“No. President of the Future Business Leaders of America. Nat was on the drill squad.” Another memory surfaced, one that made her laugh at the irony. “I just remembered how Caleb found out what Nate had in mind for me. Lyle was at Aquinas High by this time, selling steroids to football players. He heard about it, and called Caleb.” She looked out the window. “Maybe in the suburbs things are black and white, good and evil. It’s harder to pin down the East Side. I know Lyle’s bad news now, but to me he’s still the kid who called my brother. Even then Caleb hated him, but Lyle still called him.”
He pulled into his driveway and cut the engine, but didn’t get out of the Jeep. “It’s a gift, you know.”
“What is? Forgiving Caleb for taking on the world and everyone in it?”
“Seeing people as they are and caring about them anyway.”
Might get her in trouble, given how much slack she’d cut Lyle. “Guess I paid attention in church.”
Another laugh, the noise tugged from somewhere deep inside, rusty and unused, but she liked it. She liked seeing his battered face morph into something filled with humor and personality. She liked being the woman who did that for him.
“They ride you pretty hard,” he said quietly. “Why?”
Sitting in the now-warm Jeep, she smoothed the strap of her purse in her lap before answering. “Because at heart I’m selfish. I want what’s best for the East Side, but I want something for me too. A good person, a good girl, wouldn’t do what I do. I’d be teaching or in social work, volunteering at church and the SCC. I should be married by now. Raising babies.”
“You’ll be good with kids, but I can’t see you at an insurance company, boss.”
“You and I are the only ones with that particular deficit in our vision, Matt.” When he didn’t say anything else, she added, “It’s Monday night.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“Football night, right?”
“Preseason game in New York,” he said.
“Do you want to watch the game?” she asked. “We could order a pizza. My treat. Dinner was inedible. Mom’s an amazing cook with unlimited quantities of butter and…”
Her voice trailed off. His eyes were heavy-lidded and intense. Despite the setting sun, the air in the Jeep was heating rapidly, twilight-dark, close.
“What do you want to do, Eve?”
Uncertainty shimmered in her stomach. Dinner with her family only brought back the realities she was ignoring, the troubles the East Side faced, her job, her lack of a steady boyfriend, and suddenly the fear was back, the threat from Lyle intensifying every worry she had about the present, let alone her future. Matt sat next to her, hands relaxed on his thighs. His only concession to the heat in the Jeep was the deep red flush on his cheekbones and the glimmer of sweat at his hairline. The scent of his skin, his sweat, was engraved on her memory, and oh, she wanted him. He could make her forget all her troubles, at least for now.
“I want to stop thinking for a while,” she admitted.
Emotion flickered in his eyes, unreadable and almost imperceptible, and as the seconds passed she began to wonder if she’d seen it at all. “Stay there.”
Following his order was good practice for that by-the-book officer/civilian thing he kept talking about, so she waited, marking time by the slow thump of her pulse in her wrists and throat as he walked around the Jeep and opened the door for her. He stayed close, protective or possessive, or both, as they walked up the ramp to the front door. She was hyperaware of his body, hot and substantial next to hers, as he guided her through the door and down the hall to the workout room. The light hung soft and heavy between late afternoon and twilight, light enough to see herself, six inches from the mirror, Matt visible behind her.
“Watch,” he said.
She blushed so hard her cheeks were darker than the soft pink blouse. “I can’t possibly,” she said, even as her gaze skittered over the strangely demure woman in the mirror, feet primly together, knee-length skirt, shirt that skimmed her curves without drawing attention to them. She looked sweet, maybe even innocent.
His hands rose to the first tiny button on her soft pink blouse, unfastened it slowly, moved to the second. He gained deftness but scorned speed as he moved down, exposing her throat, then her collarbone. “What was all that about choosing mirrors over cuffs last night?”
They hadn’t made it anywhere near the home gym. “You were supposed to watch,” she said. “Not me.”
He bent his head, the gesture at once both protective and authoritative, and murmured in her ear. “We’re both going to watch.”
Electricity cracked through her, igniting heat in her nipples and deep in her belly, and sending another flare of color into her face. He shifted focus from his big hands at the slowly parting edges of her blouse, and smiled. “I can’t believe the sexiest cocktail waitress in Lancaster is blushing at having sex in front of a mirror.”
“That’s different,” she said. “That’s an act. I wear a costume, say lines. You get that.”
“So you really are sweet and innocent?” he asked as he opened the last button.