Breaking the Silence (6 page)

She poked him in the arm and laughed.

“So where are you from?” she asked on their walk a few days later.

“All over.” Will turned his face up toward the falling flakes and Jenny caught her breath. In the fading light, with the snow touching his skin, he looked like a snow king from some winter fantasyland. Giving her head a sharp shake, she focused on the conversation.

“Where’d you grow up, I mean,” she clarified.

“Hell.” He shot a quick look at her. “Sorry. I mean Miami.”

She nodded, wanting to ask about his first answer but knowing she shouldn’t push. Yet. “How’d you end up here?”

“My company has branches all over. They’ve moved me around a lot.”

Worry hit Jenny. “Will you have to move again? Away from here?”

“No.” He met her eyes, direct and even. “I won’t leave.”

Relief made her dizzy. “Good,” she said.

He was staring into his closet again. Since he had met Jenny, he had spent more time wondering what to wear than he had in the first twenty-eight years of his life combined. Why hadn’t he ever noticed how limited his clothes selection was? A few suits for the occasional formal work meetings, sweatpants and raggedy jeans for home, and slightly less-raggedy jeans for casual meetings at the office. A few sweaters, some button-down shirts to go with the suits, and lots of t-shirts with workout-related pit stains and stretched-out collars. He dug through his clothes, vaguely remembering owning a pair of khakis.

Ah ha, there they are.
Will pulled them out in triumph. They were dark gray.

Are they still called khakis if they aren’t khaki?
he wondered. He wasn’t sure why he had gotten them—it wasn’t like him to fall into The Gap—but he was glad for them now. He pulled out a light blue button-down shirt from the measly selection and tossed the pants and shirt over the end of his bed. Tie? He pulled one off its hook to consider it and was exasperated by how much his hand was shaking. No tie. Jenny had said this thing was casual.

As freaked out as he was over this, his first date at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, he would be lucky to get dressed at all and not just show up at Jenny’s house in his boxer briefs. Even though they had been walking together almost every day for a week and a half, this was different. This was an actual
date
.

If things had been normal, if he had done the usual teenage things, he would have had fifteen or so years of practice by now. Dating would have been easy, automatic—it wouldn’t be a struggle just to make casual conversation. Will would have known how to flirt, to kiss, to make love…

He tossed the tie back into his closet. Things
hadn’t
been normal and there was no sense in thinking about how life could have been. He’d spent his teen years just trying to stay alive. He’d managed that, but corsages and high school dances and sex had all fallen by the wayside.

With a sharp shake of his head, he shut off the memories and headed for the shower. His cell phone rang before he had taken two steps. Fumbling a little, Will pulled it out of his pocket, his heart hammering at the possibility that Jenny might be calling. What if she was cancelling? His stomach clenched as he checked the display, only relaxing when he saw the call was from the office.

“Will Jackson,” he clipped out.

“Hey, Will.” Charlie sounded a little tentative. “This a bad time?”

“It’s fine,” Will reassured him, trying to mellow his tone a little. It wasn’t Charlie’s fault that Will was a nervous wreck due to dating incompetence. “What’s up?”

“Josh overwrote my code on the development server. All my latest changes have disappeared!” Charlie sounded like he was about to cry.

Wincing in sympathy, Will asked, “Has his new code moved live already?”

“Yeah.”

“You might still be able to recover it—check last night’s backup tape,” Will suggested.

“Oh duh, of course!” Charlie said, relief heavy in his voice. “Sorry to call you with such a stupid question. Guess I was panicking. I was here until eleven last night—if I had to stay again tonight, my wife would kill me for sure.”

“No problem,” Will said. “Tell Josh to quit messing with the dev code base. He’s an idiot.”

Charlie snorted. “I’ll let
you
tell him that. Josh won’t be able to fire you—
his
boss loves you too much.”

Will shrugged, realized that Charlie couldn’t see him and changed it to a noncommittal sound.

“Thought you were going to stab him with your pen in last week’s meeting.” Charlie sounded positively gleeful now. “Well, either him or Natasha. One of these days, she’s just going to rip off her clothes and throw herself at you.”

“Or rip off my head and eat it,” Will muttered, and was startled by Charlie’s shout of laughter.

“Totally, man. Hey, thanks again for saving my ass—you da bomb,” Charlie told him.

Da
bomb?
“Um…okay.” Will heard Charlie laughing again as he hung up.

“Okay, Christian, what do you think?” Jenny twirled nervously, her eyes still on her full-length mirror. Had it been a mistake to give up her stomach-flattening pantyhose for the thigh-highs? It was so hard to choose between the reality of looking good with clothes on and the possibility of looking good while clothes were coming off. Jenny knew it was only their first real date but a girl could hope, couldn’t she?

Christian leaned in her bedroom doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. “
This
was your emergency?” he scoffed.

“Christian, I don’t think you understand what’s at stake here. He is
gorgeous
. He is funny. He’s even nice and sweet and shy. Did I mention he looks like a Viking? A hot one, not one of those ones with bad teeth.”

“Yeah, hate those rotten-toothed Vikings.” Christian rolled his eyes.

“Come on, Chris, just tell me I look okay.” Jenny looked at the mirror again and smoothed her skirt over her non-control-topped hips. “I’m nervous enough as it is.”

“Well don’t be.” Christian swooped in and grabbed her around the waist, swinging her in a circle. Jenny squeaked.

He put her down again and stepped back, eyeing her up and down. “You look great, fabulous, utterly stupendous—you will knock your black-toothed Viking over with your beauty. Happy now?”

“I told you—he’s
doesn’t
have bad teeth.” Jenny’s eyes grew dreamy. “They’re wonderful teeth—white and shiny and—”

“My God, first it’s the cheekbones and now the dental hygiene—why can’t you just rave about his big cock like the rest of us?”

“Everyone raves about Will’s big cock? Why am I always the last to know?” Jenny laughed and took one last look in the mirror. “Okay, you’re out of here. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“I just got here,” Christian protested. “I want to see these legendary cheekbones—and all the other parts of legend.” He made his best lecherous face.

“You’ll see him at the party,” Jenny told him, pushing him out of the room. Rosie hopped off the bed, where she had been snoozing and ignoring the fashion drama, to follow them to the front door.

“But I want a special sneak peek.”

Jenny pulled open the front door with one hand and shoved him onto her porch with the other. “No. I don’t want him to think that I was so insecure that I needed a second opinion on my outfit.”

“Didn’t you?” Christian shot over his shoulder as he very slowly ambled his way to the curb where his car was parked.

“Of course. I just don’t want
him
to know that!” Jenny called after him. “See you there.”

He gave her a flip of a wave and climbed into his car. Jenny swung the door closed and hurried back to the bathroom for last-minute primping. She had decided to put her hair up in a twist but it was so heavy and fine that it never would stay up for very long. She smoothed it nervously, which only made another small strand loosen and fall to curl at her temple.

She brushed it back and turned her attention to her face—she never wore very much makeup and she had left it light. She was fake smiling at the mirror, checking her teeth for lipstick, when she heard a knock on the door. Rosie barked, a halfhearted effort at best, and Jenny jumped, her stomach immediately hopping into her throat like a helium balloon. With one last, not-so-calming breath, she headed for the door.

William took a deep lungful of air and then another, trying to settle his heart rate enough to hear something other than pounding in his ears. He heard Rosie bark once and then there was silence. Will had an irrational moment of fear that this was a mistake, that she had been joking about going out and some other guy was going to pull up and breeze past him, calling out, “Ready, babe?” She would hurry out of the house, not even glancing at Will. They would brush by him, their arms twisted around each other, laughing into each other’s eyes and, as they walked away, this other guy would ask, “So who’s the loser?” and she would laugh a little and say, “Nobody, darling—absolutely nobody.”

The door swung open and Jenny was there, smiling at him. She wore an above-the-knee skirt and her legs were pretty and curvy. She had boots on but they weren’t the lumberjack type he was used to seeing on her during their walks. Instead, the boots were tall, almost to her knees, with thick high heels and made of smooth black leather that hugged her calves. And her sweater—her sweater made his mouth dry. It was fitted closed to her breasts, striping them with thin lines of all sorts of different reds. The v-neck came to a point where he could just barely see a shadow of cleavage and he swallowed hard, trying to pull his eyes from that mesmerizing hint of nakedness. He wanted, more than anything, to press his face there, to bury himself in the comforting darkness of her breasts and her scent.

His cock stiffened and Will forced his eyes and thoughts away from climbing into her cleavage.

That’s classy
, he thought,
popping a tent as soon as I meet her at her door.
He shifted his eyes to her face, worried that he might see a what-did-I-get-myself-into expression there, but she was smiling shyly and blushing so much that she matched her sweater. Her hair was twisted up in a complicated way, all smooth and heavy looking, as if he would just have to touch it and the whole intricate style would tumble out. Will was tempted to try.

Rosie wiggled past Jenny and greeted Will with enthusiasm, pressing against his side and thumping his legs with her tail. He patted her head awkwardly, still unsure how to act around both the dog and her owner. Will wasn’t quite sure what he’d done to merit the happy greeting from either of them.

Jenny stepped back and gestured him in. “Hi, by the way. Sorry—I’m a bit dating-challenged.” She blushed again at the admission, holding the edge of the door with both hands.

The idea that she was just as nervous as he was amazed and enchanted Will.
She
was worried about going out with
him
, and it wasn’t because she thought he would hack her to pieces with an ax once he got her to the car either. No, she was nervous because she actually liked him—at least he thought she did. Maybe, like him, she was hoping that the evening would lead to kissing and touching and—

His erection throbbed and swelled. Okay, no more thoughts about touching. Besides, any physical contact was becoming more and more unlikely, as he hadn’t said a single word since he’d arrived. Jenny probably thought that something was wrong with him. He tried to clear his throat, to say something, anything, but his vocal cords were still in a state of shock from being this close to her breasts. Words were obviously not going to work, so Will held out the flower that he held.

He had spent almost as long at the florist as he had in front of his closet. He discarded the idea of a bouquet. It seemed too big, too showy, too…presumptuous, as if he was expecting way more out of this date than just the “work thingy” that Jenny had described. He had decided on a single rose, not red—he thought it was a little early to be giving her “love” flowers—and definitely not white, because he didn’t even want to suggest purity, given his own lack of experience. He decided on yellow. For friendship, the florist had told him. Friendship seemed a good place to start.

He must have picked well, because her smile grew huge when she saw the flower and she pressed her hands to her still-pink cheeks.

“Oh,” she said softly. “That is just so…” She shook her head, smiling. “You are almost scarily perfect, you know.”

Jenny took the rose and smelled it, then ran the just-opening petals against her cheek. He really was amazing. She couldn’t believe how great he looked when she’d opened the door. His coat was open and his shirt made his eyes so blue that they didn’t look real. He smelled like clean man and cold and she wanted to keep him forever.

Will was watching her as she absently brushed the flower against her skin. His breathing grew faster and his eyes dilated until the blue irises almost disappeared. Jenny was amazed by his reaction to her—she couldn’t help but see the bulge at the front of his pants and he seemed to be tongue-tied from seeing her in something other than a bulky coat and her clumpy snow boots.

“Thank you,” Jenny remembered to say belatedly. “For the flower, I mean. It’s beautiful. I’ll just go put this in water. Or you can come too—to the kitchen?”

Stop babbling, Jen
, she told herself.
Get a grip and try to forget that it’s been two years since you’ve done this dating thing. Not helping—could you shut up about the two years thing?
Okay, now the voices in her head were arguing. She had definitely crossed the border into Crazyville.

Jenny headed for the kitchen with the rose, not even glancing back to see if Will was following. Obviously, the only way to keep her composure was to not look at him. She rummaged for a vase with no luck but she did find a very tall glass. Jenny sighed—she was sadly undomesticated. She filled the glass with water at the sink and slipped the rose stem in. It wasn’t the most elegant of arrangements but it would work for tonight.

She turned from her makeshift vase to see that Will had indeed followed her to the kitchen. He was hovering in the doorway, looking around, his hands jammed into his pockets. He seemed to fill the room, his bulk shrinking her kitchen down to dollhouse size.

“Nice,” he finally spoke. “Your house—I like it.”