“I can’t figure you out,” she said, studying him.
A shrug as he looked at the floor, then back at her. He folded his arms across his chest, his biceps straining at the sleeves of his Eye Candy T-shirt. The shirt hem lifted just enough to reveal the brown leather through the belt loops of his jeans. “I don’t like to see you under so much pressure.”
She’d gotten him to acknowledge their chemistry, but with some distance between them she remembered why she’d held back in the first place. “You want my secrets, you have to give me something, Chad. I want you, not some enigmatic half-stranger.” When he turned away, started to object, she added, “That’s how relationships work. I tell you my problems and you help, and you tell me your problems and I help.”
At the word “problems” his gaze sharpened. “What do you want to know?”
“Family means everything to me, you know, and you never talk about yours. Tell me something, because right now I’ve got the impression you sprang fully formed from the help wanted ads, custom-made to work at my bar and dig into my secrets.”
The tips of his ears went red in the long moment that passed before he answered. “I live with my younger brother. Our parents died in a car accident a few years ago and he was paralyzed. We didn’t have any other family, so I’ve been raising him.”
Outside the storeroom Natalie sang along to ’NSync’s “Bye Bye Bye.” Her back to the closed door, Eve blinked with astonishment. “Chad, I’m so sorry. How old were you? How long ago did this happen? “
“Eight years. I was twenty-two. Luke was fourteen.”
Twenty-two. At that age she’d been searching for a proper job, hanging out with Natalie, concerned about nothing more than enduring another grilling from her parents at Monday night supper. She couldn’t begin to imagine the care required for a paraplegic, let alone dealing with the psychological and emotional consequences for them both. The medical bills routinely sent even people with good jobs and health insurance into bankruptcy. Knowing Chad as little as she did, she could guess that he’d kept it all inside. Suddenly the boxing made sense.
“How’s he doing?” she asked, a general question that covered physical and/or emotional concerns.
“Good,” he said with a shrug. “Just graduated college. He started a year late, but took summer classes to make up for the time he spent in a hospital bed.”
His attitude was too casual; she’d spent enough time with teenagers to know how wearing raising them could be. With a nod at his hands, she said, “Taking out some stress on the bag?”
He looked down. Denial crossed his face, then he said, “Maybe.”
“Everyone needs a release. That’s the premise of my business plan, so I hope that’s the case,” she said, flicking a glance over her shoulder toward the bar. “There are worse outlets than boxing.”
“It’s just to stay in shape,” he said dismissively.
“Sure,” she said. If she’d learned anything in eight years as a cocktail waitress it was that you could tempt a man, tease him, flirt with him, but you’d better not push too hard for emotions.
He shrugged, then offered her a slightly crooked grin. “How’s that? You going to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Not yet,” she said. Instead, she crooked her finger at him, and the air around them crackled to life with a potent mix of desire, restraint, and anticipation.
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shoulders hunching a little at the move, and looked at her. She didn’t move, simply waited, her gaze locked with his, not bothering to hide anything she felt. Fear, confusion, longing, interest, attraction, they all flowed through her and therefore across her face until he pulled his hands from his pockets, closed the distance between them, and lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss didn’t even pretend to be sweet. Something aching and desperate tinged the way his mouth melded to hers, and that emotion, hinted at by his restraint and his dark eyes, raced through her. She wrapped her fingers through his belt loops and pulled herself up into his muscled body. Plastered together from lips to knees, the leather of her outfit softened under his body heat and his erection pressed insistently into her mound. The ever-present charge between them flared up again, as bright and hot and tantalizing as always.
“Later,” she said, her voice low.
He opened the door, lifted two cases of the pinot, and headed down the hall. She watched him go, his shoulders straining against the tight cotton, triceps taut with the weight of the crates, and wondered how he bore the daily strain without cracking.