Sparked (city2city: Hollywood) (3 page)

Oh, God. He wasn’t going to be able to squeeze past her into the empty spot without shoving his butt in her face.

Some of his panic must have shown, because, with a faint smile pulling at her full, perfect lips, she scooted over to sit against the wall of the train.
 

He would never know where he found the courage, but, after practically falling into the seat she had vacated and settling his bag in the aisle next to him—this was the last seat of the last car of the train, after all, so he didn’t have to worry about blocking anyone walking about—he turned to her and said, “Hi.”

Her smile widened. “Hullo.”
 

The British accent was so much cuter on her than on the train conductor.

Praying his palms weren’t sweaty, he held out a hand. “I’m Ryan.”

The hand she slid into his was soft, slim, and cool to the touch. “Sadie.” Her nails were painted a deep purple, several shades darker than her coat. “You’re American?”

His nod was jerky as he reluctantly released her, fingers curling into a fist as if he could trap the feel of her inside it. “You’re…not?” Too late, he realized he’d apparently lost his ability to converse like a normal person and cringed. He should never have said hello to her in the first place.
 

Luckily, she laughed, and oh, dude, she had the
best
laugh. It made the back of his neck prickle, but in a good way, almost like she’d raked those purple nails of hers over that very spot.
 

Her dark eyes gleamed up at him. “English, born and bred. Though sometimes people get confused.” One hand fluttered in the direction of her face, and he figured she was referring to the fact that her features and coloring very clearly marked her as having East Asian heritage. “Are you a student?”

A good guess on her part, given where they’d boarded the train. “I am, but not here. My brother Jon is in his last year at Cambridge.”
 

“You’re visiting him for the holidays, then.”

“That was the plan,” he muttered before he could censor himself. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Jon, not when he had somehow managed to capture the attention of the most beautiful creature in the world. “What about you? Are you at Cambridge?”

She shook her head. “I’m an…actress.” Her words were hesitant but proud. “I was visiting my brother, too,” she explained quickly. “He’s in the law program and couldn’t come home for Christmas, so my parents had me deliver gifts to him today.”

Ryan’s head was spinning. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe she was actually talking with him. “Don’t law students get to go home for break?”

Her shoulders lifted in a nonchalant shrug. “Kai really likes to study. And our parents are always extra busy over the holidays, anyway.” She didn’t sound unhappy about it. “What do you study, then?”

“Aural engineering.”

She blinked those gorgeous eyes, uncomprehending.

“Aural. A-u-r-a-l. Not
oral
.” He pointed to his mouth, then his ear, and felt himself smile, the first smile since Jon’s fist had connected with his jaw earlier this evening. “Sometimes people get confused,” he said, echoing her earlier words, and pleasure spread through him to see her return his smile. “It’s the science of acoustics and audio.”

Her lower lip caught between her teeth as she studied him. He fought not to blush under her scrutiny. “What sort of work do
aural
engineers do?”

Okay. So. The way she said that word—“aural”—in her cultured accent was kind of sexy.

Kind of?
Who was he kidding: Her voice was really, ridiculously sexy. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as blood began to sizzle southward in his veins. “I had an internship with a technology company in Chicago this summer helping design speaker components for cellular phones. Fingers crossed they’ll hire me when I graduate in a few months.”

“You must be very smart.”

There was no helping his blush this time, heating from his throat to his hairline as he murmured something decidedly inarticulate. The rocking of the train over the tracks suddenly seemed overloud to Ryan’s ears, the layers of sound amplified again as passenger noise filtered into his consciousness. Laughter, snores, the various coughs and wheezes signifying the snot-infused illness most of humanity caught at the onset of winter.
 

He had always been able to hear things others hadn’t. Not because of any keen auditory sense, necessarily, but because he enjoyed listening. In that typical way of twins, one of them had been a talker, the other quiet in order to make room for the louder personality. Jon, though the younger by three minutes, was the talker. Which made Ryan the—

“So why are you going to London on Christmas Eve if you came over to visit your brother in Cambridge?”

His eyes locked with hers, and part of him wished he could tell her, this perfect and
perfect
stranger, to back off. The holiday had already been destined for trouble even before he’d fought with his brother and had the door to Jon’s flat slammed in his face. Which might be why he found himself saying, “Our parents passed away. This year. It’s our first Christmas without them, and I wanted…I worried—” He broke off with a sigh, but couldn’t tear his gaze from her. “Jon hasn’t taken it well.”

Her hand found his forearm, rested gently upon it. “And you? How have you taken it, Ryan?”

He could feel the heat of her touch through his wool coat and the sweatshirt beneath it. Shaking his head, he carefully—tentatively, because what if he was reading her wrong, and this little fantasy would fade to black the second he touched her?—let his hand cover hers. The bumps of her knuckles against his palm brought a sense of unfamiliar intimacy to the moment. “Better. It’s better for me.”

“But how?” Her fingers tightened on his arm. “I don’t know what I’d do if my parents died. I can’t even imagine.”

His thumb delved beneath the cuff of her coat sleeve, stroking over the back of her wrist. Her skin was soft and warm, and he wished he was brave enough to lift her hand, put his mouth on that skin.

He seemed to only be brave in small doses, though, and he’d already used it all up with that first hello, that first touch. “They died in a car accident last January, driving back from dropping Jon at the airport.”

Her hand moved under his, linking their fingers together, putting them palm to palm. “
Oh
.” It was more sound than word, and more breath than sound, and he didn’t want her to say anything else, because he heard everything he needed to hear in her voice.

I’m sorry
, that breathless “oh” said.
I’m so, so sorry
.

See, he’d always been good at listening.

Giving in to instinct was easy. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he lifted their joined hands, pressing his lips to the back of hers, his bravery returned. “Thank you,” he whispered, no longer in the mood to question why she was talking to him. In the space of a few minutes, he’d bought into the possibility that, yeah, a girl that gorgeous could
absolutely
be looking at him as she was, as if she too felt the same prickle on her nape and spark in her veins he was feeling right this second.
 

He wasn’t going to let go of her hand, he decided as he squeezed her fingers. Letting go of her wasn’t an option. “You said you’re an actress?”

“I am. My first professional play actually just closed in the West End.” She didn’t make any move to disentangle her hand from his, he noted, with no small amount of pride.

“Were you the star?”

Blushing, she shook her head. “Supporting role.” She shifted to lean more heavily against his arm.

There went those sparks again. He leaned into her, as well, dipping his head toward her—not to kiss, though of course he wouldn’t mind kissing her, but to get closer. Warm, smiling Sadie, who was starting to make him rethink his stance on the quality of his Christmas Eve. “You’ll be a star someday. I can tell.”
 

She laughed at him, though he didn’t mind, because that laugh was like no other sound he’d heard in his life. Light and melodic and filled to the brim with a happiness that buzzed in his brain until his senses went all trippy and loose.

The grin stretching his face stayed in place for the next forty-seven minutes as they exchanged murmured revelations, tidbits of their lives and souls. By the time the final stop at King’s Cross station in London was announced, it felt as though more than just their fingers were intertwined. It was with great reluctance that he disentangled their hands, stepping out into the aisle to allow her to precede him off the train.

Standing in the enclosed space of the car, he stared down at the top of her head, covered in ivory knit, and was struck again at how small she was—a foot shorter than him, at least. He’d never felt more aware of the cumbersome size of his body. He was always bumping into furniture or tripping on the stairs or, as evidenced tonight in the first-class car, hitting his head on all manner of low-hanging things. He and Jon had sprouted into would-be high school basketball stars at age fourteen, but while his brother had embraced athleticism, Ryan had diverged into academic decathlon.

Their parents had never missed a single competition, nor had they missed a single one of Jon’s games.
 

A pang, stronger than the pangs he had experienced in the months since his parents’ death, rippled through his chest at the memory, and he blinked away the stinging in the corners of his eyes. He would not cry in front of pretty little Sadie. He would
not
.
 

Hefting the duffle over his shoulder, he followed her through the car, out the door and onto the platform, gaze locked on the collar of her purple coat peeking through that long fall of straight ebony hair.
 

Chill air swirled around them as Sadie turned to face him, fingers tightening on the strap of her purse, expression somber as dark, dark eyes met his. “So…this is the end of the line.”

“I—” There was no explaining this connection, Ryan realized. That she was beautiful was almost negligible next to the bright light living inside her. She smiled at him. She listened to him. She comforted him when he was nothing more than a stranger. Never in his life had he met someone whose goodness glowed through her whole body, like sunshine.
 

She was sunshine to him, scattering the cold, gray clouds of winter with her warmth. “I don’t want it to be. The end, I mean.” He swallowed nervously, mouth gone dry, and lifted a hand to tuck a silky strand of hair behind her ear. “Is that okay?”

“Is what okay?” She sounded breathless, cheeks turning pink as his thumb gently petted the sweet curve of her jaw.
 

“That I don’t want to say good-bye to you right now.” He shook his head and dropped his bag at their feet before stepping closer, until he felt the press of her body through the placket of his coat. Her face, so delicate, so lovely, fit perfectly between his cupped palms. “That I…can’t say good-bye.”
 

He was alone on Christmas Eve in a foreign city with nowhere to go. He needed to find an ATM and a phone book, and figure out where the heck he would sleep tonight and if the limit on his credit card would allow him to book a return flight back to Chicago, or if he would be forced to stay in England until his original roundtrip ticket said he could go home, three days from now. He needed to not think about Jon or his mom and dad, and he needed…he needed….
 

Sadie. He needed Sadie. Standing on the quickly emptying platform in King’s Cross, the puff of their breaths clouding the air between them, she warmed all the places deep inside him that had been cold since the day he’d found out his parents never made it home from O’Hare International Airport.
 

He shivered, once again blinking away the threat of tears. He was twenty-two, and not a boy anymore. Not for eleven months and eleven days. He was a man now, alone in the world, and men who were alone in the world
did not cry
.
 

But he wondered, a little bit, if it might be safe with Sadie, just to let one tear fall. Only the one. And then he could—would—get control of himself and be a man again, for both of them.
 

Moisture collected on his lower lashes against his will. So he leaned down and covered her perfect mouth with his at the same moment she went up on her toes to meet him halfway, grabbing him by the lapels.
 

She was…she
was
. Oh, God. He sensed tears trailing down his cheeks, but he didn’t care. Her lips were soft, sweet, open and giving. So giving.
 

She gave and gave and gave to him, filling him with her glow as he held her face with large, often-clumsy hands. Harsh, panting breaths, the slick slide of lips and tongue, her quiet moan—or was it his?

No, it was hers, the vibrations of which tingled across every last one of his senses until his hand slid from her jaw to cup her skull, his other moving around to palm her lower back, urging her petite frame to mold itself to him.
 

Then it was his turn to groan. Even through their winter layers, he could feel every subtle curve with exciting clarity. Thighs and hips and bellies and chests, separated by far too much clothing, but it didn’t matter because she caught his upper lip between her teeth, the barest nip of a bite, and he forgot what it was like to ever be cold.
 

Pulling away seemed impossible, but he did it anyway, though the sensation of her body sliding against his as she lowered onto flat feet nearly had him grabbing her up once more.
 

He didn’t let go of her.

She didn’t let go of him.

Instead, she stared up at him, gaze flicking over his face, lips parted and swollen. He watched her as intently as she did him, and when she broke into a smile, an answering one curved his own lips.

“Wow,” she said, eyes alive with some emotion he couldn’t identify but which mirrored the storm of feeling that swirled dangerously beneath his rib cage.