Aly
Jake took me to the hotel attached to the convention center, the big fancy one I always stared at while I waited for the bus. It wasn’t the stuffy William Penn where I ran into Jake at the Tap Room. This place was chic and oozed modern opulence. I’d never even stepped inside, and now I was letting all my innocence and poor upbringing hang out with my awestruck stare and eyes as big as Bambi. Jake acted like it didn’t bother him before he snatched my hand with his, leading us to the sushi place.
My body sizzled everywhere he touched me, my shoulder on fire from when he tucked me into his side. Now my hand felt as if it was scorching, heat fizzling between our palms. I wanted to squeeze his hand tightly and never let go, which was a rarity for me.
“How are you this evening, Mr. Wrigley?” the manager asked as soon as we entered the dimly lit restaurant.
I looked around, noting the sushi bar lining the back wall and the busy bar with high-top tables at the front of the restaurant. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I took in the main dining room. Pale pink tablecloths and bud vases were on each table, and classic Tom Jones’s “She’s a Lady” piped through the speakers. The place was packed. Chairs and bar stools were full of yuppies out for the night, older married couples having an intimate dinner, and a few singles, presumably travelers.
“Great, Blake. You got a table for two?”
When Jake let go of my fingers to accept the manager’s outstretched hand, a chill immediately washed over me until he brought me back into his side. This was ridiculous. I was an independent young woman who didn’t get all melty over a guy.
“Not really, but for you . . . always. How’s your brother? I saw him for a minute when he was here signing up the new guy coming to town. Kimpton is trying to make a go of it here in the ’burgh, and they’re salivating over what Lane does for us and the guys down the street.”
Jake chuckled. “Yeah, his software’s all over the place. You know Lane and his big, bad domination. He’s traveling less now that he has the wife and kid up in the country, and yet he’s still doing as much business. But enough about him. This is Alyson. Aly, this is Blake.” He squeezed me tighter each time he said my name.
“Nice to meet you, Alyson.” Blake held out his hand and I accepted it, giving him my firm work handshake. I didn’t want to be known as a wet noodle, even if I’d never been inside the Fish House before.
“But if it makes you feel better, Blake, don’t say I said it, but I know your place is Lane’s favorite joint to eat,” Jake said with a wink.
Blake grinned and shook his head. “Except for the Tap Room.”
“He does love his drinks at the Tap Room. Now, what about our table?”
“Sure, how about one next to the window?”
And just like that, we were led to what I assumed was a primo table with an impressive view of the city and an over-attentive waiter.
“All good?” Jake asked me as he sat across from me, giving me a big smile that made small crinkles form next to his blue eyes.
“This really wasn’t necessary.” It was too much for a girl like me.
“Oh, stop. Let it go, and let’s have fun, okay? We’re here, we have a great table, and I’m starving and sharing a table with a beautiful woman.”
Heat licked its way up my neck, not stopping until it settled in my cheeks. Certain I was pinker than the tablecloths, I focused on the menu in front of me. I was so out of my league, only having had sushi a few times before at the food court with the girls from the office.
“You feel like wine, beer, or sake?” Jake asked, pulling me from my perusal of the menu.
“Wine would be great. You?”
“Why don’t we get a bottle? Do you like red or white?”
“Both. I’m an equal opportunist when it comes to wine.” And I was, thankfully, because I really needed a little drink, although I was certain this wine was going to be nothing like the bargain bottles I grabbed at the grocery store.
The waiter was already back after filling our water glasses as soon as we sat. “What can I get you to drink?” he asked.
Jake eyed the wine list, scanning the pages while biting his lower lip. For the briefest of moments, he looked unsure of himself, a little nervous and out of place, and I wanted to reach across the table and run my fingers along his forearm. His uncertainty made me want to be a better woman, a caring soul, a girl who allowed herself to fall in love.
“Let’s go with the Double T,” he said, tossing a quick glance at the waiter before bringing his eyes back to me. “And how about an order of crispy rock shrimp and the spicy edamame?” He raised an eyebrow and asked, “That sound good?”
“Definitely.” Just like that, I began to relax. Inside the big brute of a flirt across from me was a gentle soul, and I felt at ease, more so than I had in a long time. I took a sip of my water and asked, “So your brother likes this place?”
“Yeah, he’s the real deal, pretty big-time. During college, he worked on this software project helping hotels gather data and analyze it in a million different ways. I was busy drinking and playing ball and fighting and generally fucking up, and he made a name for himself. He’s the more impressive of us, and it certainly shows.” A small hint of sadness filtered through the brotherly pride in his voice before he cleared his throat and added, “But he’s not here, so let’s talk about you and me.” With a tiny flick of some unknown switch, Mr. Cocky was back in the room.
“Well, I’m a lawyer and you own a gym. Apparently, you get into the occasional fight, but always with some social mission in your back pocket. As for me, I’m a rule follower. Definitely not a rule-breaker.” This got me a huge laugh, a guffaw that rose all the way from the bottom of Jake’s belly and out his mouth, reverberating around the room.
“What?” I asked just as the waiter arrived with our wine. Jake held up a finger and said, “One sec,” letting me know we were definitely not done with the embarrassing conversation.
“Just pour,” he instructed the waiter when the man tipped a sip’s worth into the glass waiting for Jake to taste it. “I don’t need to swirl and smell it. It’s wine . . . it’ll be good.”
We were now left to our privacy again, each of us with a full glass of the burgundy-hued liquid in front of us.
“Cheers!” Jake lifted his and clinked it into mine still resting on the table.
“Cheers.” My response came out in a muted half whisper, since I was somewhat unsure of what we were toasting.
“I must point out, Aly, you being here is a bit of rule-breaking. The whole fighter and PD thing? You said you wouldn’t have fun with me, and look at you . . . out to dinner with me. I like it!”
The seriousness of what I was doing came crashing down on me like a million-ton elephant, the big gray one sitting in the room. Jake had been in jail, and I’d been sent to release him. If the other guy hadn’t opted not to press charges, I would have been in charge of defending Jake. And now we were out for sushi as if none of that had happened.
“It’s not right. I shouldn’t be here, but you were extra convincing. And pretty demanding, if I remember correctly,” I said, laying it all out there. “But after tonight, you’ll go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine. This really can’t go anywhere.”
“I call bullshit.” Jake leaned forward, the blue of his eyes turning almost metallic, sparkling with silver spokes of anger and determination as he delivered those three quick words.
The moment was broken by a food runner delivering the appetizers, and I breathed out a silent sigh of relief. I picked up my fork and Jake ripped apart his chopsticks, and I thought he was going to let it go, but no such luck.
“Total bullshit, Aly Road. One hundred percent crap. Because no one is going back to their life after this night. Everything, and I mean everything, is going to change.”
He clipped a shrimp with his chopsticks and stuck it into his mouth, chewing it with tenacity. I watched his chapped lips work, the slight dark stubble along his jaw moving as he swallowed the morsel before taking a long sip of wine. All the while, I didn’t dare move. I didn’t eat or drink; I wasn’t even sure if I breathed.
“You can’t threaten something like that, Jake,” I said, finally finding my voice tucked inside my aching belly.
“You bet I can. There’s a lot I can’t tell you, but know this.” His eyes darkened as he pinned them on me with all seriousness. “We were meant to meet in that jail on Christmas Eve. There’s a reason you were on duty and responsible for me. All you need to know is I’ve gone through life with a ton of shit on my back—and it’s bad shit—and meeting you was the first time I breathed easy in decades. And why is that? Because we were meant to meet . . . it’s why we were both at Roman’s and then the Tap Room. It’s why you don’t have a car and I had two. I was meant to take care of you.”
His declaration stunned me. I breathed out his name, my wavering voice begging him to stop, but he went on.
“Yep, I know you hardly know me, and I don’t know you. But I know this . . . I was meant to care for you. I wasn’t good until I met you. I couldn’t focus until I met you. Life meant nothing until I met you. And I know I’m laying this out there over sushi and you’re in shock, but life isn’t going back to normal after this dinner, Aly.”
I took a sip of my wine, allowing it to flow down my throat all the way to my belly, hoping it would take the edge off. Even if I guzzled the entire glass, my nerves would still be humming.
“Jake,” I whispered again, searching for the right words. Painful words, words laced with rejection, but I couldn’t make them form.
In front of me was a burly man full of enough strength to beat the shit out of anyone in his way. He was an extremely virile man, oozing sex and promising a good fucking, but when I looked deep enough into the crisp blue pools of his eyes, I saw a little lost boy.
And I couldn’t hurt him. Either the man or the boy. So I said nothing.
“Eat some shrimp and relax,” he said with an understanding smile. “I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment. And I’m not trying to tie your good name to my shitty one. I know I’m a bad apple, but just give me a little of your goodness. I may never get anything like that again.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat while he waited for me to . . . respond? Eat? I didn’t know. I did know this: I was going to give him some goodness.
And quite possibly break my very own heart in the process.
I lifted my glass—channeling my inner Hilary—and tapped it to his. “I don’t know where this can go, probably nowhere, but I can’t deny our repeated running into each other felt somewhat serendipitous. So, let’s have some fun. No promises of anything more. I don’t have the luxury of thinking of the future. I’m trying to survive the moment.”
He beamed at me with a broad, delighted smile, and the small crinkles around his eyes made a welcome reappearance. I wanted to reach across the table and smooth the hair out of his eyes, but he captured my hand on the table under his and gave it a squeeze.
“Shrimp, come on,” he commanded and I obeyed, spearing a shrimp on my fork. “Next one, you have to try to use the sticks.”
I giggled. “No way. I’ve never used those before.”
“Well, you know what they say. It’s never too late to learn how to eat with chopsticks.”
“Oh, really? I’ve never heard that saying before.”
The music changed and the soft, sweet voice of Taylor Swift wafted from the speakers.
Her words struck me as the lyrics flitted through my head, and I realized that here I was actually living life for the first time. In the worst possible scenario for someone in my position, with red flags raining down all over me, I was living. And there was nothing I wanted to do more at this moment than really live.
Jake wrapped his hand around mine and slipped the chopsticks between my pointer and middle fingers, keeping his hand in place as he lined up the chopsticks just so. Our hands traveled together to the plate and we plucked up a shrimp.
Our fingers and palms remained twined as we brought the bite to my lips. I chewed and swallowed before my traitorous tongue ran a lap over my lips, making certain there was nothing left behind. Jake’s eyes fixed on my mouth, darkening to midnight blue this time. With our hands still joined on the table and my heart beating so loudly in my chest, no amount of Taylor Swift was going to cover up my reaction to him.
Once again we were rescued by an overzealous server, who popped over to our table to ask what else we wanted to order.
Jake turned to me. “How adventurous do you want to be?”
With his eyebrow raised in the air, practically daring me, I couldn’t resist. “I’m along for the ride. I’ll go where you take me,” I confessed.
Problem was, I didn’t think I was only talking about sushi.
Jake ordered all kinds of things I’d never heard of before, and one after the other, a myriad of food made up of bright colors and a variety of shapes and sizes appeared at the table like the circus was coming to town.
We dipped pieces of tuna into soy sauce, and I desperately tried to pick up the tiny rolls of seaweed in my chopsticks. Jake would reach over to my side of the table and take my hand, trying to help, but his touch only made my fingers tremble more. A few times, he snatched a piece of something, popping it in my mouth as he said, “You have to try this!” Our gazes would linger on the chopsticks until they were inevitably drawn to each other, where they would simmer and pop with electricity.
“So, this one time during school,” he told me, “the whole team went down to the stadium when the Pirates were practicing and begged security to let us in. We sneaked back to the locker room and waited for them to be finished and stormed inside, asking for pictures and inviting them to our party.” Jake’s his face bright with excitement as he recounted the story from college. “Turned out they were damn impressed with our determination, and they came. That was a wild night.”
“Certainly sounds like it.” I smiled, but I could tell my mouth wasn’t going as wide as I wanted it to.
“So, what was school like for you? Sororities? Where did you live?” He leaned forward on the table, his enormous forearms looking out of place on the pink tablecloth.
“Mostly just schoolwork, studying, working—I was a waitress at Billy’s—and that’s about it. I had a few good friends. We would run or catch a movie together. Of course, we went to a few parties, but it wasn’t really my scene.”
“Like Lane,” Jake mumbled. “He was the determined brother, the responsible one, the one who accomplished lots of shit. Not me, I was the fuckup.”
I nudged his big boot with my ballet flat. “No way. Looks to me like you’re both successful, you just got there different ways. There are so many lawyers who partied their way through undergrad and law school.”
“Wild that we missed each other by a year, right? How old are you? About twenty-seven?”
I nodded. I was.
“Yeah, I figured. Four years for undergrad, three more for law school, and no way you’re a newcomer to the PD office. Your balls are too big.”
“You got me!” I said with a laugh. “Except I went to Community for a year before transferring to Pitt, so we missed each other by two years.” I waved my hand in the air as if I were reporting for class, answering roll call, or something else ridiculous because I wasn’t used to dates, let alone fancy ones with demanding, gorgeous, body-building men.
“Maybe I would have tamed my partying ways if I’d met you back then.” He brought my hand to his lips and kept his eyes on mine as he dropped a few kisses along my knuckles.
I had no idea hand-kissing could be erotic, but this was the most sensual sensation I’d ever felt. Tingles rushed from my hand to my toes, and then settled in other places.
I was in deep, deep trouble.