What The Heart Finds (9 page)

He laughed then, the
sound short and amused. “The same woman who bought my brother
tonight.”

“No way.”

“Yes way,” he
said, his thumb rubbing down the side of her hand. “I guess she
wanted to compare brothers. Unfortunately for her, Liam doesn't have
as varied an appreciation for women that I do.”

“You didn't..”
Lena said, thinking back at the woman who must have been at least
fifteen years older than Eric.

“Oh yeah I did,”
he said, smiling at her outrage. “I was curious about what they
said about older women,” he shrugged. “They weren't
wrong. Plus, she had no interest in trying to lock me down which was
great.”

“What about...
younger women?” Lena asked and closed her eyes at her own
words. Just because a teenager bid on him didn't mean anything.

“Depends,” he
said, reaching out and touching the side of her face. “Younger
like you? Perfect. Younger like Mellie,” he said nodding his
head toward the gym and apparently reading her mind. “not my
thing.” He let a silence fall for a second before adding. “I
leave those ones to the fumbling, bumbling younger guys. They need to
get some too.”

“Just when I think
you're a decent human being,” she said, pulling her hand out of
his and taking a step back.

“Oh come on,”
he said, shaking his head. “You're a rational experienced
woman. You know that the main purpose of interaction between the
sexes is to lead to one goal.”

“Maybe not all men
are as... base as you are.”

Eric rolled his eyes
slightly at her word. “No, honey. Other men just aren't as
honest as I am.”

He was right. And she
hated that he was right. She had yet to meet a man who was kind just
for the sake of being kind. They always wanted something in return.
And nothing was more infuriating than thinking one was different only
to have to fight off his unwanted advances. It was much better to
have it all right there up front.

My name is Eric. And I
want to sleep with you.

“So you never
really answered my question. What are we supposed to do now?”

“Well... there are
the usual town spots: the diner, the inn...”

“Seriously? Women
take their dates to the inn to eat?”

“Well if by 'eat'
you mean...”

“Not,” Lena
broke in, feeling flushed. “what I meant. Yes. Well. The inn is
out.”

“Tell you what,”
Eric said, reaching for her hand again. “how about I take you
for a walk to the old fishing stream?” He looked at her arched
brow and dropped a kiss on the top of her head quickly. “It
will be quiet. You can play around in the water.”

“Isn't there some
kind of pond...”

“Yeah,” Eric
interrupted quickly. “but I'm not taking you there,” he
said in a strange, final kind of way.

“Alright,”
she said, shrugging. “the stream it is.”

They walked out toward
the inn, sneaking off into the woods to the side of it, just a few
yards away from where the walking trail turned in an opposite
direction. Why the stream wasn't on the trail was beyond her.

That was until they
started walking, the ground underneath uneven and steep, covered in
overturned trees and massive root systems.

“Oh to hell with
it,” she burst out, stopping on top of another stump and
kicking out of her shoes. One of the heels had knocked slightly loose
as she had climbed down a hill, her feet pushing too hard into the
dirt. Eric turned and went to stoop to grab them. “Don't
bother,” she said, grabbing them herself and putting them on
top of the stump. “they're broken. We can grab them on the way
back. I'd rather have my hands free so I don't fall on my face
scaling this mountain.”

“Not much of an
outdoors type, huh?” Eric asked, reaching for her as she tried
to jump down off of the stump.

“That's not true,”
she objected. She might be annoyed about her shoes and her too-tight,
unforgiving dress, but she was actually enjoying herself. “I
run in Central Park every weekend.”

“For the exercise,”
he said pointedly. “not the nature.”

Lena pulled away from
him, jumping down another hill easily. “If I just wanted
exercise,” she said defiantly. “I could use the treadmill
at my apartment complex.”

“Touche,”
Eric conceded, watching as she stood and pulled her skirt down again.
Trekking through the woods had definitely been a good choice.

“So you hike
through the hills a lot,” she half-asked, half-declared.

“Yeah,” he
said, kicking a branch out of the way. “there's actually a lot
back here if you take the time to look around.”

“Like the stream.
And the pond.”

“Yeah,” Eric
nodded. “And a massive rock formation a little further up. You
can go in and out of the caves.”

“Aren't there bears
out here?” she asked, suddenly surprised she hadn't thought of
that before.

“Yup,” Eric
said, his tone almost excited at the prospect. “but what's
nature without a little danger?”

“Okay there, Huck,”
Lena laughed.

“Except I'm not a
twelve year old boy,” Eric said, laughing at her surprised
look. “My brother owns a bookstore. Did you really think you
were going to sneak a Twain reference by me?”

Lena turned her head away
from him, seeming to put all her effort in moving things out of her
path. She really hadn't expected him to get it. Nothing about him
seemed to imply he liked to spend his idle time curled up with a
book. He seemed too active, too physical to spend days reading. It
was another piece of the Eric O'reilly puzzle. Not that she was
trying to figure him out. That was totally not the case. She was just
trying to have a somewhat decent evening.

But even as she was
trying to convince herself of that, she knew it wasn't true.

“Shit,” she
yelped, jumping backward and bumping into Eric's chest. “what
the hell was that?” she pointed out in front of her where
something had brushed up against her bare foot.

Eric laughed, snaking a
hand around her belly. “An opossum,” he said quietly.
“ugly little devil.”

“Opossums are
cute,” she objected, pulling out of his grip which felt too
good.

“Yeah until you go
to throw your trash in the can one night and find one in there
hissing at you.”

“Well you scared
it,” Lena objected. “You didn't...”

“Bash him with a
hammer?” Eric asked, his tone entertained. “No, baby. I
threw the lid on and turned the can on its side by the woods. You
like animals?”

“Only the ones that
cant help themselves,” she admitted, surprising herself. She
had never considered herself a huge animal person. She had hardly
ever even had a pet. But she did sort-of have a soft spot for the
small, furry kinds. “I used to spend hours at the pet store
looking at the rabbits.”

Eric grinned behind her.
He could totally see her with one of those fluffy white angora
bunnies. It would suit her.

“Do you have any
pets?” she asked, picturing him with some big, goofy dog.

“No,” he
said, falling into step beside her. He grabbed her wrist. “Wait.
Let me jump down this first and help you. It's kinda hard to see
where it ends if you haven't been over it a dozen times. Don't need
you twisting your ankle. I'd have to carry you all the way back to
town.”

“Yeah definitely
don't want that,” she said, her tone lighter than she intended
it. “So how much further?” she asked as he threw himself
down a steep decline, landing effortlessly on his feet and reaching
up toward her.

“We're almost
there,” he said and watched her eye him suspiciously. “You
need to jump. Don't worry, I'll catch you.”

Lena looked around and
down. She really didn't have a choice. She took a breath and threw
herself forward. The falling sensation flooded her system, making her
stomach flip-flop in panic until she fell against Eric, her arms
desperately grabbing around his neck, her legs around his hips.

Her breath whooshed out
of her quickly and she giggled, a full-on school girl giggle. “I
didn't think it was that far,” she admitted, pushing her chest
away from his and looking down at him.

“Yeah I wouldn't
have done that,” Eric admitted with a laugh. “That was
some blind faith there, baby.”

“Hey,” she
objected, slamming her fist against his chest. “you said I
could trust you.”

“Well...” he
said, looking sheepish. “I caught you, didn't I?”

“But you weren't
sure you would,” she objected, suddenly realizing how tightly
her legs were wrapped around him. Her dress had hiked up around her
butt and she felt Eric's belt buckle press against her panties.

“I was about
eighty-percent sure,” he smiled.

“But twenty-percent
sure you might drop me on my ass!”

“And what a nice
ass it is,” he chuckled, his hands threatening to slip lower.

“Alright, hands-y,”
she said, grabbing his shoulders, slipping her legs from around his
waist, and putting her feet back on the ground. He automatically
reached out and grabbed the hem of her dress, pulling it down over
her thighs. His fingers brushed against her skin unnecessarily,
intimately. “Show... show me to the stream,” she fumbled,
her heart racing in her chest.

“Come on,” he
said, his eyes jumping from intense to carefree in a breath.

They walked for another
few short minutes, past the biggest weeping willow tree she had ever
seen before she could finally hear trickling water. “Oh,”
she breathed out. “you made it sound like it was something I
could just dip my toes in,” she said, looking out to where the
land plummeted down into a quickly moving current of water. It had
layers, not quite waterfalls, but cliffs that the water cascaded off
of before leveling off. “I could almost swim in this.”

“Well... float
maybe on a good day. Right now it should just about come past your
ankles. Go on, step in. Wash those puppies off,” he said,
looking down at her bare feet that must have been hurting. There was
no way she had trekked through that part of the woods barefoot and
gotten away unscathed. It was actually kind of impressive that she
hadn't complained at all.

“It's safe?”
she asked, eyeing the water. “Like... nothing is gonna bite me
or anything?”

“Well... no
promises,” Eric said, rubbing his chin. “but you should
be fine.”

Lena stepped into the
water, careful to not step on any jagged rocks, enjoying the still
frigid water moving around her feet. “Oh,” she said,
bending and sinking her hand into the water. She held up something
small and round. “I've never seen a rock this red before.
Here,” she said, tossing it toward him. “hold onto that
for me.”

Eric slipped the rock
into his pocket, watching Lena kick her feet out in the water like a
child would. He knew there was more to her than work clothes and the
uptight, carefully guarded shield she wore. “So was this a good
idea for a date?” he asked, moving toward the bank and lowering
himself down on a fallen tree.

“So much better
than making awkward conversation at the diner,” she conceded,
running her feet over the smooth surfaces of the pebbles on the floor
of the stream.

“So Lena Edwards,”
Eric said, his voice soft as he said her name. “tell me
something you don't usually tell people.”

Lena looked over her
shoulder at him, smiling a sly smile. “Is this some ploy to
invoke intimacy?” she asked and watched him roll his eyes.
“Fine. I'll play along. My father was a truck driver and was
almost never around.”

“And your mother?”
Eric asked, trying to imagine a young Lena. Was she so restrained
then?

“She worked
whatever odd jobs she could fit around my school schedule.”

“Where did you grow
up?”

“In the city,”
she said, shrugging a shoulder, but her body had gotten tense again.
“A really awful area of the city,” she admitted, not
looking at him. “I used to get woken up by meth heads on a bad
trip a few nights a week. You know... normal growing up stuff,”
she said, attempting levity. “What about you? Aside from
Liam... do you have any family around here?”

“No,” Eric
admitted, feeling tense himself. “We lived here with my father.
Our mother died a long time ago.”

“I'm sorry,”
Lena said automatically, moving closer to the bank where he was
sitting. “So what was your father like? A pain in the ass like
you and your brother?”

“Hey don't be mad
at Liam just because you're a sore loser,” he smiled.

“He told you?”
she objected, moving out of the water and sitting down next to him,
careful to leave several inches between them. “I beat him
once.”

“You two might be
the only people ever to actually brag about winning at backgammon,”
he said, looking over at her. “But yeah... our father was a
real piece of work. No one could tell him anything. Maude used to
march over to the garage, dragging us by our ears, and tell him he
better get us in line.”