Twice Upon a Blue Moon (6 page)

“No,” Hazel lied, folding her arms across her small breasts. She hated the way her nipples poked into her shirt. She hated that Dylan could crank her engine with a simple kiss. “And I’m sure you wanted to go out with me because we have such stimulating conversation… Look, it’s fine. I just need a little space.”

“You and me both,” Dylan agreed, leaning against the counter. His gaze was mild, the threadbare hint of a smile flickering into being on his lips. “How are you still single?”

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“It’s meant to be.” Dylan raked a hand through his hair. “You’re smart. You’re witty… You’re very beautiful.”

“Easy, Romeo. If you’re not going to sleep with me, you don’t need to seduce me.” Which wasn’t to say she didn’t enjoy the laundry list of unearned flattery. The kitchen was too narrow for this kind of talk. Hazel picked a breadcrumb off the counter and hurled it into the sink bowl. “I guess I’m not really in the market for a relationship. I’ll leave the hunt for true love to Sadie.”

“That’s good to know.”

Hazel hauled a glance his way, grinning when she noticed him doing the same. “Okay, we need to find something else to do before I renege on my promise and jump you where you stand.”

“I’m an excellent Monopoly player.”

Laughter simmered in Hazel’s throat, rising like soap bubbles.

“I’m serious.”

Hazel bit her lower lip, but the knot of tension in her belly had come undone and she couldn’t seem to will away the inexplicable sense of euphoria.
Must be the booze.
“You know, this is the weirdest date I’ve ever been on…”

“It’s a little strange for me, too,” Dylan admitted.

“I don’t have a Monopoly board.”

“Chess?”

Hazel shook her head.

“Poker?”

“Strip poker,” she countered and that
was
the liquor talking, but Dylan didn’t back down from the bid.

It was how they found themselves crammed together on her narrow futon, trading grins over the upper edge of their cards. Dylan insisted on Texas Hold’em and Hazel, having no particular preference, went along with it.

She lost the first hand, and consequently her tights. Gin kept her from feeling more than a flicker of mortification for baring chipped, sparkly blue nail polish to Dylan’s gaze.

“My turn to deal,” she said, wriggling her fingers toward the deck.

“You’re not implying I cheat…”

“No, I’m sure you’d
never
.”

Dylan smirked as he parted with the deck, their hands brushing in the exchange. “Good job pretending you’re not judging me.”

“I’m not.” Her heated cheeks told a different story.

“Not even a little bit?” Dylan leaned his head against the backrest of the couch, eyes so dark they were nearly all pupil. They told Hazel this was no longer about poker. “It’s okay. I’d probably judge me, too.”

Self-deprecation always rubbed her the wrong way, but Dylan made it sound genuine. Hazel pursed her lips. “You’re a grown man. The way you live your life is none of my business.” Not least because this wasn’t a date, it was a hook-up, albeit without any hooking up being done because according to Dylan they were both too drunk to consent. Hazel dealt another hand. “Our current pastime aside, I’m sure you’re mature enough to know what you’re doing.”

“I object. Poker is
very
mature.”

“Really?” Hazel poked her tongue into her cheek. “Because this brings back memories of college.”

Dylan’s eyes gleamed when he smiled. “Is that a bad thing? I liked college. Would that I could go back!”

“Easy there, granddad.”

“I feel old,” he confessed with a counterfeit sigh. “Thirty-three is the new forty, right? I’m sure I read that somewhere.”

Hazel scoffed. “Not when you’re making six figures a year.” Bitter about the cards she’d been dealt? Never.

“Five,” Dylan corrected, in a small voice.

“Really?” She wrinkled her lips. “Way to squander that hard-bought Yale education. I bet your Century City friends never let you join in any reindeer games.”

“I didn’t go to Yale.”

“Harvard?” Hazel ventured. He was too Ivy League not to be an alumnus.

Dylan shook his head and studied his cards. “Ledwich U.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Private college. Very small. It’s got maybe about three hundred students? Something like that… All guys.”

“Ah, I see. America’s last bastion of macho academic sovereignty,” Hazel ribbed as she glanced down at her hand. “Is that where you met the roommate?”

On the edge of her peripheral vision, a shadow flitted across Dylan’s features. Hazel instantly regretted asking.

“Sorry. It’s none of my business…” She couldn’t blame it on the gin, either, because she would’ve been curious anyway. Guilt bit at her insides like a snapping dog. “We don’t have to talk.”
About that. About anything.
She understood wanting to avoid hot-button issues. “We can just…play cards. I did say you didn’t like me for my stimulating conversation.” The corners of her lips threatened a smile. She hated herself for the stubborn urge to please.

She hated herself even more for the flash of relief when Dylan curled his fingers around her ankle, something magnanimous and kind in the caress.

He flicked up a glance, expression soft and open. “You’re wrong.” He won the next hand and smiled beatifically when Hazel peeled off her shirt and threw it at him. “Had enough yet?”

A stubborn Hazel shook her head. She gathered up the cards again.

* * * *

The spill of sunlight through the blinds teased at Hazel’s eyelids until she could stand it no more. She rolled over with a groan, turning her face into the pillow in an attempt to get back to sleep.

She was vaguely aware of her legs being bare beneath the covers.
That’s weird
. Why wasn’t she wearing her PJ bottoms? She remembered Dylan, the hastily assembled supper. She recalled the poker game and her luckless string of consecutive losses.

Strip poker
.

Hazel bolted upright in bed, heart leaping into her throat.

The right side of the mattress was empty, no dent in the pillow to suggest that a body had lain there. The apartment did not smell like freshly brewed coffee
or
sex. It didn’t echo with the prickly, out-of-focus mental snapshots of a drunken fling.

It took Hazel a moment to recall walking Dylan to the door, then peering out of the kitchen window, in the dark, to watch as he boarded his cab five flights below.

Dylan hadn’t spent the night. They hadn’t done anything worth regretting.

She was about to sink back into the rumpled bedding, relieved, when the doorbell went off.

“It’s me!” Sadie shouted into the intercom once Hazel had shambled her way to the door. “Buzz me in, it’s freezing out here.”

Hazel cast about the room for any signs of compromising activity. Finding none, she did as she was told. She spent the minutes it took Sadie to navigate six flights of stairs pulling on her pajama pants and finger-combing her hair into place. She didn’t know why she bothered.

One glance was all it took for Sadie to beam a knowing smile.

“Looks like someone had a rough night!” Sadie breezed into the apartment with a foursome of Starbucks coffees in a disposable carry tray. “Latte, another latte… That’s a caramel macchiato—and a frappuccino for me,” she rattled off, then plucked out the last and parked herself on Hazel’s futon like her presence was a foregone conclusion.

Hazel watched her peel off the plastic lid from her drink and lick the straw.

“So?”

“What?” Hazel took the armchair, trying not to imagine that she could feel Dylan’s body heat still somehow clinging to the upholstery. “He’s not here.”

“You didn’t let him spend the night?” Sadie grinned. “You go, girl. Although I think I saw his car parked out front… You sure he’s not hiding in the bushes somewhere?”

“Positive.” Hazel rolled her eyes. “We didn’t fuck.”

“Oh.” The revelation seemed to take the wind out of Sadie’s sails, if only for a moment. “Why not? He do something to piss you off?”

“No.”

“You’re not into him?”

That would’ve made it easier. If she could have just brushed last night off as another near-miss, she could put the thought of Dylan Best out of her mind and get back to the regularly scheduled routine of work, home, work, home. “No,” Hazel admitted. “It’s…complicated.” She winced at the words coming out of her mouth. “Christ, I sound like a status update.”

“A bit,” Sadie confirmed, “but, hey, at least he’s not a creep, right? I’m all for not sleeping with a guy on a first date. Cheers.” They clinked their Starbucks coffees.

“Thanks. And thanks for the coffee. I know you don’t splurge for any occasion.” Even with tips, they didn’t exactly make bank serving burgers at Marco’s. Starbucks was a rainy day extravaganza. It tasted like birthday cake or Christmas.

Hell, it tasted like every breakup Sadie couldn’t get over.

Sadie grinned over the rim of her plastic cup. “It’s not every day my girl finds a guy worthy of a second look, is it?”

There was nothing in Sadie’s expression to suggest that she felt any way other than supportive, but Hazel still wondered. “Is this weird for you? I mean…because it’s Dylan.”
Because you two had a thing, however brief, and now I’m not doing the sane thing and telling him to get lost.

“Is it weird for
you
?” Sadie asked.

“Putting those Psych 101 classes to good work, I see…”

The joke fell flat. Sadie didn’t so much as crack a smile.

Hazel rallied. “A bit. Knowing right off the bat that he’s into…you know. It’s something to get used to.” The men she’d dated since college were a varied bunch, but they had one thing in common. They were all safely and consistently vanilla. Whether or not that explained why the relationships never lasted was another story.

Sadie folded her long legs, skinny jeans creaking at the knee. “Does he know he’s not the only one?” It was an oblique way of asking if Hazel had come clean with her dirty little secret. That Sadie even bothered couching it in vagueness was a sign of how well she understood the trickiness of the subject.

“Not sure that’s first date conversation…”

“You have to tell him.”

“Why?”

Sadie quirked an eloquent eyebrow.

Oh.
“Yes. Fine. Yeah, it’s part of the reason I’m attracted to him,” Hazel groaned. Then quickly added, “But I don’t know that it’s something I want to do again.”
With him. With anyone. Ever.

Most days, she was happier not thinking about it at all. Those cravings would go away eventually.

“If… Okay, hypothetically speaking? If you were to jump back into that particular pool, you could do a lot worse than Dylan.” Sadie pursed her lips around the straw. Then she tapped a finger against the cup, meditatively. “I know you don’t want details, so I’m only going to say this once. He’s a good Dom. You’d be in safe hands. And his playroom—”

Hazel held up a hand, grimacing. “Okay. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but no. I can’t hear that from you.”

“I’m only trying to help…”

“I know and I’m grateful.” Somehow, her voice didn’t shake. “But I can’t be thinking of you and him together. Not yet. Maybe not ever, I don’t know.” Too much had happened since high school. Hazel wasn’t that gullible, naïve girl anymore. She knew her hard limits.

She didn’t have many friends besides Sadie. Something like this—a kernel of doubt, the seed of envy blooming in the pit of her stomach whenever she compared herself to Sadie—could end their friendship.

Sadie opened her mouth, closed it and nodded at the floor.

“We need ground rules,” Hazel went on.

“Kinky.”

She ignored Sadie’s quip. “No talk about Dylan’s playroom. I don’t want to know what’s in there, what he does or how he does it.”
Not even if it helps me mentally prepare.

Sadie grinned, resting the tip of the green straw on her tongue. “But he does it
really
well.”

“Rule number two, if I try any of…that with him, I’ll do it in my own time. And I tell him when I’m ready.”
If I’m ready.

“There’s a good chance we’ll be old and gray by then, but sure.” Sadie shook her head. “Your body, your choice… Right, chicken?”

Hazel flipped her off. “Rule number three, if any of this makes you uncomfortable, tell me and I won’t bring it up again.”

“Why would your completely rational…irrational hang-ups make
me
uncomfortable?”

“You know what I mean.” Sadie could be flippant and mulish in her own relationships, but they had never experimented with seeing the same guy—albeit at different times. Hazel usually appreciated her mean streak, but this time it made her feel a little wary. “I don’t want to lose you because of some guy.”

Sadie rubbed a finger under her glossy lower lip, as though considering this. “You’re worrying for nothing. I’m totally cool with it.”

“Okay. Good.” Hazel tilted her head against the backrest of the couch. She yearned to believe it could be that simple.

“Frank and I are doing great, by the way,” Sadie added with the twist of a smile. “Thanks for asking.”

Hazel arched her eyebrows. “Like you need me to ask… Did you finally take him for a drive?”

Sadie’s grin was ear-splitting, an answer unto itself. Her methods of seduction were limited to acting as crazy as possible or as flirtatious as possible—driving up the winding ribbon of highway that wreathed the Santa Monica Mountains fulfilled both quotas. Lately, she took Hazel’s car for those outings, having wrapped her own around a tree last spring.

Nine lives, she’d say whenever Hazel urged her to ease up on the gas. Sometimes she listened. Mostly, she just gunned the engine and rolled the windows down, choosing to think of speed limits as suggestions.

Hazel sighed into her latte. “Here’s hoping you filled up the tank.”

Chapter Five

Tuesday mornings at Marco’s were noisy, chaotic affairs, even more so than the usual. Tuesdays was the day he got to see his daughter, which meant he took off in the morning to drive her to school and didn’t come back until well after eight o’clock. Hazel had the run of the kitchen. She was never happier than when he finally breezed into the diner all wide grin and puffed up chest,
il straoridinario papà
.