I turned to see Greg standing behind me, a Sam Adams in his hand. He had ditched the business casual in favor of jeans and a black polo shirt. His attire felt intimate, as though we weren’t colleagues but friends, and heat flushed my face.
With a smile, he pulled a chair up to our table, while simultaneously extending his hand to Sarah. “I’m Greg.”
With a wide smile, Sarah shook his hand. “I’m Sarah.” Naturally, she commandeered the conversation. “Why are you here at the hotel? Don’t you live in Rochester?”
I averted my eyes, intently studying the scarred oak table. My heart hammered in my chest. I felt uncharacteristically nervous and tongue-tied. Not that I was normally a flirt, but I could put together sentences. My mind was blank, and for the second time that day, I tried to remember my name.
“No,” he replied with an easy smile. “Right now, I live in Pennsylvania. But I’ve been posted here temporarily while they get the New Jersey site training program back on track. Apparently, they’re doing all East Coast training in Rochester, and all West Coast training in San Diego. Somehow, I feel cheated by my post, but I get a free efficiency apartment for six months, complete with kitchenette.”
“Wow,” Sarah cooed. “Big man on campus, then, eh?”
Greg reddened slightly and cast a look sideways at me. “Can I buy you ladies another drink?” He stood up, gesturing toward the bar.
We nodded, and when he walked away, Sarah said, “Claire, you should really go for it with him. He’s so cute, in such a nerdy you kind of way.”
“What? He could be married with three kids for all I know. I know nothing about him.” I threw back the remainder of my martini, feeling the vodka heat bloom from my center. I felt nervous and giddy at once, despite my protests. I recalled his wink during class.
“Well, I feel a headache coming on.” She put her hand up to her forehead for mock emphasis. “I really think I’m going to head back to our room and try to sleep off some of these martinis.” She gathered her purse.
“Sarah, this is crazy. Please don’t leave.”
She just smiled, wiggling her fingers as well as her eyebrows, and slipped out before I could stop her.
Greg returned with two martini glasses. He cocked his head to the side with a tentative smile. “I generally don’t scare women away that fast.”
“Sarah claimed she had a headache. She’s a misguided cupid. I apologize.” For the second time in ten minutes, I felt my face grow hot. God, just shut up. How much did I have to drink? I rushed to change the subject. “Well, tell me about yourself. How did you become a trainer for Advent? How long is your post in Rochester? Are you married?” I felt scattered, running off at the mouth. His hand rested next to mine on the table, barely touching, and I studied his arms, thick and strong, and briefly wondered how they would feel around my waist.
He didn’t answer immediately, and the silence seemed to last forever. Finally, he laughed. “No,” he said, with a small smile, giving me a nudge with his elbow. “I’m not married.”
Conversation flowed easily, and unlike a lot of the men I dated, he struck a nice balance between awkwardly quiet and excessively talkative. He laughed frequently and had a smile that reached his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. When he walked me back to my room at two in the morning, I was drunk and head over heels. When his mouth opened to mine, I knew I never wanted to kiss another man for the rest of my life. And when he invited me back to his deluxe suite, I never hesitated.
Later, I couldn’t remember the subject matter from the other two days of class. More than once, he stumbled over his words or lost his place in the lecture, not so coincidentally after we made eye contact. That told me I had the same effect on him that he had on me. We spent the remaining two nights after class together, and poor Sarah’s mini-cation was mostly spent alone in a hotel room. She never complained.
The morning we left, I couldn’t find Greg to tell him goodbye, but Sarah and I spent the entire ride home analyzing my new love interest. I was giddy on hope, and with a little prompting, I looked up Greg’s number in the company directory and called his office the day after we got home.
Until recently, I couldn’t be sure that we’d gone a day without speaking in ten years.
Chapter 5
“I’m Detective Matt Reynolds.” The man stood on my porch, wearing a wrinkled button-down shirt and a pair of equally wrinkled khakis. He held his credentials with the badge out for me to see.
When I made no move to look, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and wordlessly, I opened the door.