“I do.” She walked up to him and put a hand on his chest, her suspicions confirmed by well-shaped pectoral muscles. “Hey, what’s this? I’m thinking gym membership.”
He blinked, in the middle of a sip of amaro, and then recovered. “You are, huh?”
“Am I right?”
“If I say yes, does that count as telling you a secret?”
“Not in a million years.”
“Yes.” He took her hand and led her out on the house’s screened-in porch, where he seated her on an upholstered bench swing and plunked down next to her. Close.
So. They’d start now. She was still a bit...off, and she couldn’t quite figure out why, but over her lifetime she’d become an expert at faking confidence she didn’t feel. Came in handy quite often, actually.
“Well, Erik.” She lifted her legs and swung them across his lap, arranging herself comfortably against the side cushion on the swing. “Tell me everything.”
“Okay, then. Everything coming up.” He took another sip, put his glass down and laid his hands on her bare shins, caressing them up and down, almost absently. “Starting with tonight’s secret, Secret Number One.”
“I’m ready.”
“When I was a young teenager, I was bored here. My parents were pretty strict. Jonas hung out with a few kids close to his age, mostly older. I was the little brother they didn’t want around.”
“Ouch.” She could picture him, maybe a little chubby, hiding his hurt at being left out.
“Aw, it was just basic kid stuff.” He picked up her leg and started a gentle massage of the muscles in her calf. “But I was lonely and pissed off about it. There was a general store not too far from here, about a mile down the road, where the gas station and convenience store are now. It was old-school. You could buy nonperishable groceries, raincoats, fishing gear, hardware items, a few toys, stuff like that. There was a great assortment of candy up in the front next to the register, and behind it were shelves with magazines and personal pharmacy stuff.
“The owner had a son about my age. I hated this kid for no reason except he was skinny and weird-looking and had to spend his summer working in his father’s store.”
“Perfect anger target for that summer.”
“A couple of summers.” He shook his head, picked up her other leg and continued his massage.
“Hey, Erik?” She trailed her fingers down his arm. “Can I hire you to come home with me and do that every night?”
He gave her a slow smile. “Absolutely.”
“Good.” She waved at him to continue before she started going soft on him. “Now go on.”
“What, that’s not enough? My hidden hatred for the poor blameless angel of a child?”
“Nope.” She folded her arms across her chest and regarded him sternly. “There’s got to be serious dirt dug up here.”
“There will be.” His fingers stopped massaging and lay still. She had a feeling he didn’t realize how hard he was squeezing her leg. “I figured out that at lunchtime the kid was in there alone. Alan, his name was. I’d ride my bike over whenever I could get away. Must have been a couple times a week. I’d wait until he was with a customer somewhere in the store, or I’d ask him about something behind the shelf. Then I’d steal candy.”
“Oh, the ultimate irony—a rich-kid shoplifter.”
He nodded, looking adorably contrite. “It gets worse.”
“Mmm, goody.”
He relaxed his grip, bent her leg and began massaging her foot. She closed her eyes and groaned in pleasure. Immediately, the massage stopped. Sandra opened her eyes to find Erik looking at her with such feral intensity she nearly gasped.
“Damn it, Sandra, you are so hot, sometimes it’s all I can do not to attack you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”
For a second, she sat there stunned by the passion in his outburst.
That makes two of us.
“Well.” She tried for a cocky unconcerned tone and failed utterly, struggled to sit up higher, as if her position had interfered with her voice. “You know what you have to do to make that possible.”
“Yes.” He turned back to her foot, leaving her somewhat shell-shocked. How many men had told her they wanted her? Dozens. She was well aware of the vibe she put out, but she also knew how to handle herself and had always felt well in control of the men and of her own actions and emotions. Not so much now. She didn’t like it.
“Keep talking.”
“This went on for two summers. Then I grew up some and realized Alan’s dad was probably just making it financially and that I’d been a complete shit.”
“No argument there.”
“The next summer, the store wasn’t there anymore. I was probably fifteen, sixteen by then. So I did some digging and found out where this kid lived, so I could give him and his dad back the money for what I stole. And then some.”
“Ooh, noble child.” She was more caught up in the idea of the struggling teenage Erik than she wanted to admit. “What happened?”
“I went to his house, in this sort of run-down neighborhood. Their place wasn’t so great, either. I was about to go up and knock, when the kid came out. He had a girl with him, she was pretty, and they were laughing. Then his dad came out and told them to go have a great time, he passed his kid some cash and they headed for a car at the curb not far from where I was standing with a bunch of twenties in my pocket.”
“And...?”
Erik turned and sent her a look of world-weary amusement. “And I turned chickenshit and went home.”
“Oh, no!” Sandra nearly choked on her last sip of amaro. She put the glass down. “No, no, that’s not how it goes. You give them the money and then the kid says, ‘Oh, this is the exact amount I still need for the life-saving operation on my darling mama.’”
“Nope. I chickened out.”
“So, then.” She beckoned, prompting the rest of the story. “Years later, you found him again and sent an anonymous check?”
“Nope.”
“At least tell me you’ve felt guilty all these years.”
He looked pensive. “Not really. It was probably twenty-five bucks’ worth. They survived.”