Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(96)

She wanted to know those big things and a thousand little things about him.

“Well, what I tell them is that you should be in a committed relationship or marriage, you should love the person, and you should use protection. And then I usually say, you should only sleep with someone when you know them well enough to be certain your feelings and your body are safe with them. And you need to be old enough to know what it means to you to be safe.”

Of course, she had felt safe with Henry. She had felt secure in his arms. She had felt singular and loved and cherished.

And she’d felt so terribly, terribly foolish to discover how far astray her gut had led her. Her cracked pride as sharp a pain as a broken bone.

“That’s very wise,” Miles said.

He didn’t try to maneuver them back toward the pivot point he’d created. Instead, he said, “Tell me things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“All kinds of things. About you. Where you were born. Your favorite food, your favorite color. How many siblings you have. What foods you like.”

So they were going to do this. They were going to get to know each other.

She wanted to ask him what this was a prelude to. Where this was leading. Instead, she asked, “If I tell you, will you tell me?”

Again, the crackle over the line of the double entendre, of their shared chemistry.

“Yeah,” he said. Rumbly and dark.

So she began, and they took turns.





Chapter 5


During their second conversation, they relived their middle-and high-school dating fiascos. Until she was snort-laughing.

“I can top that,” she said, when she caught her breath.

“Cannot,” he said. “I put my smutty love note in the wrong locker, but not just any wrong locker: the wrong locker belonging to a girl who actually had a crush on me. I defy you to top that.”

“I broke up with my boyfriend at the beginning of senior year. And the high school psychologist found me and took me aside and asked me to get back together with him because I was going to hurt his chances of getting into his first-choice college.”

“You made that up.”

“Swear to God, it’s true. I was standing next to my friend Sia at the time, and if you need corroboration, I’ll have her email you.”

“That’s … that’s—there are no words. What did you say to him?”

“I was totally flummoxed. I stammered something and slunk away.”

“Did you report him?”

“I did, but nothing happened. He’s probably still there, getting himself overly involved in seventeen-year-olds’ romantic lives.” She shuddered.

“Did you get back together with your boyfriend?”

“No. But he did get into his first-choice college. And I did email the school psychologist to point that out.”

He laughed. “You’re not scared of anything, are you?” No reason that should please her so much.

No reason at all. “I’m scared of some things.”

She was scared of making the same mistake she’d made with Henry. Of hanging on too long, trusting too much, expecting enough that she could be knocked down a notch.

“Not many, though, right?”

She was scared of the tenuousness of their connection, their voices floating through the ether, linked only by a series of cell towers. He might decide not to take her calls, not to lie awake with her at night, not to laugh at her stories or admire the things about her she loved best.

It was a good kind of fear, something like how she imagined it might feel to hang-glide in the dark.

“Not many,” she agreed.

During their third conversation, they talked about the cities they loved. Nora had lived in more—a different one every two or three years since graduating from college, partly because most schools had a last-hired/first-fired policy that had made it hard for her to sustain jobs, but also because she loved the thrill of a new place and new people. Miles had lived in the Cleveland area for almost a decade, but his work for the nonprofit had taken him all over the country.

“What’s your favorite?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t have a favorite.”

“How can you not have a favorite?”

“I just don’t. Wherever I am, that’s my favorite.”

“I’m not sure you’re for real,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “They stuck electrodes in your brain at that New Year’s Eve party, and I’m computer programmed to implant sense data in your head to make you think I’m a real person.”

“It’s a very convincing computer program. And whoever programmed it knew how to keep me coming back for more.”

His words sparked along her nerves, but she kept it light. “The electrodes tell us your likes and dislikes, and the program reacts rapidly to create new scenarios that are pleasing to you. It’s working?”

“It’s working,” he confirmed.

She lay back on the couch so his voice, a purr, could twine itself around her and she could luxuriate in the sensation of it.

“Do you seriously not have a favorite city?” he asked.

“They all have people in them,” she said. “I like people.”