After Midnight Read online

  “He’d go out the window if he could.”

  They watched for a moment, but apparently the social awkwardness of fleeing the scene was stronger than his fear, because the curly-haired guy stayed put.

  Beside her, Miles shifted from one foot to the other, which brought his shoulder so it nearly touched hers. The little hairs on her bare arm stood at attention. Even they wanted to get closer to him.

  The heat in her body had started when she’d first felt his eyes on her. She was used to having men ogle her breasts, and mostly she ignored it. But she’d been checking out this guy before he began to stare at her. She’d seen him lurk as if the party were a spectator sport. He’d come in with the scruffy-looking blond guy, and he’d barely made conversation at all, had hung around the periphery, drinking beer and observing. He had sad eyes. Or maybe she had made that up because he was hot and she wanted to give him a dark artsy soul to go with his dark hair and dark eyes and slashed eyebrows and Christian Bale mouth.

  She was watching him, in fact, when “Come on Eileen” started playing and she began to dance, and she was watching him when the girl behind her gave a preternaturally loud and painful shriek, so she saw his gaze come up and search for the source of the sound and settle on her breasts. And instead of wishing she were built a little more . . . conservatively, she was glad, for a change, that she had the power to catch and keep men’s attention. She waited, because inevitably he would become curious about who was attached to the breasts, and indeed, up came his eyes, and—

  She really dug it that he didn’t look away in shame when she caught him staring. He made a face like, Shit, you caught me, the curved, slightly twisted, sensual mouth almost but not quite smiling, the eyes still sad. And she grinned at him because she liked him. Could you like someone with whom you’d exchanged no words, only—to put it as fairly as possible—some gawking and a single wordless expression of amusement and apology?

  Probably not, but she liked him, anyway.

  Or maybe that was something she told herself because she was pretty sure she was going to sleep with him tonight, and liking him was a way better motivation than wanting to drown out her on-the-rebound, wounded-pride, missing-Henry feelings.

  She had been disappointed when he pulled his gaze away the second time she caught him looking. For a moment she’d thought about letting it go, but she’d had three hot-pink drinks and one bright-blue drink, maybe more. It was possible she’d lost track at some point after her friend Rachel had left the party to pursue a booty call from her on-again–off-again boyfriend.

  “You don’t mind? I feel like I should stay with you. You’re . . .”

  Rachel hadn’t finished the sentence, but there were a variety of ways it could have been finished. Dumped. On the rebound like nobody’s business. Vulnerable. A danger to society.

  Nora’s sister’s condo was downstairs in the same building—no height, no view, hundreds of thousands of dollars less expensive—and Nora had arranged to stay over there, so it wasn’t as if she had to find her way home alone. In the morning she’d take the T back to her own Davis Square apartment. Unless—unless she took it back there tonight with the hot, sad-eyed guy in tow.

  “I’m fine,” Nora had told Rachel, thinking, I wish someone would booty-call me. Which probably meant she wasn’t fine at all, but there was a sure thing at the other end of Rachel’s phone, and Nora didn’t want to stand in the way of that.

  I’m jealous of a booty call, Nora had thought as she watched Rachel weave through the partygoers on her way out. That’s pathetic.

  But when you thought about it, maybe it wasn’t really that pathetic. Nora had been dumped by her boyfriend of three years and had simultaneously found out he’d been sleeping with another woman for the last nine months. And that was only six weeks ago. The fact that she was at a New Year’s Eve party, on her feet, dancing—that made her a minor miracle. Not pathetic at all. Tough.

  She liked the idea of being tough. So much better than letting people—herself included—think that Henry had been able to lay her on her ass. All those hours she’d spent crying her eyes out, not quite sure if it was the embarrassment of having been such a fool or the loss of the guy she’d thought might someday be her husband . . .

  Man, that felt like a narrow miss. She could have been a forty-eight-year-old mother of four whose husband walked out on her for the woman he’d been sleeping with on and off for, oh, nearly twenty years. Did that happen? It must. After Henry had revealed the extent of his cheating, all kinds of women had opened up to Nora with their own horror stories. Being cheated on was so humiliating that people didn’t usually talk about it, but once the floodgates opened, whoa. Stories that had made her eyes fill with tears, stories about mega-scale epic-level assholes. My husband . . . my boyfriend . . . slept with my best friend . . . my sister . . . my mother . . . for six months . . . for six years . . . in my bed on a daily basis . . .

  Okay, no, to be fair, she hadn’t heard that story. Yet. But she’d be willing to bet it had happened.

  But the point was, even if there were way worse stories out there, getting cheated on for nine months while you obliviously whistled Dixie, washed your boyfriend’s dirty socks, and sucked his cock, entitled you to a little rebound fun.

  This guy watching the countdown with her, the one with the Christian Bale mouth and the dark, sad eyes, had terrific broad shoulders and narrow hips and a great ass. You could choose a way worse specimen for a New Year’s Eve rebound hookup. He also smelled really good, like the expensive wool in the fine-gauge sweater he was wearing over dark-gray slacks, and like some sporty deodorant that was probably supposed to evoke hiking through canyons but, warmed by his body, pretty much shouted sex. They probably put some crazy pheromones in that stuff, grizzly-bear sex-gland extract or something.

  Nora shifted, too, toward him. Now their arms almost touched and, holy crap, it was crazy how good that felt. As intense as being thigh to hip on the dance floor. How was that possible? Zero contact, but a mad tingle that went straight to her core. She wondered if pheromones worked across a crowded room and if somehow she’d been able to smell, standing on the other side of the room, intercepting his intense scrutiny, that it would feel this good to stand next to him. Maybe that was what had made her cross the room to him after he’d broken eye contact the second time.

  She’d moved through the crowd toward him without thinking about it too hard, because if she’d given it too much more thought she might not have done it. And then she was standing next to him, inhaling his scent, discovering that he was considerably taller than she’d suspected. Bantering with him about cheese, feeding him cheese—she wasn’t sure what muddled corner of her brain that stroke of genius had come from. Asking him to dance. She’d had a brief moment of paralyzing doubt when she’d seen the look on his face following her invitation. A look that was all fear and claustrophobia: Get me out of here!

  “Hey, I get it,” she’d said. “I’m not your type.”

  But he shook his head, and there’d been something in his eyes. Whatever he was afraid of, it wasn’t her. She thought, What the hell? Because, really, the good thing about getting humiliatingly dumped was that all other rejection paled in comparison. Suppose he turned her down? If she’d lived through these last six weeks, she was hardly going to shrivel up and die because a stranger didn’t want to have anonymous December 31 sex. So she asked him, “Is that a ‘No, you’re not my type’ or a ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong’?”

  His dark gaze held hers, the way it had when she’d been dancing and he’d been watching. “You’ve got that part dead wrong.” The way he said it had made her heart pound, and that was when the heat he’d started by staring at her across the room had taken on bigger, buzzier dimensions. Something she wasn’t in control of, and she didn’t want to be.

  They’d danced. And speaking of things she wasn’t in control of, Nora felt as if it wasn’t her body out there on the floor. As if she were channeling something, standin
g back so it could move through her and rub itself shamelessly all over him. Which it did, and, whoa. Too many years with Henry had made her forget that he was, you know, kind of average-sized. And sometimes a little slow on the warm-up. This guy wanted her.

  She shouldn’t let it go to her head, right? That was the whole problem with rebounds. Your pride was hurt and then some guy, some random guy you hardly knew, or didn’t know, made you feel for a few minutes like there was something worth wanting about you, and of course you were setting yourself up for another fall, because one-night rebound sex never made you feel any better about yourself in the long run.

  But it was in her head, buzzing around with the alcohol and the sugar, and now the clock was running down, -2:44.

  “That guy—” He pointed toward the door, where a heavyset man in a sport coat was making a getaway. “He couldn’t take the heat. Had to get out of the kitchen.”

  “It must be a totally terrifying moment to be a male human.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Worse than Valentine’s Day.”

  “And yet you’re here.”

  Nora made herself turn to look at him, and he was looking down at her. As if he were trying to perform some complex calculation. She could have saved him the trouble, because she didn’t know the answer, either.

  “I almost left fifteen minutes ago,” he said.

  “And then?”

  She got to watch his pupils get bigger, his eyes darker. She’d thought that was a myth.

  “And then I saw you dancing.”

  “I’m not really very good.” She wasn’t. Not in the talent sense. She’d seen the odd video of herself here and there at various events, and she was kind of dorky.

  “You looked great to me.”

  He said “great” as if it held a world of significance: beautiful, sexy, smart, fun.

  “Okay, folks! Two minutes!”

  They watched the countdown for a moment. Her heart was pounding way harder than it should have been. Less than two minutes and this guy was going to kiss her, and the thought was making her nipples harden and her breasts tighten and her girl parts throb. He was looking at her as if he could see what she was feeling, which made all those body parts up their game.

  Only -1:45- left to go.

  “You can still leave,” she told him.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  She laughed at the expression on his face, but it also made her inner muscles clench: The way he wouldn’t take his eyes off her. The way his gaze held hers briefly, then dropped to her mouth. She licked her lips, not to be provocative but because, when he stared at her like that, her mouth got dry and she felt self-conscious and had to do something.

  “This is weird, right? Have you ever had a countdown for a first kiss before?”

  He shook his head.

  “One minute! Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven . . .”

  Everyone was chanting now, staring at the television screens, except them.

  “Forty-five, forty-four, forty-three . . .”

  “It’s possible midnight will never come,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s possible we’ll be stuck here like this forever.”

  “Fuck that,” she said.

  She tilted her face up and his mouth came down on hers. Hard enough for her to feel her teeth against her lip, but she didn’t care because it was so good. It was wild and dirty and slick, and she was whimpering into his mouth and trying to get as close to him as possible. Her hands were not under her control; they were grabbing at his clothes and his ass, and his hands were in her hair. And it went on and on, with one or the other of them panting for breath and then diving back in for more. It was like standing-up sex in public, and—

  All around them, people screamed and cheered, blowing noisemakers and throwing confetti, and for a split second her addled brain thought it was for them. It felt like they deserved a celebration.

  They stood back and breathed hard and stared at each other, which in some ways was hotter than kissing, because he wouldn’t break eye contact with her, even though he’d have a perfect right to refuse to look at her after the way she’d grabbed and licked and bitten and—

  “Wow,” he said. “Um, more?” He plucked confetti from her hair.

  She laughed. “We jumped the gun.”

  “Hell, yeah. That was . . .” He seemed genuinely at a loss for words.

  “Better than the average midnight kiss with a stranger?”

  “I was going to say something more like, ‘really hot.’”

  “That works.”

  “Hey,” said a voice behind Nora, and when she turned, a big guy with a beer gut was right up in her personal space, so close she couldn’t back away quickly enough to avoid—

  Eeuww. Beer breath and poky tongue.

  “Leave her alone, asshole.”

  Oh, shit.

  The two men were squared off, Beer-Gut Guy and Sad-Eyed Guy, and—oh, crap. She’d never asked his name.

  “It’s New Year’s Eve, dude, lighten up.”

  She took a step back, but not fast enough to avoid Beer Gut’s vengeful lunge at her for a second smelly, damp kiss. And then Sad-Eyed Guy was hauling Beer Gut off her by the back of his shirt and shoving him, hard, away from her.

  The crowd was close, and the shove bowled over several bystanders. Suddenly the room was dead still and dead quiet, all the celebration brought to an abrupt halt. All eyes were on the man who’d kissed her so spectacularly less than two minutes earlier. His scruffy blond friend—he’d told her his name was Owen—scrambled to his side. Several huge friends hauled Beer Gut up, asking after his health and well-being, a rising mutter of deep discontent coming from their ranks. Nora’s heart beat in a different way. Fear.

  “Hey, man, we’d better get out of here,” Owen said. “He’s got friends. Lots of very big, very drunk friends. Boston College football. You can choose ’em.”

  “But I need to—”

  Beer Gut attained standing, and his crew advanced as Owen and Sad-Eyed Guy backed away.

  “No, man, we’re outta here.” Owen tugged his friend’s arm.

  “I—”

  “Don’t be an idiot, dude. They’re going to kick our asses.” Owen yanked him, hard, and the two of them turned and ran.

  “Wait!” Nora called. “Wait, I don’t know your—”

  They were not waiting. They were running, pushing through the crowd, heading for the door as fast as they could go, and by the time her legs started to work, they’d already disappeared from her sight.

  3

  “What the hell happened back there?”

  Miles and Owen had taken the elevator down twenty-two floors and run full tilt toward the Kendall Square stop for several blocks, ducking through parking garages and hotel lobbies to stay off the street, before they were able to convince themselves they weren’t being pursued.

  “That asshole kissed her. Twice.”

  Owen regarded him levelly. “It is New Year’s Eve.”

  “She was with me.”

  As he said it, Miles recognized the total absurdity of it. But she had felt like she was with him. She had been hot and vibrant and his while he kissed her, and funny and adorable when he’d let her go, and he’d been two seconds from asking her to leave the party with him and become more his. All his.

  Probably it was a good thing fate had intervened in the way it had. Fifteen minutes and he had gone Neanderthal-possessive. The events of the last month had apparently unhinged him.

  “You work fast, man,” Owen said mildly. “Also, you’ve got confetti in your hair.”

  Miles shook it out, a slight rain of silver, and ran his hands through his hair to get the rest.

  The train car they were riding in had been packed to the gills when they boarded it. An earthy scent blend of beer and hard alcohol and vomit and sweat permeated the air but was starting to fade as the car emptied out. They’d managed to snare two seats side by side. There were still people in the aisles, though, loud and jovia
l, as the car made its lurching way over the tracks, screeching and squealing as it cornered.

  “Are you going to see her again?” Owen asked.

  “I don’t know her name,” Miles confessed. All he knew was the precise way her smile bloomed, starting with the lift of her upper lip, finding her eyes last. He knew the shape of her fingers on another woman’s arm, telling her it was okay, she belonged. And he knew the thoroughness with which she inhabited a room.

  Not much. A name would be more practical.

  The look on Owen’s face would have made Miles laugh, if he’d been in a laughing mood. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “You didn’t get her number.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you when you were dragging me out of there. I don’t know her name or her number.”

  “You danced with her, you kissed her, you beat some guy up over her, she was ‘with’ you”—Owen inserted air quotes—”and you never asked her what her name was?” With his loony yellow hair and outraged expression, Owen looked like Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

  “It didn’t come up.”

  “How does that not come up?”

  Miles stayed silent, and Owen narrowed his eyes. “Oh. You didn’t tell her your name because of the investigation.”

  Miles sighed and used his shoulder to fend off a drunk T rider who had almost fallen in his lap. “I might not have felt particularly inclined to share that piece of information, no.”

  “Well, now you’re screwed. How are you going to find her?”

  “I’m not. She lives in Boston. I live in Cleveland. I’m not going to see her again.” Except in my dirty fantasies. Because he was already having intense flashbacks, to the way she’d looked on the dance floor, to the swift show of her smile as they’d talked, to the feel of her mouth and the exact curve of her ass under his palms.

  “What about tomorrow night?”

  Miles’s flight back was on the third. If he kept his ticket. It was tempting not to return to Cleveland at all. Maybe if he stayed away, all that had happened there would recede slowly in importance until it didn’t hurt anymore.