Infatuation. Alison Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ had grown up in such a neighborhood. Good people, living and loving paycheck to paycheck, hoping the life they were able to provide their kids would be enough. It had been for Rennie. The summer vacations, the balancing of school and athletics and work, the nightly dinners at seven. The holiday celebrations that included his father’s employees and their families—from salesmen to secretaries to grease monkeys—along with the extended Bergen clan.

      It had been an insular world of tightly woven bonds, but growing up in that atmosphere had given him an appreciation for men willing to get their hands dirty while taking care of their own. His first real exposure to the flip side hadn’t come until his freshman year in college.

      While his parents had paid what they could of his fees and tuition, he’d held down a job to pay the rest along with his room and board. Living on campus had been easier than spending valuable study time commuting from home when he worked so close to the school.

      But his first-year roommate, Derek Randall, one of the privileged and wealthy big men on campus, had been all about paying other men to do his dirty work while taking care of himself. And Derek’s girlfriend, Milla Page…

      Rennie shoved off the water and yanked enough paper towels from the dispenser to dry his arms up to his elbows. Derek hadn’t been a bad guy, just from a world Rennie hadn’t been used to. The fact that they’d butted heads so often had been only the tip of the iceberg Rennie had eventually faced, trying to fit in with that crowd before realizing the futility of the effort.

      He’d made his way in the world, and then he’d come home, belonging here, comfortable here, employing men who shared his background and his belief that there was no such thing as a job that was too dirty when a little muscle and degreaser made cleanup a breeze. Still, he had to admit it was a hell of a lot more fun working for the man when he was the man and was rolling in a big fat pile of greenbacks.

      “Yo, Ren,” Hector hollered. “Today just ain’t your day, man. Angie called up from the showroom. Some blonde’s here to see you.”

      Rennie tossed the towels in the trash and glanced at Hector who stood in the doorway of the office. The long-time Bergen Motors’ employee was Rennie’s right hand man. “This blonde got a name? Better yet. Did she bring me a rust-free frame?”

      “She didn’t even bring much in the way of a female frame, Angie’s saying.” Hector frowned as he listened to the other end of the phone conversation. “She’s like a stick figure with white skin and white hair, and eyes like big green double spoke rims. Her name is—”

      “Milla,” Rennie said, swallowing hard as his gut drew up into the knot of fiery emotions he hadn’t felt in years. “Her name is Milla Page.”

      2

      SHE LOOKED exactly as he remembered. She’d always been slender; it had been an ongoing source of inside jokes, fearing she would snap in a strong wind, be whipped about on the bay’s waves like driftwood, float on a bank of misty fog. That she would break in two if he wasn’t gentle when they made love.

      She’d disabused him of that notion quite forcefully and quite often—often enough that those memories were the first to come to mind when he should have remembered that everything between them had been a lie. Instead, all he could think about was the sex.

      She didn’t say anything, just stood in front of him, her feet primly together in shoes he knew cost what was a month’s rent for Hector, Angie and Jin. He didn’t hold it against her. Milla Page was who she was.

      He could tell by the way she clenched and unclenched her fingers around the handle of her funky purple purse that he’d been standing and staring way too long.

      She was uncomfortable; he gave her the benefit of the doubt, deciding it wasn’t the fault of the neighborhood as much as it was seeing him again.

      It probably didn’t help that Angie sat behind the receptionist station punching buttons on the switchboard console, transferring calls and paging salesmen, glancing back and forth between them while neither one said a word.

      So Rennie forced a smile and motioned Milla forward, leading the way across the sales floor to the customer lounge, listening for her soft steps to fall behind him. He grabbed a foam cup from the corner table’s stack and poured himself a coffee from the pot on the warmer. Milla shook her head when he offered to pour one for her.

      “Still prefer lattes?” he asked, now a fan himself though in a pinch of nerves sludge would do.

      “Yes, but right now I don’t think I could swallow anything,” she replied in that voice that still slid over him like the honey she’d loved…so sticky, so sweet, so warm on her tongue.

      He nearly choked as he knocked back a slug of the caffeine. He was already wired to the gills and hardly in need of the jolt, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do. And he wouldn’t be able to figure that out until he knew what she was doing here.

      Why it had taken her six years to look him up.

      Why she appeared ready to bolt.

      Why he cared when he’d sworn to wipe her from his mind.

      Curiosity got the better of his self-made promise. He gestured toward the row of chairs on her right. “Sit. Please.”

      She did as he’d asked, or rather as he’d ordered her, choosing the seat closest to where she stood and settling onto the edge. She held her purse tightly in her lap.

      Her knuckles stood out like bleached bones beneath translucent skin. Her smile seemed forced and fragile, and that made him groan.

      No matter her size, Milla Page was the least fragile woman he’d ever known. If anything, she was unbreakable. Untouchable. Unyielding. And he shouldn’t be feeling responsible for the change.

      He moved closer, choosing to leave only one seat between them and angling his body to the side. He liked the idea of the space between them being more for show than effect. He wanted to see if after all this time he could still make her sweat.

      Or if there was more to her emotional state than a simple case of nerves. “I guess this is where we do the small talk thing. Unless you want to skip the catching up and just tell me why you’re here.”

      “I happened—”

      He cut her off with a shake of his head and a laugh that was harsh. “Nope. I don’t buy that you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

      He watched as she struggled not to snap back. Her eyes, as always, gave her away. “What I was going to say was that I happened across your business card.”

      “So you’re here to buy a car?” The more likely scenario was that she was here to see for herself that he really hadn’t come up in the world.

      But she shook her head, surprising him by admitting, “I’m here to see you.”

      He grunted, slumped back in his chair. Did she know about his show? Had she come thinking to cash in on his celebrity? Was his financial portfolio more to her liking than had been his empty pockets in college?

      “It surprised me…seeing your name like that…I hadn’t thought of you in years—” She caught herself, her mouth clamping shut on her words. She shook off whatever it was she’d been thinking, СКАЧАТЬ