Ticket Home: Strangers on a Train Read online

  It had apparently caught her off guard too. Her eyes were big, almost scared. Now would probably be a good time for him to shut up. But apparently, once the anger was out, it was like the proverbial genie. “So why don’t you tell me what you’re so mad about, really? What you were so angry about that you had to fly all the way across the country instead of having a conversation with me?”

  There was a long silence, silence that seemed to have spread over the whole train car, which probably meant a good number of their fellow passengers were avidly listening. Great.

  “I think you know.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  She sighed.

  Something about the fatigue in her sigh calmed him enough so he could say, “Whatever it was, I know it was a big deal to you. And I know the thing with the job was the final straw.”

  She fidgeted with the fabric of her pants. “There wasn’t. There wasn’t anything else. Not anything you could do anything about.”

  He wanted to pound the seat in front of him. What she had said was in the same category of awful relationship utterances as “It’s not you, it’s me” and “I think we’d be better off as friends”. There was a flaw in him that made it impossible for her to love him the way that he loved her. And that—that sucked so much. “Oh,” he said.

  If that was the case, the smartest thing he could do would be to get off the train at the next stop, take a cab to the airport and fly home.

  Except the way she was looking at him now didn’t seem to match what she’d said. She eyed him gravely. Her eyes full of heat and interest.

  His heart started to thud. She was staring at his mouth, he was sure of it.

  She looked away, and it was as if none of that had happened.

  What the fuck?

  The race of heat under his skin told him he hadn’t imagined it. But there was no hint of it now.

  “It’s the work.”

  “What?”

  “The work. I got so sick of it, never seeing you. All the phone calls at the worst possible moments, not ever being able to go away on vacation.”

  Dread crawled under his skin like a thing under the bed at night. Not the work. Streamline needed him, now more than ever as the company gathered momentum. Porter wanted to hire in a new management team, had even talked about cashing out now while the valuation was so good, but Jeff had said no. Streamline needed them both, needed their vision and energy and commitment. There were going to be years, still, when going away on vacations would be touch and go, and if Amy couldn’t handle that—

  “You never said anything before—”

  “That’s not true. I said it a million times. A million and one. I got sick of hearing my own voice. Nothing ever changed.”

  “I—” He took a deep breath. Tried to uncoil the fear. There was a way to fix this. He could work less. Differently. Be more attentive to her. Of course he could.

  “You should go home. Before either of us gets hurt any more than we already have been. You work there. I work here. Neither of us is interested in negotiating, apparently.”

  “I am. I will. Tell me what I can do.”

  “Okay, let me put it differently. I’m not interested in negotiating.” She turned abruptly and looked out the window.

  But earlier, she had looked at him with hunger. She had laughed with him the old way. Maybe before this morning he could have given up and gone back to Seattle. But today had sharpened his longing for her. It had reset his determination.

  Chapter Three

  “Come home with me,” he said.

  It was Wednesday evening now. She was being slowly worn down like a stone in the middle of a river. “No,” she said.

  “Please.”

  There was something intoxicating about a powerful, well-dressed man pleading. It should be a controlled substance. And this wasn’t just any powerful, well-dressed man. This was a man who had always had the ability to reduce her to naked neediness—and that was before that bit of wavy hair had started hanging over his eyes.

  Also, she hadn’t remembered his mouth clearly. How did it manage to look so soft and so masculine at the same time?

  “No.”

  “What do you have against second chances?”

  “The fact that nothing changes.”

  “That might have been true with your father. It isn’t true with me. I will change. Whatever you need. I won’t talk on the phone during dinner. No phone calls when we’re in bed.”

  The phone calls in bed. She’d blocked those out. He’d never actually answered a call while they were making love, but one time, she was pretty sure he’d driven them speedily to the logical conclusion in order to check his voice mail. She’d been mad as hell, had walked around for days thinking of it, but she’d never brought it up because it would be too easy to deny. If he’d told her he hadn’t done anything deliberate to hasten the happy ending, what evidence would she have to the contrary?

  “Long vacations in exotic locations. No broken dates. I’ll be on time.”

  What other concessions could she demand from him, and would it make a difference if she did? There would be no guarantee he would keep his promises. No guarantee that he could keep his promises. Once she’d given in and come home, she wouldn’t have any leverage.

  “No.”

  He banged the back of his skull on the soft seat behind him. “Amy.”

  Why was that sexy? What was wrong with her? It was too many hours spent too close to him. Months of living with him and having constant access to sex had conditioned her to associate the sight, smell and sound of him with mind-blowing orgasms. And then she’d deprived herself of all sexual contact for six months, and this was the inevitable outcome. He banged his head on the seat, and she wanted to climb on and straddle him.

  “I want you to tell me about your father,” he said.

  “This has nothing to do with my father.”

  “This has everything to do with your father.”

  He looked fierce. So much for the softer Jeff. He was all boss today. And, well, she liked him that way.

  She took a deep breath. “I told you my parents split when I was ten.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did I tell you about it?”

  He tilted his chin up. “Not much. You told me he was a colossal jerk.”

  “Yeah, that’s about the shape of it. Only I probably told you the abbreviated version.”

  He nodded.

  “The first time he left, I was ten. I don’t know absolutely every detail, but she caught him cheating and kicked him out.”

  Amy remembered the day he’d left. He’d found her playing paper dolls on the floor of her room. He’d loomed over her, a tall, beefy man in a red plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans. A fixture of her life, not threatening. Not someone whose presence she’d ever questioned until that moment.

  I’ve gotta go, he’d said. Only that. Nothing about how long or how final, just I’ve gotta go. A kick in her gut, and that was before she’d felt the full weight of fury at her mother. The real anger hadn’t started until ten-year-old Amy had realized that if her mother had been more forgiving, Amy would still have a dad living in her house with her, making Saturday-morning pancakes.

  Breakfast had always been her favorite meal. The only essential meal in a day. Jeff had known it so well that he’d developed a policy: He never went to bed until he checked to make sure the apartment was locked, the dishwasher loaded and primed to run, and a healthy supply of Wheat Chex and two-percent milk—her favorites—on hand. More than once, he’d made a late-night cereal run over her protests, so she wouldn’t have to wake up without. For me, it’s coffee, he’d said. Everyone’s got a morning addiction.

  He’d made it a casual thing, but every time he did it, she got a little teary. A cigar wasn’t always just a cigar, and breakfast wasn’t just breakfast to Amy.

  “He was gone about six months—he was living with the woman he’d been cheating with. Then he came back and wanted another
chance. He begged. I overheard. I had just read Harriet the Spy, and I had a spy notebook, and I hadn’t figured out yet that eavesdroppers never hear anything good. He said he wasn’t in love with this other woman, that he was in love with my mother, and that he couldn’t bear to live without the two of us. He was very persuasive. I think he’s probably technically a sociopath, you know, charming and totally devoid of conscience? Anyway, she agreed to give him a second chance.”

  Amy had forgiven her mother and welcomed back her father. Saturday mornings were Saturday mornings once again, the Bisquick box and Aunt Jemima and the feeling that everything was right in the universe. A parent on each side.

  “We were all together another eighteen months, and then he left again. All told? I think he came and went five or six times. Finally, he emptied our bank accounts and took off for good.”

  His knuckles were white, his mouth a tight line. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Other guys I dated had this way of using that story against me. ‘Oh, you have daddy issues. Trust issues.’ Whatever. Maybe I do, but I got tired of hearing about them.”

  He frowned. “I wouldn’t have—”

  She went on, her words overlapping his. “My mother said it was her fault for not trusting her instincts. She said she shouldn’t have even let him talk to her. She used to say once she’d let him onto the porch, it was inevitable that he’d manage to sneak into the house, and once he was in, it was only a short distance to the bedroom.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” She finally turned and looked at him full-on. “So now you see.”

  As she’d gotten older, she’d stopped blaming her mother for sending her dad away and started blaming her for being weak enough to readmit him, not once but many times.

  “Well, here I am. I’m in the house. Metaphorically speaking. And I’m not your father.”

  It would almost be better if he were. If he were as much of an asshole as she’d convinced herself he was. Because then she wouldn’t be sitting here, her face close enough to his that if he only leaned a little closer—

  She turned suddenly and looked out the window.

  Behind her, she could hear his breathing, ragged, uneven.

  “I’m not your father,” he repeated. What a gut-wrenchingly bad story she’d told. The original asshole had been a true original.

  “You took an awfully long time to come looking for your second chance.” Her words were almost lost in the soft shhh of the train.

  Everything made sense now. Why she’d been so quick to anger, yes, but more to the point, why she’d fled instead of giving him a chance to explain.

  “I was angry too. That you’d walked away so easily.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  He leaned closer, catching the lemon scent of her hair. His fingers and lips tingled with longing to reach out and touch. Comfort, apologize, forgive. “It happened so suddenly. And being angry was easier than feeling hurt.”

  She nodded.

  “I let my anger make me stubborn about coming to find you, even though I knew I’d behaved badly. I tried to get in touch, and—”

  “And I blew you off.”

  “But I understand why. I do.” He spoke almost into her neck now, and if he leaned a little closer, his lips would touch her. Could she feel his breath, moving across her skin?

  She made a small, incoherent sound. A whimper.

  “Amy.” Her name was barely more than a puff. He reached for her, put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off, and he felt her warmth through the thin blouse. Felt the sharpness of her bones and a slight tremor. That, more than anything, set him off. He leaned closer, anticipation gripping him around his chest and in his groin. His balls tightened, and his cock hardened. He pressed his lips to the juncture of her neck and shoulder and to the smooth, hot skin there, the feel of her electrifying.

  They’d been together almost a year, and in that year they’d made love hundreds of times, but this was like brand new—this was like before they’d ever touched, that crazy-prickly, whole-body wild desire that made you do things you shouldn’t.

  Another tiny sound slipped from her lips. A groan that caught him off guard and was like a touch, almost pushing him outside the bounds of control. He groaned too, and several things happened at once, then. She laughed, turned toward him and shushed him loudly.

  “We’re on a train,” she said.

  “I don’t care.” He leaned in. It was awkward, but he managed to find the V of her blouse with his mouth. She groaned again, a little louder than last time, and without lifting his head, he said, “Doesn’t sound like you care, either.”

  “There are a million people on this train.”

  “There’s no one sitting across from us.”

  “Yet.”

  “Then let’s not waste any time.” And he kissed her for real this time. A puzzle piece fit into place, like a tiny internal click deep inside him. It took only a second for her to open to him, for her tongue to find his, for her to begin to make those familiar little whimpering noises that had driven him completely wild in bed from the very first time they’d made love.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever told her this, but it was those noises that made him come, every time. Sure, there was all that heat and friction and wetness, all the grappling and groping, her fingers reaching into the space between where their bodies met to move slickly over his balls, his thumb finding her clit, and all the kissing, endless hot, wet and hungry—but every time, those little whimpers were the final straw, picking him up and hurtling him into mindlessness. He guessed it was how helpless they made her sound, like she was awash in what was happening to them.

  He had to wrench himself away, or he was going to make a spectacle of himself, of them. When he broke apart from her, she was panting, and so was he.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  “We’re on a train.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He sank into kissing her. He skimmed the lace of her bra under her blouse, and beneath it, the hard, tight knot of her nipple. They were superconnected, and touching her set off a chain reaction in him, like he wasn’t in control of anything he was doing or feeling, caught in the spiral of their need. She arched up into his hand and made another sound, a different, rawer sound, as he brushed his thumb back and forth.

  He slid his other hand to the seam of her slacks, where heat radiated. He rested the palm of his hand there, not willing to push her too far, but she slid forward to meet him and ground herself against him, hard. “Christ,” he breathed, and she whispered, “Please don’t stop,” and you couldn’t have paid him to, nothing could have made him stop touching her or kissing her. He felt the tension in her body growing to match the tension in his. He moved his hand against her needy grinding, closing his index finger and thumb over her nipple, and felt, rather than heard, her yell her release silently into his mouth as the train clattered to halt in a station somewhere in Westchester County.

  The doors opened. A new batch of people climbed on, and a middle-aged couple sat down across from them.

  Chapter Four

  Amy turned her whole body toward the window to hide the physical signs of what had swept through her. Also, there were tears of release—and relief—in her eyes. Behind her, Jeff said, “Impeccable timing.”

  “For me,” she murmured. “Can’t imagine it’s going to be a very comfortable rest-of-the-train-ride for you.”

  “No. God, no. Ouch.”

  “Wish I could help you with that.”

  “No, you don’t. This is your revenge.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  Gradually her breathing returned to normal. Gradually the heat in her face retreated. But her nipples were still hard little peaks, and she was swollen and damp where he’d rubbed her with the big, strong palm of his hand. God, she was shameless. They were on a train. This was her commute home. Which brought her abruptly back to reality. This was crazy. They lived on opposite sides
of the country. He was a workaholic, and all the promises he’d made wouldn’t change that. The fact that he was the indisputable master of her body, that he could bring her to climax faster than she could bring herself—and that was saying something—shouldn’t enter into things a bit.

  And yet entering into things—his entering into things—his entering into her—was precisely what she could not stop thinking about. Sex had a way of screwing everything up. All one’s best laid plans. All one’s best intentions.

  “You know,” he murmured behind her. “I can’t think about anything right now except being inside you.”

  Her body should’ve been taking a break, but she felt a sharp jolt of renewed enthusiasm. Which scared her. She could keep going. They could keep doing this. It could spill off the train and into real life, and then what?

  “We can’t do this,” she said.

  “Why not? I think we’re pretty amazing. I’ve always thought we were pretty amazing.”

  For a moment, she let herself think about it, really think about it, and then she realized exactly how much of a complete and total mess she’d made of everything. “How would that work? I live in New York—well, Connecticut—and you live in Seattle.”

  “Come home. Come home with me.”

  She got itchy with anger then, all of a sudden.

  No, it wasn’t all of a sudden. She’d been angry the whole time, and what he’d done to her body had been a fabulous distraction, but here it came, roaring back, anger and hurt. “I won’t. I can’t. Not until you realize how ridiculous it is for you to say that. Why is Seattle home, just because you work there?”

  “It was home first. It was our home.” Now he sounded angry too. “I took that for granted. Maybe that was crazy of me, but we were living there together, and it didn’t occur to me that you would just upend that.”

  “I didn’t just upend it. I tried to have a conversation with you, and you wouldn’t have it.”

  “It wasn’t a conversation! It was an ultimatum!”

  They were both silent for a moment. Around them, unfazed by their anger, unfazed by their distance, their attraction, their needs, their desperation, the passengers on the train continued with their low chatter, the clattering of keyboards, the buzzing of cell phones.