Page 30 of Crossing the Line
“What was going on with you in the conference room? Why did you break down?”
My smile drops. The game has taken a turn onto a street I never thought we would travel down. My eyelids flutter closed as I inhale deeply.
Then I open my eyes, and taking in every part of Hercules’s face, I whisper, “I don’t know.”
His eyebrows furrow. “Come on, PG. I think you do know.”
I grimace, shocked that he said that.
“You’re too smart to not know. You can’t talk about it, but you should. It’ll do you good.”
My lips are pressed together as if on some subconscious level I’m defying him. But he’s right. I do know exactly why I had that breakdown. I found some things after I graduated from college. They were hidden in a chest at my grandfather’s mountain house in Aspen.
A pregnant silence grows between us.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he finally says.
“It’s just…” I glower ahead. “I think it has something to do with my grandfather. I miss him. Even now, it feels like he was just here. Yet he’s been gone for eleven years. And you know, I thought I’d be over my grief by now.” I heave a sigh, but it’s not strong enough to dispel my sorrow.
Hercules is quiet for a few beats. “You have good memories of him?”
“The best.”
“Then hold on to them.” All of a sudden, he stops walking and puts a hand on my back, causing a thrill to shoot through me. “Hey, do you want a doughnut?”
I frown at his perfectly handsome face and then turn to glimpse the rows of decorated doughnuts through the window where we just stopped. My mouth waters, but a force of resistance shoots through me. “You know what’s funny and probably unbelievable?”
His white teeth flash past his kissable smile. “What?”
“I haven’t had a doughnut since I was a kid.”
He leans away from me. “Get out of here.”
The longer he touches me, the more excited I become. I should probably step away from his hand. But I can’t.
Swallowing, feeling flushed, I nod. “It’s true. My parents never let me eat junk food growing up. Well, unless it was on a special occasion. Like my birthday or a Christmas party.”
“Well…” He puts his mouth to my ear. “You don’t know what you’ve been missing.”
Oh no. My lady parts just trembled. Can we really be friends without sex?
Hercules opens the door to the shop. “One doughnut won’t hurt,” he says, coaxing me.
I stomp on that red flag that’s waving inside me, telling me that my parents don’t approve. I take a moment to realize that feeling this way is strange. I’m almost thirty. I wonder whether my parents really still have this much power over me. Then it makes sense, and I realize why Hercules would struggle so much about marrying Lauren. I know his family exudes the same amount of control over him. Since we’re in it together—we might as well be in it together.
“Okay,” I say, smiling and showing two fingers. “I’ll have two.”
Hercules’s smile stretches wide. I love making him smile that way.
“Now, that’s the spirit, PG.”
* * *
Hercules buysa half dozen of the doughnuts the girl behind the counter says are her favorite. He’s a natural flirt, but there’s nothing sexual about the way he goes about it, at least not toward her. The girl, however, basks in his charisma. Then, when their transaction concludes, he sets all his focus on me and me only.
I realize this is the first time I’ve been out in public with Hercules as an adult. In high school, when we would meet after school to work on our computer-programming project, I never paid attention to whether Hercules was distracted by other girls. I was just so happy to be in his presence. But as we sit eating doughnuts and drinking coffee, women pass our window constantly, and he doesn’t turn to glance at any of them. Boyles, my last boyfriend, couldn’t focus on me for one whole minute before checking out all the females in the immediate area. And girls working behind the counter? Forget it. Boyles would flirt shamelessly—and sort of creepily—staring at them as if in a daze, needing to suck as much attention from them as he could absorb.
He had problems—that was for sure. Problems that Hercules doesn’t seem to have. That’s another reason why I feel so at ease with the man who has talked me into eating doughnuts before lunch.
