On His List (Entangled Flirts) (4 page)

“No,
how
was
your flight?”

Owen sat there, staring straight ahead, like she’d given him a question impossible to answer.

“Was it good? What did you do for six hours and fifteen minutes?” she asked. It was seriously like prying out gum.

“Oh, I worked. I finished typing two reports and responded to six emails.”

“So, you’re saying it was fun?”

He actually smiled. “Loads of fun.”

“What do they give you in first class? Gold-dusted peanuts?”

He shook his head. “They just hand us gold. It’s hard on your teeth at first, but you get used to it.”

She’d have never guessed he could actually tell a joke. Every time he smiled, she felt that gap between them lessen…just a little, and it made the prying worth it.

When they arrived at Pier 33, they were lucky enough to find tickets still available. He’d insisted they needed a guided tour. She never went on guided tours. Still, she could survive this one. It would give them more time together anyway.

“They have a night tour?” he asked.

“I guess so. I’ve never actually done this,” she admitted.

“Never?”

“I don’t usually visit prisons in my spare time,” she said, rolling her eyes.

He smiled. “C’mon, Remy, live a little.” She felt his hand on the small of her back as they boarded the ferry. It made her feel safe and dangerous all at once. He didn’t remove it when they got on board. They stood by the railings and the wind made her shiver.
Yeah, the wind.
A moment later, he had to steady her as the boat shifting knocked her off balance.

“You’re not really dressed for being on the water.” Owen nodded in particular at her heels and added a frown for good measure. If he knew his frowning left her feeling hot, he probably wouldn’t be frowning.

“Hey, I hadn’t planned on this when I got dressed,” she said. “Besides, Denny said you might freak out and request a different driver, so I was going for sexy-but-not-desperate.”

His gaze slid down her from head to toe, appreciation mingled with concern. He’d definitely lingered on her shoulders and legs, though. “You’ve succeeded. You also might freeze.”

“We can go inside.”

“I don’t have a coat to loan you, but I can try to keep you warm.” He moved behind Remy and wrapped his arms around her.

A shiver of pure, unadulterated pleasure hummed through her body, and she closed her eyes with a deep sigh. Oh. My. It felt so completely right.
He
felt right.

Live in the moment, Remy. Live in the moment. Besides, he visits here every so often.
She leaned back against him, and he tightened his embrace. The pressure and warmth felt so good—a constant reminder of being wanted. Another shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. For the first time that she could remember, Remy felt like being quiet and still and just enjoying the sensation of being with someone. She tipped her head just a bit and inhaled. Mmm. He’d probably notice if she licked his neck, and she
had
promised Denny there’d be no licking, so she contented herself with breathing in deeply. Deep breaths were good for you anyway. Normally, they relaxed you. She was anything but relaxed.

When they arrived and she saw the hill climb, she didn’t think anything of him grabbing her hand and towing her up. When he didn’t let go at the top, she felt her world shift. It was hard to concentrate on the tour with him holding her hand. A prison had to be the least romantic first date in the entire world, but it felt like a date, and it felt romantic. His eyes met hers time and time again—like the world was their private joke. The whisper of a smile hung on his lips constantly, and the inches between them were dissolving. This was a date, and a good one at that.

“If I were going to prison, I’d prefer one with a view,” Owen whispered to her. Everyone else had been chatting so loudly and the echo of voices had bounced so that it’d been hard to hear the tour guide at points. She loved that he was whispering.

“So, on your list of future prison requirements, a view would rank highly?”

“Well, also a window. Otherwise it just really adds miles to your escape plan.” He held up his free hand, and ticked off. “One, a view. Two, a window. Three, decent food.”

“Four, low probability of being shanked while sleeping.”

“I don’t know if you can negotiate that. It
is
a prison.”

“Well, I’m not going then. That’s a dealbreaker. Yours is a view. Mine is not getting shanked.”

He smiled, but tried really hard not to. “Mine are more quantifiable, more controllable. Lists, ideally, should be more succinct like that. Items you can achieve or hope to achieve. I can
have
a window.”

“Well, sure, if you’re alive and unshanked.”

Owen laughed…which drew the tour guide’s attention to them. He’d paused in the middle of some story obviously not meant to be laughed at. Owen cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said, with a wave of apology. Turning, he gave Remy a significant look for getting them in trouble.

“This is why I don’t take tours.” When the tour guide looked at her, she shrugged and grinned.

Deciding it might be better to put some distance between them and the tour group, they walked the grounds of the prison in a slow meander. “So, what’s your full name?” he asked.

“Remy Maison.”

He rolled his eyes and looked at her. “That’s not what I meant. What’s your first name?”

“I told you. It’s a secret. I even had it changed legally.”

“So, none of the other guys you date know your full name?”

Hmm. So, he thought of this as a date too? That was probably good—even if it worried her.

“No,” she said.

“Boyfriends?”

“You’re not my boyfriend,” she pointed out.

“But…if I were, you’d tell me?”

Her feet quit moving, and she turned to face him, raising her eyebrows. Was he trying to say something? The wind coming off the water tossed his short black hair around. It would probably annoy him if he knew it was getting mussed.

“I like to have things defined,” he said.

“Yes, I have told boyfriends what my full name was.” If he wanted boyfriend status, that would definitely mean them being in the same state a good portion of the time—at the very least. Besides, they’d only known each other a short time. This was just a business trip fling for him—with someone very, very different from his norm.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe she could visit Miami…with her hordes and hordes of money. Her stomach soured at that.

“What if I guessed it? Would you tell me if I were right?” he asked.

She felt the weight of her expectations as they crashed and burned in a glorious four alarm fire. A loophole. He was trying to find a loophole to the boyfriend rule to satisfy his curiosity about her name. “No,” she said, trying not to stiffen up and drop his hand. A loophole. Damn.

“Oh, c’mon, Remy,” he said, laughing.

“It’s getting a little cold.” She used the excuse to drop his hand and rub her arms, which backfired completely when he put his arms around her.

“You’re very sensitive about your name.”

His breath on her neck sent electricity down her spine. Mmm. He was so delicious, but if it ended in a few hours, that might destroy her. She tended to invest with her whole heart and soul.

Live a little, Remy. Take a chance.
Why did her heart always seem to get the final say in everything? Her mind had just given up with a “well, we tried.”
Idiot.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“C’mon, let’s break out of this joint and go get some grub,” he said.

“Had to throw out some prison lingo? I don’t think grub is prison talk, though. That’s more like an old prospector.”

He slid his hand down her arm and grabbed her hand. “I’m clearly not meant for the criminal class.”

They wandered back toward the dock. “Tell me about Miami.”

“What about it?”

“Well, you must like it because you live there.” Would she really visit him in Miami if he wanted it? Her heart tickled at the thought. Crap. She totally would. She hadn’t felt this way about her ex-boyfriends here. She’d broken it off with a guy when gas prices had skyrocketed, and she’d realized he wasn’t worth the gas money. Now, she was thinking of plane tickets and getting a second job to afford them. Maybe she could waitress at night again. This was bad. So very bad.

“You really want to know?” he asked her.

“I really do.”

Owen Savoy, control freak, who’d probably made more money in the last five minutes than she’d make all day, grinned like she’d offered him the world.

He told her about the beaches and the Art Deco. He was big into Art Deco. She’d have never figured him for an art guy—it seemed too unstructured and emotional. Art was a bit messy, in her opinion. Then he described his condo’s style and referred to the clean, crisp lines of Art Deco for the eightieth time. Okay, maybe Art Deco was the exception to creative chaos.

The apartment she shared with Denny was clean, but could only be described as cast-off heaven. Their kitchen table was older than her. The couch had been a sidewalk find they’d scooped up before the garbage truck had.

What am I doing?

They were so different.

Chapter Five

They ate fish and chips down on the wharf and watched seagulls dive-bomb someone foolish enough to set their food down to take a phone call. Owen had his arm around her, and she was starting to get the vibe that he was going to kiss her.

“Remy?” a voice called behind her. She turned on the bench to see a guy carrying takeout from one of the restaurants.

“Hey, Cade, how’s it going?” she asked, standing up.

“Good. I haven’t been by to see you for a couple months.” Cade looked at Owen with eyebrows raised.

Was it her imagination or did Owen shift closer to her? “This is Owen. Owen, this is Cade.” They shook hands but neither looked friendly about the exchange.

“I was going to call you, when are you available again?” Cade asked.

Owen’s arm tightened around her shoulders. What was his deal?

“I’m pretty open,” she said.

“Okay.” Cade glanced back and forth between Owen and her. “I’ll let you get back to your date, and just give you a call.” He smiled uncomfortably and waved before walking off.

Remy turned to see Owen staring after Cade with his eyes narrowed.

“Owen?”

He glanced down. “Sorry. Did you want to talk to him more? I mean, I didn’t even…” He took his arm from around her.

“He can just call me at work and schedule an appointment,” she said.

The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out and he grinned. “Oh…that’s what he was talking about?”

Oh my hell
.
He was jealous?
“He’s one of my massage clients.”

“So, you give massages to men too?”

“Yeah, I do some work for a local physical therapy place, so I get a few athletes from time to time in addition to my regular clients. Cade tore a muscle playing football two years ago.”

“I thought he was maybe a boyfriend or something,” Owen said.

She scooted a few inches away. “If I were dating someone, I wouldn’t have let you buy me dinner.” That dinner was sitting heavy in her stomach. “I’m not like that. I don’t play games.”

Owen winced. “No, I’m sorry. I just…don’t normally do this. So, I’m not quite thinking things through.”

“Do what?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Anything without planning it out. Doing something because I want it and not because it’s logical. I…uhh…normally like to list pros and cons before making any decisions, but I’ve bypassed that step because there weren’t any cons. And there still aren’t, none that I’m seeing, but I’m not behaving very rationally.”

She shifted on the bench, then cleared her throat. “Are you saying you want me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Her heart started pounding. She shrugged. He’d had his arm around her, but didn’t anymore. He’d been holding her hand, but wasn’t anymore.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

He leaned toward her slowly, giving her plenty of time to back away.
Live in the moment, Remy.
She met his mouth with hers while sliding a hand along his jaw, caressing below his ear, and into the hair at the nape of his neck. They both parted their lips with the second kiss. He tipped his head and licked her lower lip tentatively. She brushed his tongue with hers and pulled his mouth tighter against hers. His arm slipped back around her shoulders, his other hand stroked her thigh where her skirt ended. She pulled his tongue into her mouth, which made his hand grip tightly on her leg. Her nails dug into the skin on his neck, coaxing a moan from deep in his throat.

He liked that?

She liked that.

She could kiss like this for hours. For being so uptight, Owen had some moves. She wanted to climb onto his lap and straddle him, but she wasn’t so far gone to the world that she thought he’d be okay with that.

When they pulled back to catch their breaths, he said, “I’ve never made out on a bench before.” He glanced around and added, “In public.”

She smiled at his discomfort. He was looking around as if they’d just yanked each other’s clothes off and given a spectacular show. Yeah, he would have really freaked out if she’d climbed onto his lap. Licking her lips, she leaned in to get back to kissing when he looked around again. Crap. He was uncomfortable. Well, more uncomfortable than normal.

The sun was setting and it was a weekday, so there weren’t many people around, but public affection wasn’t her thing either. She grabbed his hand from her thigh and stood up. “Let’s go somewhere less public then.”

On the walk back to the car, he kept quiet, lost in thoughts that made him frown. Remy had swung his hand at first, but after he’d commented, “You have a lot of energy,” she tried to stifle it. His silence and frown was eating away at her confidence.

She had a hard time reading into frowns. It might be a puzzled frown, a thoughtful frown, a disappointed frown, or, worst-case scenario, a “what the hell was I thinking” frown. Owen was complex enough a frown could mean anything. Or may just be the relaxed position of his lips for all she knew. She’d thought frowns were sexy earlier, but that was back before she’d jumped into the deep end with him. Now, they set off an anxious jittery thing in her stomach, making her wish she hadn’t eaten.

“It’s late,” she said. One of the dumbest things ever to drop from her mouth. It drew attention to all sorts of things she didn’t want to think about. Their time was running out. They’d already crossed beyond five p.m. so, technically, she was off the clock. They were officially on a date…but then he left tomorrow to go home to a different state on the other side of the U.S.

“It is late,” he agreed. Never had anyone agreeing with her thrown her into such a panic. Was he saying it was too late? Too late for what?
Get a grip, Remy. You were the one who threw out the whole “it’s late” business in the first place.
He could probably feel her pulse pounding in their joined hands. She was a mature and sexy woman. She didn’t get thrown like this, not like she was an inexperienced teenager on her first date.

Inhale and exhale, Remy. Breathe. From the diaphragm. There you go. It’s not so sexy if you pass out from hyperventilating.

Owen glanced at her, and his frown tipped up into a smile, but it wasn’t the warm and impetuous smile from before. This was more an acknowledgement that they were two people holding hands, and he’d caught her staring at him, trying to read his expression.

They were probably both wishing they could drop the other’s hand but it was a bigger statement than just maintaining the status quo, so they didn’t. They’d gone from kissing until their clothing nearly caught fire to…this. The disappointment scared her. To feel this devastated by a lack of emotion meant something she wasn’t ready to face. It had only been a matter of hours. Just a kiss or two. She shouldn’t feel shattered and fragile.

“This was supposed to be my day off. Normally, around this time, I’d be sitting on my couch with a bowl of popcorn and in my rattiest clothes.” She wrinkled her nose. He’d probably be horrified if he saw her.

He tipped their joined hands to look at his watch. “The stock market just opened in Asia. I’ve been dabbling in that lately.”

“I can drive you somewhere that has Wi-Fi.”

He shook his head. “They’ll manage well enough without me for one night.” His smile looked a little more real that time. Every time she made him smile it felt like a personal victory. “I’m sorry you had to give up your day off for me.”

“I’m not.” No matter where the rest of the night went, she was enjoying the rush of feelings. Even all the emotional pain of this roller coaster was freeing. For all her impulsivity, her dating life had been declared DOA thanks to all the money she’d been putting toward her student loans the last year. Today’s date to a prison with the most conservative and controlled man she’d ever met might be one of the biggest deviations in her love life. Ever. She felt alive.

When they arrived at the car, she’d considered dragging him into the large, comfortable backseat, but it felt tacky. Actually, the passion they’d shared before wasn’t withstanding the quiet of the walk back. It was one thing when her heart was pounding, and he was looking at her like he had been on the bench. Now, it was awkward.

She didn’t do one-night stands. There was no way she’d go up to his hotel room on the off chance that’s where it led. He was leaving in the morning. Denny hadn’t even been scheduled with him because he was taking a cab to the airport.

This was why you didn’t live in the moment…because the moment after
that
moment—just completely blew. Eventually, you had to pay the piper.

“It feels strange to still have you drive,” he said, opening her car door. If he’d yanked her into the backseat, it might’ve salvaged the mood. But he didn’t. It might not have even occurred to him.

“Yeah, but I know my way around, and it’s not your car.”

He slid into the other side. “I know. It’s not logical. It just…is.” That phrase could sum up a lot of what had happened on the bench. Only, in that case, it just was. It wasn’t anymore. Damn.

They sat there, not making eye contact, staring at the windshield.

“I can drive you to your hotel,” Remy suggested. If he was interested in more than a one-night stand, he’d suggest otherwise…in theory.

“Okay.”

She started the car and bit down hard on her lips to avoid showing how she really felt. It was a half an hour from the wharf to his hotel. The longest half hour of her life. It was too heavily weighted with expectations and hidden meaning.

When she asked him, “So, where else do you travel?” she was really asking, “Do you come around here often, sailor?” The statement: “You must be really busy if you’re always checking stock markets around the world” was actually: “Do you date a lot?” and “Am I significant at all to you?”

Owen, of course, answered all the surface questions. “Some. I usually make a trip to New York twice a year. Sometimes, a trip to Europe.” He didn’t tend to elaborate either. “I don’t mind being busy.”

She wanted to bang her head against the steering wheel. Denny always told her that she’d understand guys’ intentions better if she didn’t try to couch everything in subtext, but the subtext kept you from getting your heart broken.

“I never look around when I’m being driven,” he said suddenly while doing just that. “The city skyline looks remarkable with the light still fading from the sun.”

She tried to search for the subtext in that. He wasn’t frowning, just looking around curiously. Perhaps there was no subtext. Men were so strange. Then again, he hadn’t asked her any personal questions about her life. Maybe there was subtext. She blinked and stared out at the other cars. Twenty-nine green cars. Thirty.

When they got to the hotel, would he tip her? Denny said he usually did. Denny had been counting on that tip. If Owen tipped her—paid her for their day together, she might actually lose it and start crying, though. On the other hand, there was the rent…and the cavern between Remy and Owen opened up and swallowed her hopes. Just like that.

If he didn’t tip her, they wouldn’t make rent and they might be evicted.

If he did tip her, it’d break her heart.

Maybe that should have been on Owen’s list. 4. Take Remy out to dinner. 5. Make out on bench. 6. Drive to hotel. 7. Break Remy’s heart. It wasn’t the ten items he’d wanted, but it was a list.

No, she was being unfair. She’d been the one to throw out the list, both literally and metaphorically. He’d never once suggested this was more than it was.

“So, do you like it here?” she asked.
Subtext: Do you like me enough to like here?

He looked around outside. “It’s not bad.”

That was it. No elaboration. Nothing.

When he opened his mouth after about a minute of silence, she got her hopes up. “I don’t think real estate will ever be what it once was in terms of investment,” he said.

She gripped the steering wheel tighter. Hopefully…there’d been no subtext there.

Thirty-two green cars.

When she pulled into the hotel’s drop-off area, it was her way of saying “I’m not available for that kind of ride.” Her principles kept asserting themselves, even as her emotions and hormones gave her the beating of her life.

He frowned at the front of the hotel and turned in his seat to face her. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“I work.” She had bills to pay. A life. And he hadn’t asked a single question about her life the whole ride. And she’d spotted an additional twenty-two green cars. “Besides, aren’t you flying out tomorrow?”

“I can stay another day.”

Another day? Her heart raced ahead, while her head struggled to make sense of it. Damn. It sounded amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. Her nails might leave marks in the leather steering wheel with how tight she was clenching it. One more day together might almost make things worse. No, it
definitely
would.

She liked him. She really did. They had more sexual attraction between them than she’d felt with any of her ex-boyfriends, but another day wasn’t going to change the fact that he lived in Miami. It would dig her heart in deeper and raise her expectations, only to have it stomped on again.

Still, if he dragged her closer and kissed her now…kissed her like he had on that bench…kissed her like he couldn’t live without her…

She waited. Motionless for once. Breathing out a sigh as the moment passed.

“I have to work,” she said again. It sounded lame, but it was as good an excuse as any for not diving into this heartbreak. “Maybe next time you’re in town…” She didn’t meet his eyes. Hell, she was gutless.

Her brain started building its own list—a list of reasons why she should say good-bye right here. Her heart was the first reason, and the final one was that he was only offering to stay another day. The middle ones on the list didn’t matter as much with those two on there.

When he’d talked about not stopping to make a list of pros and cons because there were no cons, she’d been flattered. She was an all green lights “go” sort of thing. In retrospect, if he didn’t see any cons to a short-term relationship, well…that said it all, didn’t it?

Her list had plenty of cons when it came to risking her heart.