Page 21 of Falling into Place

Chapter Fourteen

Carly

“Did you see the ballot box for Homecoming King at lunch? Who did you vote for?”

“Brooks Martin, who else?”

“Same. Last week he smiled at me in the hallway, and I swear I almost passed out. What about you, Carly? Who did you vote for?”

“Who did I what? Oh, I didn’t. I went to the library during lunch.”

—Gym class at Freemont High, sophomore year

This wasn’t her best idea.

Carly was already struggling with Brooks inserting himself into situations where he shouldn’t be—there’d been that dream the other night, and then yesterday, she imagined sharing a table at Coffee Slingers with him for no reason at all when she’d stopped in for coffee—and somehow she’d thought it would be a good idea to invite him to watch a romantic movie with her?

Big regrets for that third glass of wine.

There were sexy parts, for crying out loud.

She lived alone and only had a couch, which felt small enough to fit inside a Barbie Dreamhouse with the way Brooks’s body took up space.

He’d sat about as far away from her as humanly possible, but warmth seemed to radiate off him during the heated scenes and Carly kept her eyes glued to the screen, cheeks burning.

Adult enough to casually say “dick,” my ass.

His pine-tinged scent was detectable at this range, and it saturated her senses and crossed a few wires in her brain.

What would it be like to be the woman Brooks watched movies with on the regular?

Was he a cuddler who could be easily distracted for a hot make-out session, or did he like to focus and catch every detail to discuss as soon as the credits rolled?

What was his favorite movie?

What was the last one he’d seen? She had so many questions.

So many things she wanted to learn about him but didn’t really have the right to know.

He was her client and she was part of the team preparing him to meet other women, and if she did anything to encourage these feelings, her job could be at risk.

Last but certainly not least, he wasn’t interested in her like that.

The movie ended and she shut off her wayward thoughts, putting on a confident, teasing demeanor. “Well?”

“Sorry, no tears.”

“What are you, made of stone?”

One corner of his mouth tipped up, but it wasn’t the full smile she’d come to covet. “Something like that.”

“Okay, so no crying. But did you at least like it?”

“Sure, it wasn’t bad. I love James Garner. He reminds me a little of Coach McKee. Remember him?”

It sounded familiar ... She squinted her eyes as she thought. “Wasn’t he the football coach at our high school?”

A gentle fondness passed over Brooks’s expression. “Basketball.” He paused. “He was my coach for four years and helped get me back on track after my mom died. Not before I made some big mistakes, but at the end of senior year, I finally listened.”

She’d had no idea. She hadn’t really paid attention to the school sports teams back then. Was Coach McKee the one responsible for the change in him? “It sounds like he was really special to you.”

“He was. Still is, actually. We’ve kept in touch.”

“Really? I love that. Last year, I helped Mrs. Knipplemeier find something to wear to her daughter’s wedding. Remember her?”

Brooks snorted. “Name a single teenage boy with a teacher named Knipplemeier who didn’t spend all year cracking jokes behind her back, and I’ll show you a liar. She’s probably the only teacher I’ll literally never forget.”

Carly laughed. “I was so prudish back then I couldn’t say her name without blushing.”

“I had no such qualms,” Brooks said, grinning. He stretched his arms high above his head. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Sure, it’s that hallway right there, the door on the left.”

He got up and paused as soon as he hit the middle of the hallway, the bathroom to his left and her bedroom to the right. He glanced over his shoulder at her, one brow raised. “Now that is an immaculately made bed.”

She laughed. “I told you, I have a thing.” Her room had been the one place in her control as a kid, and she’d taken meticulous care of everything inside those four walls.

She kept her bargain clothes clean and perfectly folded, her bookcase full of used books dust-free and organized, and found some measure of stress relief in the process of making her bed every morning.

He turned in place. “Actually, your entire place is spotless. Organized, clutter-free, nothing out of place, and not a single dust bunny. I seem to remember the first time you saw the disarray of my room you said I should see your place, as if yours was just as messy. You’re a dirty little liar, aren’t you? ”

The way her stomach dropped at the way he casually called her “dirty” wasn’t normal at all. “I believe it’s called being polite.”

“Lying is polite?”

“I was trying to make you feel better!”

“Is that what you told yourself when you stole my jeans?”

She couldn’t help it, she laughed. With a snort and everything.

He just nodded and continued into the bathroom, calling out one last thing before he shut the door. “I knew it.”

She leaned back on the couch and picked up the remote and was still flipping through movies when he plopped back down beside her.

“What’s next?” he asked.

“Next?”

“You’re not gonna give up that easy, are you? Surely there’s another movie you think might make me cry.”

“I do, but I’m not sure I want to put myself through another tearjerker. Unlike you, I did cry tonight. Both times. I need something uplifting now.”

“Probably for the best. I have a process, and I don’t think you could break me anyway.”

“You have a process?”

He nodded. “If I’m in a situation where I don’t want to cry, especially if I’m in public somewhere, I start singing ‘Baby Got Back’ in my head.”

“I’m not sure that counts as singing.”

“Whatever it is, it works every time.”

“What’s so wrong with crying in public?”

“Nothing. I actually admire people who are comfortable showing emotion like that, but after I cried in the locker room junior year the week after my mom died, I sort of got turned off on the whole idea. For myself, anyway. High school guys can be a bunch of assholes.”

“That’s horrible, and they were assholes.” Sometimes the girls hadn’t been any better.

“Why weren’t we friends back then?” he asked. “I knew several of Sasha’s friends, but you were always sort of a mystery.”

“Eh, I liked it that way. I didn’t want many people close enough to see what my life was really like, so I tried to fly under the radar. Keep my distance.”

Brooks smiled ruefully. “Sounds familiar.”

“It’s like we’ve sort of switched places, isn’t it?”

“A little, yeah. I have no intention of going back to the Extreme Brooks that I was in high school, but I see now I went a little too far in the other direction. I’m on my way to something in the middle, thanks to you.”

She bent forward in a dramatic little bow. “I can’t take all the credit, though. Maybe just like, ninety percent.”

He laughed. “I’m just glad you agreed. To help me, I mean.” His hazel eyes assessed her face, and he hesitated a beat, as if debating what to say next. “It’s been more fun than I thought it would be.”

She hummed in victory. “Fashion is fun.”

“I don’t think it’s the clothes I enjoy,” he said quietly.

Her heart hiccuped, and she just stared at him. As she considered how unwise it might be to ask what he meant by that, he spoke again. “What do you think would have happened if we’d noticed each other back then?”

“Excuse me, don’t try to both-sides this. You were Brooks Martin. Not noticing you wasn’t an option.”

She couldn’t tell if he was pleased by that or not. “What did you notice?” he asked, a raw vulnerability in his gaze.

A strange sensation jump-started in her chest. She sifted through memories, pulling some off the dusty shelves and leaving others where they were. “You were ... charming. Bold. Spontaneous. Everything I wasn’t.”

He said nothing, but the hand he’d rested on the back of the couch shifted, brushing her hair back from her shoulder. His fingers touched her bare skin there, and her breath caught as a sizzle of fire rushed down her spine.

Was he ... interested in her? His steady, heated gaze said so.

His breath seemed to come a little quicker, chest rising and falling in time with hers.

His eyes dropped to her lips, then shifted back to meet her eyes.

His brow furrowed and he worried his lower lip with his teeth, as if he were considering something, or holding himself back from it.

“What would you have done if I’d flirted with you like I did with Sasha’s other friends? If I’d asked you out?”

She opted for humor because the moment felt heavier than she was prepared for. “I’d have passed straight out, that’s what.” Though, she wasn’t altogether confident it wasn’t true.

“Come on.”

“The sexy, popular upperclassman and star of the basketball team noticing me, the shy, studious girl who cut her own hair to save money? That’s, like, the plot of every teenage rom-com.”

His brows pinched together, but her brain had trouble focusing on anything except his thumb moving back and forth across her skin. “I thought you said you didn’t want people to notice you. That you tried to stay under the radar.”

God, since when were there so many nerve endings at the edge of her shoulder? She swallowed. “There would have been ... exceptions.”

His gaze turned electric. “Would you have made an exception?” he asked, voice a little rough. “For me?”

“I ...” she started, but the words wouldn’t come. Yes. Absolutely.

Had he leaned closer? Had she? His eyes, nose, lips ... They didn’t seem as far away.

All the signs were there that he wanted to lean in, and while her body was here for it, her brain panicked, asking rapid-fire questions: What was happening? What did it mean? Was this a terrible idea? What the hell was she doing?

A shrill ringtone sliced through the air. She sucked in a startled breath, and Brooks jerked back like a fifteen-year-old with his hand on the school fire alarm. She blindly reached for her phone.

The display showed an incoming FaceTime call from Benjamin Wheeler, complete with his contact photo that was a candid of the two of them at Christmas last year.

Brooks’s eyes shifted from the screen to her face, and his expression shuttered. He stood. “I’d better go. Sorry I stayed so late.”

He was halfway to the door before she caught up to the movement and stood. Phone still vibrating in her hand, she silenced the call and tossed it back to the couch. She’d completely forgotten that Benjamin said he’d try to call her tonight.

The timing could not have been worse. Or maybe better ... because what was she thinking, almost kissing Brooks?

Still, she didn’t want it to be weird, and didn’t want to leave things on an awkward note. “No, you don’t have to ... I’ll call him later.”

He dug his keys out of his pocket, probably just so he didn’t have to look at her, because there’s no way that fancy Audi wasn’t push-start. “I have to be at the hospital early tomorrow.”

“On a Saturday?”

“It’s orientation for our new class of critical-care fellows. I’m leading it.”

“Oh, okay.” Fine, that was a decent excuse. “Hang on, at least let me get that shirt for you.”

She retrieved the bag from her room and handed it to him. “Do you want to try it on first? Make sure you like it before you take it?”

He shook his head. “I trust you.” Damn, he really wanted to get out of there.

“Okay. Just, um, let me know what you think. If you want.”

“Sure. I’ll talk to you later.” Then he was gone.

The door closed behind him, and she dropped her forehead against it.

It took all of thirty seconds for the weight of what they’d just barely sidestepped to settle across her shoulders.

Yeah, in the moment she hadn’t intended to stop him, but she had way too much on the line with this project to throw it all away in a moment of weakness.

She’d worked too hard and wanted that Mode position too bad.

Especially after the phone call she’d gotten from Mai earlier today.

She’d been in the car, headed home from a bone-dry day of inputting numbers into spreadsheets, when Mai’s number lit up her console.

Her boss wanted to congratulate her on how well the LiveOKC partnership was going.

She had nice things to say about Brooks’s attire in the various media sources he’d appeared in—print, television, and digital alike.

But most importantly she’d shared a sharp increase in client contracts, one in particular from one of the Sip & See OKC morning show hosts, which could lead to great publicity for the company as the stylists for someone so regularly in the public eye.

“Strategic partnerships like what you’ve done with this magazine are exactly the type of thing we’re looking for,” Mai had said.

“I hadn’t realized the connections you had, not only with LiveOKC but also with the entire Martin Media Group.

They have several outlets we could pursue in the future.

I have a meeting with Kyle next week, and I plan to discuss your success with this. I’ll be in touch.”

Carly couldn’t take her eye off the prize. Not right now.

Handsome, charming, and smart or not, Brooks Martin was just as off-limits now as he’d been from day one, and Carly had to be more careful.

A hopeful part of her brain popped off with a reminder that when this was all over, if he hadn’t found someone he wanted to be with, maybe they could test the waters.

The prospect filled her with the same kind of excited energy she felt when she was waiting for a client to emerge from the dressing room in an outfit she just knew would turn out perfect, which, to be honest, was a little alarming.

Brooks may be rediscovering his skills in conversation and flirtation, but was he actually ready for an emotional connection?

What would Sasha think?

What about Benjamin? What would happen when he came back?

And speaking of Benjamin, how the hell had she gotten so distracted by Brooks that she forgot they were supposed to talk tonight? They’d agreed on a time and everything, and she’d been looking forward to it all week.

She pushed off the door and went back to the couch, Pepper circling her ankles after she sat.

Her cat had traded off between her and Brooks’s laps all evening, and it didn’t escape her notice that he seemed to love Brooks.

He’d never cared for Benjamin, but he also didn’t seem to like Sasha, so Carly’d never held it against him.

She gently nudged him to the side, and he promptly leaped up to the spot Brooks had vacated and curled up, while she picked up her phone and settled in to call Benjamin back.