AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Delia was nodding, looking proud of herself. I’d been surprised when she’d handed all the literature to me, though I’d read it with interest. She knew me well, and she was right—having children might one day move higher on my list than having a relationship or a marriage. A family—however that happened—was the one thing I’d always known I wanted. As a kid I’d watched my friends with their parents in their perfect houses, their rooms decorated with Disney characters and stuffed animals. Mama Gi had done what she could for us, but she wasn’t our mother, and she wasn’t wealthy. She’d been present and stable—but she hadn’t been affectionate, and she couldn’t afford to be frivolous. I wanted everything I never had, and if it came from a sperm bank one day, I’d be okay with that.
“Aha,” Carl said, finally getting it. “The turkey baster route.”
“Hopefully there’ll be an actual man instead,” I said. I still couldn’t put Hale’s full lips and stone-cut jaw out of my mind, and something in me was desperate to talk about him. “And, actually, there kind of is, but he’s part of item number one, not number two. And definitely not number three.”
“Is he hot?” Delia’s grin widened.
“It doesn’t matter. This is a work thing. He might be able to help me develop StrokeStat for baseball—I told you guys about this a couple weeks ago, remember?”
“Think it’s gonna work?” Carl asked. Delia and Carl both worked in sports, and had been really interested in everything I’d told them about Cody Tech’s business. Delia coached track and field at Collin University nearby, and Carl was the athletic director there.
“I think it will,” I told him honestly. “But I need help, and I can’t go to anyone in development at Cody. This guy I met—his name is Hale—he used to work up there and he seems really smart.”
“So what’s the issue?” Delia asked.
“I’m just not sure I can trust him. And the whole situation is a little weird. He keeps showing up at work, hanging around the coffeehouse. But I don’t think he works there anymore.” I’d seen Hale entering or leaving the coffeehouse twice since he’d sat down and offered to help me, though he hadn’t lingered and I hadn’t invited him to.
Delia scrunched her nose but didn’t say anything.
“The barista seems to know him, though…I don’t know what to make of him, really.”
“You didn’t answer the first question,” Carl said. “Is he hot?”
I thought about the dark expressive eyes, the stone cut of his jaw, and the way Hale’s muscles challenged the fabric of his shirt. Muscles deep inside me tightened just in response to the thought of him. “Yeah, he’s hot.”
“Perfect,” Delia said. “You can knock out numbers one and two at the same time, then. You love efficiency!” She pointed a long finger at me.
I did love efficiency, but Hale was not part of my plan. I wasn’t sure what he was. “We’ll see,” I said. Whatever he was, he was hard to forget.
—
I wandered into the coffeehouse at six the next day. I’d vowed not to go down there, but I was starving again and tired of the same four cubicle walls upstairs. I ordered my sandwich and my flat white, and then settled in to work at my usual table. I glanced around, expecting to find Hale brooding at a table near the back, but the place was empty of scruffy T-shirt-clad mystery men. I tried to push down a swirl of disappointment. It was for the best.
When the bell above the door chimed an hour later, I was too absorbed to look up. But when the bench next to me depressed and the distinct scent of alcohol hit me, my eyes rose from my screen to find Hale sitting beside me.
“You’re working late again,” he said, his voice scraping something inside me that I wished wouldn’t respond to him at all.
“You smell like the inside of a distillery.” I dropped my eyes back to my screen, willing my heartbeat to slow down, my nerves to stop jumping around. I hated that I responded to him, when it was clear that was exactly what he was used to.
“Had to make a stop to visit a friend.”
“Is your friend named Jack Daniel’s?” Why was I encouraging this conversation?
He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. I scooted away from him, feigned extreme focus.
“I’ve been thinking more about your project, about StrokeStat,” he said. I couldn’t help the way my eyes jumped to his face, my interest undoubtedly clear. “I think you’re onto something.”
I blinked hard at him. I still hadn’t decided how to categorize him, or whether I could trust him. I was having trouble accepting that I was going to look for help from a guy who looked like he’d been finding most of his answers in a bottle, but I didn’t have a lot of options. “I already know that,” I told him, pulling my best bitchy tone from somewhere deep inside.
He smiled and for a second I caught a glimpse of pure handsome boyishness, but then the façade dropped back into place. Ambivalence, nonchalance, and arrogance beamed from the dark moody eyes.
I stared at my computer, focused all my energy on the screen before me. The screen where I was still stuck on one niggling aspect of my solution.
He leaned over, close enough that the whiskers of his too-long scruff tickled my cheek before I jumped away. He was peering at my screen, and for a split second, I let him before I slammed it shut. “Seriously?” I said.
“I think I know what you need,” he offered, a tone in his gravelly voice that made me think of things far removed from coffee and computers.
I stole a quick glance up. He’d sure as hell better be talking about my solution—shit, why did my blood rush at the thought that he might be talking about something else? Traitorous body. His eyes danced when I met them, clear for a moment of the darkness they’d held the few times I’d looked into them. “What’s that?”
