About That Kiss: A Heartbreaker Bay Novel Read online

  Spence was waiting for him and wordlessly handed him a coffee. He was kind enough to wait for the caffeine to kick in before saying, “You’re late.”

  “Alarm didn’t go off,” Joe said.

  “Because you don’t use an alarm.”

  True enough. Joe had an internal clock, one of the things he could thank the army for beating into him.

  “You alright?” Spence asked. “I mean, you’re always a bitch in the mornings but you look particularly bitchy today.”

  “Bite me.”

  Spence was richer than God and brilliant enough that he’d once been recruited to work for a government think tank. Joe was not richer than God, and though he’d also once worked for the government—in special forces, to be exact—it hadn’t been his brain that had been coveted, but his ability to be as lethal as needed.

  To say he and Spence were unlikely friends was an understatement. It’d started at the weekly poker game that went on in the Pacific Pier Building’s basement. Spence owned the building, so he played poker with an easy abandon. Joe played poker the same way he lived his life—recklessly. It’d bonded them.

  Spence, not really a morning person either and certainly not a coddler, accepted Joe’s “bite me” for “I’m fine,” and they tossed the coffee cups in a trash and took off running. Today they hit the Lyon Street stairs, which—talk about being a bitch—were a straight-up torture rack of 332 steep steps, made all the more daunting by the early morning fog hiding the top third of them from view. This made it feel like an endless, unobtainable goal, not that they let this stop them. If anything, they each pushed harder, trying to outrun each other.

  When they finally got to the top they didn’t stop, instead entering The Presidio, a park where one could run along forested trails for miles. Almost immediately the city vanished behind woods of thick eucalyptus and, still goading each other, they went all out.

  Spence was in excellent shape, but Joe trained for a living. Five miles later Joe inched ahead of Spence and beat him back to their building, gasping for breath, dripping sweat.

  “You’re insane,” Spence managed, bent at the waist, hands on his knees. “You outrun your demons, I hope?”

  “Can’t run fast enough for that,” Joe said.

  Spence straightened with a frown. “See, something is wrong. Your dad? Molly?”

  “No, they’re both fine and so am I.” Joe shook his head. He didn’t know what was up with him, other than a general restlessness. His dad was . . . well, his dad.

  “The job?” Spence asked.

  Joe shook his head. His job was fulfilling and solid, and served the additional purpose of giving him his daily adrenaline rush as needed. “I’m fine,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, so you keep saying.” Spence paused and then shook his head. “I’m around. You know that, right? We’re staying in San Francisco for the next few months.”

  Not that long ago, Spence had fallen hard and fast for Colbie Albright, a YA fantasy author based out of New York. They’d been splitting their time between San Francisco and New York, but both preferred San Francisco and resided on the private fifth floor penthouse suite of the Pacific Pier Building where Joe worked.

  Colbie had been great for Spence, making him seem more human than he’d ever been, and clearly far happier. Joe was glad for him, even if he didn’t completely understand the life Spence was making in the name of love. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the need or yearning to share his life but that he didn’t feel like he had anything to offer. As a hardened soldier turned security expert, he knew how to protect, but what else could he give to a woman? Teach her how to hold a gun? How to incapacitate a man in one-point-five seconds? Hardly things a normal person would want or need to know.

  And he could give even less emotionally. After all he’d seen and done, he wasn’t even actually sure if he could open up or allow himself to be vulnerable enough to sustain a serious relationship. And what woman would want a guy who couldn’t? But not sure if Spence would understand, he simply nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and he meant it.

  They fist-bumped and went their separate ways. Joe headed home, showered, and then got to work at two minutes past seven a.m.

  “You’re two minutes late,” his sister, Molly, informed him from behind the front desk, where she ran the show at Hunt Investigations. She stood up and moved to her credenza to grab her iPad.

  Her limp was more pronounced today than usual, which meant she was in pain, and an age-old guilt sliced through him. Not that he said a word. She got mad whenever he brought it up, but even worse than that, the last time he’d done so, she’d cried.

  He hated when she cried. So they played a game he was very familiar with. A game called Ignore All The Feels.

  “I’m aware that I’m late, thanks,” he said. He was the older sibling by three years, but twenty-seven-year-old Molly seemed to believe she was in charge of him. Which was not how it really went.

  They’d grown up hard and fast. In their neighborhood, they’d had no choice. Their dad suffered with prolonged PTSD from serving in the Gulf War. As a result, Joe had been in charge from a young age. Being poor as dirt hadn’t helped any. He’d gotten in with the wrong crowd early, doing things he shouldn’t have in order to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.

  “Archer’s pissed,” Molly warned quietly.

  Archer had a thing. Being on time meant you were already late. Being two minutes late was unforgiveable. Joe lifted a bakery box. “I brought bribes.”

  “Ooh, gimme,” she said, using both hands to do the come here gesture.

  Joe held out the box but didn’t relinquish it when she tried to take it. “Pick one.”

  Again she tried to take the box, huffing out a breath when he held tight. “Whatever happened to trust?” she asked, relenting and taking only one doughnut.

  “It’s not about trust. It’s about if I let my guard down, you’ll chew my fingers off to get to all the other doughnuts.”

  “And?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Annnnnnd . . . you made me swear on Mom’s grave that I wouldn’t give you more than one doughnut per day.”

  “That was last week.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So,” she said. “I was PMS-ing last week and feeling fat. I need another doughnut, Joe.”

  He had looked death right in the eye more times than he could count but Molly’s tone was more terrifying than anything he’d ever faced. “You said you’d kill me dead in my own bed if I caved to you,” he reminded her.

  “That could still happen.”

  He stared her down, but she was a Malone through and through and she wasn’t playing. Between a rock and a hard place, he relented and let her take a second doughnut. Because who was he kidding? He’d never been able to tell her no.

  “Thanks. And good luck,” she said, mouth full, giving him a chin nod toward Archer’s office. “He’s waiting for you.”

  Great. Yet another battle to survive. Some days his life felt like a real-life video game. He headed down the hall to Archer’s office, where Archer and his significant other, Elle, were on the couch, arguing.

  “I need the remote to show you my PowerPoint presentation,” Elle was saying.

  Archer shook his head. “Told you I don’t have it.”

  “You just don’t want to suffer through my PowerPoint,” Elle said.

  Archer apparently pleaded the Fifth.

  “You’re sitting on it, aren’t you?” she demanded.

  Archer almost smiled. “Funny how all trust goes away when the remote’s involved.”

  Elle sighed. “You’re impossible.”

  “And irresistible,” Archer said. “Don’t forget irresistible.”

  “Hmm,” Elle said.

  Archer was grinning at her as Joe stepped inside the office to make his presence known because if he gave them another minute, chances were that they’d decide to settle this by getting naked. Yeah, they were polar op