Once Upon a Valentine. Allison Leigh

put the car into gear and slowly nudged out from beneath the overhang, turning onto the street lined with red brick buildings similar to his and Cornelia’s.

      They drove for three blocks heading inland from the Ballard waterfront before they spotted another occupied vehicle. The heater was doing its job very well now; she imagined her clothes were starting to put off steam. It was a better excuse than thinking she was overheating just from sitting inches away from him inside his hot rod of a car, watching his long fingers, deft and easy on the gear shaft.

      She dragged her eyes away and looked out at the icy city, trying to empty her mind.

      “You’re thinking too much again.”

      How did he do that? “I’m thinking about how I’m going to get to work tomorrow,” she lied.

      He snorted softly. “I’ll bet you Honey Girl that you’re not.”

      She knew that Honey Girl was his 65-foot sailboat. That he’d built her by hand. That he’d received offers from around the world to buy her, and that women all over the city jumped at the opportunity to be invited aboard.

      “Even if you were thinking about work—which you’re not—” he shot her a grin “—I’m pretty certain there won’t be anyone working at the Tub tomorrow. Listen.” He tapped the car radio. “They’re still advising everyone to stay off the roads unless it’s an emergency.”

      “Driving me home to my apartment probably doesn’t qualify.”

      “Sure it does.” His dimple appeared. “Medical emergency.”

      “A feline one.”

      “Doesn’t make it unimportant.” He stopped at an intersection where the traffic lights were all flashing red and, even as slowly as he was going, the car eased sideways a little. But there were no other cars present. “If my dog Hooch needed medicine every day, you can take it to the bank that I’d find a way to get it to him.”

      She’d written eight articles about Pax. She knew he’d grown up in the little town of Port Orchard across the sound, where he and his business partner had first started out building boats, that he now lived on the top floor of a luxury building in trendy Belltown, and that he had a well-known weakness for anything chocolate. “You never said you had a dog.”

      “Would you have said yes the first time I asked you out if I had? Or the second time or the third?”

      Her ex-fiancé, Bruce, had had a dog. He’d dumped her two days before their wedding.

      “No.”

      Pax watched her for a moment, then continued through the empty intersection. “And what about now?”

      “I told you. This was a—”

      “—mistake. Yeah. I remember. Why?”

      She stifled a sigh. “Because!”

      He raised an eyebrow. “Figured a journalist like you would be better in a war of words than that, sweetheart.”

      “Even if I believed in relationships—which I do not—I wouldn’t be foolish enough to expect anything from you. And I don’t have time in my life to play around.” She was busy enough trying to keep her head above water between the Washtub and her gig with Cornelia.

      His lips twisted. “You always have been hard on my ego.”

      “Please.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Flirting is as second nature to you as breathing. Nothing I could say or do would dent your ego.”

      “Why don’t you believe in relationships?”

      She exhaled and looked out the side window again. Thankfully, her apartment was only a block away now. “Who in their right mind does? Just drop me at the top of the hill. If my street is icy, you won’t make it back up again because I’m pretty sure this little toy of yours isn’t sporting four-wheel drive.”

      “I’ll have to let my parents know they’re not in their right minds.” His voice was mild. “Believing in relationships as they tend to do.”

      “They’re the exception rather than the rule.”

      “You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

      “Twenty-eight.” And he was ten years her senior. His birthday had been in August, and Harvey’d had her camping outside the nightclub across from his apartment building with her camera to get photos of any gossip-worthy patrons coming in and out. He’d been practically gleeful when she’d shown him the ones of Pax and his dates. As in plural. He’d had three women clinging to him when he’d finally left the club in the wee hours of the morning. It’d been obvious they weren’t done celebrating when they’d crossed the street and headed inside his apartment building dragging a bobbing trio of “Happy Birthday” balloons behind them.

      “That’s still too young to be so jaded,” he was saying.

      She lifted her shoulder. “I learned early. Wait—” He’d turned onto her street and was creeping down the steep hill. “I said just let me off at the top!”

      “And I ignored you.” The wheels crunched over the road, finally coming to a stop in front of her aging apartment building. He rested his wrist on top of the steering wheel and looked at her. “I do that whenever I hear nonsense.”

      “Whenever you hear something you don’t want to hear, you mean.”

      His lips twitched. “That, too.”

      Her stomach swayed when his gaze dropped to her lips. She pressed them together and tried not to squirm in her seat. “Whether you want to hear it or not, we shouldn’t have, um, you know. Last night. That shouldn’t have happened.”

      “Slept together? Got busy? Had sex?” His brown eyes were filled with devilish mirth. “Made love?”

      She barely kept from clapping her hands over her ears. “We shouldn’t have had sex,” she managed sternly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

      He reached out and twined a tangled lock of her hair around his finger. “Don’t be so sure about that, sweetheart.”

      “I am sure.” She pulled her hair free, unsnapped her seat belt and shoved open the car door. Icy air swept in, overriding the car heater’s efforts, though it didn’t do diddly to douse the heat inside her. “Thanks for the ride home, Pax, but save yourself some time and look elsewhere for your next conquest. Lord knows there are plenty of women waiting to jump at the chance.” She grabbed her purse and leaped out of the car, shoving the door closed again before he could say anything else.

      She hadn’t even begun picking her way across the icy sidewalk to the building entrance when she heard the whirr of the electric window going down behind her. “My parents are having a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. You should come with me. We can start off at my place with a drink.”

      Exasperated, she looked back at him. “Pax—”

      “I told you I ignored nonsense when I hear it. I’ll call you.” Then he gave her that trademark half-smile of his, rolled up the window with another whirr and drove back up the street that, by all rights, a car like that should have never been able to climb.

      She blew out a shaky breath. “Darned shirt.”

      Chapter Two

      February

      “She’s there.”

      Pax looked up from the contract he was reading. His secretary, Ruth, was standing in the doorway to his office. “Excuse me?”

      Ruth raised her eyebrows knowingly. “Shea Weatherby,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I just saw her head into Mrs. Hunt’s building next door. Don’t pretend you haven’t been waiting for her. You’d be over at the boat works if you weren’t.”

      Pax’s