“Oh, I’m mad. I’m pissed as hell at myself.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d probably feel the same way. I know I would. But Mick, at some point you’ve got to let it go.”
“Do I? Or more to the point, should I?”
She tilted her chin, her brows drawing together. “I don’t understand.”
“The guilt is nothing less than I deserve, Allie. It’s my burden to carry with me.”
“But you didn’t hurt anyone else,” she protested.
“That’s not true. Every single day I’m not a firefighter like I should have been, like my family and my city had a right to expect of me, I hurt someone. Every day there’s one less man on the force to protect people.”
She shook her head. “That’s not realistic, Mick. You can’t blame yourself for things you might have been able to prevent. And you have found a way to protect people. Your security business—”
“I work boxing matches and rock concerts. I protect drunken fools from other drunken fools. It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s something, Mick,” she said quietly, maybe understanding that he simply wasn’t able to hear it, no matter how she put it.
“Yeah. Something.” He shrugged.
“Thank you for telling me. Even when you didn’t want to. Especially because you didn’t want to.”
But he had wanted to. That was the strange thing. Or maybe the strange thing was that they were there together, in her bed, naked. Strange that it had finally happened, the two of them together again.
A part of him felt like it was fate. Another part still believed she was too damn good for him.
He had to shake that shit off.
He lifted her hand, kissed it, shifted the gears in his head.
“Enough of this. I’m taking you out to breakfast.” He silently thanked God for the male ability to compartmentalize. “Get your gorgeous ass in the shower and get clean while I make some coffee for the road.”
“Yes, Sir.”
She was smiling at him, going along with the game. Good girl.
She was a good girl. The best. More than he deserved. But he was done trying to convince her of that. She’d chosen him. And he wasn’t that stupid anymore. He wasn’t letting her go again.
* * *
LESS THAN AN hour later they had made their way uptown along St. Charles Avenue to The Camellia Grill, one of the best breakfast spots in the city. It was the usual packed Sunday morning. They stood together on the sidewalk in front of the old colonial structure, with its white columns and dark green shutters, another of the city’s local landmarks to resurrect after Katrina.
It felt strange to be out with Allie, doing this kind of normal thing like going to breakfast. They’d been to this place a dozen times as teenagers, and it took him back. Him in his ever-present leather jacket. Allie’s long hair shining in the sun, her laughing with him. Everything had seemed a lot simpler then. So much less at stake. But wasn’t that always the difference between being a teenager—just a kid, really—and being an adult? Yeah, a hell of a lot more at stake now.
Don’t trip on it. Just enjoy the day.
What had happened to the compartmentalizing he’d been so good at only a little while ago? Hell, he’d had years of practice at shutting things down. He knew it was Allie that was making things harder to keep under control. And control had been the key to managing his life since those days . . . the days before his life had come crashing down around him piece by piece. Brandon’s death. Seeing Jamie’s reaction—his grief going way beyond what the rest of them had experienced. Coming to terms with the fact that he had to leave Allie behind when he went away to college. That one night when he’d seen her again. When he’d done those things to her. The way he’d felt the next morning, as if he’d fucking murdered someone . . . and the damn accident that he swore was not a death wish.
“Mick? You look like a cloud just passed over your grave. What are you thinking about?”
“What? Sorry, princess. Just woolgathering.”
“You are so not the kind of man to mingle with sheep,” she teased.
He had to smile. “Nope. Subbie girl though you may be, you’re definitely not the sheep type.”
She laughed, and some of the ice that had been running through his veins melted. “You’ve got that right. God, I can’t remember the last time I ate here.”
“The last weekend in May, my senior year. Jamie and I were cutting school, which was our right as seniors, and you were playing delinquent with us.”
“I can’t believe you remember all that.”
He reached out and tucked a long strand of her dark, silky hair behind her ear. “You were wearing a cotton sundress with tiny pink roses all over it. They were the same shade as your lips.”
Her smile widened, her eyes shining. “You’re a romantic at heart, you know that, Mick Reid?”
“Never.”
She slunk up against him. “Always.”
He grabbed her by the waist and bent to brush a kiss across her lush mouth. “If I agree with you, will it get me some later?”
“Do you really have to ask?” Her voice was a quiet purr. “You buy me breakfast and you are so getting laid.”
“Am I, now?”
“Yep. Sir. Yep, Sir.”
He laughed and picked her up until her feet left the ground.
“Hey!”
He set her back down, took her hand and kissed it, held it tightly in his.
If he could just keep the bullshit from invading his brain, this might turn out to be a perfect day. A perfect life.
Gotta take it one day at a time.
That was the smart thing to do, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
* * *
THEY WERE FINALLY seated at the long counter facing the gleaming steel kitchen, the only seating there was at the crowded, noisy Camellia Grill. Mick seemed almost too big to fit on the stools lined up at the marble counter—he had to sit half-turned toward her, one long leg crossed over hers, but Allie didn’t mind. She was enjoying the closeness she felt with him today.
Maybe part of it was that he’d opened up to her and told her a bit of his story about the accident. But it was also that he’d remained open to her—a good chink in the armor, anyway—and she loved the vulnerability he was allowing himself with her.
She knew it was that he allowed himself—there was no doubt about it. Mick was still almost perfectly controlled. The Dom thing. The Mick thing. It was that lovely, melding combination of control and vulnerability that just killed her. He could ask anything he wanted of her right now and she’d have to say yes.
“What are you having, baby?” he asked.
“A veggie omelet.”
“Really? That’s no fun. I’m having the waffles.”
“Oh, that sounds good.”
“You should have them, too.”
“I’m a pastry chef, Mick. I have sugar in my mouth on a daily basis. Or, I will when I start working again.”
He leaned in and murmured against her ear, his breath warm on her skin, “I’ll put some sugar in your mouth, girl.”
She shivered, lust infusing her system so fast it made her go hot all over.
“Yes, please,” she answered.
He grinned. “Good girl.”
“Oh, God, don’t do that to me here, Mick.”
“I’ll do plenty to you later. Just leaving you with something to think about.”
“You’re a wicked man.”
“You like me that way.”
“Yes, I do. But shall we change the subject?”
His gray eyes were sparkling. “Why, when I’m having so much fun torturing you?”
“Change of subject, please.”
He looked like he was about to protest when a waiter approached their section of the counter and poured two cups of coffee for them without being asked.
“What’ll you have?”
Mick ordered for them, and the waiter, in classic Camellia Grill style, shouted the order at the cooks.
Mick turned his attention back to her.
“Okay. Change of subject, but only because you asked so nicely. Tell me how your family’s doing.”