Chapter Twelve
I performed at the farmer’s market once. I brought the old acoustic and sat cross-legged on a blanket by the entrance to the market while Aidan made animal balloons for the kids and Ethan handed them out, always the helpful “assistant” as he liked to say. Young kids clapped along to “This Land is my Land” as I sang my heart out for the preschool set of Manhattan.
Every time I come back, I can’t help but picture the little fledgling indie rock singer who strummed for the five-and-under crowd, even though my little one isn’t with me today. It’s a school day for Ethan, but I’m just here today as a civilian anyway. I’m wearing a soft black sweater, jeans, boots, and a warm coat. I find Matthew leaning against the Waffle Guy’s truck, his eyes fixed down on the pages of his book. I feel a little sneaky, like I’m spying on him, watching him from a distance, but the view is worth it. I make note of the cut of his jeans, well-worn but trim, his jacket, the same black leather, and his shoes, black combat boots this time. He doesn’t look dashing or proper. He looks the part, like a rock critic.
He looks cool.
“Lost in a good book?” I ask as I reach him.
“A very good book,” he says, tapping the cover. He’s moved on to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.
“You finished L.A. Confidential?”
“Just last night. Started this one this morning. I find that with a thirty-minute subway ride to our offices in Gramercy Park I can get a lot of reading in.”
“The Big Sleep is in Los Angeles too. So what’s this Los Angeles fascination of yours all about?”
He tucks the book into his backpack. “I enjoy the fascination with superficiality, the obsession with stars, the rampant sunshine. We don’t have much of that, of course, back home. And the whole city was really a big fight over water rights, and the rise and fall of the water company was the foundation of the city. The history of LA is fascinating and the city is teeming with stories. Plus, my little brother lives there, and I’m determined to know more about LA than him. We have to constantly find ways to compete.”
“I’ve never really been a big LA person.”
“Well, I should probably go now. You don’t like to cook and you don’t like LA. I’m not sure what else we’ll talk about.”
“You’re right. This was silly. I’ll just go home.” I pretend I’m about to walk off.
“Wait.” He reaches for my arm. My eyes are immediately drawn to his hand on me. Even through my coat and sweater, I can feel my skin calling out for his touch. “I have an idea, and I bet the vegetarian in you will be powerless to resist.”
“Try me.”
“Do you want to come over to my offices for lunch? I could make you that pasta primavera and we could chat there.”
I narrow my eyes. “Does Beat have a lot of pasta-primavera-making reporters to support a kitchen? Or is it just you whipping up the veggies?”
He laughs. “It’s a prerequisite of working there. Everyone is required to have a signature dish to cook once a week. Or, it might be that we happen to share office space with a sister magazine owned by the same company. Tastes Delicious and they have a full and proper kitchen.”
Too bad he’s not taking me back to his apartment. Because then it wouldn’t be the vegetarian in me that’s powerless to resist. It would be the woman.
But vegetables will have to do for now.
“Let’s see what sort of secrets you can wheedle out of me using pasta as a hook,” I say as I flash him a challenging stare.
“Oh, just you wait until you try my pasta primavera. I’ll have you eating out of the palm of my—” Then he stops himself and holds up a hand. “See, I find it very challenging not to turn everything into an innuendo with you, especially when it involves things like hands and eating,” he says, emphasizing the last word as he raises his eyebrows, then turns on his heel to head for a stall stuffed with ten thousand varieties of mushrooms.
“Mushrooms will distract me from how gorgeous you look today,” he says in a low voice as he checks out the mushrooms. I grin privately, thrilled with his compliments.
Then he heads for a food stall with asparagus and another with carrots. He makes what he swears will be his final purchase—green peas—then tips his forehead between two stalls that ring the edge of the market.
“It’s a shame it’s not June,” Matthew says, and we both stop to look up at the wintry sky, the color of slate. Gloom-filled clouds have claimed the once-blue real estate.
“Because it would be warm and wonderful and we could wear shorts and tank tops?”
He rakes me over with his blue eyes, lingering on my chest in a way that would bug me if he were a random guy on the street, but that instead heats my body given that he’s not. “Tank tops are a big yes. That, and summer fruit,” he adds. “I love coming here in June and July. They have the most amazing peaches. Honey-kissed peaches,” he says, as if he enjoys the way those words take shape on his tongue as he’s looking at me. My chest feels hot, and I bite my lip absently, barely even aware I’m doing it. But he picks up on my signals, the cues that my body’s giving off. He leans closer and brings his mouth to my ear, his breath warm against my skin, sending shivers through me. “Isn’t that a great description for peaches?”
I sway slightly, and he steadies me with a hand on my elbow. There’s a table full of bread behind me that I may topple into if he keeps doing this. “You need to stop talking to me about fruit as if it’s foreplay,” I say breathily.
“I do?” he asks, far too innocently to be believed.
“Yes. You do.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I say in a jagged whisper.
“Because why?”
“Because it makes me want more,” I admit, even though there’s a part of me that’s terrified to say that, but another part of me—probably the part controlled by this sharp, sweet ache in my body—is demanding as hell.
“They’re incredible peaches, though,” he says, never taking his eyes off me, as he continues seducing me in the alley at the market. “Juicy and sweet. And they have cherries. Summer cherries. I’ll buy a carton and stand by my sink and eat them all. I can’t help myself. They taste delicious. And sun-ripened apricots,” he says, shaking his head several times as if he’s savoring the memory of the taste on his tongue. “I’ll have one, then another, then more please…” He lets the last words linger between us, deliberately burning me up.
I pull at my sweater, as if it’s summer and it’s sticking to my skin. And suddenly, it’s no longer cold outside. It’s hot and the sun is beating down on me and I want to strip away my layers of clothes. I want to lift my face to the sun. I want to inhale the smell of ripe, tantalizing fruit. I want to pin my hair up, let my skin turn warm, feel Matthew’s lips on the back of my neck, his arms wrapped around my waist, my body tangled up in his.
“You like torturing me,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t like it. I love it.” He places his hand on my back, and guides me out of the market and onto the crowded sidewalk. “But do you want me to stop?”
“No. I want you not to stop. That’s the problem.”
“Does it make you feel any better if I told you it’s torture for me too?”
“Sure,” I say with a laugh. “That makes everything better.”
“Because,” he says as we turn onto his block, and he says in a completely deadpan voice, “It really is torture waiting for that summer fruit.”
I swat his arm playfully. “Thanks,” I say sarcastically. “Way to give a girl a complex.”
He grins and shrugs, his admission that he likes to have fun. We reach his office building and head through the lobby to the banks of elevators. We wait in silence, and then once we step inside the lift, the doors close, and it’s just us, he turns to me. “I want more too,” he says in that low and sexy voice that turns me inside out. “And I swear this will be the last time for a while, but I can’t resist doing this right now.”
He drops the bags from the farmer’s market on the floor of the elevator, backs me against the wall, and cups my face. My breath catches as he moves closer, then presses his hips into mine, lining up his tall, trim frame against me in a way that makes it clear how much more he wants me too. Then he delivers a scorching kiss, deep and hungry and desperate, threatening to send me up in flames. I feel it across every inch of my skin, inside every cell in my body, and it’s like the end of a rock anthem, a searing coda to an epic song, as he explores my mouth with his tongue. One hand drops away from my face, and in an instant I feel his fingers on the waistband of my jeans. He draws a quick line across my belly with his index finger, and I arch into him, wishing there were time for his fingers to undo the button, then the zipper, then slide inside my panties and save me from this excruciating ache between my legs. But I have no such luck because the elevator is slowing, and he’s lingering on my lips, in an exquisitely cruel letting go, the final note held long and lasting, reverberating through your bones.
The moment ends all too soon. Seconds later the doors open, and I exit the elevator, in some sort of heady, drugged state that I’d like to stay in for a long, long time.