Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (6 page)

I didn’t actually like any of them, and I knew they didn’t give me a second thought. It was just sex, cold and mechanical, and I was intentional in choosing not to care about them. It was the most disconnected form of connection possible, and I liked it that way.

But right now, I couldn’t understand why I ever liked anything cold or mechanical when women like Lauren Halsted existed.

“I might.” Lauren nodded and reached for her drink. She met my eyes from behind the glass, and I swore I saw desire flicker in her gaze. Spending the better part of the past twenty-four hours swimming in my personal Lauren spank bank might have made me a pervy dickhead, but that one look told me I wasn’t there alone. “How did you get into this work?”

The Walsh history was the opposite of happy hour. It belonged with campfire horror stories.

“Birth. Let’s get some food. I can’t remember eating today.” I flagged down the waitress to order.

I was aware of all things Lauren in our shadowy booth. Her scent—like sugar and sweetness. Her skin—smooth and tanned, and sprinkled with just a few pea-sized dark brown freckles. Her smile—brighter than the sunrise, with just a bit of smirk. Her sparkle—a fucking force field I was powerless to resist, though I wasn’t sure why I bothered resisting in the first place.

Lauren asked, “You were just born into architecture and structural engineering?”

“Basically.”

“So, what?” she laughed. “I can drop my hot messery in your lap, but you’re empty-handed? Come on, Matthew.”

I turned my attention to the pulled pork sliders and fresh round of drinks when they arrived at our table. “Try one. They’re awesome.”

Lauren waved a hand. “I’m fine, thanks.”

She was on her third round of tequila, and looked as sober as a saint. “Have you eaten yet?”

Lauren squared her shoulders and sent me a firm stare. That expression probably brought most people to heel in an instant; I was halfway there myself. She didn’t need to be eight inches taller or bench two-twenty to kick my ass. I drank in the set of her jaw and decided I liked seeing her in control. She was intelligent and quick-witted, and bossy as hell, and I wanted to touch her again.

I also wanted to fuck her until she lost her voice from screaming my name, but I’d start with touching.

“No, but—”

“Please. Considering I’m the guy who figures out how to ignore the laws of physics on a daily basis, I’m not in the business of saying no very often, especially not to beautiful women. Drinks and bar food are the least I can do, and my sister would belt me for not taking you somewhere decent like No. 9 Park or XV Beacon.”

“You’re a little demanding,” she laughed while selecting a slider. “And you just rattled off the only two places in Boston with numbers in their name.”

Grinning, I rubbed the back of my neck. “There’s also 75 Chestnut, and Twenty-First Amendment, and 29 Newbury. And a few others.”

Lauren folded her arms on the table and leaned forward. “So you’re a freak. This puts things in a new light.”

“Something like that, yeah.” I raised my beer to her glass. “Not sure I can compete with hot messery, but I’ll sure as hell try.”

We covered the basics—our siblings, our work, our general interests—but didn’t delve further. No fucked-up family stories, no exes, no hopes or dreams.

The history of Walsh Associates was fairly straightforward, mostly because it didn’t turn pear-shaped until recently. The firm dated back to the fifties when my grandfather and his brothers started out as architects preserving and restoring historic buildings in the Boston area. My father, uncle, and aunts carried on the work, but Angus wouldn’t play nice in the sandbox, and over the past two decades, my uncle and aunts left for greener pastures. I didn’t get into Angus’s preference for pissing his money away at the dog track or his day-drunkenness, and there was no talk of his screaming matches with Shannon or his tendency to throw things at people.

I opted for stories of us growing up surrounded by architecture, and getting conscripted into grunt work as children. It felt good talking about my love for building and designing, and creating ways to modernize within the constraints of restoration.

Dozens of people and loud bar music surrounded us, but her gaze never wavered from mine. She listened, savoring every word, and made me feel like there was nothing she’d rather hear.

I stared at my beer bottle for a second. Five-point-four percent alcohol by volume. I didn’t need to run that equation to know the prickly heat crawling over my skin wasn’t from the beer.

It was from Lauren.

And the best part? I didn’t want it to stop.

LAUREN

T
ipsy. I was
definitely tipsy.

Tequila was to blame for the current state of blissfully inebriated affairs, such as they were. His tie sat crisply folded beside his beer bottle, green with small pink shapes, and the collar of his white shirt gaped open. And I wanted to taste him right there.

It was late, the bar nearly empty, and far, far past the proper end for a normal business meeting, but this stopped being a business meeting when we walked through the door.

None of my other first dates—or fourths, for that matter—involved hole-in-the-wall bars or innuendo-laced discussions of architecture. They never involved Matthew Walsh either. This was all rather peculiar, much like that fun, buzzy feeling in my body.

He smiled at me, a smug, knowing expression that told me he was watching my inhibitions evaporate by the minute.

“If you hadn’t come out with me? What would you be doing tonight?”

“I’m not winning at work-life balance these days,” I said with a grimace. “I’d probably be working on a few overdue projects.”

Matthew held up his palm and I stared at it for an embarrassingly long time before meeting his high five. His fingers laced with mine, and for a moment, I could only gape at the way they layered together. He was touching me and I liked it, and somewhere in my head I knew this was strange. I wasn’t into boys right now. I mean, I wasn’t into girls, either, but I wasn’t doing the whole boys and dates and worry about whether I shaved my legs thing.

“Balance is overrated.”

I laughed. “Yeah? And what would you be doing? If you didn’t maneuver me into drinking with you all night, that is.”

“Maneuver? That’s strong.”

He rubbed his thumb against my palm, and I bit down on my lip to prevent the tipsy giggles from leaking out.

It was just a thumb circling a palm, and it shouldn’t have been especially delightful, but if confronted with a choice between this and calorie-free cupcakes, I saw no contest. I liked this, and I didn’t want it to stop.

“Some new projects landed on my desk this afternoon. Probably digging into those.” He finished his beer and shrugged. “It’s what I love, but I don’t balance work and life either. Actually, I hate the phrase ‘work-life balance.’”

“Why?” I set my empty glass aside, a clear signal for a refill. Considering the painfully overt manner in which the waitress mentally undressed Matthew and then threw some boob action in his direction each time she dropped off another round, I was surprised we weren’t getting more of her attention. A greedy part of me knew it owed something to the heavy, hungry gleam in his eyes, and the methodical way in which he watched my every move, as if he was stalking his prey.

I liked that, too. Rationally, I knew there was something unusual about liking some late night prey-stalking, but unusual was my operating speed. The Commodore’s idea of an exciting family adventure was getting lost in the desert with nothing more than a compass and Swiss Army knife. Bizarre? Yes. Traumatic? Not even close, but it meant some of my thoughts followed slightly unorthodox paths.

Matthew gesticulated as if trying to reach for something, and sighed. “It’s probably semantics, but work-life balance presumes that you’re reaching a homeostatic level, where things are in perfect proportion. It never happens, not for anyone I know, but people are constantly beating themselves up and feeling guilty when it’s unrealistic in the first place.”

I didn’t understand half of what he said, but he looked damn sexy saying it. He gestured when he talked. A lot. It was adorable and I wanted my mouth on him.

Like, right now.

“So…you’re good with crazy hours?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t see it as balance. It’s about the fulcrum.” I shook my head, not following his reference. “A fulcrum is the point where a lever rests, is supported, and pivots. Think about a seesaw. It’s just a lever positioned over a fulcrum. Force on either side pivots the lever. On a seesaw, the fulcrum is always in the same place—the midpoint. But in life, and other mechanical applications, the fulcrum moves. Sometimes it’s far to one side because force is exerted there. That’s been my life for just about a decade now. There are days, sometimes a lot of days, when I hate it. But I mostly love it.”

He motioned with his hands, miming his seesaw example.

“Some days, I hate it, too,” I sighed. “But mostly love. You could probably teach me a few things about enduring the hate days.”

Matthew’s eyes seemed to darken, turning a deeper, more brilliant blue, and a slight smile pulled at his lips. “I’d teach you anything you wanted, Lauren.”

Silence fell between us, though Matthew kept his eyes fixed on me. This would have been a great time for tequila to magically appear in my hand. It wasn’t cheating; I skipped lunch and my skinny latte breakfast meant there was room for splurging tonight.

“I met you yesterday. Why does it feel like I’ve known you, I don’t know, longer than that?” Matthew asked.

“Maybe you knew me in a past life.”

“You believe in reincarnation? All that stuff?”

I shrugged, thinking a moment. “I have to believe there’s something bigger than me, bigger than us. Maybe we’re just recycled versions of ourselves, floating around the universe, trying to make sense of it all.”

“You believe in soul mates, too? Isn’t that why we’re all floating around?”

Matthew sounded both skeptical and hopeful, and I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. “It’s a possibility.”

“Mathematically speaking, a rather unlikely possibility.”

I studied our joined hands, the bar, the people laughing and talking, and I felt as though I was watching myself from a distance. I wanted to remember the way my foot bumped Matthew’s knee and my hair fell across my face and his eyes sparkled every time I laughed.

This moment, this night—they were proof I was still me, that I hadn’t lost myself to the deadlines and deliverables and action plans. Not yet.

I knew this school required me to give it my all, and I knew I was losing some of myself in the process. I’d wake up some morning, not able to remember anything I once loved about schools and kids and learning, and I’d be trapped in a hollow wasteland of spreadsheets and strategic priorities. I was sliding down that slope, the slippery one no one ever managed to climb. I didn’t know what would be left of me if I fell all the way to the bottom, but I didn’t have to worry about any of that tonight.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

My eyebrows arched upward. He had to know what he was doing. No one could stare that hard, look that heated without putting some effort into it. That kind of eye action burned calories. “The way you’re looking at me.”

“Lauren, please tell me you want to get out of here.”

*

The brisk autumn
air whipped along Cambridge Street in sharp contrast to the overheated bar. Or maybe I was a little hot and bothered, and the bar was the best excuse. Wind blew through my hair and I struggled to smooth it into place while my new architect friend was trying to melt my undies off with a few smoldering looks.

I glanced up at Matthew, his tall frame sheltering me from the wind. My gaze lingered on the exposed hollow of his throat where his top button gaped open, then the way his belt rode low on his hips, and then the bulge just below the brushed steel buckle.

Scrumptious.

“What would happen if…” I bit my lip, hoping I was interpreting his signals the right way, hoping my tequila-infused courage would see me through. I stretched up on my toes, and Matthew’s hands went to my waist. “If I did this?”

Digging his fingers into my hips, he pulled me against him, and there was no misinterpreting that signal. Our lips brushed together, and I hesitated, wanting more—
so
much more—but not knowing the right way to play this game.

“If you do that, I’m doing this,” Matthew whispered against my lips. Tugging my hair, he tipped my head back and slipped his tongue past my teeth, and it was exactly as I suspected: he wanted to swallow me whole. A strong gust forced me against him, and I shivered, at once relieved he was taking the lead and wondering if it was the lead I wanted.

“Let’s get you out of this wind tunnel,” he said, his hand rubbing in a circular pattern against my back.

“Mmm, not yet,” I murmured. My lips found Matthew’s again, and we were rooted to the sidewalk, our arms locked around each other, and I felt fully and completely awake, aware,
alive
. And I was doing this—kissing a stranger on a street corner, surrendering to my desires, letting my instincts make the decisions—and I wasn’t second-guessing myself.