The Duality Principle (14 page)

“This is Connor. My boyfriend.”

She’d never put it that way before, even though it had pretty much been implied, and he stood up a little taller and smiled. He couldn’t help it.

Gabby pulled out a chair and sat. “Since you’ve made so many comments about me never being satisfied, I thought you’d want to meet the man that is finally…satisfying me.”

She looked up at Connor and grinned. That pressure in his chest made full impact again, but he breathed through it, winked and sat down next to her.

“I assume you’ve brought the paperwork?” her father asked, still flipping through the menu. “You’ve had it notarized?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”

That got his attention. “You haven’t,” he repeated.

“Nope.” Gabby popped the P at the end of the word. Connor had to stifle his laugh.

“Gabriella,” her mother said. Connor watched Gabby stiffen at the name. “Explain yourself.”

Gabby unzipped her jacket and took the envelope out of the pocket. She held it in her hands before looking back up at them. “Have you known about this since Nana died? The clause about the whole family agreeing?”

“Of course we did,” her mother answered.

Gabby shook her head and laughed. It was a sad sound, one Connor hadn’t heard much over the past few weeks. He recognized it from earlier in the summer, from when she was still struggling between the idea of who she was and who she thought she had to be.

She laid the envelope on the table. “I’m not signing it.”

Her mother’s eyes blazed. “We are meeting the buyer tomorrow, Gabriella. Yes, you certainly are going to—”

But then Gabby’s father put a hand out, silencing her. Her mother looked stunned but stayed quiet as Mr. Evans calmly placed his menu down on the plate and asked, “Why?”

There didn’t seem to be any anger in his voice. Only genuine curiosity.

Gabby looked at her lap and rubbed her palms over her jeans. Connor linked his hands together to stop himself from touching her, from comforting her.

“How could you…” she began then stopped herself, swallowing hard. Lifting her head, she met her father’s gaze. “How could you not know how much that house means to me? How much I loved being there with Nana, every summer you brought me here. When now that she’s gone—”

Her voice broke, and she bit her lip. This time, Connor did reach over to her and covered the fingers that were gripping her jeans with his palm.

I’m here.

You can do this.

“When now that’s she’s gone, it’s all that’s left of her.”

There was a long moment of uneasy silence. Connor watched Gabby’s father consider her words, his gaze fixed on something in the corner of the room. Then he looked back at her. Connor swore he saw something different than what she’d said was in his distant gazes. Something that looked like respect.

“I had no idea the house meant so much to you.” He took the envelope from the table, folded it once and put it in his breast pocket. “We’ll back out of the deal with the buyers tomorrow and take it off the market. You can stay there as long as you like.”

Her mother opened and closed her mouth but said nothing. Connor watched Gabby exhale in relief, the color coming back to her face. She beamed and turned her hand over in his, giving it a tight squeeze.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

It wasn’t quite a happily ever after for them, but it was a start.

When dinner was over, they rode back through the streets of Portland. Connor insisted on a little victory lap, hoping Gabby would just enjoy the ride and not pay too much attention to where they were going. He drove them past the coffee shop where they’d met, then the ice cream parlor. He picked up speed on Commercial, passing the wharves where fewer boats now rocked in their slips than in early July. The sun had already set by the time they went over the Casco Bay Bridge, the air laced with just a touch of pre-autumn chill, but he took the long way around anyway, threading through South Portland to Bug Light Park, then by the tavern at SMCC. By the time he pulled up in front of her grandmother’s house, he had to swallow around the lump in his throat.

He needed to get his act together. He had lots of plans on how they were going to spend their last night here, and none of them included him crying.

“Can you believe it?” she asked, pulling him up the walkway and inside. She paused in the entryway and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I get to keep this house.”

“I believe it.” He stepped in close behind her and folded her in his arms. Breathed in the smell of her hair and kissed the top of her head. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Come on.” She broke away from him and reached back to circle her fingers around his wrist. “I need to finish packing.”

She sounded almost giddy. He was happy for her, but the hollowness in his stomach made his feet drag as he followed her up the steps to her bedroom. She started transferring clothes from her drawers into an open suitcase, kneeling on the floor next to it. She’d already packed so much, the room looked almost empty. Connor sat on the edge of the bed and folded his hands.

“Okay, my first holiday is in two weeks. I can drive back here for that,” she said. “The next one isn’t until Columbus Day, but I’ll need to come back to check on the house before then, to make sure it’s set for winter. I’m off for Veteran’s Day, and then it’s Thanksgiving. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, so here.”

She stood up and handed him a small envelope.

“What’s this?”

“A gift. And a bribe.” She plopped down next to him. “Open it.”

He pulled the flap open. Inside were two tickets to at least half a dozen Red Sox home games.

“I can’t…you shouldn’t have…” Connor sighed. “This must have cost you fortune.”

She snuggled up close to him. “Well, they’re for me too. Sort of. I mean, I’m not really into baseball, but I still have tons of fantasies of all these raunchy things I’d love you to do to me around campus. This is just a reason to get you to come to Cambridge.”

As if he needed a bribe for that. He wanted to say something about being into every filthy thing she could come up with, that he had every intention of making her fantasies a reality, but there was that pressure again. Connor rubbed his chest and took a shaky breath, trying to talk, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her if this was more than just sex. If this summer meant as much to her as it did to him. He’d sound like a pussy, and he wasn’t sure what kind of answer he wanted to hear.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I’ll probably be a wreck over Thanksgiving because my thesis is due pretty much right when I get back, and I’ll be even worse until my defense is over. But the semester ends a few days before Christmas, and assuming it gets accepted, all I’ll have to do is prep it for publication in January. Then I’m done. And I’ll be here.”

“Wait, you don’t have to go back to school?”

“Not until my hooding ceremony in June.”

“And you’ll be staying in Portland.”

She looked at him like he’d gone slightly insane. “Of course. I’ve already started looking for jobs. I saw an opening coming up for an assistant professor at the University of Southern Maine’s Department of Math and Stats and thought I’d apply.”

Connor looked down at the tickets in his hand as relief and uncertainty coiled their way through him, tugging him in opposite directions. It was what he wanted, more than anything, but he didn’t want her coming back to Maine for him, to live out what might become a future of disgruntled hopes, when, just like his mother, she might have been able to accomplish so much more. Wasn’t this what love was? Letting it go and hoping it came back to you, or some shit like that?

“Are you sure that’s the right choice?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not very logical to make decisions on the rest of your life based on two months with me.”

“Screw logic. I love Portland. I love this house. And I love you.”

The weight on his chest grew heavier and then somehow snapped. His eyes found hers, but even when his mouth opened, no words would come.

“Since I met you, nothing has made sense,” she told him. “Nothing has been logical, ordered or defined. But at the same time, everything has made perfect sense. You can’t get more duality than that.” Her grin grew wide. “Maybe I should write a paper on how blind dates really can go well, despite the statistics.”

“I love you too,” he blurted out, then grimaced and looked away.

“I know. I’ve known all summer.”

He chanced a gaze back up at her. She was smiling big and bright, her gray eyes sparkling behind her glasses.

She pointed to her head. “I’m smart
and
outdoorsy, remember?”

He laughed but ducked his eyes down again. Despite her finally saying the words he’d wanted to hear, he couldn’t reply, couldn’t fight back the fears that had plagued him all his life. That someone he loved would actually be coming back to him. Staying with him.

Gabby cupped his face in both her hands and drew his gaze up to hers.

“We’re both geeks and rebels, you and me. The perfect match, balanced and mathematically sound.” She rubbed her nose over his, a sweet, simple move that spoke of intimacies he’d never known. “Didn’t you know by now that I loved you? You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Connor Starks.”

And when she kissed him, Connor closed his eyes and finally believed her.

About the Author

Rebecca Grace Allen spent her summers as a child amongst the rocky shores of Southern Maine, and considers New England to be her second home. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English with a double concentration in Creative Writing and Literary Comparison, which seemed like a good idea at the time. After stumbling through careers in entertainment, publishing, law and teaching, she’s returned to her first love: writing. A self-admitted caffeine addict and gym rat, she currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, two parakeets, and a cat with a very unusual foot fetish.

You can find Rebecca online at
www.rebeccagraceallen.com
, on twitter at
@RGraceAllen
, or on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/rebeccagrace.allen
.

To protect her, he’ll have to cover the bases—first, second, third, and all the way home.

Guarding His Heart

© 2014 Cari Quinn

Deuces Wild, Book 2

Cassidy Dixon isn’t about to let her overprotective big brother know she has a stalker problem. But when she turns to his bodyguard agency partner, former MLB player Jax Wilder, she realizes she’s made an even bigger mistake.

Jax is even more overbearing, and soon he’s getting too close for comfort—as in panty-melting close. Heat is the last thing she needs in her under-siege ice cream shop—until hot tempers explode into the best angry sex of her life.

For once, the last thing on Jax’s morning-after mind is escape. He’s wanted Chase’s little sister too long
not
to make a move when opportunity strikes. He knows the reasons why she lives a careful life, and he’s ready to be the man she needs. If only she’d stop trying to get away…

Certain Jax feels guilty for sampling forbidden, way-too-sheltered fruit, Cassidy sets out to prove that she’s not as innocent and inexperienced as he thinks. She never expected him to rise to the challenge…or to be ready to risk everything to keep her safe.

Warning: Contains an overworked bodyguard who is juggling a stalker and a woman desperate to unleash her wilder side. This hero knows how to ride…to the rescue and a motorcycle, among other things. Beware of curve balls and acts of spontaneous outdoor sex.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Guarding His Heart:

Jax Wilder was about to go stark raving mad. Minus the raving. And the stark.

Either that or he’d petrify right in this chair by the time Chase returned from his girlfriend’s east coast tour. Hey, maybe Chase could sell Jax’s body as a baseball relic and earn back the income he’d yet to produce much of on a regular basis since they’d started Deuces Wild.

Jax shook his head and sent the metronome on his desk swinging again. A bodyguard agency. Who the fuck had come up with that idea?

It was days like this, when he was sitting around, thumb firmly up his butt, in the oversized coffin his business partner optimistically called an office that he wondered why in the sweet hell he’d left baseball. He’d had it good there. He was still winning games, still fairly well respected, possibly because he was one of the few who hadn’t been chewed up and spit out by his supposed fame.
Yet
.

That
yet
was part of why he’d left. The rest of the reason was in the photo tucked in the corner of his blotter. His mother’s smiling face beamed up at him, her hands full of the flowers he’d surprised her with when he’d returned to town for good. He’d caught that surprise and pleasure with his phone’s camera and had printed out the picture so he never forgot what he’d come back for. Yardley, New York was no one’s tropical paradise, but it was home.

Sometimes home counted for a fucking lot.

He was tapping the metronome’s small silver balls again when the door swung open and a dark head wrapped in a patterned scarf peeked in. The woman wore oversized glasses despite the gloomy day outside, and they tipped down her nose, practically obscuring her face. He started to ask if she had an appointment—knowing she didn’t, since he set the appointments—and fell silent as she swept inside and flipped the lock in the door.

Jax rose. “Uh, Miss, can I help you?”
Why the hell are you locking yourself in with me
? She wasn’t bad looking from what he could tell in her long coat and even longer skirt, but other than offering him a more pleasant last image when she shanked him, he couldn’t see how that mattered. “This is a bodyguard agency,” he added, hoping she read the implication of
big bad danger
in his tone.

So what if there were more dust motes than weapons in this place? So what if he was alone and unarmed, minus the switchblade he’d taken to carrying in his boot? Badassedness was an attitude more than a state of being.

Or so it would read on the police report detailing his murder.

When she reached up and pulled off her scarf—and her dark wig—he nearly laughed aloud at the red silk that tumbled free. Yeah, his boredom was reaching epic heights if he was concocting tales about mid-afternoon office ambushes by willowy women wearing Jackie O glasses. He could’ve taken her down in a tackle, no problem.

And when it came to this particular redhead, tackling her wasn’t too far from what he wanted to do to her on a daily basis. Minus their clothes and possibly with the aid of a couple of sex toys, but only for rounds two and three. For the first one, he’d use the equipment God had given him.

Enthusiastically, for an hour or two until the chafing set in.

“I fooled you.” Cassidy Dixon, Chase’s younger sister and the cause of Jax’s perma-hard-on for the last seven months, dropped into the chair across from his desk. He had the desk in front, on account of the fact that Chase said he was the prettiest.

Though Jax couldn’t deny that—Chase and Sterling were a pair of ugly motherfuckers—the real reason was that neither of them planned to be in the office more than the minimum amount of time. Their nonexistent budget didn’t extend to receptionists, so for now it was him and his metronome.

And when things got really tedious, the TV in the corner and the punching bag he’d tucked discreetly in the coat closet.

“You did,” Jax acknowledged, pushing aside his desk diversion to cross his forearms over the blotter. He wasn’t hiding the picture of his ma, despite the fact that more than one of the women who’d visited him at the agency had made a sickeningly sweet comment about him being a mama’s boy. He wasn’t. In fact, his mom didn’t even know he was seeing anyone. Or everyone, if town gossip was to be believed. “So what’s with the cloak and dagger, Ms. Mysterious? You trying out your Halloween costume five months early?”

Cass shed her raincoat and let it slouch behind her, then pushed her massive glasses on top of her head. The virulent purple smudges under her startlingly green eyes grabbed his attention first, but the tension pinching her generous lips followed a close second. “I’m here on official business and I didn’t want anyone in town to know.”

“Official business, hmm?” Another niggle of worry chilled his spine. “And somehow people would realize that if you weren’t suitably disguised? You do realize your brother owns this agency. I don’t think it would be out of the realm for you to visit him without calling the Feds.”

“Chase isn’t here right now, remember?”

How could he forget? Jax had been on his own for a good part of the first five months of their bodyguard agency, though they’d brought Sterling on board part-time after the first of the year. Very part-time at first, because their, ahem, current lack of business hadn’t exactly necessitated lots of help. But they had picked up a few clients, some long-term, some short, and Sterling had proven himself adept at pounding the pavement in getting the word out about their agency. Being a bodyguard wasn’t the easiest job to advertise. It wasn’t as if they could hang up a sign somewhere that anyone with a stalker should call them.

That hadn’t worked at all.

“No, but
I
am. You think people would think it’s that strange that you’d stop in to say hello to an old friend?”

Cass’s eye roll didn’t make him feel confident she viewed him that way. Old annoyance, maybe. Old nuisance. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten slotted in that particular category in her mind, but he didn’t like it one bit.

Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He knew exactly when she’d pegged him that way, at least for good. It had happened last summer when he’d been the bearer of bad news and informed her that her piece of shit boyfriend liked to stick his tongue in other women’s mouths. Since then, Cass had acted like he was two steps up from a communicable disease, and that was only because she hadn’t had her flu shot. Otherwise he and the disease would’ve been running dead even.

“I might say hello to you, but I’d do it when you swaggered into my shop on your daily ice cream run. Why would I bother to come here to speed up the process?” she asked, proving his point.

“Swaggered? I don’t swagger.” He wanted to be offended but it was hard to be when she looked so damn tired. She was always pale but right now the white curtains had more pigment than she did. She was practically translucent. “And I also don’t stop by every day.”

“Yes you do.” She sounded smug. “Ever since I hooked you with those Moose Tracks...”

The Moose Tracks ice cream was pretty good, he had to admit, but that wasn’t why he stopped by often enough for her to tease him about it. Though it was a handy excuse.

Too bad he was hooked on something—someone—else who happened to be smirking at him with those slick pink lips and making him wish he’d worn looser jeans. Wish he
owned
looser jeans, because seriously, good fucking hell.

“You know me and my ice cream.” He played it off because it wasn’t as if he could tell the truth.

The only way ice cream could interest me as much as you is if you were naked and writhing in a vat of it.

“I do. And if you help me out, I’ll give you a lifetime supply, on the house. As long as you keep this between us for now.”

Curiouser and curiouser. “Help worthy of a lifetime’s supply of ice cream?” He wondered what she’d say if he suggested a non-traditional serving cup.