a moment or two. Three, four, five. Her heart surged with gratitude. He felt as warm and comforting as ever, but also muscled and solid. When had that happened?
He’d been a skinny dude with an unintentionally hip geekiness when they’d met three years ago while playing Ultimate Frisbee with a group of friends in the park. In between putting in eighty hours a week at work, she’d been dating one of her typical Mr. Right Turn To Disasters. Jamie had been seeing her ex-roomie, self-proclaimed bitch diva goddess Shandi Lee—an odd couple if ever there was one. The relationships had lasted just long enough for Marissa and Jamie to avoid the awkward “should they or shouldn’t they?” moment and settle into platonic friendship.
Lucky timing, Marissa had always thought. Jamie Wilson had become the only long-term chromosome XY in her day-to-day life, the only male, aside from her cat, Harry, that she wasn’t pressured to impress.
“Marissa,” he said, patting her back. “I’m sorry.”
She squeezed him, allowing his sympathy even though too much sentiment usually made her itchy and restless. Outside of the holidays, when she was a sap about family cheer and goodwill to men, she kept her game face on. A single woman in Manhattan had to be tough.
And yet once again she felt herself relaxing into Jamie’s patented comfort zone, the one place where she let down her guard. He felt strong. He smelled good. Not like Paul, granted, who’d given off the alpha wolf eat-or-be-eaten pheromones that typically revved her engine. But surprisingly good, all the same.
Surprisingly sexy for a best friend.
What? Her head cranked back.
Beep, beep, beep. Time to back up that truck before it drove over the cliff looming ahead.
“Enough of this. I’m not dying.” Marissa pulled out of Jamie’s arms. “It’s just another breakup. I’ve survived them before.” She tucked away the cell phone that was still clutched in her hand, watching his face through her lashes while she snapped the bag shut.
Jamie seemed unaware of her instant of sexual awareness. He looked the way he always did—strong nose and jaw, blunt cheekbones, big dark blue eyes with sleepy lids beneath the mop of nut-brown hair that fell across his brow. A mouth so mobile that she’d learned to read his emotions from the shapes it made.
At the moment he was holding a faintly quizzical smile, his expression as clear and innocent as a choir boy’s. No sign of any of the messy, secret yearnings she’d occasionally worried he might harbor for her, that Shandi, among others, had sworn were there.
Who knew that Marissa, the tough chiquita from the barrio, would crack first?
She shrugged. Well, whatever had happened was only a momentary weakness. Gone like a speeding bullet, she told herself, although an alarming amount of warmth toward Jamie still simmered inside her.
Ignore it. No more mistakes, remember?
“You okay?” he asked, taking her rare uncertainty for Paul Beckwith aftereffects.
“Sure.” She tossed her ponytail. “You know me. Paul’s roadkill in my rearview mirror.”
“But this time, you’ll have to keep seeing him.” Jamie had warned her not to have a workplace affair. He was always so sensible, telling her in his evenhanded way exactly what was wrong with the man she’d chosen. That he was invariably right but never said “I told you so” was one of his most endearing characteristics.
Which didn’t mean she’d ever learn to listen to him! But it was nice having someone looking out for her.
“Not to worry,” she said. “We’re both too busy for office drama.”
“If you say so.” He scowled as he took her bag.
“Now, Jamie. I only need one stern papi and I left him behind in Little Havana.” Jamie’s brotherly concern was nowhere near as stifling as the concern of Alberto Suarez, an old-fashioned Cuban American who thought that his eldest daughter should be married and popping out babies like a good little Catholic. Two years shy of thirty and she was already considered an old maid by her family. “So don’t look at me like that.”
Jamie blinked. “Like what?”
“Like you know what’s best for me.” She kissed his cheek. Another tingle of awareness chased itself over the surface of her skin, which she continued to ignore. Jet lag could knock anyone off center.
“Someone has to,” he teased. His eyes went to the lily in her hair.
She touched it, feeling an emotion so rare she almost didn’t recognize it. Shyness.
“You look very tropical.” His voice rasped.
“Even without the tan I was promised?” She made a face. “Instead of lying on the beach, most of my time in the Caymans was wasted holed up in the suite or hanging around the bar, waiting for Paul.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Exactly. Once I realized that, I made my escape.” They walked through the exit doors. She scanned the cordoned taxi line, dismayed to see that it would be another wait for transportation. “Men don’t treat me that way more than once.”
“Like what, specifically?”
Marissa gave a snort. “Like an accessory.”
Her father had attempted to raise her to be what he considered a “good” girl—obedient and humble. Obviously that lesson hadn’t taken, perhaps because he’d also taught her pride and pugnacity by example. Instead of accepting a gender role, she’d preferred to outdo his expectations for the boys in the family, even when that
meant working as a waitress to put herself through the first years of community college, even when she was told over and over that she would never make it.
The desire to achieve a success that would show them all what she was made of had become her driving force. She couldn’t be like her cheery, tolerant mother, née Mary Margaret McBride, who was content in her little cottage, still in love with her bantam rooster of a husband after thirty-two years of marriage. Or her sister, Graciela, who’d married at twenty and now had a husband who spent more evenings out drinking with his muchachos than at home with his family.
Marissa appreciated her parents for the stability and love they’d given her and her brothers and sister. But she’d known from the age of ten that she had to be aggressive or she’d never get away. If she was single-minded and frequently too abrupt, that was why.
Until she was where she wanted to be, she couldn’t let up. She couldn’t slow down.
Except with Jamie. He was her release valve, as she was his energy pill. They went together like salt and pepper, up and down, yin and yang. Each gave as good as they got, and it worked.
“An accessory?” Jamie had to know there was more to her early return than that, but he wasn’t one to push. “For a smart man, Paul sure is dumb,” he said cheerfully. “You’re a treasure.”
Marissa shook her head. “I’m a woman in need of a giant Cubano sandwich.” Suddenly she was starving.
“Then let’s get out of here so I can feed you,” Jamie said, reverting to the reliable friend she recognized. They’d reached the head of the line and he’d stashed her suitcase in their taxi’s trunk. He held the door open, smiling at her, adorably rumpled in a tee layered over a white cotton shirt with frayed edges. No fashion plate, her friend, Jamie. Nothing like Paul, who spent more on his wardrobe than many women.
Marissa climbed into the taxi. After she was settled, she took a moment to thank her lucky stars for the Frisbee she’d mistakenly aimed at Jamie’s nose the day they’d met. She was certain that he’d never once thought of her as an accessory, even though she’d been his plus one at a number of the events that he attended in his career as an arts writer for the Village Observer,