The One That Got Away (6 page)

She filled a pot with water for the pasta.

“I get it. You weren’t ready. Believe me, I know how that feels.”

There was no point correcting him. “The breakup was inevitable. I can see now that I look back on it. I’m not sure my heart was ever really into it.”

“If your heart wasn’t there, where was it?”

This was the kind of poetically poignant question that had made Ginger fall for Marcus so many years ago. He saw right to the heart of things—well, most things and most people. But not her. He’d never quite seen her heart.

She sighed, willing herself once again not to blurt out any uncomfortable truths. “I don’t know. I guess my heart was in hiding. Afraid of committing or whatever.”

He laughed. “You? Afraid of commitment? That’s supposed to be my line.”

“Why are you the only one who gets to use it? How many committed relationships did you ever see
me
in?”

“There was that one guy—what was his name? Neddy?”

“Teddy.”

She cast a glance at Marcus over her shoulder and caught him grinning wickedly.

“Right,” he said. “You were with him for what? A year?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“But it doesn’t matter how many relationships I saw you in. The point is I know what kind of person you are. You’re not afraid of intimacy. You’re probably devoted to it more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“I am not,” Ginger protested, but as the words left her mouth, she realized he was right.

She was devoted to the idea of intimacy, and she’d done a great job of finding it with her friends. It was in her romantic relationships that she’d fallen short. And maybe it was her devotion to some ideal intimate relationship that had tripped her up.

An ideal intimate relationship with the one guy she’d ever loved, the one sitting at her kitchen table. A man she now wanted only to be friends with.

But the mere fact that he knew her so well sent the unwanted tingly sensations in her belly into overdrive. Her grip slipped from the heavy pot of water, sending it clattering into the sink.

“Need any help there?” Marcus called as she cursed and began filling the pot again.

“No, thanks.”

“So you’re still thinking about adopting, even without the guy around?”

“I don’t know. It would be a long shot. But I’m getting older, and I don’t want to put off having a child until some man I might never find comes along, you know?”

“Of course you’ll find the right guy if you really want to.” There was firm conviction in his voice.

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Look at yourself.” Marcus sounded incredulous now.

She turned to him to make sure she hadn’t misread his tone. “What do you mean?”

“You’re amazing—beautiful, smart, funny, accomplished. What guy wouldn’t want to be with you?”

What guy, indeed?

She bit her tongue.
Not now
. Not now.

This wasn’t the time to castrate him verbally for his utter and complete inability to see why she’d managed to be a failure with men all these years.

But the fact that he’d called her beautiful…

That sent the warm tingly storm south, into dangerous territory.

Pathetic.

She was completely hopeless if this was how she responded to a mere compliment from the guy she was supposed to be over.

She knew she was an attractive woman. Over the years she’d shed the insecurity of her twenties, along with the extra fifty pounds she’d managed to carry around from her preteen years, and she liked who she was and how she looked. She wasn’t perfect, but she was comfortable in her body.

So why did Marcus’s approval make her feel so damn fluttery?

Old habits, perhaps.

Or maybe it was just that he was finally giving her a compliment she’d deeply craved once upon a time.

“Isn’t the real problem finding a guy that
I
want to be with?” she said at last.

“Ah, good point.”

Ginger poured olive oil into a pan, turned the burner on low, then began crushing garlic to add to it. “So what about you?” she said as she worked.

“I’m definitely not looking for the right guy.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I was dating someone. Long distance. You know me. Love to put a country or even a continent between me and my beloved. But we called it quits when I decided to move back here.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Annika. She’s Dutch. I met her in Amsterdam, but she traveled a lot for work. I saw her whenever she was in town, which was rarely.”

Ginger couldn’t help herself. “Just the way you like it?”

“I thought so. But when I was lying in the hospital after the shooting and the nurse asked me who I’d like her to contact about what had happened…”

His voice had changed before he trailed off. He’d sounded uncertain, or maybe unsettled.

Ginger dumped a handful of crushed garlic into the oil and turned to look at him. But his expression was inscrutable.

She began chopping vegetables as he continued.

“I realized there wasn’t anyone it mattered all that much to contact.”

“I’m sure your girlfriend cared that you were shot.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t really stay in touch when she was out of town. I knew she was off somewhere working on a story, and…I don’t know. I guess it was the first time I realized she and I were actually more like friends with benefits than significant others.”

“And you don’t call your friends with benefits from the hospital after an emergency.”

“Right.”

“So who did you call?”

“No one.”

Again she turned, just in time to catch the haunted look in his eye.

“I’m sorry, Marcus. It makes me wish we’d stayed more in touch, you know? I wish I could have been there.”

“No worries. I was happy to get your message when I returned to Amsterdam.”

“Is that when you heard from Izzy, too?”

“Yeah. She said something like, ‘Hi, uh, this is, uh…Isabel Grayson. Uh, I’m Lisette Grayson’s daughter. And, uh, you’re my dad.’”

“I can’t believe you have a kid. You, of all people…” Ginger shook her head, then glanced over her shoulder to smile at him. But her smile vanished when she saw the uncertainty in his eyes.

And for the first time, she glimpsed how he really felt about having a thirteen-year-old girl take over his life.

He was more than just afraid. He was lost. Wandering a planet he’d never visited before, somewhere on the opposite side of the universe.

But what surprised him most was how appealing he found this mature Ginger. She wasn’t as remote or sophisticated as the women he usually went for. She’d always been a warm, welcoming person, but it had been her sense of humor and her take on life that had made her his best friend. That part of her hadn’t changed, and yet, somehow she was transformed.

“I’m hoping to revive this rose garden someday,” she said, gesturing to a row of forlorn-looking rose bushes along the side of the house. “The previous owners were gardeners.”

“I remember you having a bit of a green thumb back in the day.”

“That one little window box outside my dorm window didn’t really count as a garden.”

“You grew basil.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I still do. Anything I can eat, I grow. I’m just not good with flowers, but I’m going to get there.”

They rounded the side of the house, and Marcus spotted a couple of raised beds filled with healthy-looking plants. “Ah, see? I know you better than you think I do.”

She beamed as she knelt next to one box and lovingly propped a vine back against its supporting stick.

“Are those tomatoes?”

“Sugar snap peas. The heirloom tomatoes are over there.”

“Wow.” In truth, he didn’t know much about growing vegetables.

He just knew that the sort of constancy and stability required to garden had never been his thing. Those very qualities had been part of what had attracted him to Ginger—and at the same time made him wary. That constancy also made her a great friend, but now that he was seeing her in her new confident and curvaceous glory, he realized that she was just the kind of loyal, reliable woman he was terrified of.

She was supposed to be the one woman he could be friends with without ever having to worry about sex coming between them.

But here she was now, a whole new woman. The same, but irresistibly different.

Give him emotionally unavailable women on different continents any day. He knew how to handle them. They were safe.

“I’ve been wondering,” she said, “how are you doing since the shooting?”

“I’m healed up fine,” he answered.

“No, I mean, how are you
doing?
” she asked as they continued along the path toward the woods.

“It’s weird—ever since getting on the plane to come back here, I feel like the shooting didn’t even happen to me. It’s like it happened to someone else.”

“Because you feel safer here?”

“I guess so. And maybe it’s partly that I’ve been so preoccupied thinking about Izzy, I don’t have time to worry about anything else.”

“Now you have to keep yourself alive not just for yourself, but for her, too.”

He winced. “Gee, thanks for reminding me.”

“Anytime,” she joked, but he knew she was right.

He had a huge responsibility now. He was a father. Impossible, but true.

“I guess it’s the classic near-death-experience reaction,” he said, knowing Ginger wouldn’t laugh at him, “but I’ve had this sense that I’m supposed to drastically change my life somehow, ever since I first woke up in the hospital.”

“You’re supposed to make right all your wrongs?”

“Yeah, me and Ebenezer Scrooge. Actually, it’s more like I want to experience things I haven’t experienced before. I’m thirty-six years old, you know, and there’s a lot I haven’t done yet.”

“Like what?”

They paused at a bench that looked out on the lake. Sitting up on a bluff, beneath some trees, it provided an expansive view. Ginger sat down, and Marcus followed suit.

“Like…I don’t know. Be a father?”

“Box number one, check.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, didn’t even have to work at that one. It just fell into my lap.”

“What else?”

“Um, you know, maybe settle down a bit?”

Ginger cast a shocked look at him. “Get out.”

“No, really.”

“I guess that sort of goes hand in hand with being a dad,” she suggested.

“Well, I could do it the nomadic way, like my parents did, but I want Izzy to have a better life than I did.”

“You sound as if you’ve given this some thought.”

“Not really,” he joked. “It’s just that the wine is going to my head.”

But that was only half-true.

He was having thoughts he’d never had before. He’d taken one look at Ginger’s beautiful, decrepit cottage and felt for the first time that he wanted a home of his own. Not a place where he lived for a short time, but a real home, where he could put down roots and grow a life for himself and Izzy, and maybe someone else, too. Izzy would need a woman in her life someday, and so did he. Hell, he wanted to do the family thing all the way—get married, raise kids, take the hand Fate had dealt him, and play it through.

He hardly recognized the crazy thoughts he was having. But he felt so present, so thankful to be alive, that he wanted to run with each wild idea.

For instance, what would it be like to kiss Ginger?

Was she a good kisser? He had no idea. Was she warm and eager or cool and reserved?

He was hoping for the former as he stared at her mouth.

“The thing about a near-death experience,” he said, “is that it makes you wonder what you’re missing out on. It makes you want to live in the moment more, and do whatever the hell you feel like doing.”

She looked at him curiously, her eyes luminous in the fading light. “Oh, yeah? What else do you think you’ve been missing out on?”

“You,” he said.

He hadn’t meant to say it, but he
had
drunk half a bottle of wine.

And it was true. Sitting here right now, he couldn’t think of anything on earth he was more curious to experience than Ginger.

He slid closer, leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on her lips.

No sooner did he wonder how she was going to react than he felt her response. She was, as he’d hoped, warm and eager. After the initial shock, she kissed him back, her soft, pliant lips coaxing his into a deeper kiss.

Wow.

He pulled back a bit, looked her in the eyes and smiled slightly. “That was nice,” he said. “Can we do that again?”

The words were barely out of his mouth before she parted her lips, and he leaned in again. This time he lingered, explored, tasted.

His body responded with an eagerness the likes of which he couldn’t recall having felt before. He shifted closer and put one palm on her waist. He was contemplating where it might go next when Ginger’s own hand landed on top of his.

She stiffened and pulled back from the kiss.

“What’s wrong?”

She sighed. “Where did that come from?”

He grinned. “My near-death experience? Carpe diem, right?”

“Seriously. I…we…we’re friends. How would Izzy feel if she saw us out here like this?”

Right. Izzy
. He was supposed to be thinking of her needs first.

The thought sobered him, and he slid back until a proper twenty-four inches separated them.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m still getting used to this thinking-of-the-kid-first stuff.”

“Yeah, well, I just don’t want to screw up the summer before it’s even gotten started.”

“Right, right, good thinking.”

“And seriously. What on earth is going on, Marcus? You’ve never showed the slightest romantic interest in me before.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, yeah, I know. We’re friends, and I don’t want to mess that up. I’ve always wanted to protect our friendship.”

It was a lame excuse in a way. Because of course he’d never thought of kissing her back in college. They’d both had to grow up for him to see Ginger’s appeal. Now he was looking at her through the eyes of a grown man—and a father—rather than the selfish perspective of a guy on the run from everything and everyone.

“I know you’re going through tough times, and maybe it’s tempting to seek the closest—and most convenient—comfort.”

“Right,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”

It was true, he supposed. The comfort of a willing woman’s arms sounded like a welcome distraction right now. Too bad that woman couldn’t be Ginger.