Break the Sky (Spiral of Bliss Spin Off) (12 page)

Because there was always a fall. Always a price to pay.

We drove out of Rainwood in silence. I spoke only to tell Archer how to get to my house on Mousehole Lane. When he pulled up to the driveway, I fumbled for my jacket and purse.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I know I was… I mean, I…”

Christ. I stammered more with this man than I ever had in my life. I couldn’t form a sentence around him. I could hardly grab a coherent thought.

Get it together, Professor March.

“Archer, thank you for coming with me tonight,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. “I apologize for leading you on again. I’m not… I’m not always myself when I’m with you.”

“Yeah, you are. You just don’t know it yet.”

My stomach knotted.
A girl who took risks and faced challenges without fear…

“Well, good night.” I took hold of the door handle. “You can borrow my car to get wherever you need to go. You can either bring it back here tomorrow or leave it at Liv and Dean’s.”

I started to push the door open when his hand enclosed my wrist. I turned back to him. He was watching me, his face shadowed and his expression unreadable.

“Does the offer to come in still stand?” he asked.

“Archer, I said I—”

He held up his other hand in the gesture of a pledge. “I won’t touch you. We haven’t had a chance to talk all evening. Give me an hour alone with you with no one else around.”

Something shifted inside me as I gazed at him, at his eyes that almost glittered in the night. I wanted to be alone with him, too. And while there was a whole hell of a lot I wanted to
do
with him, I was absolutely certain he wouldn’t break his promise.

“Just to talk,” I said, in case there was any misunderstanding.

“Just to talk. Though I won’t turn down something to eat, if you were to offer it. That dinner wasn’t enough to feed a cat.”

“Okay.” I let out a breath. “Eat and talk only.”

“Okay. But I have to warn you that I’m still hard.”

My heart jolted, my gaze snapping involuntarily to his lap. It was too dark to see anything. I forced my eyes back to his face.

Archer winked at me. “Made you look.”

CHAPTER NINE

KELSEY

HE LOOKED GOOD IN MY HOUSE
. I owned a Craftsman-style bungalow that I’d fallen in love with because of the hardwood floors and built-in bookshelves, the bay windows, and decorative trim. A few men had been here over the years—though none in my bedroom.

And none of them had looked the way Archer did as he walked around, studying the architectural details, the paintings, the family pictures, the souvenirs I’d brought back from various trips.

He was wholly masculine, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, his white shirt wrinkled now but still astonishingly sexy with the top buttons undone and the material tight enough to reveal the planes of his chest.

To avoid gawking at him, I disappeared into the bedroom to change. I stood staring at my closet, wondering what to wear. Should I go casual with jeans and a T-shirt or put on another dress or…

I shook my head at myself. It didn’t matter. Well… it shouldn’t matter. As if trying to drive that point home, I pulled on a pair of black yoga pants and a stretchy, dark blue shirt that had a rip near the hem. Exactly what I’d change into after a day of work when I didn’t care what I looked like.

Except when I stepped back into the living room, Archer’s gaze slipped appreciatively over me. Everything inside me responded to that look. I hurried to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

“How about eggs?” I called. “I can make an omelet.”

“Sure.” He appeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb. “This is a really nice place.”

“Thanks. I bought it when I first moved here.” I busied myself cracking eggs and getting out cheese and tomatoes.

“Anything I can do?” he asked.

I nodded toward a loaf of bakery bread. “You can slice that. Knives are in the drawer by the stove.”

We worked in companionable silence for a few minutes. Though Archer was big, he fit well in my kitchen, moving with his easy masculine grace and making sure we didn’t get in each other’s space.

“So what made you become a meteorologist?” he asked.

I didn’t answer right away. It was a personal question, and I didn’t get into personal stuff with just anyone. But Archer West wasn’t
just anyone
.

“My parents were from Russia,” I finally said, finding it easier to tell him more since we were both busy working. “We immigrated here when I was two. Neither of my parents knew much English, but they found an apartment that had cable included in the rent. My father discovered The Weather Channel. He loved it. Watched all the shows about weather phenomena and forecasting. That was how both he and my mother learned a lot of English. They’d even talk about the weather at the dinner table. So I grew up with it. Guess it was a natural fit.”

“Your father must be really proud of you.”

The comment caught me off guard. Secretly I’d always imagined that my father would be proud of what I’d accomplished, but to hear it from Archer felt like he’d looked right into my heart.

“My father died when I was a junior in college.” I turned away so Archer couldn’t see my face. “He had a heart attack.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “My mother lives near Chicago. It’s about a five-hour drive.”

“You visit her a lot?”

“I try to. Hey, do you like bacon?”

“I love bacon. It gives me a lard-on.”

I chuckled and took another pan from the cabinet. After we’d made a big, cheesy omelet, crispy bacon, and thick-cut toast, we filled our plates.

“Have a seat.” I tilted my head toward the breakfast nook, a polished walnut table tucked beneath a half circle of windows.

Archer eased his tall frame onto one of the bench seats, putting my plate at the seat across from him.

“What do you want to drink?” I asked, peering into the refrigerator.

“Got any chocolate milk?”

“Chocolate milk?” I straightened and looked at him over the top of the refrigerator door. “What are you… ten years old?”

He gave me an engaging grin. God, he was cute. One minute he had me all hot, breathless, and writhing shamelessly against him, and the next minute he had me wanting to hold his hand and share an ice-cream sundae.

“I don’t have any chocolate milk,” I told him. “But wait a sec.”

I rummaged in the cupboard and found an unopened container of hot cocoa mix. I made two mugs of cocoa in the microwave and joined him at the table.

“So where in Russia were your parents from?” he asked.

“Near St. Petersburg.”

“You’re an only child?”

I nodded. “My parents thought they couldn’t have children, so after years of trying, I was quite a surprise. They immigrated because they wanted me to have a better life and a good education.”

“Kelsey March doesn’t sound like a Russian name.”

“My father’s last name was Markovich. Like many immigrants, he wanted to change it when he became a citizen. And because I was born in March, he changed it to March.”

“And Kelsey?”

I picked at a crust of toast. “My real name is Kseniya. But I went to a school full of Emmas and Allisons, and… among other things, I didn’t want my name to be so different. After I read a picture book about a girl named Kelsey, I told everyone to start calling me Kelsey.”

“Including your parents?”

“They still called me Kseniya at home. But at school and in public, they called me Kelsey.”

I felt him watching me, probing for all the things I wasn’t saying.

“It sounds like your parents succeeded in giving you everything they’d wanted,” he said.

I nodded. “When they moved to America, they couldn’t afford a house in a good school district, but they were determined that I’d have the best education they could manage.

“So my father found a job as a janitor at a highly ranked school in an upper-class neighborhood outside Chicago. He was a strong-willed man, incredibly tenacious. He convinced the principal to sponsor him for residency and petitioned to let me attend the school, even though we didn’t live in the district. A few months later, my mother began working at the school’s lunch counter. And I started kindergarten there.”

“That’s when you wanted to change your name?” Archer asked.

I nodded, disliking the echo of old shame. “The other kids lived in big houses. Had parents who were doctors or corporate bigwigs. I was the girl who lived in a tiny apartment in a rough neighborhood. My parents had funny accents. My father was the school janitor and my mother was the lunch lady. I knew early on I’d be an easy target if I didn’t do something first.”

“So what did you do?”

“I became kind of a daredevil,” I said. “Known for taking risks. I knew it’d be a way to get attention, even admiration. I was the kid who climbed the highest tree, walked on a roofline, jumped into a lake from the highest rock. And when I outgrew that, I became the rebel girl with a bad attitude.

“I was always a good student. Academics were easy for me, and I even skipped a grade. But I made everything else difficult. I got into fights. I made sure all the other kids were scared of me so they wouldn’t give me crap. I started dying my hair in fifth grade. Wore ripped clothes, makeup, lots of black… so-called tough-chick stuff.”

I looked out the window, seeing my face reflected against the dark glass. I remembered that girl, the one who wanted to be so adventurous, who didn’t care what people thought of her, who wasn’t scared of anything. Sometimes I even missed her.

“What did your parents think of all that?” Archer asked.

“It upset them,” I admitted. “My father and I fought about it all the time. He wanted me to be a good, respectable girl. I knew my behavior pushed his buttons, which was probably part of the reason I acted out. My mother always tried to keep the peace between us. When I was offered several scholarships into college, my father eased up for a while.”

“Until… ?” Archer asked.

I shook my head. I’d already told him far more than I’d ever intended.

I pushed my plate away. I wanted to ask Archer questions too, to find out more about him, to figure out why he was so different from Dean.

I shoved my curiosity back down. Knowledge created intimacy, and intimacy with a man like Archer West was dangerous.

I stood and picked up my plate. “Are you done?”

When he nodded, I brought our plates to the kitchen. We took our mugs into the living room and sat on the sofa. Archer stretched out opposite me, his long legs crossed at the ankle and his eyes closed.

Surely there was a way to know him without
knowing
him…

“What’s your favorite band?” I asked impulsively.

“Stones. The Foo Fighters. You?”

“The Backstreet Boys.”

He opened his eyes to look at me. I grinned. He shook his head.

“Liar,” he murmured.

“I know you are, but what am I?”

We both laughed. A warm, rich pleasure filled me. I realized I’d laughed with him more in the past few days than I usually did in an entire week.

“Favorite food?” I asked.

“Pizza,” he replied. “You?”

“Anything sweet.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I slanted him a glance. “Why are you surprised?”

“I thought you’d like something spicy like salsa or curry.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re incredibly hot.” He slid his gaze down my body.

I tried to conceal my embarrassed pleasure with a slight cough. “So, um, favorite book?”

“
The Dark Knight Returns.
”

“Isn’t that a movie?”

“It’s one of the best vintage comics of the ’80s. Frank Miller’s finest. Batman comes out of retirement for one last vigilante crusade.”

“You’re a comic book aficionado?”

“Not so much.” Archer shrugged. “I liked them when I was a kid. Dean and I used to draw our own comics sometimes.” He took a swallow of hot cocoa. “What’s your favorite movie?”

“Hmm.
Aliens
, probably.”

“Not
Twister
?”

“
Twister
? No.”

“Really?” Archer looked at me askance. “That movie is epic. Remember the flying cows? How can a tornado specialist not love
Twister
?”

“Because said tornado specialist is intelligent.”

Archer groaned and thumped his chest. “You’re killing me, Professor March. Flying
cows
.”

“Udderly ridiculous.”

He chuckled. I winked at him.

We talked for the next hour, exchanging favorite colors, TV shows, sports, cities, and seasons. Then we agreed to watch a movie, and though I was aware Archer had well exceeded his allotted “hour,” I didn’t want him to leave. We found a good car-racing action flick, both of us remaining firmly on either side of the sofa for the duration of the movie.

It was nice. Too nice. Tame and warm and… comfortable. I wasn’t supposed to be comfortable with dangerous Archer West. Who, as it turned out, was proving to be
not dangerous
at all.

As if that weren’t strange enough, the situation slipped into downright
cozy
when I woke up with my head pillowed against his strong thigh.

I blinked, trying to push aside the haze of sleep and focus. His thigh was warm under my cheek, and there was a gentle weight on my hair that I slowly realized was Archer’s hand.

Good. Everything about it felt good.

Morning sunlight glowed through the windows. An infomercial was on TV. Though I didn’t want to move, I fumbled for the remote and turned off the TV. Archer shifted against me.

Embarrassment hit me. I sat up quickly, not looking at him as I shoved up from the sofa. I grabbed my glasses, which had somehow ended up on the coffee table, and put them on before turning to face him.

He was scrubbing his hands over his jaw, looking rumpled and mildly surprised. He rubbed his eyes before lowering his hands. Our gazes met.

“Hi,” I said weakly.

“Hi.” He pushed to the edge of the sofa. “I don’t remember falling asleep.”

“Neither do I.” I gestured to the hall bathroom. “There should be an extra toothbrush in the drawer. I’m just going to go change.”

I hurried into the other bathroom to brush my teeth and hair. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to deal with a morning after, even though technically this didn’t qualify.

Or did it? Deciding to try and act as normal as possible, I went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and clean up the dirty dishes from the previous night. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Archer’s broad frame fill the kitchen doorway.

“I’m making coffee,” I said unnecessarily, gesturing to the full pot.

“Great.” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb in that lazy way of his. His jaw was stubbly, his black hair ruffled and slightly damp, his shirt wrinkled. He looked edible, like a messy, decadent chocolate cake that I wanted to dive into headfirst.

“I guess we already had breakfast last night,” I remarked.

“Yeah. And we slept together before we had sex. We even kissed before we knew each other’s names. Seems we’re doing everything backward.”

Which was not the way I did things. Ever. Or at least… until Archer.

I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. I was pouring myself a cup when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, easing past Archer in the doorway.