Breaking the Silence (3 page)

Okay,
ew
. Now he was thinking about getting into her pants, which made her picture it, which made her want to wash her brain with some industrial cleaner.

So it wasn’t going to be masculine grunting or slapping Janice on her bethonged ass. Nope, he was going to prove he wasn’t gay by asking Jenny out. She wondered which lucky person in the betting pool had picked today as the ask-out day.

The irritating thing—one of the irritating things—was that he didn’t ask her out for a specific day, so telling him that she would be busy that night wouldn’t work. Jenny didn’t want to just blow him off with a flat-out, “No, never, you creepy, creepy man,” because Christian was right—Evan was a passive-aggressive little prick.

Once, the big boss had torn into him in front of a whole meeting room of people about some mistake he had made. Afterward, everyone had filed out of the conference room when Jenny had ducked back in to grab her favorite pen she’d left on the table. She’d jerked to a halt when she saw Evan sitting alone, his expression so furious, so vicious, that she’d pivoted around and left without her pen. Later, she felt silly for feeling so frightened, blaming her imagination for the overreaction, but the memory of Evan’s expression on that day popped into her head now.

Jenny tried to slow her thoughts and think rationally. She needed an excuse for not going on any dates in the possible future. There were two standards—“I’m a lesbian”, which Jenny found usually didn’t turn a guy off but instead had the opposite effect, and “I have a boyfriend”, which, knowing the gossip pipeline around the office, Evan would know wasn’t true. Still, it was the best Jenny could think of right at the moment.

“I’m sorry, Evan, but I’m seeing someone.” She gave him a pacifying smile and inched backward, ready to bolt.

“No you’re not.”

Jenny stared at Evan, startled. He sounded so sure of that. She started to get a little pissed. How would he know if she was seeing someone? Maybe she just hadn’t told anyone at the office about this new, albeit fake, boyfriend so that her private life wouldn’t be gossiped about.

“I mean, I hadn’t heard that you were dating anyone.” Evan must have seen the anger in her glare, because he backed off a little. “I asked a few people.”

“It’s new. We’ve just been out a few times and I haven’t told anyone here. I don’t want to jinx it, you know?” Jenny let her eyes get a little dreamy. “I really think he might be the one.”
Hah
, she thought.
Christian’s not the only drama queen around here.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry to bother you.” Evan took a step back to let her pass. “I hope he’s a really great guy—you deserve it.”

“Thanks, Evan.” Jenny hurried away from him. Somehow she doubted that he believed her about the boyfriend. His eyes had gone cold and there had been a vein of sarcasm running through that last bit about her deserving a great guy. Great. There was going to be tension. Why did guys have to wreck everything?

She glanced back toward Evan and he was watching her walk away, his face twisted, reminding her so much of his expression that day in the conference room that she flinched, whipping her head back around in time to see Mary peeking from behind the wall of her cubicle, her face bright with eavesdropping glee.

Jenny sighed. Of course it had to be Mary—she was the biggest gossip at the office. Well, the biggest gossip after Christian and herself, Jenny had to admit. Now not only would everyone know that Evan had asked her out, they would all be talking about the “new boyfriend”. And since the annual office party, thrown every year in January for the big boss’s birthday, was coming up in less than two weeks, she would have to make up a reason for her imaginary boyfriend’s absence.

Jenny sighed again. This really was not turning out to be a good day.

By the time Jenny dragged her tired, cramping body through her front door, she had never been so glad to be home in her entire life. She had bailed out of work early, bringing her laptop with her so that she could work at home. It would still be a long night but at least no one would be “casually” walking by her cubicle, hoping to interrogate her about her new boyfriend. In light of that fascinating tidbit, Evan’s request for a date was quickly forgotten by everyone except for Clarence in Accounting, who won forty-eight dollars from the betting pool and, Jenny was sure, Evan, who was probably plotting revenge.

Rosie, her rangy black mutt, greeted her ecstatically. Jenny groaned as the dog raced back and forth from the hall closet, where her leash was kept, to the front door. A walk was so not what Jenny wanted right now. A hot shower, yes. A pint of chocolate mint ice cream and a spoon—definitely. Her favorite pajamas, the ones with monkeys holding pink bananas printed on them—of course.

Rosie stared at her with hopeful eyes. Okay, a walk it was. Jenny had known when she and her eighty-pound dog moved into the townhouse with its miniscule lawn that they would be taking lots of long walks. Usually Jenny enjoyed their jaunts. Her house was just a few blocks away from Beaver Creek path and her favorite loop took about an hour, winding through trees and between neighborhoods, crisscrossing over the creek with lots of cute footbridges. Tonight though, she was just so tired that a walk seemed like a Herculean task.

Jenny dragged herself upstairs to change, rolling her pantyhose down carelessly despite knowing that she would have to fight that tangled knot eventually. She did hang up her suit jacket and matching skirt—“dry clean only” inspired some respect. She threw on her favorite jeans and yanked a fuzzy sweater over her head.

Glancing at herself in the full-length mirror in the corner of her bedroom, Jenny yanked her hair out from under her collar and brushed some static-charged floaters back with her hand. She wondered if she should get some blonde highlights. Right now, in the dull gray of winter, her hair seemed so…
brown
.

She shook her head, dismissing the thought. With highlights, she would look like Christian’s freaking twin. Already people commented on their resemblance and asked if they were brother and sister.

“Yeah, he’s the brother I never wanted,” Jenny muttered to her reflection. She still hadn’t forgiven Chris for his part in driving Evan to ask her out in a testosterone-fueled panic.

A date would have been nice though. Not with Evan, of course, but with… Jenny thought but came up with a blank on datable men. It had been—she counted back the months—holy cow! Almost two years had passed since she had gone out on a date. It had been
way
longer than that since she had gotten laid. How had this happened?

Jenny critiqued herself in the mirror. Long hair, light brown, that couldn’t really decide whether it was curly or not. Eyes, brown as well, but dark brown this time. Nice eyebrows, although no one had ever gotten a date because of her eyebrows, at least that Jenny knew of. Normal nose. A pretty good mouth—Jim, her college boyfriend, had told her that guys liked her mouth because it made them think of blowjobs. Evan always stared at her mouth, if he wasn’t staring at her chest, when he talked to her.

Speaking of her chest… She glanced down. Things were good in that department, although they were a pain in the, well, breast to run with, even with two sports bras. In high school and college, Jenny had made several halfhearted attempts to lose weight but now, at twenty-six, she had accepted that her body was meant to be curvy. Depriving herself of cookies and exercising like a demon never changed anything—it just made her cranky. Besides, she grew to like the softness of her hips and breasts, the smooth roundness of her bottom and the tapering shape of her legs. When she saw pictures of models in magazines or watched actresses in movies, their bodies seemed sharp and knobby, all the feminine mystery sucked out of them.

Jenny had grown up in a house of all women, her mother and three sisters, and she had grown accustomed to naked female bodies—dashing into the shower before the single bathroom was occupied
again
, dressing in a shared bedroom during the half light of early morning, tossing clothes on and off to find the perfect outfit for a date. The normality of the true sizes and shapes of women had been imprinted on Jenny’s brain long before fashion magazines had a chance.

Jenny frowned at her reflection. If all features were accounted for and, if not drop-dead gorgeous, at least not
troll
-like, what was the problem? Why the dating dry spell? She was interrupted from her introspection by a questioning canine whine from the bedroom doorway.

“Enough of this,” muttered Jenny as she walked downstairs and pulled her coat from the closet. She stuffed her feet into her boots. “Looking at my reflection won’t help and I have a dog that has to pee.” Jamming a knit hat on her head and grabbing up a pair of mittens and Rosie’s leash, Jenny headed for the front door.

With Rosie tugging her forward to a speedy walk, however, Jenny couldn’t stop the thoughts rolling around in her head. Why was a reasonably attractive, semi-sane, fairly young woman alone?

Her last relationship had ended three years ago and there had been no sex since. None. And not even a date for almost two years. It had been easy to slip into a pattern of work, home, walk the dog, climb into jammies, work some more, read or watch TV and go to bed. Alone.

When she did go out, she tended to hang with Christian. If they drove to Minneapolis or St. Paul to visit the gay clubs, that didn’t do her much good date-wise, although she always had a blast. When they went out to places where there was the possibility of the presence of straight men, they usually assumed that she and Christian were together—as a couple.

If she wanted a date, she obviously had to do something different, go somewhere single men might lurk. Jenny made a face. She hated change. Besides, her life was good, except for the no-date, no-sex part, and she really had no desire to start a man-hunting mission.

Jenny realized that it was starting to snow. Yesterday’s warm spring fake-out was gone and she was alternating between slipping on smooth patches of ice and catching the toes of her boots on the rough edges of refrozen slush. The snowflakes were small and mean, and the wind spat them into her face.

Blinking against the assault, Jenny noticed that she and Rosie were the only ones in sight. She reeled a hopeful Rosie in and unhooked the leash from the dog’s collar. Jenny generally tried to be law-abiding and obey the dog-on-a-leash pictograph signs that dotted the path. Right now though, they were apparently the only ones foolish enough to be out in this weather and the footing was treacherous enough without Tugboat Rosie yanking her off balance every few seconds. A few minutes of loose dog shouldn’t hurt anything. Rosie had been great in obedience class at everything except heeling. Sit, stay, down, come—she had picked everything up with ease, until it came time to heel. Rosie had never quite gotten the concept.

Jenny trudged along, her head angled down away from the wind. She glanced up to check on Rosie—and jerked to a stop, startled.

Right in front of her was a man, a huge man, so close that if she hadn’t looked up just at that moment she would have crashed into him.

Jenny took a second look. It might not have been so bad to bump into
this
guy—he was hot. Really hot. So hot he didn’t look real hot. In fact, for a whimsical moment, she wondered if he was a gift from some heavenly deity sick of hearing her whine about her dateless state.

Although, if he was her date, he didn’t look very happy about it. He was definitely frowning. Scowling even. Great, the deity gave her a cranky date—there always had to be a catch somewhere, didn’t there?

The guy really was beautiful though. He was big—muscle big, not Homer Simpson big—and tall and had cheekbones that could cut…what? Cheese? They could definitely cut cheese. Jenny frowned a little. She had never been very good at romantic descriptions. He looked very Nordic, not that that was anything unusual for this neck of the woods. Minnesota was filled with blond people with last names like Swenson and Anderson and Olafson.

He
wasn’t just a typical blond though. His eyes, slanted over those cheekbones, were the see-through light blue, almost scary blue, of a Husky. They were the same color as snow at night, when it gives off an almost unearthly blue glow. He was definitely blond, close to platinum, Jenny could tell, even though his hair was cut almost military-short. His eyebrows and lashes were darker—unusually so. His brows slashed above his narrowed eyes and a few snowflakes were trapped in the tangle of his lashes…

Jenny suddenly realized that she had been staring at this man way too closely and for far too long for him to think that she was right in the head.

She smiled tentatively as she offered a weak greeting. “Hi.”

Nothing.

Jenny’s brain had unfrozen just enough for her to realize that this man wasn’t a gift from the gods that she could take home and keep tied in her bedroom for her own enjoyment, although the thought of that made sweat break out under her knit hat. This was a real person, a person who didn’t look very happy with her…

Oh!

Comprehension dawned. She would have figured it out earlier if he hadn’t been so darn distracting to look at. With her head ducked to avoid the wind, she had probably missed Rosie veering into one of the neighboring yards, bringing Mr. Crabby-Pants here out to give her a lecture on responsible dog ownership.

“I’m sorry—was my dog in your yard?” Jenny glanced around and saw Rosie innocently rooting around in the snow at the side of the path. “I try to keep her more under control usually…”

She glanced at the man through her lashes, checking to see if her apology had lightened his expression. Nope. Oh come on now, how much damage could one little dog—okay, one rather large dog—have done in the ten seconds Jenny wasn’t watching?

“What?”

He spoke. Of course he had to have a voice like Barry White’s, as if there wasn’t enough tingling going on in her girly bits… Oops. Jenny realized that she was wandering off again. He was really going to think she wasn’t quite right.

“I thought that’s why you were angry—because my dog was on your property?” Jenny’s voice went up in question at the end, since the hottie was looking at her like she was speaking Pig Latin.

“I’m not angry.”

Oh
that voice again. Jenny pressed the tops of her thighs together. “You’re not?”
Okay, Jen
, she thought,
he could fuck you with that voice alone and you’re Squeaky
McSqueakerson
? Let’s try for a little more on the sexy purr side, please.

“No. That’s just my face.”

Jenny laughed. He was hot
and
funny? She was doomed. “So my dog wasn’t bugging you?”

“No. He’s fine.”

Okay. So if it wasn’t to rage about the dog, why was a Nordic god standing in the middle of the path in a snowstorm—well, at least strong flurries? And an easy conversationalist, he was not. “That’s good. If no one else is around out here, I like to let her run some of her energy off. She can be a bit of a rubber ball sometimes—bouncing off the walls.”

“Sorry—I meant
she’s
fine.” He looked a little embarrassed at this, as if he had made a major faux pas. Or maybe he just wasn’t comfortable discussing canine gender differences.

“Don’t worry about it—she doesn’t care. Everyone thinks she’s a ‘he’ at first.” Feminine, Rosie was not. “She’s a bit butch.”

He made a noise, a half cough, half snort, and Jenny was pleased that she had maybe made him laugh. Or choke. She wasn’t quite sure which. Now the ice would be broken and he would carry his half of the conversational ball.

Jenny waited through a few seconds of silence. Guess not.

“So…”
Topic, topic, topic.
Jenny hunted through her brain for a conversation starter. For some reason, she didn’t want to just say goodbye and continue with her walk. She was also still curious as to why he was here. Here and not moving.

Rosie had obviously decided that now was a good time to introduce herself. She trotted over to the stranger, snuffled at his pant leg for a moment and must have concluded that he passed muster, because she sat in the snow by his foot and leaned against him. He looked down at the dog with a sort of bemused expression, like a zebra had just plopped down next to him, but he didn’t move out of leaning range.

“Do you walk here often?” Mentally, Jenny slapped her forehead in disgust. Of all the cheesy pick-up lines—why not just ask him what his sign is?

“No.”

Okay, this was just unfair. The way she was straining for conversation, he needed to put a
little
more effort into it than monosyllables. “So…do you live around here?”

“There.” He pointed to the back of one of the houses.

“Really? That’s yours?” Jenny was delighted. The quirky house was her favorite of all the homes they passed on Rosie’s walks. It did not, however, seem to fit this man. It was more of a crazy grandma house—but a kindly crazy grandma, of course. One who brought her neighbors cookies that they didn’t want to eat because they knew how very many cats she had.

At her astonished tone, he looked a little defensive. “Yeah. Why are you so surprised?”

“It’s just that I love that house! I’ve been dying to ask the owner, who is, conveniently, right here in front of me—why did you paint it purple?”