Breaking Through. AM Hartnett

‘Sadly, that’s pretty much the gist of who I am.’

      ‘Did you grow up here?’

      She gave him her life in point-form, how she and her sisters had been latchkey kids while their mother worked the jewellery counter in a department store, how her father had been a truck-driver nearly 25 years her mother’s senior and had suffered a massive heart attack in a motel room in Virginia. She told him about Juliet moving to the West Coast, about Des getting pregnant and the father up and leaving for Alberta with the promise of sending her money, only to get there and announce he was marrying someone else. She recounted Des’s shocking and sudden death by heart attack at 24, just two months after giving birth to Eddie. She told him of her mother’s return to her Cape Breton home, where she found comfort in her big family in the aftermath of Des’s death, and the last year living in the Agricola Street house with Eddie.

      She told him too much, she thought, but she found herself unable to stop. Maybe it was because for all the talking she did during the day, she rarely got to talk about herself, and he didn’t seem to mind.

      The whole time, Simon listened with his chin perched on the heel of his hand, saying nothing as she unfolded her life’s story. Then she prompted him for his own past.

      Once more, a moment’s discomfort passed over him but he seemed to swat it away with a hand in front of his face.

      ‘I was born in Ottawa and moved to Montreal when I was a kid. I lived there until I went to the University of British Columbia. I was there for one semester before I transferred back to Quebec. I just screwed around and sponged after I dropped out. I got into this line of work in my late twenties after finally finishing my degree.’

      ‘Bored or broke?’

      ‘Both, and tired. I had a friend offer me a job working for his company, sort of as his personal assistant. How sad is it that I was nearly thirty before I actually worked for a living?’

      ‘You should talk to my sister,’ she grumbled. ‘She’s a temp – sometimes – but if you ask her she’ll tell you that she’s a musician. In all fairness she made more money with her music in the last six months, but that’s only because she hasn’t taken an office job and doesn’t have to get up in the morning. Too bad she blows about half of it on herself.’

      ‘So how do you support yourself and a baby?’

      The place was too nice and the food too good to indulge any further talk about disappointment, so Miranda shook her head and told him she was changing the subject.

      ‘I want the truth: why did you pick me up? And don’t give me your bullshit about chivalry.’

      ‘There’s some truth to that,’ he said with a sheepish look. ‘You looked so sad and pathetic standing there, I couldn’t bear it.’

      ‘But?’

      ‘But …’

      He lifted his cup and took a sip, and he didn’t need to say anything more. His hazel eyes told her the answer to her question, and the quiet hunger that radiated back at her made her feverish all of a sudden.

      She pushed her damp hair off her hot neck, and her pulse fluttered in her veins as he lowered his cup. The corners of his mouth quirked, telling her that he knew exactly what he had just done to her.

      ‘You’re not my type,’ she told him, seeing no point in beating around the bush, ‘not even a bit, and that whole bathroom thing was a bit of a turn-off.’

      ‘Right.’ The laughter that shook his voice irritated her and at the same time amused her, and she couldn’t hold back a smile.

      ‘But you did buy me a four-dollar scone, so I suppose you’re all right.’

      ‘Oh, is that all it takes?’

      ‘To get me on my back?’ She shook her head and giggled. ‘No, but it’s a start – and you haven’t tried to bullshit me yet, so I like that.’

      Simon frowned. ‘How do you know?’

      ‘I just asked you pretty much point-blank if you wanted to get in my panties, and you didn’t try and act like it never crossed your mind. If you were trying to bullshit me, you’d be spoon-feeding me some crap about how you’re not that kind type of guy and then try and win me over by telling me about how your job makes it so hard to meet women. If you were bullshitting me, you’d have spun that whole bathroom thing into your tale of woe somehow, expecting me to sit here and go, “Poor baby, so sensitive and sad – how can I not sleep with him?”’

      ‘I sincerely hope you’ve never fallen for that.’

      He finished his tea, tore off a piece of her scone and popped it into his mouth as she studied him. After a moment under her scrutiny, he slung his arm over the back of the chair and sprawled out, legs bumping hers under the table.

      She didn’t pull away. She let him settle with his knee resting against hers, and enjoyed how the warmth crawled along the inside of her thigh, reaching for a more intimate shelter.

      ‘Why did you get in my car?’ he asked.

      ‘I was sad and pathetic,’ she countered.

      Simon cocked his head. ‘And?’

      ‘And, honestly? That’s it. I just wanted a ride home, but now I’m having a good time.’ She met his gaze with a nod. ‘I think I can overlook the whole bathroom thing.’

      He groaned. ‘Can we please drop that once and for all?’

      ‘Are you embarrassed by it?’

      ‘I’ve gone from embarrassed to mortified.’

      ‘I’m thrilled that you’re mortified, and yes, I’ll drop it now, but I might need a cookie to make up for taking away the one thing I have to hold over your head.’

      ‘I’ll get you two cookies if I can get your phone number.’

      The line of communication they had been weaving back and forth between them drew taut with his request and pulled her closer to him even though she didn’t move a muscle. Miranda found it hard to speak.

      She still didn’t understand why he would want to sit and have coffee with her, and she didn’t understand why he wanted her number now. Picking her up with the purpose of getting her into bed – that she understood, but this reaching out threw her. He wasn’t her type, and she’d bet money she sure as hell wasn’t his.

      It’s not that he had charmed the memory of the event in the bathroom from her mind. In fact, it was at the forefront of her thoughts. In that silence, she couldn’t stop thinking about sex.

      He took a slow sip of his tea, and the throaty sound of his swallowing it reminded her of the one he’d made as he went deeper into the woman’s throat. That sound rattled around inside Miranda’s head, and as he rubbed his thumb around the rim of his mug she couldn’t help imagining the same motion stroking her through her bra.

      ‘I don’t –’

      She started to tell him she didn’t think it was a good idea, that one cup of coffee wasn’t enough to convince her that he could aspire to be her type, but that’s not what came out. Her arousal had rattled the words right back down her throat.

      ‘I don’t have any evenings free,’ she finally said. ‘I work from two until eight, six days a week, and go right home because my sister goes on stage at ten.’

      ‘That’s fine,’ he said easily, but she wasn’t finished.

      ‘And I have an eighteen-month-old in the mornings, so even breakfast is out. Lunch is debatable, depending on whether you like kids and having carrot sticks thrown at you.’

      ‘What is it you’re trying to do here?’ he asked her with a chuckle.

      ‘I’m just saying, I don’t know what you’re looking for but you might not get it from me.’

      Simon