The Hang Up (First Impressions) (10 page)

He grabbed the skillet like it weighed next to nothing, even though it was heavy enough that Miriam needed both hands to lift it. He gave her a knowing grin, probably wondering why she’d made such an abrupt shift from flirty banter to business mode.

But Miriam knew why. She had to set some boundaries, dammit. To let him know this was fun and fabulous, but also very, very casual. That was the only way to do this without risking her heart.

“I feel great,” he said, and the gravelly undertone in his voice made her cheeks warm up. “About the dinner,” he added. “I feel great about my preparation for the dinner.”

“Of course. I knew that’s what you meant.”

“I feel great about other things, too.” He grinned and set the skillet aside, then reached for the serving platter she handed him. “You certainly showed me some things I’d never seen before.”

“Likewise.” She smiled in spite of herself as she remembered what he’d done with his thumb and— “The hiccup cures,” she blurted. “That was new to me.”

Jason gave her a knowing grin, but nodded. “And the stuff about napkin placement and silverware—that was new to me.”

She looked down into the sink full of soapy water and began scrubbing the little copper saucepan she used for melting butter. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.” She paused, moving more delicately as she washed the blade of her mandoline. “You never mentioned what time the dinner event starts. Is it early or late?”

“I think it’s at six thirty on Saturday evening, which is kind of a pain.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, since it’s a three-day weekend, I was hoping to head over to the Cascades to climb Three Fingered Jack,” he said.

A rush of ice sluiced through Miriam’s veins. She kept her eyes on the spoon she was scrubbing, not trusting herself to look up. “Okay,” she said, though it came out more like a squeak than an affirmation.

“I planned to drive over Thursday evening to set up base camp at the bottom of the mountain, but Ellie has this support group she goes to for parents of kids with cancer,” he continued, blessedly oblivious to Miriam’s discomfort. “His oncologist offered to hook us up with a babysitter who’s a nurse. Someone who knows all about kids in remission and that sort of thing.”

“That’s great!” Miriam said, doing her best to focus on Henry instead of her fears about Jason’s climb. “It must be a relief to have someone you can trust.”

“That’s just it. I don’t. I don’t trust anyone with Henry. Even though it’s only for an hour. Even though Ellie insists it would be totally fine.”

“Oh.” Miriam frowned, trying to understand. “So Henry’s doctor thinks it’s okay to leave him with this nurse for an hour, and his mother thinks it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay.” The vehemence in his voice told Miriam the topic was off-limits for discussion, so she shut up and kept scrubbing.

“Anyway, I’m staying here with Henry,” Jason said. “Which means I can’t take off until Friday morning, which means I’ll get a later start than I wanted on the climb.”

Miriam didn’t say anything. Several long seconds passed before she realized she’d been washing the same spoon for at least three minutes. She rinsed it off and handed it to him. “Three Fingered Jack,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, though she could feel her hands starting to shake. She plunged them back into the soapy water, determined not to make a big deal of this. “Didn’t I see a headline about a guy falling to his death there just a couple weeks ago?”

“Yeah. It was on the descent about a hundred feet from the summit. He wasn’t roped in.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. “But you’ll be roped in?”

“At that spot we will be. Plus my climbing buddy and I are doing the south route, which is a little safer.”

“I see.” She wished she could find the words reassuring, but instead she just felt cold. She could feel Jason watching her, but opted to keep her eyes on the sink full of dishes, on the nest of silverware glittering beneath the suds.

“The sad thing about that climber a few weeks ago is that he bonked right after he summited,” Jason said.

Miriam frowned. “Bonked?” The term sounded familiar from her father’s years as a climber, but she couldn’t recall what it meant.

“It’s where body systems shut down due to dehydration or a lack of nutrients or altitude or some other factor. With the muscle-glycogen bonk, the brain works fine but the legs stop working. Or the blood-glucose bonk, where the brain is the thing that shuts down.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, still fighting to keep from jumping out of her skin and
bonking
him over the head with her skillet or tying him up in her closet so he couldn’t go. She looked up at him, hoping like hell her expression didn’t give away how terrified she felt. “And how do you keep yourself from bonking?”

He looked at her, his gaze seeming to assess whether she was genuinely curious or on the brink of yelling at him. Miriam wasn’t too sure herself.

“I eat smart before I climb, I drink plenty of water, I make sure I’m well rested, and I stop moving if I’m feeling weird or dizzy,” he said slowly. “But obviously there are no guarantees.”

“Right.” She swallowed hard. “No guarantees.”

Those two words underscored everything Miriam had been thinking these last few hours.
Don’t get attached. Keep it casual. Nothing good can come from you losing your heart to an adrenaline junkie, so make damn sure that doesn’t happen.

This conversation was a good reminder of why.

She cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”

“You don’t,” he said, offering her a small smile. “But I will anyway.”

“And since we’ve agreed this is a casual thing between us, I guess I don’t have to waste my time fretting about your well-being or worrying about how you might not come home.”

He laughed as he set the skillet aside. He started to reach for the saucepan, then seemed to stop himself and reached for her instead.

“You don’t,” he agreed as he pulled her tight against him, sudsy hands and all.

Miriam started to protest, but he felt so good and solid and warm that she gave up and twined her wet fingers behind his neck.

“You don’t
have
to worry about me at all,” he said. “But you’re welcome to do it anyway.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked, annoyed with her traitorous heart for speeding up.

“Because you care about my well-being. Even if we’re not getting attached. Or involved. Or anything else that implies something other than a casual fling.”

“Right.” She buried her face against his chest. “Nothing serious at all.”

She closed her eyes, thinking it was easier said than done.

Chapter Eight

“You want a lick of my ice cream, Uncle Jason?”

“Well—”

Jason looked at the waterfall of melted chocolate running down Henry’s arm and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief.

Ellie beat him to the punch by whipping out a packet of wet wipes. “Uncle Jason has his own ice cream, sweetie,” she said as she swiped vainly at her son’s hands and face.

“But that’s very nice of you to offer,” Jason said. “Sharing is good.”

“Yeah,” Henry said. “Just not underpants. Or boogers. Or spit.”

“No, those aren’t good things to share,” Jason agreed, though he didn’t entirely rule out the spit-swapping idea. The thought made him remember what it felt like to kiss Miriam, deep and wet and—

“Open wide,” Ellie said, and Jason looked back to see her popping the last piece of ice cream cone into Henry’s mouth. “There you go. Now you can run off and play on the swings.”

“Will you come push me?”

“In a minute,” Ellie said. “I want to talk to your Uncle Jason right now.”

“Grown-up stuff?”

“Grown-up stuff,” Ellie confirmed.

Henry frowned, and Jason reached out and tousled his nephew’s hair. “Too bad there aren’t any real grown-ups around.”

Jason giggled and ducked out from under his uncle’s hand. “I did good at the doctor, right?”

“You did great,” Jason said. “That’s why you got the ice cream.”

“And the playground,” Ellie added.

“And remember what else I said we’d do?” Jason prompted.

Henry’s eyes lit up. “We’re going canoeing.”

“That’s right. Not today, but this weekend. You and me and your mom.”

Ellie nodded and took one more swipe at Henry’s mouth with a wet wipe. “That’s right. Maybe we’ll even take a picnic.”

“Cool! I can go play now?”

Jason took a deep breath. If it were up to him, he’d swaddle Henry in protective Bubble Wrap and never let him get more than two feet away, but Ellie was a little more willing to give her son some space.

“You can play,” she said. “Be careful, though. Remember what the doctor said about being gentle with your body?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Stay where we can see you,” Jason said. “And don’t climb on the monkey bars. Or go on the swings. Or pick up any bugs. Or—”

“Have fun, baby,” Ellie told her son as she elbowed Jason in the ribs. Henry scampered off, and she turned to face her brother.

“He’s fine,” she said. “You heard what the doctor said the other day. At this stage, fresh air is good for him. So is a little bit of independence.”

“I just don’t want anything to happen to him.”

“Neither do I,” Ellie said, then took a bite of her own chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream. “But I also want him to get the chance to be a normal little boy. He hasn’t had that for the last eighteen months.”

Jason sighed. His sister was probably right, but nothing she could say would make him feel any less protective of the two of them. They were all he had left, the only remainder of his family.

He watched as Henry smiled at a little girl with pink butterfly barrettes, then picked up a bark chip to show her. Jason felt his heart twist in his chest.

Nothing in the world is more important than this.

“So,” Ellie said. “You nailed your PR chick.”

Jason sighed and bit into his ice cream cone, not surprised this was what his sister wanted to discuss. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. I could read it all over your face the next morning. You’re transparent as a wet T-shirt, brother of mine.”

“Can we not talk about this?”

Ellie laughed and slugged him in the shoulder. Her gaze swung to the playground where Henry was playing on some sort of spinny swing thing that would probably make him barf, but he seemed to be having a good time.

“What do you want to talk about then?” she asked. “The presidential debates? The price of milk? Niels Bohr’s theory of atomic structure?”

“You’ve been watching the Discovery Channel again.”

“Henry loves it.” She spooned up another bite of ice cream as her gaze stayed fixed on her son. “And it took his mind off worrying about the doctor visit all week, so that was a plus.”

“He did great today,” Jason said.

“Yeah, he did.” She smiled. “And I’m glad his levels are staying down. I know it’s too soon to get to hopeful, but—” She shrugged and looked down at her ice cream.

“I know.” He squeezed his sister’s knee as his heart did the same in his chest. “I’m hopeful, too.”

“So back to your girlfriend—”

“She’s
not
my girlfriend,” Jason said, a little surprised by the vehemence in his own words. But Miriam had seemed pretty certain about the whole no-strings-attached thing, hadn’t she?

“This was fun, but I’m not looking for anything more, okay?” she’d told him that night as they’d said good-bye at her front door.

“Right,” Jason had said, wondering why the words stung even though he’d had the same damn thought not ten minutes previously as they finished up the dishes. “So I’ll see you around.”

“Absolutely. Text me and let me know how the dinner event goes.”

The dinner, not the climb. He’d wondered if it was a deliberate choice, her unwillingness to hear anything about an activity that clearly made her nervous. Or maybe it was just logical that if he texted after the dinner, she’d know he’d survived both without incident.

Either way, the thought that she cared about him left him with a warm feeling in the center of his chest.

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?” Ellie nudged him with her elbow.

Jason frowned at his sister. “What, you’re telepathic now?”

“I can just tell. You get this funny little smile like someone’s diddling you under the dinner table.”

“Very nice,” he said. “And people think I’m the one who lacks class.”

“How’d that go, by the way? Your dinner the other night with all those executives.”

“Really well,” Jason admitted. “Miriam’s lessons helped me not to do anything embarrassing like eating with the wrong fork or tucking my napkin in the front of my shirt.”

“Sounds like she really helped you out.”

He didn’t take the bait, despite the suggestive note in her voice. Instead, he watched Henry, who’d given up on the spinny thing and was busy picking dandelions from the grassy patch beside the playground.

“So are you going to see her again?”

“Who?”

“You know who, you big dork.” Ellie slugged him in the shoulder again. “Miriam, of course.”

Yeah, all right. He’d known what she meant. Hearing her name—even from his sister’s lips—sent him smiling again like an idiot. Maybe Ellie had a point.

“We’re meeting with them again next week to go over some scaled-down ideas for the rebrand,” Jason said. “The board is still on the fence about how to proceed, in light of the current financial challenges.”

“You gave ’em hell, right? About their stupid idea to lay off all those people?”

“Yeah, I did.”

He definitely had, not that he’d made any headway. Besides spelling out his case in the board meeting this week, he’d mixed, mingled, and schmoozed like a pro at the dinner last weekend, trying to get his point across to the board members over canapés and crudités.

For all the good it had done.

“We’re considering all our options at this point,” Jack Wainswright had told him elusively, making Jason want to slam the guy’s head in a car door.

“So, do you think you’ll see Miriam again outside work?” Ellie asked, never one to let a subject drop.

“I don’t know. I texted her Sunday to let her know things went well with the dinner and the mountain climb. Sounded like she had a pretty busy week lined up.”

“Did you try asking her out?”

“No. It’s not like that, El.”

His sister raised an eyebrow. “What is it like, then?”

“Just—casual, I guess. Nothing serious.”

“Is that what she wants?”

“Definitely.”

“And it’s what you want?”

“Yeah,” he said, hesitating only a little. “It is.”

His sister looked at him a moment, then gave an eye roll that summed up every thought that had been echoing in Jason’s head the last week.

“Whatever you say, bro.”

And with that, she stood up to go push Henry on the swings.

…

“So it’s official.” Miriam grinned and wrapped her best friend in a bear hug at her dining room table, doing her damnedest not to think about what she and Jason had done on that very table just over a week ago. “Congratulations, hot mama. Now I can start sending you links for all the trendiest designers of fashionable maternity wear.”

Holly hugged back, her hair tickling Miriam’s nose. “Thanks.” She pulled free from the hug and sat down, then grabbed a handful of rosemary-dusted almonds from the bowl in the middle of the table. “These are my favorite. I can’t seem to stop eating lately.”

“I’ll grab you some more,” Miriam offered. “I’d open a bottle of champagne, but I’m pretty sure that’s off-limit for preggos.”

“Right you are,” Holly agreed. “I’ll take ginger ale, if you’ve got it. Or anything fizzy. My stomach’s been giving me fits all week.”

“Is Ben over the moon?” she called as she hustled to the fridge and grabbed two cans of club soda and a couple glasses. She hurried back to the dining room, not wanting to miss Holly’s answer.

“Yeah, he is. He’s always wanted to be a dad. To do better than his dad did with him.”

“I’ve met his dad, so I know that won’t be too tough,” Miriam pointed out. “But I know Ben’s going to be a great father.”

“Lyle did set the bar pretty low, but I’m positive Ben will rise above it,” Holly said. “We knew we wanted to have kids right away, but we kinda didn’t expect it to happen so fast.”

“Well, that
is
the way the birds and the bees work.”

Holly grinned and cracked the top on her soda. “Speaking of which…” She trailed off there, but gave a pointed look at the dining room table. “Please tell me you’ve sanitized it since then.”

“At least twice,” Miriam said. “You don’t see any butt prints on it, do you?”

“Ew.” Holly poured her soda, then took a sip. Then she set it down and looked at her friend. Miriam knew that look. It was the same one Holly gave their clients when she sensed they weren’t giving them the full story on a project.

“So,” Holly said as she adjusted a bobby pin at the edge of her chignon. “You’re sure it’s just a casual, no-strings-attached kinda thing with Jason?”

“Positive.
Please.
Can you see me with a scruffy mountain man in any long-term capacity?”

“You mean because you’re the world’s most citified city girl, or because of what happened with your dad?”

“Both,” Miriam said, her throat tightening a little as she lifted her own glass of soda. “I mean come on, can you imagine a worse match?”

“I can. And I’ve been happily married to him for two months now, so don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.”

“I just—”

She stopped herself, not sure what she’d been about to say.

I just can’t see myself with a guy like that?

I just can’t go through that again?

I just can’t stop thinking about him?

She settled for something simpler. “We’re not a good match. Outside the bedroom, I mean.”

Holly laughed and picked up her soda. “From the way you’ve been grinning all week, whatever happened inside the bedroom was enough to make up for the rest.”

Miriam tried to smile back, but she knew it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Holly seemed to notice and set her soda down. “Hon, I know it’s scary. The idea of getting attached again?”

“Not just attached,” Miriam said, hating the pinprick of tears that stabbed her eyelids. “Attached to a guy who likes to take risks. Who goes skiing down mountains and climbing up cliffs and doing all sorts of things that could get him killed.”

“I know,” Holly said, and her eyes were so kind, Miriam’s heart nearly split in two. “But you can’t spend your whole life avoiding the great outdoors and everyone who frolics in it just because you’re afraid of getting hurt again.”

Miriam looked down at the table and swallowed back the threat of tears. “You were there, Holly. You were the one who had to mop me up and carry my weight at work after my dad died. You saw how devastating that was.”

“I remember.” She put her hand on Miriam’s and gave a gentle squeeze. “But I also saw before that how much you loved your dad. And I’m seeing now how much you’re starting to care for Jason. The way your whole face lights up when he walks into a room. It’s like you’re electrified or something.”

Miriam was spared from responding as her phone buzzed on the table beside her. She glanced at the readout, and her heart gave a silly little lurch at the sight of Jason’s number on the screen. She drew her hand out from under Holly’s and reached for the phone.

“Hi there,” she said, trying for casual and breezy and probably just sounding like a woman trying too hard. “How’s it going?”

“Actually, not so great.”

“Oh? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ellie—my sister? The woman you mistook for my wife.”

“You’re never going to let me live that down,” she muttered. “What’s wrong with Ellie?”

“She just got hit with a migraine.”

“I’m so sorry,” Miriam said, not sure what that had to do with her. “That sounds awful.”

“Right. That’s not the worst of it. I promised Henry I’d take him canoeing today. It was his reward for being really good at the doctor the other day. Ellie was supposed to go with us so we’d have another person paddling and an extra set of eyes on Henry.”

“Oh,” Miriam said, wondering if this call was headed the direction she thought it was and why she wasn’t working harder at coming up with an excuse not to go in case he asked. Instead, she felt a silly little flutter of excitement in her gut, which was kind of awful. She didn’t want Ellie to be sick, after all.

“So I was thinking maybe you could come with us,” Jason said. “With Henry and me. Canoeing.”

“Um, right,” Miriam said. “The thing is, I’ve never been canoeing before. I’ve never been around kids much, either.”

“Which of those things scares you most?”