Late afternoon bled into evening and Cici still wasn’t sure what she’d agreed to. One thing was clear; Hoop seemed to have taken her agreement to mean that they were a couple.
He kept one arm around her as they sat next to each other on the bench enjoying the picnic that Alfonso had provided. It was delicious and though she might regret it tomorrow, she ate until she was stuffed.
“Why food?” Cici asked. “Hayley … my partner at The Candied Apple & Cafe is drawn to desserts. She says that she can taste the combos just from smelling the ingredients.”
Alfonso chuckled. “For me food has always meant family. I think the first time I met Hoop was at a cookout at his place. Everything important in my life has taken place while I was eating.”
“You have cookouts?” she asked, turning to look at him.
He shrugged and she felt his arm tensing behind her. “Sometimes. A lot of the kids that I work with have busy working parents and sometimes don’t get to experience that for themselves. I like to make sure that getting together is special.”
“And food brings people together,” Alfonso said. “That’s how I won Lulu.”
“He is a really good cook but he also looks good in his chef’s whites,” she said with a laugh.
“Do you cook, Cici?” Alfonso asked.
“Not at all. I can eat, but cooking? No, I don’t have the patience for that. I hope someday to master some dish, something special that I can always fix for my baby,” she said.
Alfonso looked at Hoop for a second and then back at her. “I can teach you a lot of easy dishes. Good comfort food and home cooking.”
“I’d love that. I can … do you have someone who does your books?” she asked. She never liked to be in debt to someone. If Alfonso was going to teach her to cook she’d be more than happy to help him out in some way.
“Yeah. But I could use some help with my personal taxes,” Alfonso replied.
“Don’t do it, Cici. This guy’s idea of bookkeeping is putting all of his receipts in a box under the bed. You’ll be in there all day,” Lulu said, smiling.
“I’m willing to give it a try if the cooking lessons are good. Also, I can set you up with some systems that will make it easier for the future.”
“Deal,” Alfonso said. “I can start whenever you want.”
“I’ll text you to set it up,” Cici said.
“He’s pretty good,” Hoop said after they’d exchanged numbers.
“Can you cook?” she asked.
“He’s pretty good in the kitchen if you like some sort of egg-based dish or meat on the grill,” Alfonso said.
“I thought you said my chicken satay showed promise.”
“Dude, I was being nice. Didn’t want to diss your kitchen skills but the lady needs to know that you are a breakfast and grill cook.”
Cici smiled to herself. Hoop seemed most of the time to have it all together. Nothing ever seemed to get in his way so it was nice to know he wasn’t perfect at something.
“What are you smiling at?” he asked with a mock frown.
“Just thinking that you aren’t perfect after all,” she said.
“I’m not perfect at all,” Hoop conceded.
“You just seem to have your stuff together,” Cici said.
“He does,” Lulu nodded. “When Alfonso first introduced us I was intimidated.”
Hoop looked over at Lulu. “You know I think you’re ideal for Alfonso. Nothing to be intimidated about. I always sing your praises. You tamed this crazy man.”
“It was an uphill battle,” Lulu said.
“I didn’t think I was that bad,” Alfonso jumped in.
“He thought that a month was a long-term relationship,” Lulu said to Cici.
Cici could see that Alfonso and Lulu were content and that Hoop was very much a part of their…well, family, for lack of a better word. But Lulu and Hoop were ganging up on Alfonso so Cici decided to take his side.
“That might have more to do with the quality of singletons on the market than Alfonso,” Cici said.
“Perhaps. I was in a prior relationship when he was in his long-term thing,” Lulu said.
Alfonso reached over and scooped Lulu off the bench and onto his lap. He brought his mouth down on hers in a passion-filled kiss and when he lifted his head, both of them looked flushed.
“All of that changed when we met. It makes a difference when you find the one,” Alfonso said.
The one.
“Do you think there is really one for each of us?” Hoop asked, once Lulu and Alfonso went out on the deck.
She looked over at Hoop. She’d dated a lot. Many of them clearly not the one. “I have no idea. To be honest, I’ve never been looking for one.”
“You haven’t?”
“Have you? I mean life is busy with getting the Candied Apple & Cafe going and it’s hard when a relationship takes a lot of energy and it seems like keeping things light is just…well, easier,” Cici said.
More than once she’d thought about maybe getting serious but then when she’d met Hoop it was different. “When we met that night at the club, I thought you were a great guy. The kind of man I wanted to get serious with. But then…”
She stopped. She didn’t really want to reveal the big ugly mess she was inside. How she almost didn’t feel like she was good enough for a guy who had his shit together like Hoop. Most of her life she’d been running from mistakes. But admitting it to a man whose only flaw so far was that he could only cook breakfast food or grill meat? Well, she wasn’t going to do that.
“I screwed up,” Hoop said. “I’m not flawless, Cici. I make all kinds of mistakes. I have a great family and I know I should be grateful for them and I am. But then another part of me always wonders why I have to be thankful for what everyone else seems to just take for granted.”
She sat back staring at him. His words resonated deep inside of her. In that spot where she sometimes resented Steve because he loved the boys more than her. But he had never treated her poorly, she just wanted more. And here was Hoop who’d had nothing.
“That’s only natural,” she said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean everyone says I’m lucky to have ended up at the Fillions’ and I know I am, but damn, once in a while it would have been nice to complain about how mom is always trying to set me up, but someone always points out that she’s the mom she didn’t have to be,” Hoop said.
Cici finally heard the pain in Hoop’s voice. She scooted closer, put her arms around him and hugged him tightly to her. “Being an adult is hard.”
He laughed and pulled her closer. “There is one thing about it that I like.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“This,” he said, lowering his mouth and kissing her.
He tasted like sunshine and sea and she closed her eyes and had a flashback to Jamaica. The smell of the salty ocean had been in the air that night. But she’d been drunk on champagne and searching for something to make her feel better about herself.
In retrospect, Rich’s kisses were sloppy.
Hoop was nothing like that. He tasted right to her. She opened her mouth a little wider and coaxed her tongue into his mouth, trying to taste more of him. He groaned and pulled her closer. She wrapped her arms around him and held him for what felt like forever before she pulled back, looking up at him. His lips were swollen and his skin flushed.
He didn’t say anything and she was glad of it. She was afraid if he tried to talk to her now she’d start rambling and say something she regretted.
Hoop hadn’t meant to get all heavy about his past but there were times when he heard himself described as perfect or flawless, like today, which made him feel at his limits. There was no way he could be less than Mom had raised him to be. He had to be a good guy. He knew how to cook eggs because she’d taught him and Pops had taught him to grill.
But they had a lot of rules and hadn’t been forgiving of mistakes. Mom had been the one to tell him that most of the people he met would be waiting for him to fail because of how he’d come into the world. That he had to remember that. And he did. He worked with Big Brothers and met guys like Alfonso who never had anyone to tell them that.
To say that just because society expects someone from a certain background to be a punk doesn’t mean that was the only option.
Cici turned him on. She made him want to be a better man, but he knew that he wanted to be more than that to her. He didn’t want to be the good friend. The guy she could safely date. Because there wasn’t one damned safe thing about how he felt about her.
He wanted to know everything about her. Wanted to dig deeply and find all of her “flaws” and show her his. He didn’t want to find a perfect relationship with her because that wasn’t real. He’d heard the Fillions fighting often enough to know that love wasn’t quiet romance all the time.
He wanted that.
But he also didn’t want to turn into someone who could potentially push her away.
So, he was playing the good guy. Never admitting that he was jealous of Rich Maguire, some two-bit actor who knocked Cici up and then turned his back on her. Angry. Damn, but he was good and angry at himself and a little bit at Cici.
But he wasn’t going to say any of that. Not to her.
Not now.
And probably not ever.
“You are a good kisser,” she said at last.
He shouldn’t have kissed her, he thought. Yet it was what he wanted. But he could tell she hadn’t been prepared for it. “So are you.”
“Tell me something that’s not perfect about you,” she said as they sat on the edge of his yacht in the marina. Alfonso and Lulu had gone back to their place and he’d asked her if she wanted to stay. They were sitting on deck chairs facing the skyline. He had thought how lucky he was to live in this city. The views were perfect.
He was a lucky guy.
He knew it but it was easier sometimes to pretend that life wasn’t as easy as it sometimes seemed for him. He’d been the youngest boy in the Fillion home while he’d been growing up. They hadn’t adopted any more kids after him.
His siblings all said he was spoiled because he was the baby. And to some extent that was true. He had been taken care of by the Fillions and treated really well. Part of it was that he was older when he got to them and they tried to make up for years of him being adrift.
“Do you really have to think that hard to come up with something that you aren’t good at?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t very good at being a cop.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded and she watched him a lot like she wasn’t sure how to take him. He realized that was because of Garrett. She wasn’t simply a woman he’d asked out; she’d seen him with his guard down with his boys on a poker night.
“Why not? Seems like you are the kind of guy who likes to be the best.”
“I do. But…this is not going to do anything for my argument but I hated to see perps who were making choices because they thought they were owed something.”
“I bet,” she said. “I mean if anyone were owed something it would be you.”
“No. No one is owed anything. We have to find our path, work and make our way. I mean that’s it. I wasn’t very sympathetic and some of my collars were really in a tough spot and had made the best decision they could.”
The breeze blew, bringing the smell of the sea and the hibachi grill someone was using to cook stir-fry. She tucked that long strand of hair that was always blowing around her face behind her ear. “Good thing you were smart enough to change careers.”
“Good thing,” Hoop said. Now he had a chance to become a partner … he didn’t regret his choice; it felt like validation.
“How did you choose law?”
“Pops is a lawyer and when I was home one weekend talking about changing careers he suggested I take a leave of absence and do some internships. The first one was at his practice. I found I really liked it. I could make a difference to the people who needed it. Family law is difficult. It’s hard for people who feel like they have no options to make the right choice.”
“Like me,” she said.
“Do you feel trapped?”
She shrugged and nibbled on her lower lip as she toyed with the charm on her necklace. She stared at the Manhattan skyline and didn’t say anything. He wondered if she was going to answer when she dropped the charm and looked over at him. There was seriousness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“No. It’s odd because being a mom has never been in my plans but once I found out about the bean,” she patted her stomach, “I just started changing. Like maybe this was my reason to grow up, you know?”
He didn’t know. Not really. But he could see what the baby had done to her. He hadn’t really known her before her pregnancy but he liked the woman she was now.
“I do,” he said.
Cici knew it was time for her to go but she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay with Hoop and see if the kisses and the touches were going to live up to their billing. She suspected they would. But part of her wanted to stay because of the sun and the day they’d spent together. Another part…well, to see how he’d react after.
Was he sincere when he said he wanted to be friends and would stay by her side or was that just a line?
Chances were it was legit. She was learning that Hoop was a man of his word. But neither of them knew what this parenthood thing was going to be like. And she was just starting to sort out the paternity agreement she wanted Rich to sign. And Hoop was going for junior partner, something that would demand a lot of his time.
Starting anything right now wasn’t the best idea.
Given everything that he’d revealed to her today, she suspected he wasn’t playing her. But she’d been wrong before and she really, well to be honest, she really liked Hoop. She realized how shallow her affection had been when she’d gone to Jamaica. She would never have suspected half of what Hoop really was.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, as he came back on deck bringing them some fresh drinks. He was drinking something that looked like whiskey neat and she was downing water like she had just run a marathon. Trying to pretend that she didn’t miss alcohol.
Dang. She’d hoped he’d just sort of sweep her up in his arms so she wouldn’t have to think. But she was already dwelling too much on what could happen.
She hadn’t realized how often she leaned on alcohol to ease the decision-making process. She needed to figure this out for herself. Champagne had been responsible for her getting into this situation and it looked like bottled water and her own judgment were going to be in charge this time.
“Trying to decide if I should go home or stay here with you.” Once the words were out she didn’t regret them. In fact, as she watched him leaning back next to her, everything she wanted out of this evening coalesced.
Hoop had changed into a pair of shorts when they’d gotten on the boat which showed off his long, tanned legs. He had his sunglasses pushed up on the top of his head and he stood there, his head tipped to the side smiling at her.
There was something mischievous in his smile and the way he watched her gave her shivers. The good kind. The kind that she’d experienced the first time he kissed her.
And she knew all the reasons why she should just turn around and leave his boat, but none of them mattered.
Even the mental pro/con list she had going wasn’t going to change her mind.
Her gut said Hoop was who she needed to be with. Tonight.
“How’s it going?” he asked in that droll way he had when he was trying to be nonchalant.
“It’s harder than you might think,” she said.
He threw his head back and laughed. “Nah, I know how hard it is.”
She shook her head. “Stop it. You just make me want to straddle you and find out.”
“Come on, Cici,” he said putting his glass on the deck and holding out his hand.
It was a big strong hand. She stopped thinking. Why was she trying to analyze this? She’d never been good at it. He wasn’t like a number on a spreadsheet. No matter how many times she tried to force the columns to balance. It wasn’t going to happen. Not yet.
Not until she had all the information.
Pretending she didn’t want him. Learning more than she’d expected to about him. Everything swirled around as she put her water on the deck and stood up. Glamorous as ever, she tripped over her flip-flop and sort of fell on him instead of the sexy way she’d planned to straddle him.
He grunted as he caught her and she started laughing. Of course, when she wanted to be graceful she wasn’t. It wasn’t like she was always klutzy. This was … she didn’t know what. If she had to guess she’d say it was nerves.
He joined her with a shout of laughter a second later.
“If there is anything that sums us up it is this moment,” he said.
“What?”
“Not perfect,” he said. “I think that means we are real.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. I always try to be what a woman wants but with you I keep faltering on the starting block. Not one time have I done what’s necessary to get you into my arms. But you are here now and that’s…well that’s enough.”
“For me too.”