Coming to a Crossroads Read online

  “No,” she assured him, a wide smile spreading over her lips. “Here is fine.”

  The smile was back in his eyes. “Then it’s settled,” he concluded. “I’ll meet you here.”

  Since Liz was obviously ready to go, he followed her to the door and went out with her. As she locked her front door, Ethan couldn’t ignore the longing that was building up inside him.

  Even as he had warned himself to go slowly, he felt as if he had gotten his foot caught in the door of a race car just as it was about to pull away.

  “Would it upset your schedule if I kissed you goodbye?” he asked Liz.

  “Actually,” she told him, pausing in front of her door for a moment, humor curving her mouth, “my guess is that it might even enhance it.”

  “Okay,” he said, his eyes all but making love to her mouth, “let’s put that to the test.”

  Slipping his hands around her waist, Ethan brought her closer to him. When there wasn’t even room for a thin piece of paper between them, he leaned into Liz.

  And then he kissed her.

  The second his lips touched hers, he knew.

  Yesterday hadn’t been a fluke.

  He could feel the effect of her lips against his, feel their kiss unfurling, drumming wildly within his chest.

  If anything, yesterday had been just a preview of things to come. Her mouth definitely tasted sweeter this morning than it had last night, and in his opinion, last night had been wondrous.

  Even when he forced himself to draw his lips away from hers, Ethan allowed himself to continue holding Liz for just a moment longer. It felt as if he had to step back from her in stages in order to be able to survive the ordeal.

  “How long did you say this shift was going to be?” he asked her, his voice low and husky.

  Too long, Liz thought.

  Out loud, she told him, “It’ll be over by six tonight.”

  “In other words, an eternity,” Ethan assessed with a groan.

  Liz laughed at his response. “Not quite that long,” she told him.

  “That all depends on which side of the clock you’re standing on,” Ethan answered.

  He almost sounded serious, Liz thought. But then, the man was a born charmer, and charmers always knew what to say in order to turn a woman’s head. It was a given.

  Even so, she liked what he had said.

  Liz was very tempted to kiss Ethan one more time, but she knew that if she gave in, if she did kiss him one more time, then she wasn’t going to be going anywhere. The man had an utterly lethal mouth, and she would have liked nothing better than to lose herself in it, reveling in its effect, but she’d already done that last night. If this thing between them ended right now, she didn’t want Ethan to think of her as a needy woman he’d had a one-night stand with.

  It was far better to walk away with the memory of one beautiful night shining in her soul than to leave herself open to being considered as an object of pity.

  C’mon, you have got to stop anticipating bad things, Liz upbraided herself.

  “All right,” she said brightly, “I’ll be back here at six.”

  She was doing her very best not to sound overly excited or hopeful. She didn’t add, “I’ll see you, then” or even anything vaguely close to that. Instead, she told Ethan “Goodbye” and hurried to where her car stood waiting in her carport.

  Liz didn’t look back over her shoulder but just got into her vehicle.

  She also deliberately refused to look in her rearview mirror as she pulled out of her space. She knew if she did, she would have been more than just tempted to pull back into her carport and go back to her apartment to spend the day with Ethan.

  At the very least, she would have lingered for a while, and every minute she delayed getting to work was a minute she needed to make up—if not more than a minute, she amended.

  Maintaining strict control over herself, she kept her eyes on the road as she drove away.

  * * *

  Maybe it was her, Liz thought, but it felt as if every single hour of her day dragged by with agonizing slowness.

  Not that she wasn’t busy. The entire day, she was ferrying a steady stream of new passengers. There was no break in the customers needing to be taken from one place to another. She found herself driving all over the city of Bedford, as well as a few of its neighboring cities.

  Over the course of her day, she had crisscrossed not just Bedford, but practically the whole of Southern California.

  Ordinarily, one tank of gas was more than enough to see her through a workday. Today, however, she had to stop and fill up not once, but twice. And while all of her passengers were exceptionally nice people—not a single surly one in the lot—she still found herself watching the clock and wishing time away.

  That was something she had promised herself she was never going to do, because she, more than so many other people, was aware of how very fleeting time could be.

  Although today seemed to have twice as many minutes in it as it normally had, eventually, those minutes did finally slip into the past. And, practically an eternity later, Liz was finally able to clock out after delivering her last Chariot passenger to a concert hall where the passenger was meeting her friends.

  Finally free for an hour, Liz resisted the temptation to call Ethan. Instead, she glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes after six. Liz told herself that she would call Ethan once she got home because that way she could get in a wee bit more studying while she waited for him to arrive.

  Even as she tried to convince herself that she needed to take this slow, her heart refused to go along with that or accept it.

  The simple truth of the matter was she couldn’t wait to see Ethan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Liz told herself that she was going to call Ethan only when she finally walked into her apartment. She managed to hold out until she parked her vehicle in its designated carport.

  The second she pulled up her parking brake and turned off her ignition, she started to dial Ethan’s number.

  He picked up before the first ring was over.

  “Hello?”

  The sound of Ethan’s voice slid up and down along her entire body. “Hi. I just got in,” she told him.

  “Good. I’ll be right over.”

  Before she could say anything else to him, he had terminated the call.

  Liz tucked her cell phone away. By “right over,” she assumed that Ethan meant he would be driving over from his apartment. The thought of seeing him again had her stomach tightening in anticipation even as she told herself to keep calm.

  No sooner had she managed to get out of her vehicle and into her apartment than she heard her doorbell ring.

  Oh, please don’t let it be my mother, she prayed. Ruth was the only one who would just pop up, unannounced, on her doorstep on a Sunday. And although she dearly loved her mother, now was not a good time for an impromptu visit.

  Unless the person ringing her doorbell was an aggressive college student trying to get her to buy magazine subscriptions in order to help them win a trip to Cancún. That happened more often than she was happy about.

  Braced and prepared to send the student on their way, Liz opened her door. “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in—” she began dismissively, only to stop dead in the middle of her sentence when she found herself looking up into Ethan’s handsome face.

  Ethan gamely asked, “Not interested in what? I haven’t said anything yet.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were selling subscriptions.”

  “No,” he assured her with a laugh, “things aren’t that bad yet.” Ethan looked over her shoulder into her apartment. “Can I still come in?”

  Coming to, Liz threw open her door. “Yes, please. I’m sorry, it’s just that I wasn’t expecting you to get here so quickly—how did you get here so qu
ickly?”

  “The usual way,” he answered. “I drove.”

  Liz knew exactly how long it took to get from his apartment to hers. Since driving for Chariot, she had become familiar with practically every route and how long driving from one point to another took under normal conditions as well.

  Ethan had gotten here inordinately fast.

  “Faster than the speed of light?” she questioned.

  “If that light had to drive here from the local coffee shop, then yes,” Ethan answered. “And before you ask, I wasn’t at the coffee shop all day. I estimated your approximate arrival time, and half an hour before your ETA, I drove over to the coffee shop.”

  “To buy a cup of black coffee?” Liz marveled. “That seems almost like a waste.”

  “It wasn’t the coffee I was interested in,” he replied with a grin. “But never mind that. Tell me all about your day.”

  She thought of the bartending job she had to get to in less than an hour. “Other than the fact that it’s not over?”

  “Yes, other than that,” Ethan said, encouraging her to talk.

  She thought for a moment before she began to answer. “Well, I drove twice the number of passengers I normally do. And, for a change,” she added brightly, “they were all rather nice. Nobody got sick or belligerent.”

  “Does that happen a lot?” he asked her. “The last part, not the first.”

  “More than I’d like,” she admitted. “I have to admit that I’d be happy if that never happened.” Realizing that somehow she had wound up talking about herself, Liz quickly switched topics. “Are you hungry? Can I make you something?” she asked. Then, assuming that his answer would be a positive one, she went on to ask Ethan, “What would you like?” as she got up to her feet.

  Ethan caught her hand, tugging her back down to the sofa. “What I would like is for you to sit down and relax a little. In less than an hour you’re going to be on your feet again, taking orders and serving drinks. That means that right now, you should be sitting down and recharging your batteries.”

  “But if you’re hungry—” she protested, under the impression that he probably had to be.

  “I’ll live,” Ethan stressed. “Right now, the only thing I’m hungry for is finding out things about you.”

  “Me?” she questioned, caught completely off guard. “Why would you want to find out about me?”

  “It’s called getting to know each other,” he answered with an amused smile. “I mean, I already know you’re a fantastic driver and that you’re putting yourself through college. What else?”

  She shrugged. “That’s it.”

  “That is not it,” Ethan contradicted with feeling. “You’re working two jobs, going to school when you can manage it, and you probably leap over tall buildings in a single bound when no one’s watching.”

  She made an elaborate show of snapping her fingers. “Oh damn, you found out my secret identity. Now I’ll have to kill you.”

  “Well, as long as it’s for a good cause,” he said whimsically.

  Liz shook her head. “You do have a strange sense of humor,” she told him.

  “Said the woman who talked about her secret identity and killing me because I found it out.”

  She inclined her head. “Touché.” And then she laughed, pleased. “You’re just as weird as I am.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Ethan told her. “Besides, I have it on good authority that humor is a good way to unwind, especially when you repeatedly find yourself in stressful situations.”

  That, he thought, actually went a long way to describing both their lives.

  “Lucky for me, my life is totally stress free,” Liz quipped.

  Not even a hint of a smile gave her away—for a whole ten seconds. And then she burst out laughing. Her laugh was infectious, and both she and Ethan laughed until there were tears in their eyes.

  Finally able to catch her breath, Liz said, “Thanks, I needed that.”

  “Anytime,” Ethan told her. “And that goes two ways, you know.” When she raised a quizzical eyebrow, he said, “I haven’t had occasion to laugh like that for a long time.”

  That didn’t quite jibe with what she knew about him. “Not even at the bachelor party?” she asked.

  The bachelor party had turned out to be more stressful than he had anticipated. “That was more of a case of me trying to make sure my friends didn’t do anything stupid and trying to get them all home with the same amount of body parts that they started out with.” He thought back to that night. What in heaven’s name had possessed him to think he knew how to throw a bachelor party? “At bottom, it was like trying to herd a bunch of wayward cats. Lucky for me this really great driver came on the scene and took the matter in hand for me.” His eyes all but caressed her as he added, “She turned out to be a real lifesaver.”

  Although she liked the fact that he was grateful to her, getting compliments had always made her feel somewhat uncomfortable. Liz shifted a little in her seat.

  “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a little?” she asked.

  Not in his book, Ethan thought.

  He wanted to hold her, to breathe in her scent. More than that, he wanted to make love with her again.

  He cautioned himself not to act too aggressive. He didn’t want to come on too strong or scare her off. But he couldn’t help being honest. “If anything, I’m not saying enough.”

  She shrugged away his compliment. “Anyone could have done what I did.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Ethan contradicted. “Compassion is not as common as you think. It kind of falls under the same heading as common sense—which isn’t.”

  She didn’t quite follow him. “Isn’t what?” she questioned.

  “Common,” he answered. “As a matter of fact, common sense is pretty far from being a common thing. It’s more like a unicorn. Very rare and hardly ever seen.”

  Liz looked at him, fascinated by his reasoning. “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t want to,” he told her honestly. “But yes, I do.”

  “Not me,” she told him. “I’d rather believe that if given a choice, people will come through in the end,” she maintained. “In other words, they will live up to your expectations.”

  He decided to test her beliefs and see just how strong they actually were by voicing a really dark philosophy on life. “If you have no expectations of people, then you’ll never be disappointed.”

  “But you will be,” she argued. “Each and every time they live down to your expectations, you’ll still be disappointed. I’d rather live with the possibility of hope than with no hope at all, because that way, there’s always a chance of something positive happening.”

  Ethan caught himself laughing just then. He couldn’t help thinking that Catherine would have eaten this woman alive if their paths had ever crossed.

  Even so, he found Liz’s philosophy not just delightful, but extremely heartening. He wished there were more people who thought the way she did.

  Hearing Ethan laughing, Liz furrowed her brow. “Did I say something funny?”

  “No, not at all,” he told her quickly, doing his best to look more somber. But she just delighted him too much, so he gave up. “I was just thinking that the world should have more people like you. If it did, we would all be better off.”

  She didn’t buy that for one minute. “Now you’re just pulling my leg.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of pulling any part of you,” he told her, trying to maintain a straight face.

  But the look in his eyes gave him away.

  He was feeling that irresistible pull toward her again, the same one he had experienced last night. The one he had struggled earlier to bank down. Apparently, he had failed.

  Before he could talk himself out of it, Ethan leaned toward
her, his eyes on her mouth. And then he was kissing her.

  The kiss brought out all his needs, and he clamored for more.

  “How much time do we have?” Ethan murmured against her lips in between deep, soul-wrenching kisses.

  Liz could feel herself responding. She really wanted to give in to him, to herself. But her sense of responsibility was overpowering, and in the end, it won out.

  “Not enough time for that,” she answered, albeit not happily. “You do make me want things,” she confided honestly, her voice thick with longing. “But I just can’t let Young down. She did me a huge favor last night. She’s the owner of the restaurant, and she wound up covering for me when she couldn’t get anyone else to fill in. I can’t pay her back for her unselfish act by not showing up today.”

  He could understand that and admired her loyalty.

  “Okay,” he said, reluctantly releasing her and drawing away. He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “Can I get a rain check?”

  “Sure.” And then her mouth curved. “But you know it never rains in California.”

  Ethan lifted his shoulders in a quick shrug. “Who knows? I might get lucky and there’ll be a sudden cloudburst.”

  Liz played along and nodded. “Well, we can always hope.”

  She was getting ready to leave, he thought. He could tell by her body language.

  “Say,” Ethan said as a thought suddenly hit him. “You mentioned you work in a Chinese restaurant, right?”

  “Yes,” she answered, waiting for him to explain why he was asking.

  “Is it any good?” he asked.

  “Best Chinese food in the county,” she told him with enthusiasm. “Their shrimp in lobster sauce makes you think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  Ethan nodded, making his decision. “You’ve talked me into it.”

  “Into what?” she asked, confused. “I wasn’t aware that I was talking you into anything.”