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Chapter Seven
Brian sat in the back of the cab as it cut in and out of the city’s Saturday afternoon traffic, zipping around busses and dodging pedestrians. Though a beer with Neil and Danny before heading home would be a welcome break follo
wing his the three-day business trip out East, Amber was foremost in his mind.
Three days since he’d last seen her. Since he’d last touched her. Would she welcome him tonight? Should he even go back? The timing of the trip had been right. He’d hoped to gain some perspective about their relationship, but in three days and nights, all he’d done was think of her.
Before the trip, he’d been at her apartment almost every night for two weeks. Showing up unannounced, waiting for her to arrive if she was out. Never any plans. Never any expectations. Never a goodbye. Just the crush of bodies coming together, the fulfillment of needs. But he would swear, in those first seconds when she saw him waiting at her door, her green eyes shone with…happiness, relief? Something. An emotion that he couldn’t describe but pulled at his heart and made him yearn to see it again. That fleeting look haunted his nights. Distracted his mind all day. Made him tap his toes and check his watch as he held out, waiting for the minutes to tick by until he saw her again.
He’d started keeping track of the details she let slip and clues she’d left out in the open of her apartment. He’d started thinking of her as his. Arguing with himself like some sort of lunatic, rationalizing and justifying the lack of relationship and what it was doing to him. He knew she was coming home alone. Knew she wanted him, at least in a physical way. But he also knew what she was capable of. And though he’d catch her watching him sometimes before she tiptoed into the shower, Brian had no idea where he stood with her. Where they were going. What she thought about their time together.
Hell, he had no idea what he thought about it. Hot and erotic, without question. He’d never been with a woman who sent such a current of sexual hunger through him with nothing more than her presence. The connection he felt, the possessive greed—he couldn’t explain it.
But there was something else bothering Brian, too. This wasn’t the way he lived his life. When he was with a woman, it was because he cared for her. The casual one-night variety didn’t often tempt him, but when it did, it wasn’t with a woman he spent half the night fighting with and the other half fucking. That was for sure. He was on unfamiliar ground and didn’t like the way he was feeling about his own actions.
He needed to figure it out. After having debated over mentioning the business trip to Amber, simply so she would know he was out of town and at the risk of sounding committed, he’d opted to leave a note on her pillow when she’d gone to the shower. It had been brief. New York business for a few days—don’t fuck anyone else. Short, not exactly sweet. But being back in town, he knew it was time to make some decisions. Would she be waiting for him?
The cab dropped him in front of Riley’s. With all the pent-up frustration knotted between his shoulder blades, Brian took a deep breath and tried to blow a little of the stress out with the air. Pushing open the door, he saw Neil and Danny hunched over a small table off to the side of the otherwise empty bar. The evening crowd wouldn’t show up for another hour or so, which gave the men time to relax, have a beer and catch up.
Neil looked up and waved. “Welcome back, take a load off.”
“Thanks, man.” Brian slid into an open chair and gave Danny a solid pat on the back then picked up an untouched longneck and took a deep pull from the bottle. Tasted good.
He looked at his two friends who had stopped talking as soon as he’d come in. “What’s up?”
Danny shrugged and took a swig. “Not much. Neil was just telling me about your little problem.”
His knotted muscles cinched tighter. “Must have me confused with some other guy. I don’t have a problem. What gives?”
Neil leaned forward stretching across the table to squeeze the muscle of Brian’s shoulder. Looking at him seriously, he said, “You’re being an asshole, man.”
How did they know? Had Amber talked to Danny and now both of them were confronting him about his shitty behavior toward her? He started to sputter out a response when Neil waved a dismissive hand in front of him.
“Look. I know this has to do with some woman. But there is no reason on God’s green Earth that you should be sulking around like this, being a complete jerk to the menfolk. Bros before hos, man.”
Danny looked kind of disgusted by Neil, but they all went back quite a ways and somehow managed to get along regardless of the dramatic personality differences. “Neil says this has been going on for weeks. You’ve been skulking around, short-tempered. Said you nearly bit his head off on the phone when you talked to him today. Not like you at all.
“I haven’t seen you around in ages. Not since you came with Amber that night. This about her?”
Brian chewed on the side of his cheek, keeping his eyes on his beer. Nodded. “Yep.”
“That sucks. I would have thought you two would be perfect together. What didn’t take?”
Neil took a long swallow and slammed his beer down. “She played him.”
Danny looked at Neil and then back to Brian as though nothing had been said. “Okay, don’t let it get to you. I love her, but Amber is a strange girl, has crazy high standards for men. From what I understand, she’s got some perfect guy in her mind, and no one ever matches up. Half the time, I’d swear she doesn’t even register the guys sniffing around after her.”
Brian rubbed an open palm over the rough wood of the table. “No, she… She blew me away—”
“She does with everyone. Guys, good guys like you. Like me,” Danny admitted, hanging his head a bit, “come around, asking her out all the time. She turns everyone down without a second’s pause. And then all of the sudden, out of nowhere, she finds some sub-par guy and just settles. It’s like she goes out of her way to pick some mediocre hack so she doesn’t risk getting attached. I think she just breaks down and wants some guy to ride her a while, and then she goes back to waiting for Mr. Right. That girl’s awesome, she’s a great friend and I’m happy to have her as mine, but in romance, Amber’s got issues.”
Brian was clenching his jaw so tight his teeth were ready to crack. Was he just some guy to “ride” her? Was this all she ever wanted from a relationship? Here he was, going crazy, and she was kicking back, getting her itch scratched. Commitment free. Worry free.
Neil was dipping an onion ring into a pile of ketchup, shaking his head. “Mr. Right? Shit, I might be Mr. Right. Maybe I should try to get with this chick if she’s so hot.”
Danny snorted. “Too bad for you. Mr. Right is some punk kid she went to high school with. Amber sure as hell played him close to her vest, but my sister says she knew it was some athlete in her class, but no one could ever get her to tell. But that guy, poor schmuck, even he probably couldn’t live up to the ideal she’s created after all of these years.”
The beer in Brian’s mouth tasted stale. Was it possible? Some guy she’d had a crush on all through high school. Some guy she threw all others over for. Was he just the world’s biggest egomaniac even thinking it, or was this what she was talking about when she mentioned a crush to him that first day on the train? Mentioned it like it was nothing. Girlish silliness.
