just proved Marsie right. When Beck had wondered if she should invite a man back over to her house after a first date or go to a hotel or something, Marsie’s advice had been to ask why she would be having sex with a man she didn’t trust enough to see where she lived.
Beck hadn’t had a good answer to that one.
She had read The Gift of Fear. She listened to her gut. And Caleb didn’t ring any alarm bells with her. But that was sex and walking through her front door. She didn’t know anything about his driving.
They were standing close to each other on the sidewalk. She felt his every movement and had to focus on what he was saying instead of letting her mind wander to how his body would feel, naked against hers.
“Well,” he explained, “you don’t feel comfortable driving. And driving won’t be a problem for me. I could drive you to your house in my car and, tomorrow morning, drive you to come get your car. Or, I could drive you in your car to your house and I’m the one who has to come get my car in the morning. Me driving your car seems both the more gentlemanly thing to do and the most practical. If we were going to my house, I’d say we should take my car.”
She looked up at him and bit her lip. What if he wouldn’t leave in the morning? She’d been living alone in her house for over a year and, to be honest, quite liked it. The toilet seat was never up.
“Or,” he said as he leaned against the building and she felt like she had space to breathe—to think, “we could take our pizza and eat it over on the tables at Five Points and we can go our separate ways for the night. And there are hotels. Nice ones. If you’re looking for a night, but not another date.”
He shrugged. “But I’d like to see you another time.”
The shrug was the clincher, full of interest but no pressure that she raise that toilet seat because he expected it. “Drive me home. We’ll have pizza and see where we go from there. That sounds good.”
He peeled himself off the building and was back in her space again. She liked him in her space. Frankly, she wanted him to be in more of her space. For there to be no space. He probably had dark, curly chest chair and she wanted to run her hands over it.
“Great.” God, even his smile was romantic, slow and full of promises. She was going to have sex. She was going to come. For the first time in months, she wouldn’t be completely responsible for making it happen. And it was going to be awesome.
The woman at the hostess stand gestured to them from the other side of the restaurant’s big windows. Beck stayed outside while Caleb went in and got the pizza. When he hit the sidewalk, a box of hot pizza in his hand, she fell into step beside him while they walked to her car.
She didn’t say anything, wasn’t even sure there was anything to say. It felt almost like losing her virginity for a second time—she could either babble out her nerves or let them keep her quiet company. She chose quiet company.
BECK DIDN’T SAY a word the entire way from the pizza place to her car, three whole blocks. Caleb would have worried, but she didn’t seem reluctant to be coming with him. Or to have him coming with her, since they were on their way to her house in her car.
Nerves, he figured. He remembered those days, right after his marriage had ended when he’d been at a bar for the first time, looking for company. He hadn’t been very good at meeting women when he’d been younger. Memories from his early twenties bordered on painful. Whenever he looked at pictures of himself from those years, he couldn’t take his eyes off the Adam’s apple as big as his nose and the Ichabod Crane awkwardness, complete with trying to woo the beautiful Katrina with poetry. Caleb had kept his life, but there had been moments when he’d wondered if the poor schoolmaster had been relieved to have his humiliation disappear at the hands of the headless horseman. In those years, he certainly wouldn’t have turned down a big hole to swallow him up, Adam’s apple first.
That first night back in the game after his separation, he’d opened the door to the bar and his only thought had been, “Let me not be alone for an hour.” Instead of poetry, he’d walked up to the first woman who made eye contact and said, “Hi, I’m Caleb,” while sticking out his hand.
All his confidence about talking with random strangers after years of being a reporter puffed out in an embarrassing whimper when she’d said, “I’m taken,” making her friends laugh. Except one of the women had come up to him at the bar a little later and introduced herself as “Sabrina, but my friends call me ‘Not Taken.’” It was his turn to laugh. He’d stumbled through questions about her job and her interests and they’d ended up back at his house.
The nerves had only disappeared when Sabrina had left the next morning. And they’d shown up again and again and again for the first year as slowly the memories of shuffling his feet and bad poetry faded into the background. Sometimes he missed the nerves. He didn’t miss being nervous, really, but that lack of nerves reminded him that he’d been dating for a long time.
That was not a thought he liked, though he wasn’t sure what the alternative was. And without dating, he wouldn’t meet a woman like Beck. There was something about that square chin and big, round smile that did him in—reality was even better than her profile picture.
“Anything I should know about the car?” he asked after he’d put the pizza in the back and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Nope. Drives like it’s supposed to.”
He turned the key. “Good. I like it when the D means drive.”
Unless she was giving him directions, Beck also was silent for the entire drive back to her house. Which was also fine, since Caleb wasn’t certain he’d be able to hear her over the growl of his stomach as the smell of pizza permeated everything.
* * *
EVERYTHING WAS HAPPENING in slow motion, Beck realized as she stuck the key into her lock and turned it. Seamus was barking in the background. She could feel Caleb behind her, a large, mostly unknown presence that she welcomed, even if she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with him. Or, she knew what she wanted to do with him, but she just worried that she was out of practice with the whole process, from pre-sex to post-sex. The last time she had taken a near stranger to her house was...well, it would have been her dorm room in college and they had both been drunk enough that she couldn’t remember if she’d had a good time.
Since then, it had only been Neil. With a shock, she realized she was glad it wasn’t Neil tonight.
As soon as the door opened and they both stepped in, her dog was there, bouncing up and down and making any need to talk to each other moot. Caleb actually got down on one knee, holding the pizza box up high. Seamus gave him one big lick before settling down for a solid ear scratch.
“This is the famous Seamus,” he said, looking up at her. Seamus had a dopey grin on his face, his tongue lolling out to the side. The dog slobber added a shine to his nose, making Caleb even more perfect.
She nodded. “No green collar, though. Maybe for St. Patrick’s Day.”
He rocked back on his heels and then stood, still balancing the pizza box. “It’d look good on him. But the blue collar he has now looks good, too.”
“Thanks.”
They stood in her entryway, Seamus between them, looking back and forth, waiting for one of them to do something exciting. Give him a slice, probably. Lucky to be a dog and know both what he wanted and to not feel self-conscious about how to get it.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“That depends on what you want out of the night.” He held his arms out. It felt like an invitation, though she didn’t step inside them. Not yet. “I’m here. If you changed your mind about what I’m here