Breaking the Ice

Chapter 23

23

“Okay, spill. I want to know every dirty detail.”

“Oh Bec, remind me to never listen to you ever again.”

“You chickened out?”

“No. I wish I had.”

“Good lord. Okay… start at the beginning.”

“Let’s just say that his success rate took its first hit last night.”

“You couldn’t come?”

“Something like that.”

“Was he bad? Surely not? The man looks like he invented the G-spot.”

“No. He was amazing. I, on the other hand, was not.”

“Let me guess. You insisted on doing it with the lights off and obsessed about your body.”

Bec knew her too well. “Have you seen the women Nick usually dates?”

“He was with you, wasn’t he?”

“But… why? I order from the dessert menu first.”

Bec sighed. “How come you can sleep with guys who are so wrong for you with no issues and when someone so right comes along you let your insecurities screw everything up?”

“Because they may be wrong but they’re attainable. It’s okay for you Bec. You’ve always had a gorgeous figure and found your soul mate early. Women like me know the pecking order. Nick is not in my pecking order.”

“That is such crap.” Bec’s voice was loaded with exasperation. “Why can’t you see he is totally hot for you?”

“Why can’t you see he’s not?”

“I repeat, he was with you, wasn’t he?”

“It was my birthday. He probably felt sorry for me.”

“Okay, fine I give up.” Bec huffed. “What are you going to say to him when you see him at work today?”

“Nothing. I’m not going.”

“Ahh. Avoidance. Very mature.”

“I thought so.”

Nick answered the bookshop phone on its second ring. “Hello, Birdie’s, this is Nick.” There was silence on the other end. “Hello?” More silence but… he had a feeling. “Sam? Is that you?”

“I… I’m not coming in today.”

Nick sighed. He’d texted her a couple of times since last night and had almost knocked on her door this morning to check on her but had figured he’d be seeing her soon enough anyway.

Apparently not.

“You know you’re going to have to face me sooner or later.”

“Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

Nick blinked as she hung up in his ear. Okay. He could give her a day. She’d been mortified last night and was obviously still feeling it this morning. He on the other hand was… bemused. Over the years he had honed his sexual technique to make women scream, beg and forget their own names.

He’d never made one bolt from the room before it was over.

Did he want a chance to correct that? For sure. But mostly he just wanted to assure her that it was okay. That it wasn’t her fault. Not to mention he had a thousand personalized Post-it notes wrapped up in a bow.

Tomorrow. He’d give them to her tomorrow. Unfortunately, Samantha had other ideas.

“Hello, Birdie’s, this is Nick.”

“Hey…”

“Hey.”

“I won’t be in again, today.”

“ Sam. ”

“I’m not well… really.”

Nick gripped the phone. “We need to talk.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow, I promise.”

“You’d better be or I’m going to kick your door down and drag you here.”

Nick paced around the shop. She was five minutes late. He made himself a coffee. Ten minutes now. He picked up the phone and called her number. It went to her voicemail which beeped. “Sam, if you don’t get your ass down here in the next ten minutes I’m coming up.”

The door opened as he was putting the phone in the cradle and his eyes met hers across the space. She looked discomforted but… normal and he heaved an internal sigh of relief. He’d been worried about her.

“Nick,” she said, still standing in the doorway.

“Sam.”

There were a few more seconds of staring before she moved, entering the shop and walking briskly to the back room, avoiding eye contact as she passed him by. Nick drew in a steady breath and followed, leaning into the door frame as she stashed her bag and futzed around. She was in her usual jeans and T-shirt, her hair loose and he had to force a mental gate shut to stop thinking about how good her hair had looked fanned out on his sheets.

“So… are we going to talk about what happened or are we going to ignore it and pretend it didn’t? Like the alley. And the elevator.”

Glancing at him, she nodded, an expression of resignation setting her mouth into a straight line. “Of course. Can I go first?”

“Shoot.”

“I’m sorry about the other night. I’m not usually such a… tease and I shouldn’t have let it happen. It was the wine and the birthday, but I don’t want it to be awkward between us so do you think we could just file this under stupidity and forget it?”

She wanted to forget it ? No fucking way could he forget any aspect of that night. From meeting Bec all the way through to hearing her moan when he was deep inside her. “Nope. Not until I know what the hell happened. I mean, one minute you were there, and the next you were running away.”

She blew out a breath. “I told you that I found climaxing difficult.”

“Sam.” Nick strode into the room because he didn’t want to have this conversation with so much space between them. “You were a nanosecond away from climaxing .”

“I don’t know about a nanosecond…”

“You were close. And then you lost it. You started to think. ”

She blasted him with a glare. “So, I shouldn’t think?”

“Not during sex, no.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “The thinking part comes beforehand. Then it’s all sensations and emotions. You give yourself up to a higher power. You don’t think. You just feel.”

“Well.” Samantha folded her arms, clearly annoyed. “I happen to think sex is highly intellectual.”

“Sure. Agreed. The brain is the body’s biggest sexual organ, blah blah blah. But it can also be your worst enemy. Look, I don’t mean to sound conceited, but I know women and I can read their body language and their responses really well. And I know if you’d just let go, it would have been a birthday you’ll never forget. But you seemed to be… fighting it. Where the hell did you go to, Sam?”

Her stormy gray gaze held his for long moments before her arms dropped and she huffed out a breath. “You wouldn’t understand,” she murmured as she crossed to the sink and leaned her ass against it, her hands sliding onto the edge.

“Try me.”

“I was close.” She paused as if searching for the right words. “And it was… amazing. And I was thinking how good you were at it and the next thing I was wondering how many women you must have been with to be that good and then I started thinking about the types of women you went out with and you had this handful of my ass and a voice inside was shit talking about me being the biggest woman you’ve ever been with and then I started to lose it and then I started to worry that I was taking too long and I couldn’t get back on track… I just couldn’t.”

“Oh Sam…” He covered the distance between them in three paces, stopping a hand’s breadth away. “What do I have to do, or say to convince you that I think your body is great? That it turns me on? Even drunk and vomiting in the toilet, it turns me on.”

“Your pattern with women says otherwise.”

“Okay. Yes, I’ve been photographed with less curvy women and even dated a few, particularly in my rookie years when everything was new and exciting. But I’m thirty-eight years old and not with any of them. And do you know why? Because going out to a meal with them is a fucking nightmare.”

“No dessert menu?”

Nick smiled. “Oh hell no. You, on the other hand, are much more interesting to be with. You don’t order lettuce or egg white anything and you love dessert and we talk about everything . You’re smart and sexy and funny and I wanted to give you amazing sex the other night because you deserve it and I think about it all the time.”

Nick stalled at the frank admission, not quite believing it had come out of his mouth. But then he figured screw it . Every word was true. He didn’t regret it. She, on the other hand, was looking a little like a stunned mullet.

“Say something,” he said after a long pause.

But Samantha didn’t get the chance as the door dinged and Dulcie and Kelly burst into the shop with a startling announcement.

“They’re closing down Martha’s Teahouse.”