Rescue Me: A Valentine's Day Story - Smashwords by Serena Bell Page A

thirty-three, she should have been wise enough to see the writing on the wall then, but she had a noisy biological clock and this bad habit of giving people second chances. And for many months, she hadn’t regretted giving him that second chance. He’d been charming, full of fun ideas, and expert at coaxing her to escape her cozy, introverted existence and try new things. She’d fantasized about convincing him to settle down and have kids with her.
    She further admitted that her rage tonight had been amplified by the fact that she’d enjoyed a little private session in the bathtub—pre-foreplay. She’d brought herself further and faster than she had planned, but pulled back from the brink to save herself for Peyton, later, in the hopes of reviving what had recently become a pretty darn dull intimate life. Instead, she’d found herself stood-up, horny, and in possession of an expensive pair of stiletto heels.
    She’d thrown the shoe, meaning to hit the wall, and here she was.
    “Hello?”
    Shit. So much for no witnesses .
    Oh, and God , it was him . Not Peyton- him , but the hot downstairs tenant. The one who most of the time barely gave her a tight nod of acknowledgment when she passed him. The one who made her feel like she took up too much space, and said too many stupid things. People who said almost nothing and kept their faces relatively expressionless did that to her. It was too bad she wasn’t quite introverted enough to shut the hell up. Instead, he always seemed to make her babble.
    He was standing on the ground, and even though he was far below her and the angle was all wrong, she squeezed her thighs together a little tighter, just in case. The squeezing turned out to be a mistake on top of all the self-love in the bathtub. And on top of the rather attractive picture he made down there, all broad and dark, and seen from this perspective, quite impressive across the shoulders. Apparently, the sexy kind of heat didn’t care how cold the weather was.
    “I don’t think it’s safe to sit up there.”
    Gee, thanks.
    She thought hard about playing it innocent. She could pretend she’d come out here for a breath of fresh air before her hot date. Then she’d have to screw her courage to the sticking place and crawl back inside. He’d be none the wiser.
    Or she could cut her losses — after all, he already thought she was a fool — and admit the truth: She was a bad-tempered, shoe-throwing woman who’d been jilted on Valentine’s Day, and she was experiencing a form of desperation that made losing her reservation at Sergio’s and knowing that she’d just been humiliatingly dumped by her loser boyfriend of six months seem insignificant.
    “I’m stuck,” she confessed. It felt like the first intelligent thing she’d done all evening.
    In the gray-yellow light of the sodium arc streetlamp, she could make out his ruggedly handsome face—clean shaven, strong lines, good angles, but something a little uneven, not at all pretty boy. Right now it conveyed equal parts surprise and disdain. “How exactly did you get out there?”
    “Climbed out the window?” Her voice emerged shaky and uncertain.
    “Can’t you climb back in?”
    Here was the humiliating part. “I’m scared,” she admitted.
    “Weren’t you scared on the way out?”
    No, I was too busy hating my ex-boyfriend and wanting my expensive shoe back, in equal proportions. No way would she ’fess up to that part. He already thought she was a total freak. “Somehow it felt easier to get out here than it does to get back.”
    “Huh,” he said.
    She was grateful that he hadn’t laughed. Of course, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him laugh. Or even smile.
    “What if I talk you through it?”
    The offer surprised her. It seemed somehow—soft. Soft in a way it had never occurred to her he might be. There was nothing soft at all about his physique, which was all muscle and sinew—she assumed he did