The Three-Week Arrangement (Chase Brothers) (10 page)

Wrong
. She might want him in the carnal sense—because she was a woman and she was, well,
conscious
—but she didn’t want the forever part. Mind-blowing sex was another
story, but that was a chapter in a book she’d have to write somewhere else. Maybe some foreign country where the natives didn’t have green eyes and the tourists were few and far between.

She wasn’t at the park two minutes before she spotted Ethan. He held two iced coffees while Shaggy lolled in the grass at his feet.

“What are you doing to me?” she asked in mock frustration as she
approached. “I can’t drink two of those.”

His expression called B.S. “Yes, you can.”

She balked. “Not at the same time.”

He laughed and handed her one. “This dog loves the grass.”

Rue knelt to say hello. Shaggy barely glanced at her before closing her eyes to continue her basking. “Clearly,” she said as she sat on the warm grass. “I don’t think she got much at the shelter.
It’s not exactly situated in the middle of a grassy meadow.” More of a dirty city block, but that was beside the point. “I’m surprised you asked me here.”

“Why?” Confusion shadowed his face. Rather than stare down at her, he eased onto the ground by her side. His eyes, she noted, were even brighter than the tender new growth on the lawn, and she to fight the urge to crawl on top of him,
to feel those long limbs tangled with her own.

Why, indeed. Did he really not get it? “Something about torture,” she said.

His brow lifted. “I thought we established not all torture is bad.”

She took a long drink before she answered. “Trust me when I say it’s still torture.”

He gave her an odd look. Maybe the attraction she felt really was one-sided. He couldn’t be that
oblivious. Maybe, their arrangement notwithstanding, he really was just a nice guy without an agenda.

Of course he was. Under her breath, she muttered, “But they don’t call it sweet torture for nothing.”

Ethan shook his head. “There are some days—and believe me when I say before I met you they were few and far between—that I wish I could be more like Sawyer.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s not afraid to go after what he wants.”

Hel
-lo. And just like that, the air between them was once again thick and muddled. “And what is it you want that you’re afraid to go after?”

“I want to feel free,” he admitted. “Like I do with you. It’s like it’s okay with us because we’re temporary. It’s like going to a costume party where you can be whoever you want to be for a little
while, then when it’s over you slip back into your routine, no one the wiser. That’s us. The rest of the time, with everyone but you, everything I do is painted in a different light because it’s me doing it. And I feel as if it’ll always be that way. I feel like I can’t move on from Amy because then I’m the jerk who left his wife in the ground. But when I don’t move on, I’m the idiot who won’t
let go. It’s like when she died, the middle ground died with her. It took away my normal for good.”

For a long time, Rue didn’t say anything. Shaggy rolled and wiggled on the grass, drawing her fair share of attention, but for the most part the world seemed oblivious to their mismatched union. A woman who couldn’t wait to leave the only place she’d ever called home and a man who needed someone
stable in his life but would run a mile before he’d ever let that happen. Briefly, she wondered what he’d think of the world she loved—the one not drenched in concrete—and whether he could find his freedom in a place like that. And while she might not be able to change the way the world saw him, there was a chance she could change how he saw the world. “So you lost your groove,” she said. “Anyone
would have under those circumstances. Stop worrying about what it isn’t, and let’s get it back. Let’s find your new normal.”

He blinked. “How do you propose we do that?”

“Let’s do something crazy.” Excitement bubbled inside her. Already, the idea of untethering from the city made her insides leap with joy, but it was the prospect of sharing the adventure with Ethan that really had
her pulse skating around corners.

Him, probably not so much. Dubious was a gross understatement for whatever expression he had going on. “You want to find
normal
by doing something
crazy
?”

“You want to feel free,” she said, like it was the most natural connection in the world. “So blow the restraints.”

“Got any ideas?” His tone was a tad suspicious. Clearly he’d been paying attention,
and that made her smile.

As for ideas, hell yeah, she had them. “Pose for a calendar?”

“No.” His answer was somber, resolute, and without hesitation.

That didn’t bode well.

“Sky diving!” An inspired idea, if she did say so herself.

He shot her another deadpan look. “Also a no.”

A breeze lifted her hair, the air too hot to offer much relief. “You suck at blowing
restraints,” she told him.

He didn’t relent, but he did have a rather adorable
hell no
expression. “Come up with something that doesn’t leave me plummeting to my death,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I can see why the calendar is out.”

“Funny.” He leaned back against the grass and his shirt settled into the grooves of his abdomen. He
had
to be doing that
on purpose. Two seconds after refusing to pose, he did so with perfection.

She wiped some imaginary drool from her chin and tried a new approach. “Are you afraid of heights?”

He cast her a dubious, knowing look. “No, but that doesn’t mean I’m jumping out of an airplane.”

With a touch of misplaced jealously, she watched Shaggy roll against his leg and scooch along its length.
He counter attacked, rubbing her belly.
Lucky dog
. “Are you free tomorrow?”

He looked up and grinned—for the dog, she was certain. “I think I can get out of my plans.”

She stood and wiped her shorts, then collected her things. “Good. Find a babysitter for the dog. I’ll pick you up at one.”

Chapter Nine

The minute Rue pulled up in front of Ethan’s apartment building the next afternoon, he knew he was in the worst kind of trouble. The woman was gorgeous with her weird not-Barbie hair and sky blue nails decorated with a chevron pattern. She was also double parked. She climbed out of the car and tossed him the keys without the slightest indication she’d looked for a storm
grate or anything else they might fall into if he missed, and without batting an eyelash, she climbed into the passenger side. “You coming?”

“I’m driving?” He stared, bewildered. “Because I’m pretty sure you said
no one
drove your car.”

“If you can follow directions,” she said, “then yes. You’re driving my car.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Where are we going?” Simple question,
but way more behind it than he wanted to admit. He was still stuck on her trusting him with the vehicle no one was allowed to touch. Except her, who kicked it.

“Jersey.”

“For?” In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that she wanted to cross the state line, at least with the answer coming from a woman who’d trekked pretty darn close to the Antarctic Circle.

“Just drive.” She dropped her sunglasses to her nose as if he hadn’t any other choice and the matter was settled.

And it was. He
didn’t
have much choice. They were double parked, and he had an aversion to traffic violations.

“Take the Holland Tunnel,” she said after he’d maneuvered back into traffic. Not the most difficult of tasks considering he was blocking some of it, but he still
felt a palpable sense of relief once they were on the road. Or he did until Rue spoke again.

“Tell me about Amy.” Her soft, sweet voice was like a balm.

The topic, not so much.

He braced himself for the usual shadow of grief to wash over him, but it didn’t. And that left him speechless. The sun still shone. The sky was still blue. The half-crazy woman with the choppy hair still
sat next to him, her sunglasses doing little to shade the heat of her appraisal.

“You don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to,” Rue said.

“No, that’s not it,” he said, finding his voice. “You just caught me off guard. Most people kind of avoid the topic.”

“But you specifically told me not to. Why don’t you have any pictures of her up in your apartment?”

To his
surprise, the questions were kind of refreshing. Much more so than the filth of the road and the stench of exhaust that permeated the Mustang.

“I did,” he admitted. “I took everything down to paint and haven’t put them back on the wall.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” In all honestly, he hadn’t given it a second thought. He enjoyed the bright walls. Liked not looking into the tunnel
of his past at every turn, but it hadn’t been a conscious decision to leave them down. And he didn’t need pictures to see her. She was still there. Still a part of him.

“So she loved animals?”

“Yes, but she was allergic, so we never had any pets. I guess she’d have loved Shaggy.” He snorted as the bitter irony of that washed over him. “She never did any hands-on volunteering, but she
did what she could. She probably latched onto the rainforest thing because volunteering didn’t actually require contact with dander, which made sense since she was so allergic. It was nothing like we did at the shelter.”

“What did she look like?”

Traffic thinned enough to actually move forward at a steady pace. He settled back in the seat and stared straight ahead. “Long blond hair.
Blue eyes. Not bright like yours, though. Pale.”

“I bet she was really pretty.” There didn’t seem to be an undercurrent to the words. No
tell me I’m pretty, too
.

“Beautiful. Cancer never took that from her.” The familiar ache that invaded wasn’t its usual self. This time some of it belonged to the woman next to him, and he wished things could be different between them. He couldn’t
hold on when that meant letting go, and regardless of where things went, they could only end one way. He might be wavering on his insistence that he was happy alone, but he sure as hell hadn’t budged on the prospect of good-bye.

There’d been enough of those.

Rue didn’t say anything else, and he wondered if she’d intentionally left him alone with his thoughts, or what she’d think if
she knew the direction his thoughts had taken. That, of course, brought him back to Amy, who, oddly enough, was the reason Rue was now in his life.

“I’ve never talked about her,” he said. “Can you believe that? People ask how I’m doing, and the only thing I can ever say is I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be fine, Ethan.”

“I wasn’t,” he said. “But I have been for a long time. The
thing is, she’s gone, but she’s still my wife. How do I ever forget that?”

“You
don’t
ever forget it.”

The words came as a comfort. It wasn’t that he needed Rue’s vote to know his own mind, but it felt good to have someone on his side. It felt good to not feel alone.

“How far are we going?” he asked after a moment. He was asking about the drive, but realized after he’d spoken
that he could have been talking about so much more. But if Rue picked up on that, she didn’t indicate it. Instead, she consulted her phone and gave him an exit number.

He realized he was in over his head the moment he saw the sign.

The woman was crazy. Batshit, apeshit,
penguin shit
crazy. “I am not going up in a hot air balloon.”

“Then let’s leave.”

He balked. He’d expected
a fight, and she hadn’t batted an eyelash. “What?”

“You’re behind the wheel, Ethan,” she said gently.

Good grief. Of all the times
not
to argue. Was
this
why she let him drive?

“The choice is yours. Move forward or go back.” She’d ditched her sunglasses, so he had no problem seeing the utter lack of a challenge in her face. She wasn’t daring him. It was more of an invitation,
although nothing close to normal. But then again, she hadn’t said anything about normal. She’d gone somewhere else.

New normal.

Massive understatement.

She was good; he’d give her that. But trusting their lives to a sack of air to… “Does
forward
have to be
this
?”

“No,” she said, the clear understanding in her eyes melting him. “It doesn’t.”

He swore under his breath,
partly because she had a point and partly because that meant he was about to trust his life to a picnic basket dangling from a thin parachute full of hot air. “Let’s go.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t have to wait long. After he and Rue checked in, the ground team immediately started blowing air into the balloon, and just as quickly Ethan wished he’d averted his eyes.

“There are holes
in that thing,” he muttered. “A lot of them.” The fireproof ring at the bottom sounded like a great idea, in theory, but it was barely attached to the rest of the balloon.

“Hey,” Rue called to the ground team. “How many people have plummeted to their deaths from this thing?”

The closest guy looked from Rue to Ethan and back again. “None today.”

“I’m your pilot, folks. You can
ignore him.”

Ethan jumped at the voice.
Overreact much?
He and Rue both turned. The words belonged to a relatively sane-looking, fairly young man. He probably had a lot to live for, right?

“Someone
has
died today?” Ethan asked.

The pilot grinned. “Not here. I’ve never lost a customer.”

The words, Ethan was sure, were intended to be a comfort but he took them in a whole
new direction. He hadn’t considered getting
lost
.

Oblivious to Ethan’s panic, the pilot continued. “The way this works is basic science. Hot air rises, so when we heat the air in the envelope with the propane burner, we go up. To descend, I open a valve at the top and release hot air, which cools the envelope and causes it to sink. Steering is a matter of drifting higher or lower to find
an air current moving in the direction we want to go.”

Rue elbowed Ethan. “See? Nothing to it.”

“I’m Gabe, by the way, and I’ll stay discretely out of your way. All I ask is that you remember you’re in a public place, and you can otherwise pretend I’m not there.”

Remember they were in a public place? Did people
actually
…? “We’re—”

“We’re looking forward to it,” Rue said.
And then she started talking about paragliding, and he tuned her out. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to think about her risking her life at every turn. She didn’t see it that way, but extreme sports were called that for a reason. She’d be so much safer if she’d stay home and knit or paint something.

Yeah, because that worked out so well for Amy.

Ethan stood somewhat numbly
while Rue chatted with Gabe. The balloon slowly unfurled and expanded in full glory, a geometrically patterned burst of yellow, blue, and red against a lazy sky. The basket wasn’t as flimsy as he expected, but knowing it would hold three people and
fire
didn’t offer much comfort.

By the time they were to board, only one thing kept him from fleeing to the parking lot: there was no way in
hell he’d abandon her to go up there without him. And the fact that she stood brighter than the humongous hot air balloon was telling…she’d
never
turn back. And didn’t that just pretty much sum up everything he knew about her? She tackled everything head on.

And that terrified him. Made him want to drag her into his arms.

But she wasn’t his to hold.

He quickly found there wasn’t
a single satisfactory place to stand in the basket. The choices were two: under the fire, or by the edge. And before he could wallow too much in that particular bit of misfortune, the flame roared and the basket lifted. At first, the weightless sensation matched that of a particularly forceful elevator drop, but where that feeling usually waned after a second, this one only grew. The only thing
that kept him from closing his eyes to the odd sense of floating—made even stranger by the periodic jarring of the basket—was the absolute need to watch the woman who’d coaxed him up there. He quickly realized staring at her wouldn’t keep her safe, but seeing her joy made his heart want to burst.

And break.

She belonged on the edge, and that wasn’t something he could live with.

The edge was too damned close to another good-bye.

Compared to that reality, the balloon ride seemed easy. Eventually, he figured out how to breathe. Especially if he didn’t look down, but he couldn’t
not
look. The world below them was endless and green, the sky a sea of blue that would probably forever remind him of Rue’s eyes. He couldn’t see them now. She stood in front of him, practically
hanging over the edge of the basket, while he kept toward the middle, with a hand on her ready to pull her toward him. It might not be any safer there, but he managed to convince himself otherwise. Especially when she leaned forward, tipping the basket—probably only an inch, but inches mattered, in particular the ones that kept her from plummeting toward earth. He wanted her safe. He wanted
her with
him
. He used that excuse to haul her backward, and holding her felt so good, he didn’t bother pretending he wanted to let go. And after a moment, she made no pretense of acting like he should. She relaxed against him, leaving him to realize just how perfectly she fit in his arms. Like she belonged there.

And it wasn’t enough.

He wanted to turn her around, to fold her into
him and feel her heart beat against his chest, but that wouldn’t do anything to simplify matters. He couldn’t afford to feel this way about a woman who wasn’t going to stick around. He wasn’t sure he wanted to feel this way at all, but he was too intoxicated to care. Later he could blame it on the lack of oxygen.

Hell, who was he kidding? He’d blame himself. He always did.

So why don’t
you own it?

He lowered his mouth to her ear. “Turn around.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

He responded with his hands, drawing her in a tight circle until they faced one another. A dozen questions filled her eyes, and he ignored every one. He ignored everything but the woman who’d managed in a few short days to change his life. He ignored everything, for once,
but what he wanted.

And he kissed her.

He nearly hit his knees when he felt the pleasure of those soft, sweet lips, but it was the way she fisted his shirt and held on that was his undoing. There they were, who knew how many feet above the ground,
floating
, and it was she who was the miracle. And he wanted more. So damned much more.

But he didn’t take it. He just held her, knowing
all too soon she’d be gone. He didn’t miss the fact that she held him, too.

Or that in a matter of days, she’d be the one letting go. Hell, he
needed
that reminder he didn’t have to worry about good-bye.

That particular good-bye was a guarantee.

In that moment, however, it didn’t matter.

That moment was theirs.

The view had been stunning before, but now, looking into
her eyes, he didn’t think he’d ever take a full breath again. His heart didn’t race. It held onto a slow, steady beat that told him he was grounded in a woman, in a moment, to which he had no right. But that didn’t stop him from wanting.

This time, it didn’t stop anything.

He threaded his fingers through her hair and cupped her head, then leaned down to kiss her again, and this time
there wasn’t any hesitation. She responded with parted lips, inviting him to deepen the kiss before he had a chance to run from it. But he didn’t run. He lost himself in the seduction of her mouth, in the dizzying sensation of her warmth, of having her cling to him. It was all so foreign, like he’d never known passion or hunger or the all-consuming need to become a part of someone, to lose himself
in a world made for two.

The truth was, he’d just never known Rue.