Heart Breaker (Break on Through) (3 page)

“I’m sorry, I—I can’t do this.”

He regarded me for a moment, took my cue and switched gears. “Then have dinner with me this week. Tomorrow night?”

Just then, someone gave a perfunctory knock on the door and came in before either of us had a chance to respond. It was Jessica.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but the party’s over,” she whispered, her eyes darting back and forth between us, assessing what she’d possibly walked in on.

“It’s barely into the second quarter,” he countered.

“Yeah, but Lauren’s folks and Jackson are about to have some sort of verbal showdown and he’s kicking everyone out.”

“Wow, really?” I asked, dumbfounded by all I was missing on the other side of the door.

“Really, and let me just add, he’s totally ticked off.”

“Oh hell, that isn’t good.” Kyle had one hand on his hip with the other hand absentmindedly scratching his facial stubble.

“Want me to wait for you?” Jessica tried to gauge my mood. Have I mentioned what an amazing sister I have?

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ll meet you back at the house.” She gave me a look and left quickly. I started to follow.

“Wait a second there,” he said while gently taking hold of my wrist to hold me back. “Where ya going?”

“That was my sister,” I answered. “I’ve gotta go and the party’s over anyway.” I turned back around, wanting to get out of there because I started feeling embarrassed about breathing hot and heavy with someone I hardly knew.

“Samantha, hold up a minute.” Kyle turned me around and I locked onto those bourbon-colored eyes, growing deliciously fierce with need for me. He pulled me back into his arms.

“Have dinner with me now.” He leaned in and rubbed his lips against the sensitive skin under my ear, making me shiver and my nipples pebble. “We can go out or we can pick up something and go back to my place.” He took in a deep breath, as if taking in my scent like heady liquor. “I’m not ready to say goodnight to you yet.”

I rested my forehead on his chest, loving how solid he felt, especially with his arms around me. I realized, however, that I was comforted by the same arms that had felt like prison bars a minute before. I really was all over the place.

I also couldn’t shake off what Jackson had said about his buddy being a player. As much as I loved his mouth, the way his hands felt on me, the flirty banter, I knew I had to get out of there. This man was all wrong for me, especially now.

“Kyle—” my voice came out breathier than I intended, “—you’re certainly intriguing, but I’m going to go home. I’m in the middle of demo’ing one of the bathrooms and should really get back to it.”

“Wait a second, what are you saying?” His eyebrows shot straight up. “You’d rather tear up some old cabinets than—”

“Have you tear
me
up?” I finished. “Kyle, I know you without knowing you. Shit, I used to
be
you. Now, I’m not anymore.” I looked over his shoulder through the window, noticing most of the guests were already outside. “Listen, it was fun meeting you. Let me know the next time you come to the theater and I’ll get you backstage. I’ve got a ton of cute girlfriends I can hook you up with.” Then I turned and got the hell out of there before he had a chance to stop me.

Most everyone had cleared out and, sure enough, there were Jackson and Lauren with her parents, looking like they were ready to draw pistols at dawn. I offered a quick goodbye before leaving, keeping it brief because I didn’t want to deal with Kyle again. Besides, whatever was about to go down was certainly going to be intense, that’s for sure.

I didn’t see it but later someone told me he stood on the front lawn, watching me walk away from him to my home down the block. He looked as if someone had punched him in the gut. He was even questioning out loud to anyone who would listen if he had really just been blown off by a woman who preferred doing a house remodel over spending time with him. I guess not too many people walked away from Kyle Masterson, but then again, I wasn’t most people anymore.

Chapter Two

“Sa-
man
-
tha
! There’s someone at the door for you!”

For someone even tinier than me, my sister sure could bellow louder than a foghorn.

“Who the hell is it? Tell ’em I’m busy! Retiling
your
bathroom, I may add!”

“Trust me, Sam—” not losing any of her vocal range, “—you’re not going to want to miss this!”

I bent my head down, sighed loudly even though no one could hear and went to the front door with my hair in pigtails while wearing my overalls. As I got closer to the front door, Jessica opened it wide and got out of the way.

Standing on my doorstep was a sixty-something-year-old man wearing nothing but an oversized diaper, a flesh-colored body suit, a pair of angel wings, and covered-in-red-glitter bow and arrow. Oh, and he also held a huge box of Neuhaus chocolates.

“You have
got
to be kidding me.”

The man let out an exasperated breath and shook his head. “I played opposite Al Pacino in New York summer stock, 1969, so don’t make it worse than it has to be, honey. You ready?”

In spite of feeling as if I had to physically pick my jaw up from off the ground, I still respected that this guy came to do a job. Whatever that was. And the first rule of improv is to always say yes.

“Go ahead, dear sir. Do your thing.” I waved my hand forward, giving him the okay. I had to say, he may not have been thrilled at the start of this gig, but he sure got into character fast because he straightened up and proudly recited:

“I am a little Cupid,

And I come to visit thee,

To tell you that I’m into you,

And hope you’re into me.

And if you’ll be my Valentine,

And come along with me,

I’ll take you to a lovely place,

And pretty flowers you’ll see.”

Both Jess and I broke out into spontaneous applause, clapping fervently as he graciously took a bow while I quickly grabbed my purse to give him a big tip.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” He handed me a long tube attached to the red arrow, along with the chocolates. “That’s for you, from Mr. Masterson.”

I warily took it from him. I must have had a look on my face because my personal Cupid interjected.

“Miss, I obviously don’t know the story here, but the young man seemed very sincere to me.”

I offered him a tight-lipped smile and nodded in response.

“He even made me practice the bit in front of him a couple of times, to make sure I had it down.”

“Thanks, Cupid, I appreciate it.”

“Gotcha. Later, beautiful. Thanks for the tip.”

I silently laughed, my shoulders bouncing up and down. “Take care, hot stuff.”

I heard him call out on the way to his car, “If only I were thirty years younger I’d be knocking your socks off there, Miss Lockhart!”

Closing the door, I took one look at Jessica and knew I hadn’t heard the last of things. It was obvious by the expression on her face that she was trying to prevent herself from spontaneously combusting into tears.

“You are the biggest sap that ever existed,” I told her while opening up the chocolates. Suddenly something dawned on me. “Hey, how does Golden Boy know that Neuhaus are my favorite?”

Jessica stood there, biting her lip and looking everywhere but at me.

“Jess,” I warned.

“Oh no.” She narrowed her steely gaze back at me. Seemed my sister had grown a backbone all of a sudden. “Don’t you dare ‘Jess’ me! Yes, Kyle called and asked me what some of your guilty pleasures were, and I told him.”

“I don’t understand why Kyle is calling
you
about
me
.”

“Maybe it’s because ever since you two met and groped each other last weekend, he has texted, called, sent you flowers and you keep blowing him off. Now he’s sent you a poem-reciting cupid for Valentine’s Day! What’s it going to take for you to give him a chance?”

I let out a huff, then crossed the room to return to my bathroom tiles.

“Aren’t you even going to open up what he gave you?” she called out to me. I walked faster.

“Oh that’s mature,” she chided, while following me back. I began mixing the mortar mixture, hyper-focusing on stirring well enough so all the elements congealed properly. She came into the tiny bathroom and sat across from me, on the closed toilet seat. Even though my head was down, I could feel her eyes on me. Studying me.

“Listen, I know he has a rep for being a big-time player, but people change. And I can’t see him going to all this trouble if he wasn’t really interested in getting to know you. So why not give him a chance?”

“Jess, you are incredibly sweet, and when it comes to helping your students and their families, you are the most decisive, no-bullshit, kick-ass chick there is. But you don’t have a clue when it comes to men. Kyle trying to woo me so that he can fuck me is
exactly
what a player does.”

“Well—” she straightened her back and crossed her arms over her chest, “—I think you’re wrong. I think that man is totally taken with you and you’re using his bad reputation as an excuse not to give him a chance.”

I sighed and kept mixing the mortar. I loved my sister. I really and truly did, in spite of my eye-rolling and exasperated breath-blowing. She was a genuine romantic, and she believed, with everything in her, that both she and I were going to get our happily ever afters. But while Jessica read her romance novels, I was reading plays by Sophocles and Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and Wendy Wasserstein, and trust me, there were not too many happy endings to be found in a theater production. That’s because, to me, the theater and the plays we performed were snippets of real life, of the trials and indignities and sorrows people somehow carried with them every day. I lived to share that tiny slice of human tenacity and grace and determination in every performance. And it broke and mended my heart every time.

“You know, the first time I tried tiling something in the house, my first few batches were so horrible that nothing stuck. I bought, like, two or three different kinds, convinced I was dealing with a subpar product. Until, one day, I was sitting where you are right now, doing my business, and I was bored so I looked around for something to read.” I let out a small laugh and stopped churning the mortar like I was trying to turn cream into butter. “And I sat there and read the directions and guess what happened, Jess?”

She offered a sweet smile and kind eyes in response.

“Turned out all that time I was mixing the damn stuff wrong. I had never actually
read
the directions until then, and guess what? If you add just a smidgen too much or too little water or sand, you’re left with nothing but a mess. Nothing will stick and nothing will stay.”

“Honey.” She leaned over and brushed the bangs out of my eyes. “You’re not a bucket of mortar. And even if you were, we’re all too much or too little of something or other.”

“I get that. It’s just-just…”

“What?”

“The calls, the flowers? Cupid? None of it is about me, it’s about the chase for this guy.”

“And you don’t want to be chased?”

“No, well, yes, of course. It’s that I don’t want to be dismissed once he gets what he wants. I’m not in a strong enough place to take him at face value.”

Jessica nodded, staring off into nothing while processing what I said to her.

“Want me to call him and tell him to back off?”

“Nah, I’m a big girl. I’ve even got my big-girl panties on today. I can handle it.”

“Well, at least open up what he sent over. I’m dying of curiosity.”

“Okay, okay,” I conceded. I pried open the top of the tube and out slid a single piece of parchment paper.

Stop running. Have dinner with me.

Tomorrow at 8:00 p.m.

Wear red.

“Oh my.” Jessica fanned herself. “He really does mean business. You know tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Really? It slipped my mind. Besides, I can’t go anyways.”

“
Why?
”

Jesus, my sister sounded like a petulant child not getting her way at the toy store.

“I have that late audition at the Woolly Mammoth Theater, remember?”

Her eyebrows rose up. “Since when have you had to audition for them? They know your work. They’d be lucky to have you!”

Leave it to my sister to get even more revved up over the ebbs and flows of my career than I did. My parents used to get the same way, especially my mom. Anytime I didn’t get a part, my mom would throw up her hands and exclaim, “How can they
not
pick you for that part? Are they deaf, dumb and blind? It’s a racket, I tell ya! A gosh darn racket!”

Yeah, my mother wouldn’t curse either, which is where my sister got the trait from, no matter how peeved she became over something she considered an injustice. My mom had always been cool in a crisis but would lose her shit over the more trivial indignities, such as Jessica not getting asked to a dance by a boy she liked or me not getting a part in a play. She’d stomp around, get all blustery and carry on loudly and often. For some reason, my dad got off on her moods. His eyes would twinkle, and he’d tell anyone who would listen that’s the price he paid for falling madly in love with a tempestuous redhead.

“Jess, considering I backed out of a play last season at the last minute, it’s understandable that they want me to come in. It’s more of a mental marbles evaluation than a real audition.”

She huffed and squinted her eyes, as if she were going to place some ancient voodoo curse on anyone who would dare cross her big sister. She’d done the same thing when she was five, and, as you can tell, not much had changed in that regard.

“Fine. But you let them know it’s the last time you’re ‘auditioning’. Okay?”

Just then I felt so grateful. Thank God I had my sister. I still missed my parents every single day, but without Jessica, I wouldn’t have made it. I threw my arms around her, squeezed her as hard as I could, and whispered in her ear, “Okay Jess-Jess. I’ll tell both Kyle and the entire theater community, don’t mess with a Lockhart girl.”

“Jess? Yeah, it’s me. Don’t you ever check the caller ID before you pick up the phone?”

It was seven thirty p.m. and I was coming out of the audition room at the Woolly Mammoth Theater, not even waiting ’til I got outside to call her.

“Yes, I know. Why do you think I’m calling you before getting home… It went really well… Good enough that they gave me a part in their upcoming production… I know! I know! I’m totally psyched! I’ll tell you all about it when I get—”

I stopped talking because standing outside the theater was Kyle Masterson, wearing a trench coat over a black Armani suit and a gold tie that matched his eyes. He was leaning against one of the theater posters with his hands in his pockets, as if he casually hung out in that spot all the time.

Those golden-bourbon eyes of his were fixed on mine like a bull’s-eye on a moving target. My breath hitched, and I held on to the door handle as if it were a shield to block the instant pull he had on me.

“Samantha? What’s wrong?
Sam
?”

I brought the phone back to my ear, my eyes still locked with his. “Jess, I’m…I’ll call you back.”

“Everything okay?” She sounded anxious, a slight trill shaking her voice. Ever since our parents were killed, the one noticeable change in Jessica was her constant need to check on me if I wasn’t at home. It broke my heart to hear the fear in her voice.

Even though his eyes were still laser-focused on me, Jessica’s nervousness broke the spell I had been under. I looked down at my shoes and turned slightly away from him.

“Kyle Masterson is in front of my theater,” I whispered, which was ridiculous because he was barely five feet away from me. “Did you tell him I’d be here?”

“Um…well…”

“Hang up the phone, Samantha,” Kyle commanded while striding over to me. He took the phone right out of my hand and I was too stunned to react quickly enough. “Jess? Yeah, it’s Kyle. I’ve got her… Thanks.” Then he hung up
my
phone and handed it back to me.

Now he was only a few inches away, which meant I felt his body’s heat warm me as we stood outside in the cold. A frigid breeze whipped around the building and I shivered, catching his delectable masculine scent with a hint of something stronger. Whisky? Scotch? I didn’t drink enough to be able to tell, but regardless, the biker guy I met last weekend was replaced by someone right off of K Street. Slick, controlled, his power radiating off of him like a force of nature. Damn, he was completely gorgeous, and I was still riding the high from getting the lead so I was filled with—what my mom used to call—
vim and vigor
. In other words, I was in the mood to dish some sass.

“Well, color me startled. Didn’t expect you to be here.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t. Thought my special Cupid delivery would’ve warranted more of a response than a perfunctory text.”

I studied him for a moment to determine how aggravated he was, but he had obviously learned to school his reactions because Kyle seemed impassive and calm.

“I thanked you and told you I had an audition.” I walked away from the door and spun around on the sidewalk. “In fact, you are looking at the newly cast Nina in Woolly Mammoth’s adaptation of
The Seagull
!”

Kyle’s face broke out in a beautiful, beaming, wide grin, so bright you’d think
he
had just gotten the part. “Proud of you. Means we need to celebrate.”

Maybe it was getting the part. Perhaps it was him standing there smelling delicious and looking even better, but at that moment I felt so good, so alive, I didn’t have the willpower to say no to him.

“Well, the audition finished much earlier than I expected and you are looking
quite
handsome this evening.” Yep, I was in full flirty mode. I cocked my head to the side, waiting to see how he’d play it with me.

“Glad you like what you see,” he said in that low, liquid sex voice of his as he came into my space again. “Did you park nearby?”

“No, I took the Metro into the city.”