Infatuation

2

SHE LOOKED exactly as he remembered. She’d always been slender; it had been an ongoing source of inside jokes, fearing she would snap in a strong wind, be whipped about on the bay’s waves like driftwood, float on a bank of misty fog. That she would break in two if he wasn’t gentle when they made love.

She’d disabused him of that notion quite forcefully and quite often—often enough that those memories were the first to come to mind when he should have remembered that everything between them had been a lie. Instead, all he could think about was the sex.

She didn’t say anything, just stood in front of him, her feet primly together in shoes he knew cost what was a month’s rent for Hector, Angie and Jin. He didn’t hold it against her. Milla Page was who she was.

He could tell by the way she clenched and unclenched her fingers around the handle of her funky purple purse that he’d been standing and staring way too long.

She was uncomfortable; he gave her the benefit of the doubt, deciding it wasn’t the fault of the neighborhood as much as it was seeing him again.

It probably didn’t help that Angie sat behind the receptionist station punching buttons on the switchboard console, transferring calls and paging salesmen, glancing back and forth between them while neither one said a word.

So Rennie forced a smile and motioned Milla forward, leading the way across the sales floor to the customer lounge, listening for her soft steps to fall behind him. He grabbed a foam cup from the corner table’s stack and poured himself a coffee from the pot on the warmer. Milla shook her head when he offered to pour one for her.

“Still prefer lattes?” he asked, now a fan himself though in a pinch of nerves sludge would do.

“Yes, but right now I don’t think I could swallow anything,” she replied in that voice that still slid over him like the honey she’d loved…so sticky, so sweet, so warm on her tongue.

He nearly choked as he knocked back a slug of the caffeine. He was already wired to the gills and hardly in need of the jolt, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do. And he wouldn’t be able to figure that out until he knew what she was doing here.

Why it had taken her six years to look him up.

Why she appeared ready to bolt.

Why he cared when he’d sworn to wipe her from his mind.

Curiosity got the better of his self-made promise. He gestured toward the row of chairs on her right. “Sit. Please.”

She did as he’d asked, or rather as he’d ordered her, choosing the seat closest to where she stood and settling onto the edge. She held her purse tightly in her lap.

Her knuckles stood out like bleached bones beneath translucent skin. Her smile seemed forced and fragile, and that made him groan.

No matter her size, Milla Page was the least fragile woman he’d ever known. If anything, she was unbreakable. Untouchable. Unyielding. And he shouldn’t be feeling responsible for the change.

He moved closer, choosing to leave only one seat between them and angling his body to the side. He liked the idea of the space between them being more for show than effect. He wanted to see if after all this time he could still make her sweat.

Or if there was more to her emotional state than a simple case of nerves. “I guess this is where we do the small talk thing. Unless you want to skip the catching up and just tell me why you’re here.”

“I happened—”

He cut her off with a shake of his head and a laugh that was harsh. “Nope. I don’t buy that you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

He watched as she struggled not to snap back. Her eyes, as always, gave her away. “What I was going to say was that I happened across your business card.”

“So you’re here to buy a car?” The more likely scenario was that she was here to see for herself that he really hadn’t come up in the world.

But she shook her head, surprising him by admitting, “I’m here to see you.”

He grunted, slumped back in his chair. Did she know about his show? Had she come thinking to cash in on his celebrity? Was his financial portfolio more to her liking than had been his empty pockets in college?

“It surprised me…seeing your name like that…I hadn’t thought of you in years—” She caught herself, her mouth clamping shut on her words. She shook off whatever it was she’d been thinking, and started again. “No. That’s not true.”

“Which part?” he asked, the words clattering out on a growl. The sound was an echo of the uproar piston-pumping through his midsection. “That seeing my name surprised you when we both know it shouldn’t have caused a blip on your radar?”

She set her purse on the seat between them and got to her feet, moving across the room to the coffee service before turning around. “I think about you every day, Rennie. I have for the last six years.”

He didn’t believe her. Unbreakable, untouchable, and unable to tell the truth when a lie would do. Even worse was knowing all of that and wishing it wasn’t so.

Wishing she had thought about him as often as he’d thought about her.

He clenched his fist, felt the foam of his cup begin to give. “So, you think about me every day, but it takes seeing my business card to get you to stop by?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know you’d come back to the city.”

That’s right. He’d told her he was off to see the world. That he wouldn’t return until he’d made his first million. Instead he’d come back after what seemed like a million miles on the road and a million sleepless nights to make his fortune right here at home.

“You could’ve driven by and asked,” he finally said, his jaw tight, shooting his near-empty cup into the brown rubber can in the corner. Drops of coffee spattered across the white liner.

“You’re right.” She walked back into the room, sat in the chair across from his. “I could have and I didn’t. I’m not sure why.”

He knew exactly. And he started to remind her of their last night together, the party, the fight that had grown larger than either of them had known what to do with. But the expression of pain on her face stopped him.

He draped his arms over the backs of the seats on either side, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. When he rocked his feet, the toe of his boot grazed her lower calf. “I didn’t look you up, either. When I got home. Guess that evens the score.”

“How long have you been back?” she asked softly, looking at his legs rather than meeting his eyes.

Streaks of grease, oil and transmission fluid stained his navy work pants and the once-tan leather of his boots, but none of that was what she seemed to be seeing. “At least five years. I wasn’t gone long.”

Her gaze came up, her curiosity drawing her blond brows together. “I thought you were off to see the world and make your fortune.”

He shrugged, tapped his toe against her calf again. “I did some sightseeing, took on some odd jobs to keep afloat. Didn’t take me long to realize home is where the heart is, I guess you could say.”

He expected her to question his possession of one. A heart. Instead she seemed to close up a bit, her voice taking on a hint of bitterness as she said, “It’s good to know it wasn’t broken.”

He huffed. What? She expected him to admit how hurt he’d been? That he’d spent those months in Australia and New Zealand working her out of his system? They’d never had a real relationship. They’d had lust. And heat. And the sort of sex a man never forgot.

But none of that had anything to do with his heart.

The fluorescent light overhead flickered, reflecting off the lounge’s big windows that looked out over the showroom floor. “I think that’s why we worked so well in bed. We’re both unbreakable.”

The look she gave him was a silent touché, and it set them on a more even footing. Neither had been fair with the other. But they’d both grown up, and the past was in the past—even if he was suddenly having a hard time keeping it there.

He shifted forward in his seat, braced his elbows on his knees and laced his hands between. This close, he could smell her, that subtle scent of a spicy sort of flower, the same as it had always been, reminding him how often he’d turned and expected to find her there since he’d last seen her.

He’d hated himself for that weakness. “I’ve got work to do, Milla. I need to get back. So can we get to the point here?”

She smoothed her palms over the straight black skirt she wore. It made her legs look paler than they were. “I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

A favor? “A favor.”

A hesitant smile crossed her face. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And what time was that?”

“When I saw your card.”

“But now that you’ve seen me, it doesn’t?”

More smoothing. Some toying and plucking at her hem. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?” God help him, he really wanted to know. He reached for her fingers. They were cool and small and so…fragile in his. It was hard to keep his voice steady. “What is it, Milla?”

She raised her gaze to meet his. “Seeing you again…it’s brought back so many things…I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here.”

The fact that he was more interested in what she was thinking now was as telling as deciding they could get back to what she had been thinking later. Why had he assumed that he’d see her again? “What’s the favor?”

“I need a date for tomorrow night.”

“A date?” He hadn’t seen her for six years and she’d come to ask him for a date?

“Actually, for tomorrow and the next two Friday nights,” she added, rushing on. “It’s work-related. I do club reviews for a relationship Web site.”

“Club reviews,” he said, his echo of her words sounding ridiculously inane. He was stuck processing the reality of Milla Page asking him out on a date.

“I know, I know.” She pulled her fingers free and got to her feet, grabbing her purse and heading for the door before he could stop her. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I shouldn’t have come.”

Neither did he, but he’d bet the farm it had nothing to do with needing a date for work. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”

She stopped, turned, kept her gaze locked on his as he stood to tower above her. “You don’t have to do this, Rennie. I’ll find someone else.”

“You came to me for a reason, Milla.” When she started to interrupt, he held up one hand. “I’ll be damned if I know what it is, but we’ll figure it out later. Tell me what time and where to find you.”

Her fingers were trembling when she dug into her purse for a pen and her card. She printed an address on the back. “That’s where I live. The other side is work. Call me at six?” When he nodded, she went on. “My cell, office and home numbers are all there.”

“And where are we going?” He studied the card. “So I’ll know what to wear.”

“Oh, it’s a club in the Presidio. Test Flight. The dress is trendy casual.”

“I’ll see what I’ve got in my closet.” She hesitated, as if wanting to respond to what he’d said. He saved her the hassle of asking what he was going to wear. “Don’t worry, Milla. I know how to clean up.”

“I wasn’t worried about that.” She reached up to push away loose strands of hair. “I just hadn’t thought that I might be putting you out. If you have other plans—”

“If I had other plans, I’d be keeping them,” he said, glad he didn’t have to test that theory. “I’ll call you tomorrow at six.”

She nodded, turned and vanished from his showroom the same way she’d vanished from his life.

He waited for the hurt to return, for numbness to follow. Instead he felt the same adrenaline rush he got when test-driving one of his show’s new rides.

And right then he knew he was in trouble. He wouldn’t know how deeply until tomorrow night, a thought that sent him slamming out of the showroom to bury himself in work.

HECTOR PRIETO STOOD in the doorway of the shop office and watched Rennie drop back to the creeper and shove himself beneath the panel van.

Whatever had happened between the boss and the stick chick couldn’t have gone down too good. Ren might as well have dragged a storm cloud back with him into the shop.

Gloom and doom. That’s what Hector was feeling. And that was no way to be working when they had so much to do.

His own team of mechanics was in pretty good shape, working to tear down Ren’s Studebaker for a show that would run toward the end of the season. But that didn’t mean anyone could slack off.

“Yo, Angie.”

Behind him, Angie Soon straightened from where she’d been digging through the invoices in Ren’s file cabinet. “I am busy here, Hector. I am not at your beck and call.”

Women. Cripes. Thirty years old, and he still didn’t understand them. Hector glanced at her over his shoulder. “I’m not becking or calling. I wanna know what went down with Ren and the woman who came to see him. Did they have a fight or something?”

“What did I just say, Hector? I’ve been working.” Angie straightened, gestured with both hands, her bright pink nails flashing. “That phone up front doesn’t stop ringing just because Rennie decides to get into it with some woman who drops in out of the blue.”

“Humph.” Hector stepped back into the office. “They got into it, huh? What happened?”

Angie bent over to dig through the files again, inadvertently giving Hector an eyeful. Her blouse gaped open as she flipped through the folders, and he didn’t even think about looking away.

Her breasts were tight and small, covered by a plain pink bra, the skin of her stomach smooth and white beneath. He found his palms itching, and he curled his fingers into them, his mouth dry, his blood hot.

He’d never thought about Angie like that before…

“I don’t know exactly,” she finally said, pulling out one file folder and flipping through the contents, strands of black hair falling into her face. “They were quiet, but neither one could sit still.”

He crossed to the corner and pulled a tiny paper cup from the water cooler dispenser. “Where were they?”

“In the customer lounge. I could only see them through the glass. Rennie had that look on his face. That one where you can tell he’s got something on his mind.”

“Right. The one where he’s not going to talk about whatever it is until he figures it out for himself.” Hector downed the water, crumpled the cup and threw it away. “You think she’s an ex or something?”

Angie shrugged, returning the folder and digging into another. “She could have been. Or she could have been a bill collector. Whoever she was, they definitely weren’t having fun reliving old times.”

Hector found himself smiling. Not so much at the idea of Rennie in trouble with a woman, but at Angie. Just at Angie. And just because. “Ren’s back at work, so I guess there’s no need to be worrying about it.”

Clutching to her chest the folder she’d come for, Angie slammed the drawer with the swing of her hip. “I’m not worrying over anything but getting these missing receipts to the accountant. If you’re worrying, then you obviously have too much free time.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, crossed his arms over his chest, arched a brow. “Maybe I do. Maybe you could help me fill it up.”

She stared at him for several long seconds, strands of hair catching on the folder she held. Her dark eyes were narrow and made up in colors of purple and blue to match her blouse. She kept her lips pressed together, and wore no lipstick.

For some reason her lips being bare like that made it easier for him to see when she started to go mad. “What exactly is it you’re saying, Hector? And be very clear so I don’t start thinking you meant something you didn’t.”

Cripes and double cripes. But since he was already in for a pound… “Tomorrow night. You want to grab a burger?”

“A burger?”

A burger and a beer would be better for a night with Rennie and Jin. “We could go for shrimp. Or steaks. Whatever you like.”

“I like lasagna.”

“Italian’s good. You have a favorite place?”

She nodded. “I do. Thank you for asking.”

“Okay, then,” he said, pushing off the door. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

She walked toward him, walked past him, walked out into the shop. “Don’t be late. And don’t honk. Come to the door. If you don’t, you’ll have to explain to my mamma that you are not disrespecting me.”

“You still live with your mamma?”

She stopped and swung around, one hand going to her waist. “I take care of her. I support her. Do you have a problem with that?”

Hector shook his head quickly. He knew more than enough about supporting his own family, the sacrifices it took, how nothing about it was easy. He’d just never thought of Angie that way. Living like he did…

He’d just thought of her as the girl who answered Bergen’s phones. Not as a girl who might understand his life. “No problem. I was just asking, that’s all.”

Her cute little nose came up in the air. “Okay, then. Tomorrow night. Seven-thirty.”

“On the dot,” he assured her, thinking he really needed to stop looking down girls’ blouses before he did something more stupid than inviting one out to eat.

UNBREAKABLE.

She couldn’t believe he’d called her unbreakable. After all they’d shared and all they’d been through, did he really not know her at all?

Milla stood at the window of her office, staring at the afternoon traffic ten stories below, her late lunch spread out on the desk behind her.

She’d left Bergen Motors and driven for an hour before realizing she’d done nothing but go nowhere. She didn’t like that about herself. The way she so easily drifted, searching, unsatisfied. It was a state with which she’d become too emotionally intimate the last few years.

When she’d finally arrived back downtown, she’d stopped at the deli on the corner for a sandwich, realizing she hadn’t eaten since the night before. But thinking of Rennie made it impossible to think of anything else, no matter all the things on her mind.

Food, work, the new shoes that pinched her feet and she needed to return, the book in her drawer she’d wanted to finish at lunch, deciding on a dress for tomorrow night, the fact that Natalie would be stopping by any minute for a blow-by-blow of Milla’s morning excursion—

“How’d it go?”

Smiling at the confirmation of her uncanny sixth sense, Milla turned, hoping the tracks of her tears had dried. She pulled in a shuddering breath. “I have a date, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s good, and Joan will be pleased, but that’s not what I’m asking.” Natalie closed Milla’s office door, her silk jacket swinging around her hips, her gaze sharp and demanding. “What happened with your Mr. Bergen?”

Hugging herself tightly, Milla avoided her friend’s eyes that saw too much, staring at her soggy sandwich instead. “Not much, actually. We talked for less than ten minutes.”

Gripping the back of the gold-and-blue paisley visitor’s chair, Natalie leaned forward. “Talked? About?”

“Honestly? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Milla dropped into her own chair, pulled a pickle from her sandwich and popped it into her mouth.

“So, what then? You compared notes on the weather? The state of the union? Old times?”

“He said, ‘What’re you doing here?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘What took you so long to look me up?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but would you like to go out tomorrow?’ He said, ‘Sure, I’ll see you then.’” She chomped on a tomato slice. “And that was it. Like I said. Ten minutes and absolutely nothing.”

Natalie stepped back and frowned. “But he said he’d go out with you.”

Milla nodded.

“And you’ll talk more then?”

She couldn’t even measure the level of dread in her stomach. “If not, it will be an uncomfortably dull date.”

“Then it is a date?”

All she knew was what she’d told Rennie. “A work date. Not a hot and heavy night on the town.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Milla asked as Natalie finally circled the guest chair and sat.

“It’s not supposed to mean anything. I was just thinking.”

“About?” Milla pinched off a triangle of cheese.

“How two people with the history you and Rennie Bergen share could get anything out of your systems in ten minutes and by saying nothing.”

Another triangle of cheese. Another pickle slice. She tasted none of it. “Who said we had anything to work out of our systems?”

“I did, but no one has to say it to make it so. Just like no one has to say there’s been an earthquake when the cracks in the wall tell the tale.”

Milla chuckled beneath her breath, deciding the sound was a bit too hysterical for comfort. “Are you saying I’m cracked?”

Natalie’s fingernails rat-tatted against the chair’s maple arms. “I’m saying you haven’t been whole since the last time you saw Rennie Bergen.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Milla said, unable to swallow.

“Is it?” Natalie’s dark brows winged upward. “I may not have known you then, but I know you now. And I’ve been waiting a long time for you to make your way back from wherever it was that he left you.”

“He didn’t leave me anywhere,” Milla grumbled.

“Don’t interrupt.” Natalie held up one elegant finger. “You haven’t wanted to face the impact Rennie Bergen had on your life. I figured that first you had to reach your breaking point. Maybe this was it.”

Milla remained silent and continued to pick at her sandwich. It was easier to pick at the veggies, cheese and bread than her life. “Rennie said I was unbreakable.”

Natalie, always so poised, actually squeaked. “What?”

“Unbreakable.” Milla shook her head because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “He said we both were.”

“And you believed him?”

She didn’t know what to believe. To tell the truth, as often as she thought about Rennie Bergen, she’d never expected to see him again.

They’d come from different worlds, lived different lives. Nothing about their time together had been normal. Even the first time they’d met, what they’d done, nothing about it had been right.

It had all been so very wrong.…

3

Nine years ago…

MILLA SAT ON THE end of the bed in Derek’s dorm, thumbing through his psych text and listening to Nirvana while waiting for him to get back.

An hour ago they’d finished off his roommate’s six-pack, and Derek had decided to replace it tonight. Rennie got in from work at ten and would be looking to unwind. Finding the minifridge empty would make him one unhappy camper.

But it was ten, and Derek was still gone, and Milla wasn’t sure whether to keep waiting and risk his roommate getting pissed or to cut out for home. It wasn’t like she was afraid of Rennie blowing a gasket over them drinking his beer. Really, what could he do?

But Derek insisting they make things right before Rennie got home did make her uneasy. Especially when she took into consideration everything else her boyfriend had told her about Rennie Bergen. About where he’d come from, the way his life was the flip side of theirs.

How he was so hard to read, so quiet. How he kept himself apart from the other guys when they’d all go out to party or to basketball games. How, when he did laugh, his sense of humor was wicked, almost cruel, as if he never had anything nice to say. As if he hated the world around him.

When she combined all of that with the fact that Derek never felt the need to cover his own ass…She swallowed hard, wishing he would hurry up. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told him earlier that she needed to go home. She had a ton of research to do before she could finish her paper.

Just then, she heard his key in the lock. Her fingers curled into the bedspread and she scooted forward, closing up his book and ready to call it a night. Only it wasn’t her boyfriend that walked through the door.

It was Rennie Bergen.

Her heart jumped into her throat and lodged there, making it impossible to breathe without feeling as if her chest were going to explode. God, why hadn’t she left earlier? Why had she come here at all? How was she going to get out of here now without him thinking she was running away?