He grabbed the keys and checked to see had his wallet and some portion of his brain. He was inclined to sneak out via the dock, but that was ridiculous. Sergei wasn’t paying him any attention, and if things went the way he was thinking, he might need to have a conversation with the man anyway. No point trying to hide if he was going to see as much of Rachel as he hoped.
Which reminded him to yank open the bottom left drawer of Sergei’s neglected desk and snag a couple of condoms. “Better safe than sorry,” the guy always said during orientation for new hires, offering them access to the stash alongside boilerplate about workplace relationships. He never saw anyone take one, but it hadn’t been a week since Sergei mentioned that the supply was getting low. And the near-empty bowl suggested his employees waited until Theo was out of the office before helping themselves.
Any eon now, he told himself, it would be great to stop thinking about sex and Rachel and Sergei all at once.
Terrible idea. Doomed. Decision fueled by frustration and flirt-blindness and fear, even. Fear of sinking into a life made of nothing but motherhood; fear of managing that life with one of her safety nets moving off to Brenham; fear of Depy shuffling into the role of default co-parent; fear of how angry and helpless and powerless and mad and furious and useless Sergei made her feel.
Fear Theo was another man like her ex, and everything else—her sex-starvation, his smolder, the way Hannah burrowed her forehead into his neck like she knew something good and safe and trustworthy—was a trap. A ruse. A pit she may as well throw herself down now, to test the depths. And while she was down there, if she caught a flutter of a red flag from Theo, she could claw her way back to the nice safe surface of her life.
At least while she found out more, she’d get to have sex. The teeth he flashed her as he strode her way were a promise of nips to come. The width of his stance when he stopped in front of her invited her into his personal space. His direct gaze deliberately didn’t track her body, a statement of his intent to scrutinize when he had her alone.
She’d played all these games before. She knew how to throw these dice, to collect these cards, to rack up these points.
So: doomed, yes. Maybe. Yes. But Rachel leaned a hip against her car and cocked her head. “I suppose I should ask you out for drinks, but it seems pointless. Considering.”
He cut his eyes towards the brewery. “Pretty much.”
She pressed her lips together to stop the flirt-high grin. That grin had an agenda and didn’t care who knew it. It got things done, that grin. Done in the carnal sense. How many bar parking lots, how many hot-enough men, how many Saturday nights with nothing else on the agenda had that grin made an appearance? Not for ages, sure. She wasn’t in high school any more; she wasn’t still in college.
Sergei hadn’t killed that grin.
On the thought, the pressure straining her cheeks drained. Her mouth deflated. She stopped thinking about her wilder years, banished every grim thing about her married days and those post-divorce nights with a newborn. Leaned towards Theo, who was frank and focused and who fired her up. And if she had to guess based on his reaction, the smile that overtook her then was sexy as fuck.
Hell, she lit him up. He tried to find polite, coherent things to say. “So, no drinks.”
She shook her head slowly.
“And you know I’m trying to ask you out, right?”
Her nod was even slower. His pulse kicked up in response.
“Rachel. I don’t want to overstep, but you need to give me a clue if you want me to, you know, back off a little. My mind’s got only one track right now. One very crude, slip and slide, ride me now track. I’m not trying to be coy about it, but I’m not an ass. I’m not making demands. I want you. But if it’s no, or not right now, or something else, just say so.”
“And like that you’ll head back to work?”
He tried to cut off the inarticulate noise. “Well. I’d need a minute.”
She let her eyes drop to his crotch, which didn’t help in the least. “And if I take you home now you’re not demanding sex?”
“Fuck. No. Of course not. No demands. It’s your call.”
“Not a single demand?” she asked, a tad taunting.
Damn her provocations. He edged closer. “I could be persuaded. If that’s what you wanted.”
“And you’ve got some free time?”
The report for investors. Ron’s refusal to give up on the bottling machine. Approving the shift schedule. He palmed his phone, but didn’t quite manage to look at the screen.
Her eyebrows danced. “If you’ve got calls to make, do it now. We’ll be busy later.”
He shook his head. Cleared his throat. “Nothing urgent. Plenty of free time.”
“Give me your phone.”
He unlocked it and handed it over. She glanced down then handed it back.
“Never mind. You type it; I don’t like these keyboards.”
He got over the stutter of panic that her ‘never mind’ was calling everything off, and added her address to his contacts.
“The rule is, never give that to Sergei.”
“Okay.” It hit him. “Wait, what?”
“He doesn’t get my address. Depy has it in case of emergency. So don’t give it to him, but do follow me to my place. Clear?”
He was nodding but the cogs in his brain were shifting in opposition to his head’s movement. Dizzying. He should think with his cock instead.
How about that for something he’d never guessed he would have to tell himself to do.
Between Mom car and Mom purse, the very least she should have handy was a brush. Or anything not made of fuchsia sparkles to pull her hair into one of those casual chic knots Natalie could make blindfolded.
On the way out of the parking lot, she found a tube of her favorite tinted lip balm in the car door pocket. At a stop sign, she popped a couple of soft mints from her bag. But her foraging yielded no brush. No comb. A teal polka dot scrunchie. A couple of barrettes too flimsy for Hannah’s hair, so she tossed them in the trash bag hanging from the gearshift.
Red light. She got methodical with her search. Nothing in the glove box, crumbs in the cup holders, useless crap in the center console. Finally, wedged under Hannah’s car seat, a wet-hair comb with mostly intact bristles.
Good enough. She yanked it through a few of the tangled curls, made a face at her reflection in the visor, and put it all behind her as she led her asshole ex-husband’s boss to her home.
For a while—maybe not long enough but for a while—he was in a divorce support group. Most of the members were parents. Not everyone. Enough that he got a sense of the usual kinds of custody arrangements, the usual types of communications. Some co-parents were excessively polite with each other, and some played Bribe Baby For Affection. Some got flighty about visitation schedules. But Theo couldn’t remember any who hid their location from their ex.
It wasn’t like she avoided seeing the man himself. She’d been talking to him half an hour earlier. He’d ignored Hannah and barely nodded at her instructions, but he didn’t menace or shout or ... Theo didn’t know what. Nothing he’d observed about their interactions screamed of mistrust. Sergei seemed far likelier to forget to pick Hannah up than to go throw midnight rocks through Rachel’s windows.
Maybe it was her place that was messed up. Something askew about her living situation, something the would cause Sergei to ... and he was stuck again. He tried to picture Annalisa living in some way that would alarm him or start a fight. Neglect or seediness or drug paraphernalia strewn across the parking lot. Holes in the roof and rats everywhere and eighteen people in a two-room place. And even then, he’d want to know. Want to help her find a sanitary, safe place to live. And nothing about Rachel—or Hannah, who in some ways he knew better, after playing with her at Elixir a few times a month all year long—suggested they lived in condemned housing.
He followed her car. It was still dusted yellow with tree pollen, even this late into Houston’s summer. The bumper stickers were a mixed bunch: liberal politics and knitting jokes and her other car was a bicycle and even one for Elixir. As they idled at a red light, he plugged her address into the map.
Huh.
She lived closer to Sergei’s place than either did to the gas station where they’d first met. Another three turns and they’d be at her door.
And yet she made a habit of exchanging custody another couple of miles down the freeway. Sergei sure as shit hadn’t seemed to mind, beyond acting inconvenienced by the need for drop-off at all. Theo drove more than three hours each way every other weekend to see Andres, so, sure, it was all relative. And he knew where Annalisa lived.
Another turn, and he also knew where Rachel lived. A smallish, tidy but outdated apartment complex. Gates across the drive that stayed open long enough for him to follow her in. She waved him at a parking space and continued on to pull her car under a carport. Her lips pressed together, as he approached, holding in one of those shooting comet grins of hers.
“Come on, it’s up this way.” She brushed her warm, light fingers along his arm while gesturing to a set of stairs with the other hand.
Even in the shaded overhang of the carport, Rachel’s blue eyes played color tricks. Little flashes of dark, hints of light. It kept him staring at them. Or she did. Her micro-expressions, her deliberate masks, her wary desire.
How long had they been divorced? How many people had she led to the apartment she kept hidden from Sergei? How much psychic weight had the man left in his wake?
Why hadn’t any of the questions intruded back at Elixir?
She’d turned to him because she needed an outlet from the flack Sergei and Depy had sprayed when she dropped Hannah off. So it wasn’t time to trade stories. To compare his months of post-divorce partner turnover to her, what? Single mom of a little one. Depy intruding in her business every day she could. When Andres was a baby, a toddler, it took him and Annalisa combined to manage all the playing, the supervision, the chores, their jobs. Forget about date nights, forget about time for themselves, forget about sex.
She gestured to a staircase, and Theo found he’d lost all the questions about her ex. Their steps were in sync, and the jangling of keys in her hand rang in time to his heart, and he’d gotten hypersensitive enough that the extra weight of the condoms in his pocket pressed against him. A promise, and a lure, and everything he’d been imagining since she’d barreled his way wearing star-shaped sunglasses.
Theo waited for her to unlock the door. A look on his face like she was worth waiting for.
“So, this is me.”
“Hi, you.” His voice was light. Not teasing or mean or bored. Just ... light. Some kind of burden floated off her shoulders as he spoke, like the shrugging off of her backpack once she’d biked herself and Hannah home from daycare.
She filled her lungs with buoyant air. “Hi.”
“You’re still okay with me coming in?” No innuendo, no judgment, no demand. As if any answer was fine, so long as she addressed his curiosity.
There went another weight. Like removing her helmet after a late-spring ride during rush hour traffic, when everything was grit and heat. Pretty soon she would be as unburdened like a Hannah-free Sunday morning, cool banks of energy reserves and a few hours free to fill as she liked.
And she wanted him for it. For his lightness. For having a voice the opposite of Sergei’s. For checking in like her blatant invitation still left her the power to alter her plans. For that look, the one that said he hadn’t changed his own mind, and wouldn’t write her off if she had.
She could test him. Call him on it. Wait for him to be locked back on the public side of the parking lot before renewing her invitation.
“Hang on.”
He stood still at her threshold.
She pulled out her phone. “Give me one second. Texting my friend.”
“In case I’ve got nefarious plans?”
She unleashed a grin designed to mislead him about the sharp way his words tripped her heart. “Exactly. Telling her to check on me in a couple of hours, and alert Gillian to take custody of Hannah tonight if I can’t.”
He snorted. Snorted. Like a rhinoceros or something. “Good luck to her getting her away from Depy.”
Her favorite animal was the rhino. So impervious to harm. So horny. She grinned. “You haven’t met Gillian.”
He narrowed his eyes. “She’d have to be pretty formidable.”
Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she tilted her head up towards him. “I think elite security forces watch videos of her as part of their training. And she’s got paperwork on her side. Depy doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Poor Depy. Good thing I’m not planning to disrupt you quite long enough to make you late getting back to Hannah.”
One lock. The second lock. Her hand on the doorknob. “Not quite long enough?”
Now whose voice held innuendo?
Theo leaned at her. Just a half-inch. She had clients for whom that half-inch would be a major victory over their mobility. For Theo, it was easy. He didn’t appear to struggle with control over his body at all. But he managed to lean that measly half-inch with all the impact of a full-body hug. “As long as you like, Rachel. You tell me. I’ll follow your lead.”