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I looked over my shoulder, toward the door where Vin had pulled a disappearing act.
“Nope, apparently not. My date clearly decided I’m terrifying and pulled a runner.” I sighed as I said it, although I wasn’t terribly disappointed. Vin had been much smaller than I’d expected and I liked guys who were bigger than me, which was a bit of a tall order, in every sense. That made it fair, I supposed: neither of us had gotten what we were looking for and as it stood, things were already looking up.
“Theseareterrifying.” Adam squeezed my bare, very well-defined left bicep, but his expression was full of admiration. “I know PJ’s need to be fit but holy hell, Mads, thegunson you. You could bench me.”
I doubted that, but I entertained the visual anyway because it wasn’t at all unpleasant.
“Pffft, whatever. You should see what I can do on the leg press.”
His eyes glazed over and I gave myself a mental high-five, because I knew he’d just envisioned my ass. That was something I’d been trying to get him to do for decades and I rejoiced a little as I watched the wheels spin in his brain. I’d been locked in an anti-aging time warp in his mind, quite obviously.
“So, VanBuren...” The expression I remembered so well from my childhood was back on his face: tolerant and amused. “Grab a chair and tell me what you’ve been up to the last twenty-something years.”
“You’re free?” I asked, looking around us. It was a weird time of day to be in a coffee shop.
“I’m a med flight nurse,” he explained. “It can be a weird schedule sometimes, especially when it’s a full moon.” He pointed vaguely over my shoulder. “I just pulled a fireman’s shift.” He grinned. I knew that meant a straight twenty-four hours at the hospital. “I’ll work two or three more days this week, depending on staffing. We haven’t been able to find someone who’s the right fit for years now, not since Harlowe left.” He swallowed hard and I was pretty sure there was quite a lot more story there than he was ready to tell. “She got married; has another little girl on the way in the next couple weeks.”
I didn’t really want to hear about this person he was obviously in love with, so I just made a noncommittal noise, nodded my head and hoped he was ready to switch subjects.
Adam had studied Health Sciences in college, since he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, and immediately after he’d gone into the Army. Honestly, I think he’d have gone into it right out of high school if he hadn’t followed my brother into college. That might have been the one time Steve was a positive influence.
After graduating college it was Steve’s turn to follow Adam, and the two of them ended up in the First Brigade, out of Fort Drum, eventually moving to Delta Force at Fort Bragg. They didn’t know it, but every time they deployed, I spent sleepless nights praying they both came back. Infantry was dangerous enough, but they went from a specialized combat unit to an elite team, which was code for high mortality rate in my book.
The next time I looked up, it was getting dark outside. Adam’s eyes followed mine and widened in surprise as he looked down at the face of the phone he’d flipped over on the table.
“Well, how about that?” He huffed out a laugh. “I can’t remember the last time I spent so much time just talking! I’d forgotten how easy it was to talk to you, Mads.” He reached over the table and socked me playfully in the shoulder, then spread his fingers and curled them around the bare skin of my upper arm.
I felt that touch in the most inappropriate, unholy places, all the way down to my toes–which curled in my shoes, I’ll have you know.
Adam Beckman had absolutely no idea how hestillaffected me, apparently, which was pretty stinking inconvenient, because for his part he seemed totally unaffected. I was still just Steve’s goofy little sister.
I may as well have beenjust Steve’s goofy little sister, because while sitting with Adam I wasn’t an accomplished, driven, strong, almost-forty-year-old woman. In his presence I was all of fourteen again, shy and gangly, hoping he would notice me while simultaneously praying he didn’t.
He was a god among men: tall and broad, muscular and handsome, withreallygood hair. And I was just…Madelyn–Mad or Mads, to be precise.
I had always been too tall for a girl, just a hair under 6'1" when I finally stopped growing at seventeen. I had been all arms and legs and teeth, bashful as hell and almost incapable of getting through three words at a time without a nervous giggle. Because when I was a young girl, Adam had rendered me stupid and it was clear to me that, all these years later, I wasn’t all that far removed.
“You hungry, Mad?”
I snapped out of my uncomfortable reverie to realize Adam was asking me a question.
“Hungry?” I gestured toward my person. “I’m burning calories just sitting here blinking, Beckman. Look at my genetics. What do you think?”
His grin was broad and white, even more devastating than I remembered, and I half wished I’d packed a spare change of underwear in the small bag I’d looped over my shoulder.
The two of us walked down to Maggie’s, where Adam requested a table outside, overlooking the river.
The food was incredible and by the time I drained my third glass of beer, I had a pleasant buzz going on. I wasn’t a big drinker so it didn’t take much, and from the four glasses lined up in front of Adam and the way his smile had gone permanent, I guessed he was a lightweight too.
“Where too, Ms. VanBuren?” he teased after refusing to let me pay, and I threw a nice tip down on the table and challenged him with my eyes. It made him hold up his hands in mock surrender and when I rose a little unsteadily from my chair, he held out an arm in my direction.
You’d better believe I took that arm. Tipsy or not, it gave me a reason to touch him, to smell him, and to bemoan the fact that twenty years had done nothing to diminish the fact I was going to go home and have incredibly pornographic dreams about the boy who was now all man.
2
Adam
MadelynVanBuren,asIlived and breathed. She was the last person I’d have ever expected to run into that day in Vito’s coffee shop and the instant she turned and I caught sight of her face, I felt like a mule had kicked me in the chest. I kid you not, I think my heart stopped for three or four beats and I staggered a little before I called, “Mads?”
