong way. But then she smiled that easy happy smile of earlier and winked at me. “Thanks. Looking beautiful is what I do best. I do try.”

She turned away briskly after she said it, grabbed the coat I’d bought her off the peg, and walked out, lifting a hand before she went out the door, shouting, “Bye, see you later.”

God, was that the same Rachel Shears I’d found on a bridge, freezing, shaking, and silent, only two days earlier.

Lindy said I’d changed. But I hadn’t changed as quickly as that.

I finished my beer and snack then went to put my sweats on. I was going to go for a long run. I could get my thoughts in order when I ran. No matter what was going on in my life, everything seemed to slip into perspective when I was running.

~

When I walked into the restaurant, I saw Rachel leaning over the counter talking to some guy. She was smiling broadly, and laughing a lot. The guy was laughing too. Then he handed over a note, and wished her goodnight, before walking away.

Well, she’d told me earlier being beautiful was what she did best, but she hadn’t ever tried that sort of charm on me, not yet anyway.

She caught sight of me and her smile went from a fake, exaggerated expression to what looked like a real pleased-to-see-you smile.

I nodded and she hurried around the counter.

“Where’d you like to sit, sir? Here by the window?”

Ah, so we were playing strangers. She probably didn’t like to admit she had a friend dining here on her first night.

“Did you have a good run?” she whispered as she drew out a chair for me. “You smell nice.”

I looked up at her as I sat. “I had a shower, and yeah, thanks, I had a good run.” My answer sounded husky but I was enjoying the conspiratorial feeling.

“I’ll fetch you a menu,” she said more loudly.

“Thanks, and I’ll have a beer.”

“Okay, coming right up, sir.”

She made me laugh. She was overacting this great waitress stuff, but she’d obviously done waitressing before. That was the third thing I knew about her.

In a few moments she was back with my beer and a menu. “I’ll be back in a moment to take your order. I’ve just got to serve those people first.” She spoke in a more normal voice this time, and gave me a be-patient smile.

I’m sure anyone watching would notice that smile implied she knew me.

The thing was though, she didn’t really know me, and I didn’t know her at all.

I sipped my beer from the bottle and watched her serve. My blood was still humming from my run. I felt energized and good. Running always made me feel good, and I’d run for miles tonight.

She was back over to me in a few minutes.

“Have you decided what you’d like?”

“Yeah, a bacon and cheese burger, with fries and salad.”

“A feast. Still, you can get away with it, there’s no fat on you.”

“Like you…”

“I know, I’m skinny by nature, I can’t put any weight on no matter what I eat. I gave up any hope of curvaceous years ago.”

I laughed wondering how we’d gotten back on to each other’s appearances. I was attracted to her, but she was one of those women you’d have to be blind not to be attracted by.

“It’s on me by the way. I’ve already earned enough tips.”

“You don’t have to––”

“No, I do, you’ve done enough for me the last couple of days.”

“Well, thanks then.”

“Welcome. I’ll go put your order in.”

She disappeared into the kitchen and then came out again a couple of minutes later. I had nothing else to do while I waited, so I found my eyes following her about the room as she took orders and then delivered meals.

She looked completely calm, happy even, I’d never have guessed the state I’d found her in two nights before, if I didn’t know it had happened. It had happened though. She couldn’t be as confident and happy on the inside as she appeared on the outside tonight.

She brought my burger over.

“It looks good, thanks.”

“I hope you enjoy it.”

She disappeared again, while I ate, but popped back after a little while, to ask if it was okay––in that trying-to-please waitress way.

It was good though, really succulent and filling, and with my adrenaline still in hyper-drive from my run, I felt my body absorbing and burning off the calories in a gluttonous rush.

Once I’d eaten I called her over to order another beer. She came across with a big grin on her face. She looked like she was really enjoying herself.

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah, it was great. Can I have another beer?”

“Sure I’ll get you one.”

It was with me in a moment, and she hovered for a little bit as no one else was waiting.

“It’s a good place isn’t it,” she commented.

“Yeah.”

“Have you eaten here before?”

“No, I don’t normally go out in the evening, other than to run.”

“Oh, do you know what you are, Jason Macinlay?”

“No.”

“Old before your time … You need to get some excitement in your life and have a little fun. You know far too much about caring for people, and nothing about enjoying life.”

She was probably right. I smiled.

“I’m going to change that,” she said to me with a sharp nod, like she vowed it to herself, as well as me. Then she whispered, “I’d better get back to work.”

I drank my beer watching her again, wondering what sort of life she’d led before the bridge, and wondering again what had sent her there.

Would she ever trust me enough to tell me? Probably not.

It didn’t really matter though, as long as she could pick up her life again. As soon as she did, she’d move on, and leave me behind. I didn’t have the same fears Lindy and Mom did. I knew Rachel Shears wasn’t fleecing me.

I had to stop thinking like I knew her though. I didn’t know her.

~

Jason was watching me. I liked him watching. It felt comforting having him around, like a security blanket.

The restaurant owner, Joe, had already asked me if that was my boyfriend within five minutes of Jason arriving. I’d said no he was just a friend, but more than half of me wished he was my boyfriend.

Funny really, because I wasn’t even sure I should call him a friend, we weren’t even that, not really. I was merely his damsel in distress and he was my knight in shining armor. He’d saved me from the monsters in my head two nights ago. I smiled as I caught him watching me across the room, and he smiled back lifting his beer to his mouth again, blushing a little.

He did look good. He was the best looking guy I’d seen all day, in fact probably all year, and he was so not my usual type––dark, brooding, malicious and older. I chose men who had an ulterior motive and would treat me like crap, because I had this fucking self-destruct button I couldn’t switch off.

What would it be like to go with a nice, good-looking guy like him. A young good-looking guy.

God, I really did think we could have fun together. I could make him laugh and smile more often, and forget work, and Lindy, and… Lindy. Of course she was the sticking point. He wasn’t available.

Life was crap. Sometimes it held everything against you.

Why couldn’t I have been rescued by a kind, good-looking, single guy? My palms tingled and sensation stirred low in my belly. I wanted sex. Good hard, all-out, sweaty, marathon sex. I shoved the urge aside. Sex always got me into trouble.

As I carried on serving, feeling his eyes on my back, and my ass, I wondered what he’d said to Lindy tonight, and what she’d said to him. He would have rung. He’d probably called her on the way over here. He wasn’t the sort of guy to let a girl down––too bad.

I imagined Lindy was one of those girls who’d say, I trust you, it’s her I don’t trust. My mind ran ahead then, with all sorts of cutting phrases she might have said about me.

She didn’t know me, how could she judge me? By the fact Jason had found me half naked, about to jump off a bridge.

Of course, he’d had to tell her that.

Yet I doubted he’d mentioned that he’d treated my hand while I sat naked in his bath. I doubted he’d told her we were sharing a bed either. But I wasn’t giving up sharing his bed. I liked being in it, lying warm near him and listening to his breathing and smelling his smell.

There was another lull in customers. I was only fifteen minutes off the end of my first shift. I got him another beer and took it over.

“I thought you might like another.”

“Thanks, I’m just sat here quietly getting tipsy.”

“On three beers? You seriously do need to get a life.”

He laughed.

His brown eyes looked up at my eyes, and there was a real depth and warmth in them. I don’t remember ever seeing that in any other man’s eyes. There was a slight complimentary smile on his lips, too.

I couldn’t stop myself, I just wanted to know. I leaned forward and rested my hands on the table, so he’d have a view down my blouse, where my breasts would now be hanging into the lace and satin bra I’d waved at him last night.

“So what do you say to a long walk home, and taking a detour round Brooklyn Bridge Park, on the way back?”

His eyes held mine for a moment then glanced down, only for an instant, but even so, when his gaze returned to mine, it was more heated, and his lips had tightened as the muscle in his jaw clenched. It seemed my interest was definitely returned. No matter, there was the small town opinionated Lindy in his life.

“I’ll say I’m up for that, seeing as you just accused me of being boring.”

I laughed. “Sorry, a night-time walk round the park ain’t gonna break that boundary. You need to do something more exciting and reckless than that to start living on the wild side, Jason Macinlay.”

He stuck his tongue out at me, which only gave me an urge to play tonsil hockey with him, but instead I returned to the bar and asked the manager if he wanted me to start cleaning up.

When the other customers left, Jason went outside too. I told him where the backdoor was, and to wait for me there.

He was standing there when I came out, and he smiled at me, a broad happy-to-see-you smile. The chef came out after me, looked at Jason and then winked at me. I screwed my face up at him.

Jason’s hands were firmly in the pockets of his leather jacket and he wore the woolen hat that he’d loaned me last night. His breath came out into the dark night air as steam. It was way below freezing again. Certainly a bit chilly to be walking in a park, but I just fancied doing something with him. I’d enjoyed last night.

I slotted my arm through his and hugged in tight to him, pretending it was for warmth; it wasn’t.

We began walking, and to make conversation I started asking questions, what food do you like? What movies? What TV shows? It kept the conversation light and released some of the tension in my head, I needed to be talking and it meant I didn’t have to give him any details of my life, but I could get to know him better.

We laughed, argued and debated, and in the park we walked down to the river, as I’d done earlier, but this time instead of looking at the water I looked at the Brooklyn Bridge, lit up against the night sky.

“One of the things I miss most about home, is that you can easily drive out of town and into the dark, and when you’re in the dark, you can see millions of stars piercing the sky like pinpricks of light, it’s awesome. You can’t really see the stars here. All the city lights screen them out.”

I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. I’d always lived in cities. “I’ve never seen that. I suppose you and Lindy used to drive out of town and make out beneath the stars?”

His hands were gripping the rail. He looked at me but didn’t turn. “Yeah.”

“Romantic,” I said dryly looking away from him and down at the dark shifting water.

“Yeah, our first time was out there.”

My eyes shot back up to him. It was an honest thing for a man to say, and without any prompting. Where the hell had it come from?

His eyes said he was remembering it. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking across the river to Manhattan and the city, lost in time and lost in thought.

I could tell from his expression his first time had been planned, and looked forward to, a momentous occasion designed to be fixed in his memory and cherished forever.

Fuck, he really was small town. My first time had been quick and disappointing, a drunken fumble on a park bench. I’d only met the guy that night. I hadn’t thought myself in love. I’d just wanted to do what everyone else claimed they’d done. Afterwards I’d discovered most people had been lying and they hadn’t done it at all.

I started laughing, which was definitely the wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself.

He let go of the rail and turned, looking at me, his eyebrows lifting.

I tried to stop laughing, but didn’t succeed. The back of my hand lifted to my mouth to hide my mirth. “I’m sorry, I just can’t believe you’ve only ever slept with one woman … ” He hadn’t said it, but I just knew it was true.

“I can’t see why that’s funny.”

“It’s just… Well, it’s just… You amaze me… You’re so good-looking. The other night, when I met you, I assumed you’d left dozens of hearts broken in Oregon.”

He gave me a broad smile, apparently not offended in the least. Then I realized what I’d done, I’d told him I thought him good-looking. Well, he was good-looking, he surely couldn’t be blind to it, yet I hadn’t noticed any vanity in him at all. God, he was turning into the most perfect guy.

I smiled too. “I respect you. I think it’s commendable.”

“But you’re still laughing inside.”

He was getting to know me. I smiled more.

“What about you, then? How many people have you been with?”

My smile fell.

The question was lightly put. He was teasing me back for teasing him. But I couldn’t answer, not with the truth. He’d be disgusted. His small town ideals would be rocked to their very foundations.

“You don’t want to know.” I killed the conversation flat and for a moment he was silent as he looked past me probably trying to guess if it was tens or hundreds.

His gaze returned to me. “So, have you always lived in New York?” The perfect guy that he was, he didn’t push, just changed the subject.

Surely I’d dreamed this guy up. He was too nice to be real. “No, I grew up in Philadelphia. I moved here when I was eighteen.”

It was the most personal thing I’d told him about my life, and I saw him recognize that as his gaze struck mine with a searching look.

He wanted to ask more questions, I could see that, but he didn’t. He turned back to face the water and gripped the rail again. “You and I, have lived very different lives, haven’t we, Rach…”

The fact that he shortened my name gripped in my chest, about my heart; it made me feel closer to him, like we really did know each other, like I’d known him for years.

“Yeah,” I said in a quiet voice, feeling suddenly solemn and low again, as I looked across at the heart of New York, too.

Declan would be over there somewhere. I doubted Jason Macinlay could even begin to imagine how I’d lived my life. Fast. Reckless.

“We should be getting back,” he said. “I’ve got to get up for work in the morning.”

“Yeah, Mr. Boring, we have lived our lives very differently.” I laughed. He didn’t. He just glanced at me, and then gestured with his elbow for me to take his arm. It was the first time he’d offered it. I’d just taken it before. It was a sweet gesture.

My laughter turned to a smile, and he smiled back.

God, I liked him.

Chapter Four

I was half asleep but desperate for the toilet when I woke up.

Jason wasn’t in bed. He must have gone to work already.

My eyes half shut, I didn’t looked at the clock, merely rolling onto my side then got up, trying to cross my legs a little as I headed for the bathroom. I was seriously bursting, and with my mind focused on that, I didn’t hear the sound of the shower running, until I opened the door.

“Fuck, sorry, I need the toilet.”

God, he was gorgeous. When I’d opened the door, his hands had been on the wall either side of the shower and his head had been down as he let the water run over it and then down his body. It had been running down his back in a waterfall, and that back, and his butt… The air that had got trapped in my lungs left them.

The older guys I’d dated, or rather fucked, had been all swarthy with hard muscle. His skin was pale and it looked soft, and the muscular definition beneath it was sinewy and lean. I longed to touch… Nope, I didn’t just want to touch, I wanted to have him. His buttocks were so tight, I wanted to grip them with my fingers as we did it, and feel the strength of his thighs between my legs.

I was a messed up, bad girl––he was taken. And I was trouble.

His head had turned toward me, and I saw his brown eyes watching me. He’d seen me looking at his ass.

There were droplets of water caught on his dark eyelashes.

He really was beautiful, the most beautiful guy I’d ever known.

“Give me a second, I’ll be out…”

His words brought me back to reality, to the fact I was standing in his bathroom staring at him as he stood naked in the shower. “Sorry, I’ll wait outside.” I think I must have turned bright red as I exited, and then I remembered just how badly I needed to use the toilet, and leaned against the wall, crossed my legs and bit my lip. But the image of him was still in my head. I didn’t think it was ever going to leave.

I heard the shower turn off. A couple of moments later the door-handle shifted. I tried to straighten up without having an accident.

“Rach…” He had a towel wrapped round his lower half, secured low on his hips, so now I got a front view of the glorious chest I’d seen the definition of through his body-hugging top on the first night.

He didn’t have any hair across his chest, apart from a couple of stray ones around his nipples, but he had a line of dark hair protruding upwards from his groin which just slightly showed above the top of the low slung towel.

Fuck, I’d forgotten I needed the toilet again as my eyes swept back upward over his perfectly defined abs and pecks, and I couldn’t breathe when I met his brown eyes which seemed to be expressing laughter.

“All yours. Do you want coffee?”

“Yeah.” My body remembered it desperately needed to relieve itself, and I darted past him and into the bathroom, shutting the door and sitting on the toilet as quickly as I could.

My head rested in my hands. Stop it Rachel, he’s a good guy, you can’t have him, leave him alone, you’d only mess him up, and mess up his life.

I stayed in the bathroom longer than I needed to, simply to get a grip on myself.

When I came out and went into the living room to eat my humble pie I was conscious of the fact I was wearing just his borrowed tee and my new satin underwear.

I found him fully clothed. He had a crisp pale blue and white striped shirt on and light gray work pants which hugged his ass, which I could now picture naked beneath them.

My eyes lifted firmly to his face. “Sorry, I was half asleep. I didn’t realize you were in there.”

He smiled. “It’s okay, we’re even now, that’s all. I walked in on you the first night…”

It wasn’t quite the same. He didn’t have a habit of acting inappropriately and uncontrollably with girls, like I did with guys.

Still, what he’d said told me one thing, he remembered me naked just as I was going to remember him.

He handed me the coffee.

“Thanks.”

I rested my elbows on the counter leaning over and watching him put on some toast. He glanced back. “Do you want some? I’m going to poach an egg.”

He was a modern guy who looked after himself, as well as nice––even more not my type.

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Still looking back over his shoulder, his brown eyes dropped to look at the bandage wrapped about my right hand. “We ought to change that dressing tonight and check out your hand.” His eyes lifted to mine again.

The memory of my naked body had made him think of that… That wasn’t so flattering. I straightened up, nodding before I sipped my coffee as my wicked head wondered if he’d ever thought of fucking me.

He was probably too nice. He’d probably consider even thinking about it too disloyal to his Lindy.

Damn, I wished Lindy wasn’t on the scene.

We ate the poached eggs at the counter, he on one side, me on the other, facing each other, as I questioned him about what he was likely to be doing at work; it kept my splintering thoughts focused. He asked me about the shifts I’d agreed to and what time I was starting and finishing today.

I’d be out when he got in from work.

He offered to come and meet me at the restaurant and walk me home.

I said thanks as he put his tie on, getting ready to go.

I opened and held the door, while he put on a jumper, then his coat. But I stopped him before he walked out, and straightened his tie a little. Afterwards I tapped his firm chest and said, “Have a nice day!” in my waitress voice.

He laughed and left smiling.

Dammit! This was getting out of hand. I was getting far too close to him. I felt good with him. I could even feel normal with him. In a way I hadn’t felt normal for years. Although it just felt like a game, like I was stealing someone else’s life and playing husbands and wives with him, boyfriend and girlfriend. We shopped together, we ate together, hell, we even shared a bed.

I went into the bathroom to have a shower, but all I could think of as I ran the washcloth over my body was his hands on me and mine on him. It was bad news. It would be a couple of weeks before I’d earned enough money to pay him back and saved up for a deposit on my own room somewhere.

Dammit. Stop it Rachel. Hands off.

~

When I picked Rach up from work, she initially looked pleased to see me as she came out the back door. But her smile dropped as I saw the chef wink at her again as he passed, and then smile at me.

After last night, I suppose they thought I was her boyfriend.

She didn’t grip my arm, even when I offered it. She’d gripped it every other time we’d walked together since that first night.

It occurred to me, she was still embarrassed about this morning. I didn’t actually care. She’d been really nonchalant about me seeing her, like it was nothing. I’d assumed she’d have thought nothing of seeing me either.

Still, images of her naked figure had been drifting in and out of my thoughts all day when I was at work and when I’d been running.

I’d mentioned what had happened to Justin, at work. He’d just laughed.

I wondered if images of me had been running through her mind too.

I’d tried to convert mine into images of Lindy, but I couldn’t even remember Lindy naked now, I’d rarely seen her so. Lindy wasn’t the emancipated type. She wasn’t that comfortable with her body.

As we walked, I urged Rach to talk about her shift, to dispense with the awkwardness.

I remembered her laughing at me last night over the fact I’d only ever slept with Lindy. I wondered how many men Rach had leaned over the bar toward tonight and flashed her cleavage at, and how many she’d taken home or gone back with in the past, in previous jobs.

Was it really emancipation, or just lack of self-worth, and was it that which had brought her to stand on Manhattan Bridge one freezing evening and think of jumping off?

I had an urge to put my arm about her shoulders as I glanced at her. I didn’t.

Her reservation tonight was probably a good thing.

We’d probably been getting too close.

I kept my distance from him on the way home, physically. We didn’t make any detours either, just walked straight back. But we talked, and I was glad of his company. He asked me about my night. I asked about his day.

It was good to have him around. I just had to ensure I kept telling myself now he was someone else’s person-who-cared not mine.

When we got home, he insisted on looking at my hand. He’d bought a new bandage and unwound the dirty one, gently gripping my fingers as he’d done that first night while I sat on the bath edge and he sat on the toilet with the lid down.

The environment constantly reminded me of the beautiful figure I’d seen that morning, like some naked statue in a fountain in a park.

I wondered if tending my wound was reminding him of when he’d done this while I’d been sitting naked in the warm water. He showed no sign if it did.

But I enjoyed his touch and his attention far more than I ought.

The wound was healing okay, knitting together well, and he got me to move my fingers, stretch them out and then curl them up. It didn’t disturb the cut, and proved it was only the skin of my palm which was damaged.

He cleaned it again before re-bandaging it, and once he’d done that, he looked up and smiled at me. “What about a beer and a game of something on my Xbox?”

It was a brother-like smile, and a brother-like sentimentality and that’s what I should try to think of him as, nothing else––but I had no brothers to judge such a relationship by. Or rather none that I’d had anything to do with since I’d been fifteen.

I gave him a smile back. “Thanks, and, yes, to beer, and, yes, to the game.”

He stood.

I stood too, only to realize it brought us too close physically, and foolishly stumbled back, nearly falling into the bath. He caught my arm.

“Steady.”

“Thanks. I’m forever saying thanks to you, aren’t I?”

“It doesn’t matter, Rachel. I’m happy to help.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re happy, because it’s gonna be a couple of weeks before I can get out of here.”

His smile was gentle. “That’s okay. There’s no hurry.”

I smiled again, too. “And again, thanks. Now where’s the beer you offered me? I’m gonna thrash you on your Xbox––and, women’s prerogative, I get to pick the game.”

He laughed.

I found him so easy to get along with.

Think like you’re his sister. Sister… Sister… Sister…

I sat down on the beanbag before the TV and leaned forward to turn it on.

The beanbag was the only piece of furniture he had beyond the mattress in his bedroom. I doubted anyone else had been in his apartment but me. It was hardly set up for entertaining.

He really did need something beyond an Xbox in his life.

I switched the game on and then picked up the controllers.

He came to sit next to me, handed me a beer and then sipped from his bottle before slouching sideward and resting his elbow on the beanbag next to me.

Fuck!

Think like you’re his sister, Rachel…

Chapter Five

Rachel rushed out of the back door of the restaurant, waving her pay packet. “Got it! Are you ready for our big night out?”

I laughed at her over-exuberance. It was just a pay packet. But she was bursting with pride, or perhaps her excitement was over our planned night out.

She’d suggested it. It had been Thanksgiving yesterday but she’d had to work and she’d known I was going to be sitting about the apartment on my own, so to celebrate Thanksgiving, albeit late, and her first pay packet, she’d said we should let our hair down, and go a bit wild––all her words. She’d insisted I went to a club with her. She wanted to get me out of the slow lane, as she called my life, and get me to take a bite out of the Big Apple.

She did make me laugh, and for the last week and half she’d carried me on the tide of her high spirits. It was great having her around, and it had become normal. We were good friends. I felt like I’d known her all my life. Although I still knew very little of her past, and I knew nothing about why and how she’d ended up standing on Manhattan Bridge, wishing herself in the water below.

But that really didn’t seem to matter anymore, because this Rachel was a different person than the one I’d met that first night. This Rachel was constantly smiling, and vibrant, and happy.

I’d eaten at the restaurant during her shifts twice more and both times I saw her laughing and chatting easily with customers, and flirting with men for bigger tips. But it was like she drew energy off people. Like she consumed other people’s smiles into herself and fuelled herself with them.

“So, you up for this?”

“Course. I’m not running away now, you’d call me boring again.”

“Well, you are boring.”

“I’m not going to be tonight, I’m up for anything tonight. Call my bluff and I’ll prove it to you.”

Her smile broadened and it shone in the jet heart of her eyes too.

She wasn’t just an incredibly good-looking woman; she was an incredibly sexy woman when she had her vibe on like this.

She winked at me then, and pursed her lips as she started down the street. “Mmm… Now let me think how might I call your bluff…?” She turned and walked backwards a couple of steps, her pay packet still bobbing up and down in the loose grip of her thumb and forefinger, with the rhythm of her backwards steps. “I’m gonna have to think of something really reckless … ”

I laughed again, at her teasing. She was always teasing me. I loved it. I loved the way she lightened my mood whenever she was around. I’d begun really looking forward to picking her up after her shift. New York no longer seemed like this fog of stuff I couldn’t get on with, because I always had her to look forward to.

I’d come back from work and run; always thinking of meeting Rachel later on. Then I’d get home, shower, and call Lindy, like I’d always done before walking down to collect Rachel.

My calls with Lindy would be their usual dull strained discussions all about life and people back home, what Lindy had done, who Lindy had seen, what my parents were doing, what my friends were doing. Then at the end of the call Lindy often threw in a jab at Rachel. ‘Is she still there? Hasn’t she got the message yet? Surely she’s…’ Sometimes I left my cell on the counter and went to get a drink or something when she started on about Rachel. I never listened anyway, nor replied, just let Lindy get her rant out.

When I came to pick up Rachel she’d breeze out all smiles and questions about what I’d been up to all day at work, and how my run went. Lindy never asked those questions.

I talked constantly with Rach. I couldn’t remember ever talking this easily with Lindy.

Rach and I liked the same TV shows and video games, we had some discussions on music choices, but disagreements made us laugh because she only teased, she didn’t argue. We had the same sense of humor, too.

“Come on you lazy boy,” Rach urged me, before turning to face front again. “I wanna get back and change, I’m not going on our big night out like this.”

I wanted to run with her, she said she’d never run and she wasn’t into it, but I thought she would be if I got her started; she had so much energy, I knew she’d get the buzz. Lindy had never got it. She’d hated me running when I was back at home. She’d begged me to give it up, once.

But I liked running; I’d feel like I’d missed out on something if I didn’t run.

Rachel said she didn’t get running, but she did get what it meant to me. I knew she did, because she always asked where I’d run and how far, and if I’d enjoyed it.

She’d finished two hours early tonight so we had plenty of time to go out, and I knew she’d bought new clothes with money from tips––money from the men she’d flashed her cleavage at as she’d served. But I only knew because she’d asked permission to spend the money on herself before paying me back. I’d told her go ahead, treat yourself, you deserve it.

She’d kissed my cheek, when she’d said thank you, which was the only physical contact we’d had since I’d last fixed up her hand.

She wasn’t wearing the bandage any more, she’d taken it off. The wound was healing okay though, I’d made her hold her palm out and show me.

“Hurry up!” she called from in front of me.

My hands were in the pockets of my leather jacket and my lips twisted to a half smile as I walked. Of course, I could break out into a run and see if she could keep up, her heels weren’t that high.

My hands slipped out of my pockets and I started slowly, jogging past her and glancing back at her over my shoulder. I’d worn my running shoes with my jeans to come fetch her.

She started running too, hitching up her tight pencil skirt with one hand.

I ran a little faster, it didn’t even make me breathless but it was so easy to leave her behind.

“Wait! Hey wait! Not that fast! Wait!”

I upped my pace again, although it was nowhere near the pace I usually ran at.

“Jason Macinlay! I said wait! I can’t keep up with you!”

I stopped dead and turned around laughing. There were others in the street looking at us oddly, I didn’t give a damn.

Rach had her shoes in one hand and her other gripped her skirt, holding it hitched up to the top of her long slender thighs, as she ran the last few paces in stocking covered feet over the cold ground.

She had a good stride. I was sure she’d be good to run with.

When she reached me though, she doubled over panting and pressing her palm to her side. “Dammit. I got a stitch. What did you have to do that for?”

I laughed at her. Well, she could run if she got used to a little exercise. “You need to work out, girl.”

She stood upright, her fingers still pressing against her side as she dropped her shoes onto the sidewalk, and then, when she slipped her feet into them one at a time, putting them back on, she met my gaze. “What I need is a night out, not a work-out.”

She was smiling at me like she was having the best time of her life. But I’d got the impression from Rachel that every day was the best day of her life. God knows what had made her contemplate ending it all? Probably some guy who’d let her down. She was so openhearted she wouldn’t have seen it coming.

But then any man who’d let her down was a fool. It was his loss, not hers.

Her blonde hair was in a ponytail but there was a loose strand brushing her neck. My fingers itched to tuck it behind her ear as we walked.

When we got back to my apartment she disappeared into the bathroom while I quickly changed into a shirt and a black pair of skinny cut pants. I also swapped my running shoes for the one pair of decent shoes I owned and used for work. All the time I was changing, I heard the shower running.

I’d never gone to a club. I’d only ever gone to bars with Lindy and my friends. I was sure I was in for a wild night with Rachel. I was looking forward to it. My heart beat rapidly as I walked from the bedroom back into the living room to get a beer. Rach hadn’t told me where we were going.

To calm the energy still buzzing in my veins from my run, and to control the cocktail of anxious excitement within me, I sat on the floor and started up a game on the Xbox.

I heard the shower turn off and then Rach singing in the bedroom.

“Man. Why don’t you have a hairdryer?” Her voice reverberated through the closed door.

“I keep my hair short so I don’t need one!” I shouted back laughing.

“That’s just selfish…” There was laughter in her voice, too.

“Want me to come and blow on it!”

“Ha, ha. No thanks, I’ll manage.”

She went silent then but I could hear her moving about, getting stuff out of bags.

She started singing to herself again and then shouted, “I won’t be much longer… I hope you’re ready?”

“I’m ready. I’m waiting on you!” As I shouted my thumbs carried on working the controls.

Rach was getting good at my games. Her scores were starting to beat some of mine. She’d play in the morning, before she started a lunch shift and I’d play after my run, before I met her from work. It had become a competition between us to play the same game the other one had played and beat their last score.

She was becoming like one of my best friends. In fact in some ways she was more fun than them.

“Hey.”

I glanced round. I hadn’t heard the door open, and… Fuck…

None of my friends were hot like her.

I’d dropped the controller without even thinking, letting the car just crash, and now I stood, unraveling from my crossed legged position on the floor.

“Fuck, Rach…” That wasn’t the thing to say obviously, but she looked amazing. She was wearing stiletto heeled black leather knee length boots which hugged her slim calves and a scarlet red jersey dress. I’m sure most women couldn’t have pulled the dress off, but she could.

Fuck.

I was lost for words, and then finally the right words came out. “You look amazing… Beautiful.”

Her hair was a bit messy. Obviously she’d turned upside down and shaken it to dry it a bit. But even so, its ruffled look only made me think of how she looked when she was asleep, when I got up in the morning, and I always thought that was a good look.

Shit.

She was wearing make-up too, and I’d never seen her in make-up. Her lipstick matched the color of her dress and the mascara on her eyes seemed to highlight the unusual light green even more.

“You look fabulous, Rach,” I said more calmly.

“You scrub up pretty good, too.”

Her gaze swept down over my clothes. I knew they were really nothing special, Lindy always moaned I didn’t have a gift with style.

To stop feeling awkward I finished off my beer, then turned and put the empty bottle down on the counter, saying, “Ready,” as I turned back.

She’d taken her little black leather purse off her shoulder, and was pulling some dollar notes out of it.

“Here.” She held them out to me. “You’d better take this before I get drunk and spend it.”

“You don’t have to, Rach.”

“No, I do. I’m not gonna keep owing you forever. Take it. And we’re Dutch tonight, right, no manly I’m buying all the drinks bullshit. We’re half and half.”

I smiled. “Okay, it’s a deal.” I took the money off her. I couldn’t refuse. It would be cruel to refuse. She was busy turning her life around. I wasn’t going to stop her.

After I’d put the money in my wallet, I reached her coat down from the peg and held it up for her.

“Why, thank you kind sir, it’s amazing what a figure-hugging red dress can do.”

“Very funny…” I was smiling at her, even though my words were dry. But she was right, the dress was figure-hugging, it clung to every curve and left nothing to my imagination. Not that I needed imagination, I could still see the image of her on that first night in my mind as she’d lain naked in the bath. Shit, tonight was not the night to be thinking about that.

I reached for my coat, then put it on.

“We’re going on the subway,” she said, hooking her little purse bag over her arm again. “So don’t take your hat and scarf, you’ll only lose them in the club––”

“And freeze on the way home either way…”

“You won’t notice the weather on the way back you’ll be too drunk.” She grinned at me, her devilish come-on-live-a-bit-wild grin.

I grinned back, a sucker for a beautiful woman in a hot dress. “I wish all my friends looked as good as you,” I whispered to her as we went out the door.

She glanced back, flashing me another bright smile. Then she said, “Likewise.”

When we got on the subway train we sat on opposite sides of the carriage, grinning at each other, like a couple of kids. But then my cell buzzed in my pocket as it pulled away.

I took it out.

It was Lindy.

“Yeah.”

“What, not hi, darling, or, great to hear from you.”

“I’m on the subway, Lindy. I told you I was going out.”

“Right. I just wanted to check you’re okay.”

“I’m, okay.”

“You always call me, I just wanted to surprise you and call you for a change.”

“On the one night I’ve gone out for a drink since I’ve been here, cheers, Lindy, thanks for thinking of me.”

I didn’t look at Rachel. It was embarrassing to have Lindy check up on me. She was jealous of Rachel. Lindy had always held other women at a distance from me, it was just part of what she did, and the way she was. I knew it was because she was insecure, but I was a little sick of her insecurity lately.

“Lindy, just give it a rest. Be the one to call me tomorrow if you like, it’s a Saturday, surprise me then…”

She hung up.

She’d be pissed off and angry now.

My good mood deflated like someone let helium out of my balloon. I made a sorry face at Rach and stood up, then moved further along the carriage, and with one arm looped about the bar to hold me steady, I called Lindy back. The subway was coming off the far end of the bridge. I’d lose my signal soon.

“Hi,” she answered, sounding annoyed.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, right…”

“I’m trying my best to make this work, Lindy. You know I haven’t been out, or really made friends here. Rachel just offered to get me out of the apartment and help me get to know the city a bit, to cheer me up, alright… It’s nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing, Jason. She’s living with you in a one bedroom apartment. She’s after what she can get. She’s taking advantage, and…”

And of course in Lindy’s opinion that could only be about money, nothing to do with the fact Rach might actually like me.

“Think whatever you want to think, Lindy.” I kept my head down so my voice didn’t carry. “I know why she’s staying, and it isn’t to get money out of me. I like her, alright? She’s good company. I’m sorry you’re jealous, but I’m not making her homeless just ‘cause you’re jealous. This has to stop, understand. You can’t keep running her down every night.”

Lindy stayed silent for a minute. Then she said, “You know, Jason, if you were really trying at this, you wouldn’t even be in New York, you’d be here, where you belong, with me and your mom and dad. Bye.”

She hung up again.

I didn’t call back.

I slipped the cell into my inside pocket where my wallet was and went to sit back down opposite Rach again.

“How’s Lindy?” She gave me a sweet smile. I looked for sarcasm in her expression and found none. She understood. I could see it in her eyes. She knew I felt like trash because I could do nothing right for Lindy.

I smiled back as her smile turned sympathetic. “Fine.”

“It’s alright, tonight’s gonna cheer you up and put a smile back on your face, Jason Macinlay.”

I got up and shifted to the seat next to her and then started asking her about the club she was taking me to. I wanted to lighten the mood again. I’d felt good when we’d left the apartment, now I was feeling all small-town-guy-in-a-big-city.

She had me laughing by the time we got off the subway, although it wasn’t a belly laugh. I still felt a bit down over my argument with Lindy. I wasn’t sure Lindy and I would ever work out now, and yet we’d been together forever, and I’d thought it would just go on like that. I couldn’t see my future anymore. It was ridiculous, I’d been so sure of everything until I’d come to New York. Or perhaps Lindy had just been sure of everything and I’d fallen in line…

“Do you wanna go to a bar first?”

“You’re the party planner…” Lindy’s call was seriously flattening this for me.

“Then we’ll go to a bar, and I’m buying the first round, and you’re having a shot, not just beer.”

I smiled at her, my hands in my pockets again.

“Come on, cheer up,” she said. “A girlfriend who wants to take over the world won’t end your life.”

“Just limit it…” My gaze caught hers, and for the first time in days she gripped my arm.

“Come on, I’m on a mission now, I’m cheering you up whether you like it or not.”

Her touch felt reassuring and comforting. I really wasn’t a bastard, was I? Lindy made me feel like I was.

Chapter Six

I picked a quieter bar to start with, to break Jason’s ill-mood. I thought a noisy bar straightaway may be annoying as he wasn’t in the right mind. It wasn’t empty though. Nowhere was empty in the middle of New York on a Friday night. I’d deliberately picked a place Declan wouldn’t go to, but even so, I scanned the place looking for him when we walked in. It was safe. I knew everywhere I’d chosen would be safe. They were too down-market for Declan.

We found space at the bar and I gestured for Jason to occupy a bar stool as I waved my hand at the guy who was serving. “Hey!” He was up the other end. He’d just finished serving someone else but he came straight over.

“What can I do for you, pretty lady?”

“Two of your best beers and two shots of tequila, with lemon and salt; we’re slamming them.”

“Coming right up.” He gave me a broad sidelong smile, flirting a little, but I wasn’t interested tonight. Tonight was all about giving my new friend, and official knight in shining armor, Jason, a good time.

When the bar tender set the tequila shots down in front of us, I picked one up and gave it to Jason.

He looked at it and then at the quartered lemon and salt pot. “What are they for?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never in your life slammed tequila?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head.

“Jason Macinlay, you seriously need to live a bit more.”

“That’s what I’m meant to be doing here isn’t it? That’s why you planned all this.”

“I planned all this so we could have some fun. I’ll pay for these and then I’m gonna teach you how to drink tequila slammers.” I handed the barman my money and he gave me a wink, obviously inwardly laughing over Jason’s naivety. I made a face at him. He laughed as I turned back to Jason.

“I guess I’m going to be the clown tonight.”

“You’re not. Okay, what you do is put some salt on the side of your hand first, like this…” I showed him and he copied, with a concentration frown marking his forehead.

I wanted to laugh. He did look funny, and puzzled, I seriously couldn’t believe he’d got to twenty-two and never drunk tequila shots. But then I’d been drinking long before the legal age.

“Then take a piece of lemon.”

He smiled, and copied me again.

“So now you lick the salt, drink the tequila and then suck the lemon; easy.”

I picked up my shot glass, licked the salt off with one sweep of my tongue, downed the tequila in one, and then sucked on the quarter lemon, grinning at him and meeting his questioning, smiling brown gaze, with the lemon still between my teeth.

His eyebrows lifted. “You’re mad.” But as he said it he picked up his shot glass then licking the salt, he drank the tequila and made a face a moment before sucking the lemon. His gorgeous face was all screwed up when he put the sour lemon down.

I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him and the night had only just begun. Sister… Sister… Sister…

“I’m not sure I liked it.”

I laughed. “It’s not a drink to like, it’s a drink to get drunk on and have fun with. Anyway now you can have your beer while the tequila starts running through your veins and making you relax.”

His smile lifted. He looked seriously sexy tonight. He’d worn a dark navy shirt with really thin white stripes breaking it up in places. The dark color set off his eyes and his long black eyelashes.

He’d had his hair cut too, and it was short and cut close to his nape and behind his ears and I really wanted to run my hands over it. I’d been itching to touch it ever since he’d picked me up from work.

He probably thought I hadn’t noticed, but I’d noticed.

He sipped from his bottle of beer, his legs splayed as he sat on the bar stool, with his feet on a rung and his elbow on the bar.

His facial features were as cleanly defined as his body, his jaw, his chin, his nose, all chiseled masculine definition and fresh, clean nice guy looks. Not marred by anger or bitterness, or obsession, as the faces of the older men I’d been with were. I wondered what he’d be like in ten-years-time, at thirty-two. That was the kind of age of the men I usually went for. He’d probably have kids with Lindy and look harrowed and beaten down by life.

I climbed up to sit on a bar stool, inelegantly, and picked up my beer.

He gave me another sweet smile. “You don’t drink the beer much back at my apartment. I thought you’d have picked something else.”

“Na, I just don’t drink much unless I go out, I’m an all or nothing kinda girl.” That was too true. I had a tendency toward addictions. It was all part of my nature.

He smiled again. “So, have you been here often?”

“Fishing again, Jason Macinlay…” I laughed. He was forever trying to draw out little snippets of my past. I rarely answered. I didn’t wanna talk about the past, only the here and now.

He moved his beer to clink against mine. “Cheers for this suggestion, and here’s to a great night.” I recognized his intent, to shove aside his conversation with Lindy and his worries about home and work. I think I heard him make some comment complaining about the asshole he worked for every day. I knew he didn’t really like his current life.

I knocked my beer against his in return. “And to letting our hair down.”

He flashed me a grin, “Well yours anyway…”

“What are you gonna let down then, Jason?” I pushed, joking with him. “Your guard?”

“My guard?”

“Yeah, no being-on-your-best-behavior, no looking out for me like some guardian-angel, and no holding back.”

He grinned again and shook his head.

“You’re relaxing tonight, and that’s an order, I want you so drunk you’re thinking about nothing but the moment––”

“And how I’m going to peel myself off the sidewalk…”

“Ha, ha, very funny. You’re gonna enjoy it, wait and see.”

He sipped his beer, then smiled.

He didn’t look convinced.

“I need the ladies’ room, I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Yeah.” I lifted my beer saluting her as she climbed off the stool, a little awkwardly. I smiled to myself as I watched her walk away, my gaze instinctively dropping to her ass. The red dress hugged it perfectly. Then I thought of Lindy and looked up and realized half the guys sitting at the bar were also watching Rach’s ass.

Dammit. I felt trapped in a dilemma tonight––devil versus deep blue sea scenario again. I wasn’t in the right mood to simply forget everything and enjoy myself. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t want to let Lindy down, but… But I didn’t think I could keep doing this anymore. Something had to break. It wasn’t working. Either I gave up and simply went home and lived the life Lindy wanted me to live, or… Or I called it all off and carried on trying to work out how I fitted in to New York.

I sighed, then remembered Rach and remembered how I’d found her, only a little less than a fortnight ago, and realized if I didn’t cheer up I was going to spoil her evening. She deserved better. She was doing her best to get on with life again, rather than run from it.

When she came out of the restroom she looked straight past the other guys watching her and right at me. Our gazes held as she walked back toward me and her smile shone in her eyes as well as on her lips. Something gripped tight in my chest, forcing me to exhale again. She was just such a gorgeous looking woman. I fancied her. No it was more than that, I was seriously into her. She was hot as hell in that dress.

Surely if I really felt anything for Lindy I shouldn’t have such urges for Rachel. I’d probably been kidding myself for years. Lindy and I probably ought to have been over long ago.

I breathed in. This night was for Rachel.

Looking away from her, I lifted my hand to call the barman over.

“Yeah, what can I get you?”

“Two more shots and two more beers.”

“Coming up.”

Rach’s fingers touched my shoulder. I felt her touch run through my insides too, and my abs tightened.

“Good boy. I see you’re learning.”

Her fingers slid off my shoulder.

I was learning, since I’d come to New York… Mostly about myself. The thing was, I didn’t particularly like what I was learning.

When the barman put the shots down, Rach said, “This time we see who can do it the fastest,” and threw me a devilish smile.

I smiled back, feeling a decision begin shifting inside me. Surely if Lindy and I weren’t right for each other it was best to have realized it now and let her down at this point rather than in five years’ time when we had kids to let down too.

I took out my wallet and paid the guy. Then we did the shots. I won. But my face screwed up as I tasted the lemon.

Looking sexy as hell, even when she sucked on a lemon, Rach’s eyebrows lifted. “And you’re a fast learner.”

“Sure am…” I could already feel the alcohol running in my blood. “Case in point…” I began telling her tales from my college days, seeing as she’d gone tight lipped again when I asked her about her usual night life in New York. I made my stories funny to make her laugh.

She did laugh.

Then when we’d finished the second beer she said, “Right, we’re off to another bar now you’ve livened up. There’s a great karaoke place I know on the edge of Chinatown. We’ll head there before we go to a club.”

Her dress rucked up when she got off the bar stool and flashed the length of her slender thighs. My stomach jolted with a sharp pang of lust. My gaze lifted to her face. Fuck, I shouldn’t be looking at her like that.

Her fingers gripped mine, which still rested on the bar, only for an instant, as though she’d misread my expression as worry over Lindy.

I appreciated her concern though. She was so much more thoughtful than the woman who was meant to love me––but I shouldn’t be slavering all over her, it wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair.

I held the door so she could leave the bar first, and she glanced back and gave me a thank you smile.

We hailed one of the dozens of yellow cabs racing past in the lit street, to get to the next place, avoiding wasted time.

When we walked into the karaoke bar the noise hit me first, then the heat and the smell of a couple of hundred sweaty people. I wasn’t used to bars like this. Rach was right; I’d needed to start in a quieter place. This was packed, it was elbowroom only, and everyone was talking and shouting at one another to be heard.

Rach headed into the mass of humanity, turning one way then the other, weaving her way toward the bar. She got a little separated from me. I saw the guy in front of me reach to grab her ass. I grabbed his wrist and held it tight.

His gray eyes spun to me and I gave him a steely smile, then said, “Fuck off.”

He grinned.

I moved past him so I was close to Rach again and rested my hand on her waist to keep myself from losing her.

She glanced back and smiled.

I bent and whispered. “That guy was going to grab you.”

She just shrugged and looked ahead again like she didn’t care.

God, if Lindy got grabbed she’d be in a steaming fit of anger all night, she’d never let a guy do that to her. She’d slap anyone who tried it.

When we got to the bar I found myself standing half to one side and half behind Rach, to shield her from the crush.

It was her turn to pay. She held out a note and looked up and down the busy bar. The girls working ignored her, but the guy clocked her in a second and turned to her even though probably at least ten people near us had been waiting longer.

“A beer and a rum and cola.”

Of course the reason I’d never been to a bar like this was probably because Lindy would’ve hated it and I’d been with Lindy since long before the legal age we could drink. Lindy’s way of doing things had been a habit of mine for a very long time.

“You’re going all guardian-angel on me again,” Rach said as she handed me my beer.

“Better that than let you get accosted by some scum.”

Her eyes looked deep into mine for a moment. Then she said in a much lower voice, “You’re way too nice, Jason.”

I was happy with nice though. “What’s wrong with nice?”

Her lips pursed for an instant. “Nothing.” Then she looked away from me, down at her drink.

Anyway, I didn’t think Lindy would think me very nice tomorrow when I called everything off between us. But that’s what I was going to do. It’s what I had to do. It was for the best in the long run.

I sipped my beer, feeling the weight of the decision rest on my shoulders. It wasn’t going to be easy to do.

Some woman started singing Beyoncé’s, Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It,) and I glanced up and saw her looking down from the small stage at the crowd, clearly hinting at some guy among them.

Rach gripped my forearm. “Come on, let’s get closer to the microphone, I wanna sing.” Her fingers slid lower to catch a hold of my hand as she began moving to lead the way through the crush. I gripped her long slender fingers in return, smiling again as my other hand held my beer and I watched her assertively cut us a path through the crowd of people.

She was so different to the woman I’d met on the bridge. The two of them were unrecognizable as the same, and Rach was so different to Lindy, a breath of fresh air in my life.

Rach sang Katy Perry’s Firework like she sang it to herself for inspiration, for encouragement… She glanced at me a couple of times smiling as she sang and as the crowd sang along, and I caught the words, and well… Rachel had been travelling a journey the last couple of weeks and she’d found hope somewhere inside herself, when she must have been seriously knocked down by life. I wanted to hold her suddenly, but I stood a couple of feet back in the crowd still gripping my beer. There felt like an ocean between us, but then she looked down at me, properly, as she sang the chorus, and our eyes caught. Those unusual green eyes I’d kept just wanting to stare at all week to try and work out the color. There wasn’t an ocean between us anymore, it was just us in the room and she was right inside me.

Her gaze tore away and spun over the crowd. It was more than lust I was feeling for Rachel.

“You’ve gotta sing too,” she urged when she’d finished.

“Really, I’m seriously bad. You don’t want to hear me sing.”

“But this is your reckless night, you’ve gotta sing.”

“Honest Rach, I’m not just being modest.”

“Well, I’ll sing with you then. Come on, let’s pick a song.”

My heart was not in it, I couldn’t decide, so making an excuse to escape I fought my way back to the bar to get us another drink for more courage and left Rach to make the choice.

“We’re third up!” she yelled over the noise of the crowd when I returned. “We’re singing Snow Patrol’s, Chasing Cars!”

“Don’t expect anything great from me!”

“It’s fun, it’s not a contest, relax!”

“Relax… Easy for you to say, you can sing!”

“Well now you’re gonna sing!”

“Yeah, right.”

“Seriously, Jason, you need to chill, you shoulda bought another shot! Courage!”

I smiled at her, an open smile. I was trying not to, but I felt like I was spoiling her night.

When I raised my bottle to my mouth she tipped the bottom up so my mouth flooded with beer.

I coughed and sputtered while she laughed. I gave her a wry smile afterwards.

I didn’t know how anyone could stay in a bad mood around her. I leaned forward, my hand resting on her waist to steady myself in the crowd and whispered near her ear, “I’m cheering up. I’ll give it my best shot.”

“You do that, Jason Macinlay, or you’ll have me to answer to!”

I grinned at her and carried on drinking my beer, as the crowd about us started singing along with the guy on the microphone, to Ne-Yo’s, Let Me Love You. The words hit me, just as the words of Firework had.

I doubted Rach loved herself, despite all her bravado.

The words of the Ne-Yo song kept on reverberating as though they were in my chest, and distracting my thoughts, or perhaps it was the alcohol, that distracted my thoughts, or the hot woman next to me, in a tight red dress, whose hip kept brushing mine.

“We’re up!” She grasped my hand and pulled.

“Already?” I was moving but I suddenly felt a cold sweat of fear. This wasn’t me…

“Yep, already!” She shouted down from the stage, smiling at me and trying to tug me after her.

I stepped up. My heart was hammering. Then I looked at all the people. The room was full. Rach shoved a microphone into my chest. I took it without thought.

The guy managing the sound system reached out and grabbed my beer. Perhaps he realized I might well freak and spill it all over the electrics. Rach was still gripping her drink.

The music began and my heart was in my throat. Shit, Rachel, why the hell are you making me do this?

She started singing, in a perfect key, her eyes wide and urging me to pick it up.

If I didn’t, I’d let her down, I wasn’t going to let her down. I opened my mouth and sound came out, it didn’t sound great but her perfect pitch carried it. I carried on trying to match my tone to hers and our voices blended and it didn’t sound too bad at all. It gave me confidence and I forgot the people in the room completely and just looked at her, her green eyes were shining, staring into mine, smiling, like she laughed even as she sang, and I sang with her.

I found myself enjoying it, truly enjoying it, as we sang to each other what was basically a love song while the crowd around us sang along so loud they probably never even heard my voice.

It was possibly the most empowering experience of my life, and my racing heart became enthused by the buzz of adrenaline from the fear. God, I wanted to kiss Rach, just once, right now.

I didn’t, and then the song ended and I realized I’d forgotten everything going on around me. It was over too soon. When we climbed down, I gripped Rach’s hand. “I want to do it again.”

Her gaze spun to me, “Really?”

“Yeah, I enjoyed it.”

She laughed, her arms coming up about my neck at the same time.

Her hug was firm, short and sharp, but the knowledge of it twisted something very male in my gut.

“Hey!” The sound guy held out my beer.

I turned and grabbed it, glad of the distraction.

“We’ll pick another song then.” Rach reached for the lists.

Chapter Seven

We were laughing uncontrollably over nothing, and I gripped Jason’s arm to stop myself stumbling as we stepped up the curb and joined the nightclub queue.

He’d been down after Lindy’s call but the karaoke had cheered him up. He’d been terrified of doing it, I’d seen that, but he’d done it, and loved it, and we’d ended up singing three songs together. He wouldn’t brave it alone.

The third song we’d laughed as much as we’d sung. I’d picked Coldplay’s, Viva La Vida, and the crowd had loved it. They all sang along as we belted it out.

I kept a hold of his arm. I was feeling a little worse off for drinking, but I didn’t give a damn, we were having fun. I was having fun. I was seriously high. My head had been fizzing all night, crowded with thoughts while my nerves hummed with energy. I wanted to dance. I loved dancing. Normally on a night like this, if I’d been with Declan, we’d have taken cocaine. But I didn’t need drugs. I was high on life with Jason.

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