After Midnight Read online

  She made another sound, a half hum, almost a whimper, and lifted her face to him, an echo of that moment last year when the numbers had fallen off the clock too slowly.

  This kiss was different. Tender, contemplative. It made him ache, not only in the sex-starved rock-hard parts, but all through. He wanted to get her out of here so he could make love to her, slow and sweet. Or hard and fast against a wall. That would work, too, and he was sure she’d be amenable to either. Or both. Both would be good.

  When he released her, she smiled at him, her big, buoyant, nothing-held-back smile.

  “I’ve never liked New Year’s,” he said. “I’ve always thought of it as a liar’s holiday.”

  “Really?”

  “Everyone makes resolutions they won’t keep, also known as lies. But New Year’s is growing on me as a holiday, I gotta say.”

  She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, “I’m wearing the red lace boy shorts.”

  “Did I mention how much I adore New Year’s?” He slid a hand up her thigh until his fingers met the lace hem of her shorts. “Nora. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I think that’s an excellent plan.”

  He followed her into a single compartment of the revolving door and crowded against her, making her giggle. They tumbled out into the night. She slipped her hand into his, and he twirled her, drawing her close for another kiss, the heat of her mouth a contrast to the cold air that slid under their clothes. It was hard to think about anything other than the satiny feel of Nora’s thigh where the red lace lay. Or the heat he’d been able to feel even from that distance. Or what a long, leisurely time he would spend tonight reacquainting himself with her.

  “Let’s get you someplace warm,” he said.

  They hurried along the street toward the T station.

  “You’re wrong about New Year’s, you know,” she said.

  He tilted his head quizzically.

  “Of course we’re going to screw up and fail to keep our resolutions. We know that. But we bother to make them, anyway. Because we have faith we can be better people. And we can. Not perfect people. But better people.”

  She knocked the wind out of him sometimes. By being in a room. By saying what was on her mind. She left him breathless and winded and twice as alive.

  He tugged her hand to stop her and kissed her again, because it was the best way to show her.

  And he left her breathless.

  Good. That was only fair.

  He stroked her hair. “If I hang around a few months, do you think you could try to explain to me why I shouldn’t hate Valentine’s Day so much?”

  She shuddered. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the mention of the holiday. “No one can redeem Valentine’s Day.”

  “Give it a shot, will you?”

  She put her arms around him and rested her face in the crook of his shoulder. She felt right there, as if she belonged perfectly. “Hell, yes.”

  Above them, noise exploded from a few open windows, a cacophony of shouts and horns.

  “Happy New Year,” he said.

  “Happy New Year.”

  Across the Boston sky, fireworks scattered like the craziest constellation of stars he’d ever seen. And he kissed her to welcome midnight and the New Year, all the New Years.

  Epilogue

  Miles stood on the curb outside Nora’s U-Haul, shaking his head. “Nora?”

  “Yes?” She struggled up the front walk of his house, clutching two twenty-gallon totes, one stacked on top of the other. Possibly it had been an ill-advised, overachieving idea, but she’d gotten tired of watching Miles carry all the heavy stuff.

  “What’s this?”

  She set down the totes. He had unloaded Rory from the truck, his yarn mane looking more scraggly than usual. “It’s an old-fashioned rocking horse. Rory was mine when I was little. He was in my mom’s house, but she said I had to take him or she would throw him out, so I picked it up on my way.”

  He crossed his arms and gave her a mock frown. “You understand this is a deal breaker. There is no room in my house for an old-fashioned rocking horse.”

  She almost enjoyed that grim, serious face of his, even in jest. She saw it so infrequently these days, and it reminded her delightfully of their first New Year’s Eve. “I stood by you in your time of need. I think you can cut me the slack for my rocking horse.”

  “I think it might be easier to live with an embezzler than with this guy.” But he gave Rory’s real leather saddle a fond pat, and she knew he was sold. He hoisted Rory overhead and strode past her with an ain’t-no-thang ease, flexing an assortments of muscles in his back and shoulders and nearly causing her to drop her own excessive armful.

  Recently he’d started to joke about his lost year. About his flirtation with imprisonment. About how easily he’d adopted the criminal mantle. He whispered to her sometimes that he thought he was secretly more Moriarty than Holmes, more Cigarette Man than Mulder and Scully.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she’d whispered back. “But if you want, you can be Mulder and I’ll be Scully.”

  In early March, Miles’s executive assistant had finally been charged with embezzlement, and a few weeks after that, Miles had started back to work. The first month had been hard for him. He’d worried that people at work still secretly believed he was guilty, that he’d lost credibility with his employees, that he wouldn’t be able to lead the way he once had. His worry had made him tentative, and it had briefly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But he’d turned it around, showing up at work one morning with a day’s worth of team-building exercises that put him back on terra firma.

  That weekend, when he’d flown to Boston to see Nora, he firmly asserted his leadership in bed with her, too. She remembered that weekend with great fondness.

  Somehow, without intending to, she’d sat down on one of the twenty-gallon totes to rest. Miles’s house looked beautiful. He’d repainted it recently—he’d been keeping up with the home-improvement projects on the few weekends this winter and spring they hadn’t managed to be together—and it was a pale gray with navy shutters. Along the front walk, pink and peach roses had begun to bloom, the oaks and ash and hickory in full leaf overhead. Beat the hell out of her Boston apartment. And . . . well, there was Miles, of course. Miles, maker of the world’s neatest sandwiches, giver of the world’s best oral sex, purveyor, these days, of the world’s most potent grins. Also, listener extraordinaire. He talked a lot more than he used to, but when he listened, he listened with undivided, almost disturbingly focused attention. She felt as if she were the only human being on earth.

  Miles poked his head out of the truck. “You still have milk crates.” He emerged fully with a white milk crate in each hand, shaking his head.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time for you to own real furniture?”

  “I’ve moved almost every two years since I graduated from college. Never seemed worth it.”

  “Well, you’re not moving again.”

  He set the moving crates down and came to put his arms around her. She felt his lips move along the edge of her hairline, where he especially liked to kiss her. Tingles raced up and down her spine, out her arms and legs, to the ends of her fingers and toes. “Mmm. No. I’m not moving again.” From this spot, she thought.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Every night.”

  For months they’d had to suffer impatiently through the week, then deal with goodbyes on Sunday night. Now that was over. “Every night,” she agreed happily.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, and finally her mouth, a sweet, slick flirtation with abandoning the whole idea of unpacking the truck. His hand slid down her back and scooped under her ass, drawing her close.

&nbs
p; He groaned. “God. That was a bad idea.”

  “But now you can set boxes down on your boner and use less arm strength.”

  “You’re really bad, you know that?” But he was grinning so hugely she couldn’t do anything but grin back at him. “Let’s get this thing done so we can grab dinner and go to bed early.”

  “Amen to that.”

  And Miles to go before I sleep. The first thing she’d thought when she heard his name, a year and a half ago.

  They had flown thousands of miles to be together. Traveled real and imagined geography, bridged gaps, covered and possessed immeasurable territory. They’d collapsed the universe to the size of the space between their bodies, the shrinking distance between their lives. They’d made promises out of tentative resolutions.

  I have promises to keep.

  She’d sleep here tonight, and the night after that, and the night after that, and all the nights the future held, his lean strength curled around her, his breath at her ear, his heart beating hard at her back.

  Thank you so much for reading After Midnight! If you enjoyed spending time with Miles and Nora, you’ll love the couples in my Returning Home series, four stories about wounded veterans finding their way back to life and love.

  * * *

  Start with Jake and Mira’s book, Hold On Tight, about a badly wounded hero, the woman he never stopped craving, and the son he didn’t know he had.

  * * *

  Find HOLD ON TIGHT here.

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from HOLD ON TIGHT.

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  Excerpt from Hold On Tight

  Mira Shipley watched her son, Sam, through the window of the physical therapist’s office. He was frowning as the PT explained something. His seven-year-old forehead was wrinkled under too much hair, his skinny body stork-like in shorts and a T-shirt. He needed a haircut and socks that fit and probably, as usual, to have his fingernails cleaned and trimmed. When she’d lived with her parents, she hadn’t fully appreciated how much they took care of. Now all the tasks of a single mom were hers and hers alone.

  She wished she were in the office with him, but the physical therapist had asked her to stay in the waiting room. Watching Sam from a distance made Mira feel deeply, peculiarly, tender, some vestige of the way she’d felt when she’d stood outside the newborn nursery and watched him through the glass. That one’s mine. I made him. And now I have to keep him safe. She’d been alone with him in the world, terrified—having no idea how to change a diaper or administer a bath or soothe that spazzy, overstimulated crying he’d launched into at five p.m. on his fourth day of life, a pattern that would continue for ten solid weeks.

  She could smile now, thinking of it, of walking the halls of her parents’ house with Sam swaddled tightly to her chest. Of the small, exhausted sighs Sam emitted when he finally dropped into sleep. Of the way he’d nestled against her on the bed as he’d nursed in the early morning. They hadn’t done so badly, she and Sam. Not at all. They were a good team, and they’d get through this crazy summer, too.

  Of course, she hadn’t felt at all tender toward him in the car on the way here as he’d griped about physical therapy. She wanted to say, You should have thought of that before you climbed that spindly tree. What did you think was going to happen?

  Even if Sam had been able to predict that the branch—half the diameter of his absurdly thin wrists—would snap, he wouldn’t have been able to foresee all the consequences of his risk-taking. He’d hurt his shoulder, arm, and knee, earning himself a couple of weeks of physical therapy. And disqualifying him from going to summer camp.

  Now she had no place for him to go while she worked.

  She and Sam had just moved out of her parents’ house in Florida, where they’d been living for the last seven years. Under their roof, she hadn’t had to work. They’d paid Sam’s medical bills, supported them both. Now she and Sam were living in Seattle, where she’d been born and raised, and they had no one to depend on but themselves.

  That was how she wanted it.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Behind the plate-glass window, Sam stretched a giant red rubber band while his therapist, a thin woman with gray hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail, corrected his form. Mira was supposed to have started work Monday, but they’d granted her an extra week to find childcare. Now it was Friday, and she was due to plant her butt in her office chair on Monday, but luckily, yesterday she’d finally interviewed and hired a sitter. Penny had been charming, articulate, and a big hit with Sam, who wasn’t always the easiest kid to win over. For the first time since Mira had unrolled sleeping bags on the floor of their new house, she felt like she had all the pieces of her new life—her fabulous, independent new life—in place.

  The door of the office swung open and a man stepped in. He went to the check-in desk and spoke in a low voice to the woman there, then came into the waiting area. The slightest hesitation in his step drew her eye downward. One of his legs was prosthetic—an expensive gray running shoe was fitted with a slim shank of metal ankle that thickened to a robotic calf and knee. She tried not to stare—at either the prosthetic or his flesh-and-blood calf, which was lean, well-muscled, and covered with golden curls.

  Nice.

  She made herself look away, feeling vaguely guilty for wondering what had happened and how he felt about it. Even though she wanted to look again, she wouldn’t let herself.

  But she peeked. He wore nylon hiking shorts with a red plaid short-sleeved shirt, untucked. Slim hips and waist, nicely sculpted posterior, broad chest and hunky shoulders.

  Very, very nice.

  He made his way over to a chair and sat down on a diagonal from her. Even in her peripheral vision, she could see that he’d taken over the seat like an alpha male—knees apart, leaning back casually. This is what I’ve got to offer, baby. I’m so good, I don’t even have to convince you.

  Sadly, the posture worked on her. But it was somehow at odds with her expectation, and she chastised herself. What? He’s not allowed to be cocky because he has a prosthetic leg?

  Her phone buzzed in her back jeans pocket. Penny Dawson. Her life-saving babysitter.

  “Hello?”

  “Mira? It’s Penny. I’m so sorry to do this to you—”

  Oh, shit. Mira’s breath stopped. She couldn’t lose Penny. In her last conversation with her new boss, Haley had been patient but firm: “We can give you till Monday, but we need to know that we can depend on you. We need to know childcare isn’t going to be an ongoing issue.”

  Mira had moved across the country. She’d pulled up stakes, broken her parents’ hearts, and bet everything on herself. She needed her job.

  “I’m so sorry, Mira. I just got a permanent, full-time offer teaching at Broadview Montessori. Summer and school year.”

  A collection of desperate thoughts went through Mira’s head. Bribes, extravagant promises, a willingness to prostrate herself and beg.

  “Any chance you could watch Sam just next week?”

  “I’m sorry. I asked. They said no. They said they had another candidate who could start right away if I couldn’t.” Penny sounded wretched.

  So Mira would have to go back to the drawing board on babysitters. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could still find one for Monday. She swallowed hard. “It’s okay. That’s great about the new job. I’m really psyched for you. Of course you need to take it. You wouldn’t happen to have any ideas about who else could watch a smart, well-behaved seven-year-old for the summer—or even just next week—would you?”

  “I’m really sorry,” Penny said. “I wracked my brain this morning to try to think of someone who could do it. I even
called a few friends. I swear if I think of anyone, I will let you know.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate that.”

  “It was really nice to meet you. And Sam. If you ever need an evening sitter, or weekends—”

  “I’ll definitely call.”

  “And meantime, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you find someone, and I’ll call you if I think of anyone.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mira let the phone drop into her lap and took a deep breath.

  On the other side of the room, the cocky guy with the prosthetic leg shifted in his seat, drawing her gaze. Brown hair, on the longer side of short, uncombed. A couple of days’ unshaven scruff. Not her type; she liked professional men, clean-shaven. Her mind was about to dismiss him—a guy I ran into in the physical therapist’s office and wasn’t attracted to, but not because he was an amputee, just because he wasn’t my fantasy. But something made her look again.

  Holy shit. She knew that face. The strong jaw, the well-formed upper lip, the deep groove that ran vertically between his brows—

  She’d memorized his features in the few weeks they’d been together, the quick three-quarters way he smiled, like he couldn’t quite fully commit to happiness, the all-in truth of his smile when he gave himself over. The creases that formed when he frowned, the way his jaw set when something bothered him. That night at the lake—the last night—the look on his face when she’d taken off her clothes. Gratitude and longing and Who, me? For real?

  The night came back to her in sharp contrasts, pairs of impressions. The coolness of his wet skin and the heat of his body. The softness of his mouth moving over hers, over her breasts, and the hard tug of his suckling, the yank of desire she’d felt. The rich summer smells, green and overripe, and the clean soap scent of him. How open she’d felt, how boundary-less, melting, flowing, willing—and how her body had betrayed and frustrated her.