Past & Present (Love at First Sight Book 6) Read online

  Though if she had been telling the truth about the spankings, I guess I now understood the sly smiles I sometimes caught him giving her during those moments.

  But I really wish I didn’t.

  I finished my work a little earlier than usual that Friday, which left me sitting alone in my office with the partially worn slip of paper between my fingertips.

  Mason and Layla were flying up to New York for the weekend, meaning my usual Sunday plans were shot. I tried to get excited about the two full days I’d have entirely to myself, but I couldn’t manage to do it. Having all that time alone with nothing to do just felt... wrong. Empty.

  It took asking a girl for her phone number for the first time in almost a decade for me to realize just how lonely I really was.

  “Fuck,” I groaned. My elbow thudded against my desk and I leaned my forehead on my hand for a moment before smoothing back my hair and letting out a long sigh.

  The truth of it was—I was tired of being alone. What Sarah did tore me up, but something about Juliet called to me.

  I had no idea if I could survive another heartbreak. As I dug my cell out of my jacket and typed in Juliet’s number, I realized I was willing to find out.

  Our brief conversation arranging the date was as painfully awkward as our first conversation had been. Even so, she seemed happy to hear from me and—dare I even think it—excited enough to admit that she was free that night.

  I wasn’t happy about the short notice. That gave me three hours to get showered and dressed, figure out where the hell to take her, and to freak the fuck out a little. I ended up doing the final bit on the drive to the address she texted me and I was damn certain that she’d be able to see how frazzled I was when she opened the door.

  I checked my appearance in the mirror before I got out of the car, frowning at the sight. Would people mistake me for her father? I had definitely aged during my marriage—even more so after the divorce. Insecurity wasn’t something I had much of, but this nagging feeling was too strong to ignore.

  I growled and shoved the visor back up, irritated at myself. I forced myself to imagine that I was back in my twenties or early thirties, hoping that it’d give me back some of my usual confidence.

  I may have aged since then, but I was still aware that I looked damn good for a man of forty-two. Juliet wouldn’t have agreed to a date with me if she hadn’t thought so.

  Unless she’s after the same thing Sarah was, I thought as I rang the doorbell.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered, trying and failing to shove the thought away. If there was one thing that would ruin the date, it’d be comparing her to my ex-wife and indulging in my paranoia all night. I couldn’t do it. I had to—

  The door swung open and my mouth went dry, my negative thoughts disintegrating in an instant.

  Her dark brown hair was curled and while she wore very little makeup, her lips were painted a pale pink. The simple black dress she wore wasn’t revealing, but it was just tight enough on her curves to make me desperate to see more. Her legs were visible and led down to reveal her sexy heels. She was fairly tall for a woman already, and the extra inches must have put her just over six feet tall. It was a rare treat for me not to have to arch the hell out of my neck while looking down at a woman.

  She was so damn beautiful.

  “Hi,” she said nervously while I stared at her like a fucking creep.

  I cleared my throat and offered her an uneasy smile, hoping I hadn’t already given her a weird vibe.

  “Hey.”

  She made a slight gesture with her hand and I jolted—stepping back to give her room to step out onto the porch.

  “Sorry about that. I, uh... I get in the way a lot.”

  “I can see that,” she said with a playful tone. “But it’s okay.”

  She hesitated while locking the door, her key partially inserted as she looked up at me with a question in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You didn’t say where we were going and you’re dressed... like that,” she gestured to my sport coat and dress slacks, then back to herself. “Is this okay?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  My head cocked to the side as I regarded her reaction, but I frowned when she suddenly looked uncomfortable. I had no idea what I’d done, but I wasn’t all that surprised. It’d been a long damn time since I been on a legitimate date. I was bound to screw up a couple times.

  “So... are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Oh. Oh! I—oh shit, I thought...” I trailed off, not willing to say that I had convinced myself she was about to turn tail and run. “I thought we’d have dinner and go from there.”

  She nodded before locking her front door and I could have laughed from the ridiculous amount of relief I felt. I managed to subdue it with just a smile as I silently led her to my car, opening the passenger door for her before going around to the driver’s side.

  “Wow,” she said after I buckled my seatbelt. “This is nice.”

  “Thanks. You like cars?”

  “Enough to know a Maserati when I see one,” she said with a soft laugh before she curiously asked, “What do you do for a living?”

  I turned over the engine and it roared to life before settling back to a low purr. Her fingertips trailed over the dashboard and I could tell she was doing it in curiosity, not in an attempt to tease. Yet I could feel my own motor revving as I imagined those curious fingertips trailing over my—

  “Ethan?”

  I hummed and jerked my head toward her, noting the alarm on her face. I softened my expression, but the mental image of her hand snaking into my pants wouldn’t leave no matter how hard I tried.

  Her tongue darted out to moisten her pink lips—a nervous tick, I realized—and my dick twitched in my slacks.

  It’d been way too long since I had sex. It was going to be a long fucking night.

  “What was the question?”

  “I asked what you do for work.”

  “I’m the CEO of Adam’s Gym.” When her eyebrows raised in mild disbelief, I continued. “I started out by owning a single gym after I retired from bodybuilding. We got so popular I was forced to open a second just to keep up with demand. Word traveled and before I knew it—I was running a corporation. That’s pretty much all I do now. I handle all the boring crap like management and marketing from our main office. I don’t do anything in the actual gym anymore, unfortunately.”

  “Doesn’t Adam’s also make products?”

  “Yeah. That was kind of by accident.”

  “How so?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say that she didn’t need to pretend to be interested in my work—that I’d be perfectly happy discussing something she wanted to talk about—when I turned away from the road for just long enough to catch sight of her enraptured expression. I didn’t know whether she was fascinated in general or if it was something more insidious, but I pushed my paranoia to the side for the time being.

  After all, it’d been a long time since someone looked so genuinely interested in me. Whether she was faking it or not—I was going to indulge in the opportunity.

  “I never intended to do anything besides expand the gyms. A buddy of mine started up a small company specializing in protein powder and did fairly well, but his wife passed away and he was left raising his kids alone. When he mentioned selling his company so he could have more time with them, I bought it. Mainly because I wanted to help him out, but it turned out being a good business move.”

  “Wow. That was really nice of you. I didn’t know people actually did stuff like that.”

  I shrugged. “Quite a lot of people do stuff to help out others.”

  “Not like that, though.”

  “I had the means to do that for my friend, but most people would never make enough money to help someone on that kind of scale. I don’t think it’s fair to compare one good deed to another. Anyone who does some good with what they have—however little it ma
y be—is a good person in my book.”

  When it got deathly quiet in the car, I wondered if I had said something wrong and silently cursed at myself for thoughtlessly droning on. I was thankful I had the road to focus on instead of having to stare directly at her. God only knew what she must have been thinking.

  Had I said something like that in front of the boys at my gym, they would’ve laughed and called me a pussy behind my back.

  Never to my face, though. Nobody was that fucking stupid.

  “You’re a sweet guy,” Juliet said, breaking the silence. “I’m really glad you asked me out.”

  Well that was… unexpected. I cast a glance at her profile, trying to determine whether she really meant it or was just buttering me up. I couldn’t spot any evidence of a lie in the brief look at her face I got, but it was hard to say in the darkness of the car.

  I had no choice but to hope she was being real. It’s not like she’d really given me a reason to be wary.

  She’s not Sarah.

  “You’ve got my sister-in-law to thank for that,” I muttered after Layla’s voice echoed in my mind. “But I’m glad as well.”

  I could hear Juliet shifting on the leather, turning toward me as she said, “She seems… fun.”

  A bark of laughter escaped and I shook my head. “Oh, man. I guess that’s one way to phrase it.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  “No, I do. I like her a lot and I guess she is fun. But she’s also a handful. Real good at pushing people into doing shit they’d rather not do.”

  “So would you have rather not asked me out?”

  “No!” I exclaimed, snapping my head to her and relaxing when I saw the teasing smile that graced her lips. “But uh… I would have preferred to do it on my terms.”

  A beat passed before she asked, “Would you have asked if she didn’t push you to?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “I’m not really into dating.”

  “Bad break-up?”

  “Putting it mildly,” I confirmed with a grunt before jerking my chin toward the windshield. “Do you have a preference for dinner?”

  “Nope. As long as it’s not Edelman’s.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  3

  The rest of the drive was fairly quiet and so was the first half of dinner. It didn’t bother me in the slightest—it gave me more time to quietly study her features and mannerisms as we made idle small talk and ate.

  After our plates were cleared and our second glasses of wine were polished off, the silence came to a grinding halt. Because once the alcohol had cast out the last remaining bit of awkward tension—Juliet opened up.

  And by opened up I mean started talking. And she didn’t fucking stop.

  To anyone else, it might have been annoying. But I’d always been better at listening and I found her giddy babbling absolutely adorable.

  “So after we finally got here—and the drive from Colorado is no joke, seriously—it turned out that my friend didn’t know anyone in Florida let alone Miami and we were totally out of cash because we spent it all on gas. It was rough, but that’s ultimately how I ended up working as a waitress.”

  “At Edelman’s?”

  “No, it was a small diner just on the outskirts of the city. We moved further in and I started working at Edelman’s when Jamie got accepted to Miami University.”

  “And you? You didn’t want to go?”

  Her smile dropped and I caught myself wishing I could go back in time just to stop myself from saying those words. Even though I had the inexplicable urge to know everything about her—even the rough spots—I didn’t want to sully our first date with anything that made her sad.

  “Just wasn’t meant to be, you know?” she asked with a little shrug. She smiled once again, but it didn’t come close to reaching her eyes. “Maybe one day.”

  I wanted to ask why it didn’t work out that way. I wanted to ask what she wanted to go to school for. I wanted to ask about her hopes and dreams and where she saw herself in two years and five years and ten years and if she could even imagine me being in the picture that far off.

  Instead of any of those things, I simply asked, “You want to go for a walk?”

  The smile was back and I felt like I could breathe again.

  We were so close to the beach that it seemed pointless to walk anywhere else. I found a parking spot and took her hand as I led the way through the darkness down to the sand, pausing to let her slip her heels off before we made our way toward the crashing sound of the waves.

  “A moonlit walk on the beach, huh? That’s a pretty romantic move for a man who doesn’t date much.”

  “Well I’m a pretty romantic guy,” I said with a shrug, grinning when I heard her soft laugh. “Among other things.”

  She sucked her lower lip between her teeth to keep from either laughing or speaking. I didn’t particularly care which—my dick was happy with the sight either way. At the same time, the movement made me think of Sarah even though I desperately tried not to. She just looked so young. Before we went any further, I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with here.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six,” she said as she attempted to keep her hair out of her eyes when the wind picked up. “What about you?”

  I was too surprised by her answer to reply to her question right away. I raised my eyebrows and asked, “Twenty-six? Seriously? You don’t look it.”

  She chuckled. “How old do I look?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I had you pegged as twenty-three max.”

  Twenty-three just happened to be the age Sarah was when our marriage started falling apart. I really needed to stop trying to compare them. It was going to either drive me insane or push Juliet away.

  “Well, thanks. I think,” she added with a confused little laugh. “And since you never answered, my guess for you would be…” she trailed off and hummed to herself as she studied my face. “Thirty-five.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You flatter me, doll. Try forty-two.”

  “You don’t look it,” she parroted back with a smile.

  “Thank you.”

  She began walking once more and I fell in line beside her. She didn’t seem to realize that I was watching her intently while she glanced around at the beach and the stars.

  When she finally glanced back and saw me staring, her smile faltered.

  “What?”

  “Does it bother you? My age.”

  She stopped walking again, cocking her head to the side as she thought about it. I held my breath as I waited, relieved beyond all explanation when she shrugged.

  “Nope. And I assure you—it’s not because I have daddy issues or anything. My father and I had a great relationship.”

  “Had?”

  “He passed away when I was fifteen.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Though I guess I’m glad to hear you had a good relationship with him. Family is important.”

  “It is. I talk to my mom for a few hours every week. Kind of a Sunday ritual we have.”

  “Siblings?”

  “Nah. I do have a stepbrother now. We’ve only met a handful of times so we’re not exactly close, but still. He lives in Colorado with my mom and his dad.”

  She spoke more about her hometown as we turned around and made our way back to the car and I told her about my own family in return. When we got back to the lot and I saw there were only two cars left, I realized it was far later than I thought.

  The two of us lingered at the trunk of my car where I hesitated to release her hand. I stole a glance at the face of my watch and let out a low gust of breath, giving her an apologetic smile when she frowned.

  “It’s past midnight.”

  “Really?” she asked, her eyes going wide with disbelief. “Wow. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.”

  “That it does.”

  I might not have dated for a while, but I did recognize the look o
n her face. She was waiting for me to make a move—to offer to extend the date by inviting her back to my place. She was waiting for it. She wanted it.

  And fuck, I wanted it, too. I wanted it bad.

  Which is exactly why I decided not to make the move.

  “I like you. Hell, I like you a lot more than I probably should this early on.”

  There was just enough light from the moon for me to see her cheeks tint with a blush and a shy little smile tug at her lips. Damn it, she was going to crack my resolve to do this right.

  “I like you, too, Ethan.”

  “Which is why I’m going to take you home now.”

  Her lips parted in surprise and she blinked a number of times before she whispered, “Oh. Okay.”

  I swallowed around the lump in my throat and ignored the way my body screamed to take it back—to take her to my bed and feel her warmth beneath me as I pounded into her.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to take you to my place. Because I really fucking want to,” I ground out, smirking when she sucked in a shaky breath. “But I think I want to get to know you more as a person before getting to know you like that. Does that make sense?”

  The weird part was I truly did want to know her—and it wasn’t just because I was worried about repeating the mistake of being blinded by great sex.

  “It does,” she confirmed with a nod, her shy smile melting into something that looked almost like adoration. “And I’d like to get to know you more as well. In whatever kind of way you want.”

  Jesus, this woman was going to kill me. I couldn’t recall a woman ever looking at me quite like Juliet did. It took all my willpower not to show my gratitude by sitting her on the trunk of my car and burying my face between her legs.

  Instead, I opted for a more traditional first date ritual—at least from what I’d heard. I took a step closer, once again grateful that she was a little taller than the average woman. The crane of my neck was far more manageable as I brought my lips to hers.

  My intention was to kiss her softly, but when a quiet moan slipped past her lips, my plan was blown to hell. An insatiable sense of urgency took hold and I gripped her hips tightly, groaning at the sound of her muffled gasp against my lips when I hauled her up tight against my body. She clawed at my shoulders for balance as our lips clashed together hungrily.