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“I’ve got a key.”
7
Emma glanced at Raul sitting beside her in the backseat of the Uber, but he was watching her so intensely she swiveled her head back to stare blindly out the window at the Castro streaming by. His focus felt like hands on her skin.
When he turned his head to stare out the front, it was like someone had unplugged her.
They’d made plans with Colin to meet at the front entrance of Toby’s building tomorrow morning at nine. Colin had stumbled away and suddenly Emma was left with Raul. When she whispered that they should be leaving, mission accomplished, Raul simply put his big hand under her elbow and rose, taking her with him. He hadn’t spoken a word since. They simply walked out of Heaven and an Uber was waiting for them. She had no idea when Raul could have ordered it, but like Cinderella’s coach, there it was, waiting.
Orange, too.
He’d given her address and continued his brooding silence. Emma had no way to interpret his mood. Happy they’d gotten a clue, so he could move forward and resolve this issue and get back to his life in Portland? Angry that this wasn’t going more quickly? Bored? What?
One thing for sure, he wasn’t talking. His face was tight, deadpan. He looked like a smile – one of those easy smiles he’d given her all evening – would break his face.
Even looking the other way, she was so intensely aware of him sitting beside her, his big body radiating heat. A bigger than life presence in the quiet, dark car.
He slid his hand along her arm and interlaced his fingers with hers. His hand was large, broad-palmed. He had calluses. She’d never held hands before with a man with calluses on his hands. Her father had never been the type of dad who’d hold his little daughter’s hand as she skipped down the street. And anyway, his hands were super soft, now mottled with age. Totally unlike Raul’s strong, sinewy hands with that luscious olive skin.
And the few guys Emma had dated before coming to San Francisco weren’t hand-holding types either. Most of the men she’d dated were data guys or finance guys and they weren’t into romantic gestures. And even if they wanted to hold hands, their hands were for keyboarding, not hard and callused like Raul’s hand. Raul’s hands were for – what? Shooting? Fighting?
A sudden image of his hands on her, on her naked skin, bloomed in her mind and she was grateful for the darkness in the car as blood rushed to her face.
Emma felt his hand against hers but she also felt him all along her body, like a force field. One of those science-fictiony ones that shimmered and crackled, full of energy that might explode.
Shemight explode. It felt like there was nitroglycerine under her skin, just waiting to detonate. Each moment driving down Market brought the vehicle closer to her place. No idea what to do once they arrived.
In any other circumstance, with someone who’d gone out of his way to help her, inviting him in for a nightcap would seem like the polite thing to do. Emma knew exactly how to keep something like that impersonal. Stand at a distance in the elevator, maybe stay standing while pouring a drink and reviewing the day. She didn’t think Raul would be anything but a gentleman. Not worried about that.
She was worried about herself. Because she didn’t know if she could trust herself to be a lady.
How foolish she’d been not to have taken to bed the few guys who’d asked. Not interested. With a couple of them, she’d been actually repelled. To the point where she wondered whether she’d precociously used up all her hormones and was drying up down there. Imagining her vagina as a desiccated desert, full of tumbleweed and cacti.
Well, those were foolish worries because no, she wasn’t drying up. She wasburningup. Skin tingling where Raul touched it, aware of his presence beside her with every cell in her body.
Every hormone she had woke up, after having been dormant for so long, the traitors! Emma was sure she could feel her ovaries, little bright points of heat deep in her belly. It was impossible, of course, but still. Raging ovaries was not a good place to be with someone who had been sent to help her and whom she’d first met today.
The vehicle passed New Montgomery, the Ferry Building all lit up at the end of Market. The turnoff to her street was coming up and she lived just a block down. What the hell was she going to do? Thank him and go up alone?
That was definitely a possibility or would be if her hormones hadn’t reacted in horror. So okay, her whole body wanted to spend more time with Raul. It hadn’t been this excited in … huh. Forever.
But – invite him up and then what? Raul might be a perfect gentleman but she worried that her entire body was sending out pheromones by the ton and she wouldn’t be smooth.
Women had a playbook for this sort of thing. She used to master it, but hadn’t really had the occasion to use it since she’d moved to San Francisco. The guy makes a small move forward, you contemplate it, after a sufficient amount of time has gone by, you make a countermove forward. Friendly, but at times distant. Open to whatever, but prepared to shut it down in an instant. Cool but not cold.
The playbook went right out the window and her mind, usually her most trusted organ, one that had never let her down, pooped out on her.
The vehicle stopped right in front of the big glass doors of her lobby. The lobby was lit so brightly it cast light into the vehicle. When Emma turned to Raul, his brown eyes were lit up, reflecting the light.
With no idea what to say, she opened her mouth. Then: “Would you like to –”
“Yes,” Raul said.
In a moment, he’d exited from the door, rounded the back of the vehicle and opened her door. He stood there, one big hand out.
She still had no idea what she was going to say, but maybe he did. Whatever it was, he was on board with it. She took his hand and it was natural then to tuck her hand in the crook of his arm. Halfway across the big shiny expanse of her huge lobby, Raul stopped. “Wait here,” he said and made a beeline to the desk with the night security guard. Emma knew him. Nice kid, mixed race, very polite. He and Raul conferred, heads together, for a minute or two. Raul brought something out of his wallet and the guard nodded, face sober. Raul straightened, rapped his knuckles once against the granite counter, gave a brief nod and in less time that it would have taken her, crossed the lobby, took her arm again and walked them to the elevators.
Emma frowned when they got into the elevator. “What was that about?”
