Ready & Willing (18 page)

“We’re fine,” he told her.

He was going to get his way, she thought. But then, why did that surprise her? Any man who got a parking spot like this for a restaurant with such a long wait was
of course
going to get his way. Surrendering to the inevitable, she crossed to where he stood and, after giving him just a little bit of a dirty look, folded herself into the sleek little car.

“Buckle up,” he said just before closing the door behind her.

She did as he told her to, but only because it was the law. She watched as he strode around the front of the car to the driver’s side, his gaze never leaving hers as he stared at her through the windshield. He had some way of walking, she’d grant him that, full of swagger and confidence and masculine pride. The heat that was still reeling in her belly radiated outward, stealing into her breasts and pooling between her legs. Her heart hammered harder in her chest, making her hotter still. It did nothing to ease her distress when he opened the driver’s side door and crowded himself into the little car beside her. And when the engine rumbled to life, vibrating the very air around her, she feared she might orgasm right there on the spot.

“So,” she said suddenly, hoping to steer her thoughts into a new direction. She ran her hand over the warm black leather of the seat, but that only steered her thoughts right back to where they’d been before, because the smooth texture made her think about what it would feel like to run her fingers over Nathaniel instead. Curling her fingers into a fist, she stared straight ahead and said, “Nice car.”

She could feel his gaze on her, and it felt curious indeed. Evidently, he wasn’t experiencing the vibrating air/orgasm thing. “Thanks,” he said, his voice, too, indicating that he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her sudden demeanor.

Demeanor, hah,
she thought. What she had going at the moment was more desire than demeanor.

“Are you interested in cars?” he asked, clearly in an effort to make conversation.

She nodded. “Yeah, I am, actually. I have an uncle in Florida who races them. When I was a kid, he lived in Louisville, and every time we went over to visit, he and my dad and I would go into the garage and look at whatever he was racing. Cars were the one thing my dad and I had in common.”

“Is he still around?”

She shook her head. “My parents died within months of each other when I was in college.”

He spared a glance from the road to her face, looking genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Thanks,” she said, just as quietly. Not sure why she was sharing the information with him, she added, “I was one of those late life surprises to my folks. They tried to have a baby for decades, but my mother just never got pregnant. Then, when she was forty-nine and my father was almost sixty, they found themselves parents for the first time.”

“No brothers or sisters then?”

“No. You?”

“I’m an only child, too.”

She’d suspected as much, since Silas had pretty much indicated Nathaniel was on his own. “Cousins?” she asked. “Aunts? Uncles?”

“All of the above,” he said. “But I’m not close to any of them. My mother and I kept to ourselves when I was a kid.”

“Is your mom still around?”

“No, she’s been gone fifteen years.”

“Wow, you were young when you lost her.”

He turned to look at her again. “So were you.”

So they had that, if nothing else, in common, she thought.

He hesitated a moment, then asked, “What about your husband’s family? Do you stay in touch with them?”

She wasn’t sure why he would ask such a question. Nor was she sure why she was so reluctant to answer it. “Not really,” she said anyway. “Sean wasn’t that close to his family. He moved here from Ohio to go to college, and I only met his parents and sister a handful of times. Since his death . . .” She shrugged, but didn’t continue. Then, because she couldn’t quite stop herself from doing so, she added, “Why do you ask?”

This time, Nathaniel was the one to shrug. “I don’t know. Just . . . You said you still feel married, and—”

“No, I said I
am
still married,” she interrupted him, wondering why she suddenly felt so defensive. Wondering, too, why she felt the need to make that distinction to him so adamantly.

Instead of commenting on that, he only continued, his voice a little gentler than before, “—and it made me think you must still be involved with his family.”

“No,” she said. “I’m on my own.”

He kept his eyes on the road and said nothing, then, after a moment, told her, “Yeah, me, too.”

They entered Buck’s with thirty seconds to spare and were immediately led to a cozy table for two by one of the front windows. Just as Audrey feared, the place was as cozy and intimate as she remembered, from its chocolate-colored walls to its white linen tablecloths and the cool jazz trio that was playing near the bar. The pale golden illumination of the restaurant brought out amber highlights in Nathaniel’s hair that she hadn’t noticed before, and softened the planes and angles of his face. He suddenly seemed more mellow, more relaxed, more accessible. And she couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“I love this place,” he said after the hostess left them to peruse their menus. “Not just for the food and service, but the wine list is phenomenal.”

“Then you’ll have to order for me,” she said. “I don’t know much about wine. I’ve been buying the same labels for years.” She didn’t add that they were labels Sean had introduced her to. Sean had already been far too present in her thoughts tonight. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to think about why.

Their server came and described the evening’s specials, took their wine orders, then departed. A few more moments of silence passed as they each decided on their choice for dinner, and just as those were made, their server returned. On the up side, Nathaniel didn’t try to order dinner for her. On the down side, once those orders were given, the two of them were left staring at each other with neither seeming to know what to say next.

So Audrey asked him the question she had asked on the phone earlier, the one he hadn’t really answered. “So do you believe me about the soul and the haunting and everything or not?”

She reached for one of the wineglasses the server had placed nearly side by side at the same time Nathaniel reached for the other, and as each made contact with their target, they inadvertently brushed their fingers against each other. Audrey jumped at the iciness of his skin, and he jerked his hand away, mumbling an apology. Only after she had curled her fingers around the stem of her glass and lifted it to her mouth for a taste did he reach for his again.

She remembered how he told her he had been cold since that first day she met him. She hated being cold herself. She hated those winter days when the wind whipped so harshly, rattling windows and rooftops, ’til the cold crept under her skin, right down to the bone. She hated layering sweaters over T-shirts over undershirts, thick slippers over socks, blue jeans over tights, and
still
feeling cold. Whenever she suffered from that kind of cold, she filled a bathtub with water as hot as she could stand it, grabbed a book and a cup of hot tea, and sank down until the water was at her chin. Then, and only then, would the chill begin to leave her body.

But Nathaniel’s chill wouldn’t leave. Not unless Audrey touched him. For days, he’d walked around feeling that kind of cold she hated most, his only relief those scant few moments when she’d held his hand in hers.

She watched as he filled his mouth with a generous taste from his glass and was mesmerized as his strong throat worked over it. When he set his glass back down on the table, she noted how strong his hand looked, how dark was the hair peppering its back, how blunt were his fingers. She looked at her own hand, so much smaller than his, at the slender fingers and smooth flesh . . . and at the plain gold band on the third finger, winking under the lamplight. Without thinking about what she was doing—because if she thought about it, that would make it more important than it was—she pushed her hand across the few inches separating it from Nathaniel’s, and gently cupped her palm over the back of his fingers.

He’d been looking at his glass, his dark brows arrowed downward, his expression pensive, but the moment she touched him, he snapped his gaze up to meet hers.

And then, ever so slowly, he turned his hand so that his palm was resting against hers, and his fingers curled loosely into her own. His flesh grew warm beneath her touch, a warmth that purled through her, as well. When she braved a look at his face, he was smiling, a soft, gentle smile that very nearly took her breath away.

“Thank you,” he said in a voice that was every bit as soft and gentle, every bit as breathtaking, as his smile.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, hoping she only imagined how breathless she sounded, too.

For a moment, they only sat silently holding hands, then a bus
whooshed
past beyond the window, rattling the panes and making them both jump. Audrey was the first to chuckle at their reaction, but Nathaniel followed quickly. And when he did, it was as if something that had been wound tight inside of both of them suddenly unknotted, freeing them both up to breathe a little more easily.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I believe you. About everything. How can I not? You couldn’t possibly have known about the Monica Baranski cricket incident, and this damnable cold that is only relieved by . . .” He glanced pointedly down at their hands. “By this . . . can’t be the result of anything that’s within my ability to explain it. It’s not natural,” he concluded with a shrug. “So it must be supernatural.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” she asked.

She told herself she only imagined the way it felt like his fingers curled a little more intimately into hers. Imaginary, too, she assured herself, was the way his eyes darkened when he did it. And most imaginary of all was the little ribbon of pleasure that rippled through her. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so imaginary. It had nothing to do with Nathaniel Summerfield. It was just that it had been a long time since she’d held hands with a man. She’d forgotten how nice even that simple human contact could be.

“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” he asked. “Even if I could get out of my contract with Edward, which is ironclad, I can’t scuttle the development. There are scores of other people involved. He’s contracted with a dozen different businesses who want to buy retail and entertainment space, and there are a number of other people who have already signed on for some of the condos. He’s got architects and construction crews and equipment ready to go as soon as possible. The only way out of this thing is if Edward reneges on everyone. And he’s not going to do that simply by my asking him to. Especially if I tell him the reason he needs to scuttle the project is because my soul is in danger.”

“Then we have to make Edward renege on everyone,” Audrey said.

Nathaniel expelled a single, humorless laugh at that. “Yeah, right. And what has my great-great-whatever grandfather proposed we do to achieve that?”

She tried not to squirm in her chair. “Actually, he’s still working on it. He was sort of cast down here without much of a game plan.”

Nathaniel sobered at that. “What do you mean, ‘without a game plan’? I thought he’d have all the answers. I mean, what’s the point of an afterlife if you don’t get all the answers?”

“Well, his memory is a little hazy right now. He can’t quite remember where he was before coming here, or what it was like, or how things worked there.” When Nathaniel opened his mouth to object, she hurried on, “He does think that the key to your condition is Edward Dryden.”

“What about Edward?”

“Silas says he’s a criminal.”

Nathaniel shook his head. “That would certainly make it a hell of a lot easier to halt the development if he was, but that’s just nuts. Edward is as clean as they come.”

“How do you know?” Audrey asked.

“Because I ran a thorough check on him before I took him on as a client. I don’t want to get involved with a criminal element.”

“But you’re an attorney,” she reminded him.

“I’m a commercial lawyer,” he said. “Not a criminal lawyer. Not everyone with a law degree spends their time in a court room trying to prove someone’s guilt or innocence. I mean, that would be like me assuming, just because you’re a CPA and worked as an accountant before opening Finery, you figured people’s taxes.”

Audrey bit back a smile. “I did figure people’s taxes, Nathaniel. I was a tax accountant.”

He blinked at that. “Oh.”

“And how did you know I was a CPA and worked as an accountant before opening Finery?” she asked.

She was certain the only reason he looked like he blushed in response to the question was because something must have happened to the lighting. “I read it on your website,” he said. “On the Meet the Milliner page.”

She nodded, but something in his voice told her he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming.

That was made clear when he added, “Okay, I confess. Monica Baranski wasn’t the only person I Googled today.”

That surprised her. What surprised her even more was how he made Googling someone sound vaguely sexual. “You Goo . . . Ah, I mean . . . You did an Internet search on me?”

He nodded. “Just to make sure you were . . .” His voice trailed off without finishing.

“To make sure I don’t have a history of mental illness?”

He colored again, and this time she couldn’t quite convince herself it was a trick of the light. He was blushing, she marveled. And there was something in the realization that made her feel better about him. If a guy could blush, especially a guy who was clearly not prone to it, then his soul couldn’t have gotten
too
far, could it?

“So . . . what else did you find out about me?”