The Gingerbread Boy (39 page)

He gave me a small smile and nodded his head once, but thankfully walked away. I was in over my head. Here I had spent my life savings just for the opportunity to talk to him, and I froze the second it landed in my lap.

The party blared on, drilling the incessant bass into my brain to the tempo of my thumping heart. Women gyrated against sweating men, shedding their clothing the more the beer next to me disappeared. Yet, I didn’t move.

At one point, a guy tried to make small talk. I nodded and smiled in all the appropriate places. I gave him short, staccato answers to his questions. No way did I want to encourage him. He was half-lit and kept getting in my line of sight for Nicholas. Eventually, he got the hint and left with an exasperated sigh.

“You haven’t moved all night,” came a voice to my left. When I looked into those blue eyes, I jerked in surprise and my heart stopped again.

I tried to smile, but my lips felt rigid, all those practiced greetings forgotten.

“Can I get you anything? Are you feeling okay?” He sat down so close to me our thighs touched. My heart tripped into overdrive and I felt like a skittish kitten, ready to bolt. His raised eyebrows and frown touched some part of me deep inside. When he placed his hand over mine, for a moment I wondered if he was sincere. It didn’t seem to jive with what I knew about him so far.

“I’m fine.”

“Do you want to dance or something? You look bored.”

“I was just thinking that about you.”

When I said it, he laughed. The smile lit up his whole face. He had laugh lines around his eyes that made him look more attractive. A small dimple in his left cheek flashed at me. He casually draped his arm around the back of the couch. The move might have felt suspicious anywhere else.

“You caught me. These parties aren’t my thing lately.”

I wondered if it had anything to do with Emily, but I kept my mouth shut.

“I’m Nicholas, by the way,” he said as an afterthought.

I grinned, relaxing a little. “I know.”

His eyes roamed my face, curiosity evident in their vibrant depths. “What’s your name?” he asked quietly.

“Sophie,” I replied, a little breathless as his gaze whispered over me. “Sophie Alexander.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sophie. Now will you please tell me why you came to an after-party just to sit on the couch the whole time?”

His grin was contagious and I threw my hands up. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Maybe he could shed some light on what was appropriate after-party etiquette.

“You never answered my question.”

Confused, I frowned at him, waiting.

“Do you want to dance?”

Women glared and hovered nearby no doubt ready to grab him the second he left my side. A secret part of me reveled in the heady sense of power that, for the moment, he was all mine. But the logical side, no matter how absent it had been lately, told me not to.

“There are several other girls here who would love to dance with you.” I motioned with my eyes and he flapped a hand, dismissing them.

“Forget them. I want to dance with you.”

Nicholas didn’t wait for me to answer. A grin slid across his face as he tugged me to my feet. It took years off him, and I fell in love with his smile.

I didn’t particularly like to dance. In fact, I was horrible at it and was relieved when the song ended just as we made it to the dance floor. I shrugged and turned back around to sit down, but Nicholas’s hand reeled me back in to face him.

“Not so fast.” A slow song began, one I recognized as Emily’s song. Resignation bloomed on his face as the music swelled. It didn’t stop him though; he still pulled me into his arms. My first thought was how big he was. He was tall and his arms felt huge under my small hands. And strong. His protection surrounded me.

The room faded around me as I focused on Nicholas's face. It was impossible to concentrate on one particular area of beauty. But I had spent all day driving to see him and now here I stood in the haven of his arms. The weariness of the last six months hit me and I relaxed against him.

“There you go,” he said softly. “I don’t bite.” His words were soft against my ear as he started moving with me. Our feet shuffled and his hands stayed above my hips. So far, he was nothing like I thought. Could the rumors about his life be wrong? He was an enigma.

“This is a beautiful song.” I slid my arms around his shoulders.

“Thank you,” was all he offered, apparently not in the mood for conversation.

We danced through the song and he held me close, almost too tight. His fingers squeezed my sides and he clung to me as if his life depended on it. Had he singled me out somehow? Perhaps because he sensed I wasn't like anyone else here?

Emily’s song ended and another pulsing song began, yet Nicholas held me. I didn’t know what to think or do, so I stayed where I was. He finally pulled back enough to look at me.

He swallowed once, hard. Emotion swirled in his eyes like a hurricane brewing offshore. “I need to get out of here. Will you come with me?”

I hesitated, unsure how to answer.

"Please," he whispered.

I drew in a deep breath. “Sure.” Maybe the money spent on getting to this moment hadn't been in vain after all. I was leaving the party with Nicholas Cassidy.

Nicholas led me to the elevator. It looked like he was the womanizer the media painted after all. The question was, how did I feel about it? I wasn't sure. I didn’t do casual and he would know it if he tried anything. He pressed the button for the top floor, and we waited, my ears ringing from the silence. He didn't seem inclined to release my hand and I didn't try to pull free. He glanced at me and caught me looking at him. I quickly averted my eyes and trained them on the rising number above the door. His soft chuckle filled the elevator.

When the doors opened, we stepped out with our hands still entwined, and he tugged me in his wake as he crossed the hallway to the stairwell. Where were we going? I followed him up the stairs. We stopped at a door, and I stole a peek at Nicholas to find him watching me. His lips pulled into an engaging half-smile as he opened the heavy metal door and led me through. We were on the roof.

One look over the cityscape with the twinkling lights in the distance and I owned that city. Each light represented a person, a family. And acknowledging this, for just that instant, these people belonged to me…Nicholas belonged to me. His gentle squeeze planted me firmly back into reality, but I chose to see the view for what it was. God's beauty.

To my right, a noise brought me out of my thoughts and I saw two forms meshed together in a line of mangled flesh and limbs. It didn’t take me long to realize it was the guy that tried to pick me up earlier. Nicholas cast them an annoyed glance and steered me away from them to the other side of the roof.

He finally stopped and we simply looked out over the city again. Rain from earlier that day still glistened on the rooftops and the street below. The smell of wet asphalt had me wrinkling my nose.

“I love it up here,” Nicholas finally said a little while later. “I can think.” I tore my gaze from the lights below us and met his eyes. But his look was too intense, too perceptive, and I looked away, twisting a false smile on my face. The lights beyond the roof were suddenly far more interesting than they had been earlier.

“It must be good inspiration up here for writing.”

He shook his head. “It’s not about that. We’re not here in Atlanta very often, but when we are, this is where I want to stay. I feel closer to God here.”

I closed my eyes as a small breeze lifted the hair at my temples. All the talk of God and the scenery reminded me of Emily.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. My eyes shot open and narrowed on Nicholas. I resisted the urge to look around and make sure he actually spoke to me. The fact that his attention was focused resolutely in my direction told me he was, in fact, talking about me. “You don’t even know it, do you?”

I ran my tongue over my lips and again avoided his gaze. I didn’t want to discuss me. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “What do you think about when you’re up here?”

He stood and walked into my line of vision. I could tell that I was just as much an enigma to him as he was to me by the way he pursued me. After all, I was the one he chose to come to the roof with, not someone else. “What do you do when you’re not bored at after-parties?”

“I’m a hospice nurse.”

He studied me for a long moment before he spoke. “I can see that... I know what you do makes a huge difference in people’s lives. How do you stay sane?”

My eyes swept up to meet his and I grinned. "After parties."

He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Sophie has a sense of humor after all. Seriously, how do you do it?”

“I try not to get personally involved.” But not getting involved hadn't been an option with Emily. Before I knew it, Emily had weaved a spell and I had fallen under it. She was the kind of person I wanted to be. She gave me no other choice than to get personally involved and no amount of pity for her situation could erase the fact that I loved her, too. Everyone loved her, except the one who had mattered the most. “It’s always sad to see a patient go, whether you’re involved or not. I try to remember I have a job to do and that’s to make a dying patient’s last days as comfortable and as happy as possible. But occasionally you do get invested in their story.” I snuck a glance at him. “When that happens, I try to take the good in their life and hold on to it. And learn from the bad. When both of those fail, I have a great therapist on speed dial.”

We smiled at each other. The eye contact held an intense heat as we measured each other up before I looked down and smoothed my shirt. He stepped closer to me, his warmth almost a physical caress, and the wind wrapped a nice scent of soap and pine around me.

“It’s refreshing to have a conversation with a woman who’s not thinking about the best way to get me in bed.”

I shifted and looked out at the lights again with a deep sigh. Oh, if he only knew. Maybe I didn’t do casual, but that didn’t keep me from thinking naked thoughts about him. I turned my gaze back to his and my lips quirked.

He caught the look on my face and laughed.

Shock splintered through me when his hands framed my face and forced me to look at him. The laughter slid away, as did his smile, and made room for a smoldering fierceness as he licked his lips and eyed mine. I wanted nothing more than to see what it felt like to kiss those full lips. Even though Emily didn’t tell me why she sent me, I couldn’t let him think I was that kind of girl. There was need in his eyes that I could see clearly, although I wasn’t sure it was directed at me or what he thought I might represent. He studied my mouth and with a sigh, released me and took a step back, leaving me thankful for his self-control because I was no longer so certain of mine.

“What do you think about when you’re up here?” I asked him again.

“Nothing that wouldn’t take me a year to explain.”

“I’ve got time.” What was I doing? Did I want to know his answer?

Slowly, Nicholas sat down again and patted the cement next to him. I joined him and waited for him to go on.

The weather was starting to turn cold, Emily’s favorite time of year. Fall leaves were at their peak here in the south, and Thanksgiving was just around the corner. A sudden chill had me wrapping myself a little deeper in my sweater, but it was pathetically light for what must have been forty-degree weather. Nicholas noticed my shiver and without a word pulled me into his arms.

He gave the impression in his public life of having been around the block many times. Yet just now, his touch wasn’t even suggestive. Curiosity and need danced in his roaming fingertips on my palm, but otherwise, he was a perfect gentleman. When his arms came around me, his odd position seemed awkward and uncomfortable, so I scooted to place myself between his legs, my back resting against his chest. His hands moved up and down my arms, caressing me in a way that spoke of familiarity, despite our short acquaintance.

When he began to talk, he spoke quietly against my ear, his hand continuing the slow rhythmic strokes up and down my arms, as though keeping time to one of his songs. I listened with closed eyes, feeling every ounce of what he said.

“Have you ever loved someone so much it hurts, and you didn’t know how to tell them?”

I nodded and swallowed, not believing that he was actually going to tell me—a virtual stranger—about something so personal.

“She came into my life like a tornado. By the time I realized I couldn’t let her go, she was already gone. I’ve never felt that helpless, Sophie. Never. I watched the only person I’ve ever really loved waste away with cancer. But what hurts even more, if that’s possible, was how her spirit was never extinguished. You wouldn’t believe the amount of spunk.”

But I could.

“Up until the very end, she was still the same beautiful person I met and fell in love with,” he added with a whisper. "Knowing she can't share that with the world anymore leaves a gaping hole in my heart.”

Silent tears streamed down my face. Nicholas’s voice was choked, his breathing ragged. He was crying, too. He sniffed and exhaled against my hair. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I’m a wreck tonight. Today is her birthday. She couldn’t wait for her birthday. She said it made her wiser.” His grin echoed in his voice.

“What was her name?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

“Emily,” he whispered.

Somehow, hearing him say her name succeeded in opening my heart to an idea I didn’t want to have of him. For so long, I had painted a cold picture of him - one where he didn’t care or want to be around during hard times. Now, seeing him this way told me I had it all wrong. Maybe I even chose to see him wrong because it made things easier to accept. But it made the reality so real, so special to see him torn up over her short life. Emily hadn’t suffered without him, but I couldn’t say that to him right now. She loved him just as much as he seemed to love her. Their relationship had left Emily with a heart full of hope, love, and respect.

His hand rested on his knee now but I slid my palm against it and curled my fingers around him and squeezed, hoping to convey some sort of strength. There was only one thing I could do to make him forget the pain in that moment.