LITMIR.BIZ

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       3

      DOM REMEMBERED THAT shy smile though he didn’t know why he should. He hadn’t really noticed her much back in school. And she wanted to apologize? He hadn’t seen that coming.

      Earlier, when they’d been talking about the old neighborhood, they’d had a moment where they’d connected. The past had briefly converged with the present. And then something had happened, but he didn’t know what.

      “I shouldn’t have written that op-ed piece. It was wrong and I knew it and I still—”

      “Hey, you don’t need to do this,” he said, cutting her short. “That’s all in the past. We were kids. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Wait.” He thought for a moment. “Wrong to write the article or wrong because you knew it wasn’t true?”

      “Here,” she said, pushing a bunch of napkins at him.

      “You must think I’m a real slob.” When he reached for one, his fingers brushed against hers. Something twitched, nothing big. A reminder that he was aware of how soft her skin looked, of the way her hips flared. How the shirt clung to her breasts.

      “I don’t want to see you get sauce on that snazzy blazer.”

      He glanced down and shrugged. “I had to meet with two new clients, and then I had an interview.”

      Behind him, the bell over the door rang.

      Sara tilted her head to the side to see who it was. “Sorry, we’re closed,” she said with a warm smile she had yet to give him. Although he kind of liked that little shy one. “Come back tomorrow. We’re open at ten.”

      After some grumbling, the door closed.

      “I need to go lock up.”

      “Okay, I get the hint.”

      “No, I wasn’t—” She almost touched his hand but stopped herself and grabbed a ring of keys. “No rush. At least for the next ten minutes.”

      Dom stripped the offensive pineapple off his pizza and took a bite as he watched her walk to the door. Those jeans couldn’t have fit her any better. He wondered if she knew she had the perfect ass.

      While she fiddled with getting the key in the lock, he quickly took two more bites, just to get his stomach to shut up. When Sara turned to make the return trip, he whipped out his wallet and pretended he hadn’t been checking her out.

      “How much do I owe you?”

      “Don’t worry about it. I was going to keep that one in the fridge so we could give out slices tomorrow for our homeless regulars.”

      “What happened to no free food, ever?”

      Her eyebrows went up, and he laughed.

      “I didn’t know you guys did that. That’s great.” He pulled out a twenty and slid it over to her.

      “I know. I’m proud of my folks.” She frowned at the money. “I just told you—”

      “Consider that my contribution to the program.”

      She sighed. “Obviously I can’t say no to that. Thank you,” she said, picking up the twenty and going to the register. She put it in an envelope way in the back of the drawer, then took out a stack of bills.

      “Am I in the way?” He realized he should’ve moved to a table. They had more talking to do and he had a feeling she’d be less open with him right there in her face.

      “You’re fine,” she said just as he picked up his plate and moved.

      He glanced over at Sara and caught her looking back, and she might’ve been checking him out, too. And here he was in conservative gray dress slacks. Shit.

      “Hey, I heard about your father’s heart attack. How’s he doing?”

      He quickly swallowed. “Good. Retired. Not liking it much. But his health is better.”

      “Good. And Tony, he’s—” Sara lifted a brow. “Is ‘getting married’ okay, or does it fall in the banned words category?”

      “I’ll make an exception,” he said. “Yeah, Tony’s getting married. Catherine’s great. They’re good together.”

      “I’m happy for them.”

      “You know Tony?”

      She finished counting her stack before she shoved it in a bank bag. “Not really. I don’t think we ever said so much as hi.” She shrugged. “Kind of like how I know you.”

      If she didn’t know Tony, then basically she was running out the clock. Too bad. He still had a question for her.

      “Did you ever go to college?” she asked, searching around the register, lifting receipts, moving the pizza box.

      “More than I ever thought I would. Two masters, can you believe it?”

      She touched her hair and sighed as she pulled the pencil from behind her ear. “Yeah, that makes sense. For a jock you were no slouch in the grades department.”

      Dom knew the exact moment she realized what she’d said. Her eyes widened for a split second and she looked down, gaze glued to the stack in front of her. Well, that was one question answered. She’d known it was bullshit, but she’d printed it anyway. Still curious as hell, he pretended he hadn’t noticed the slip and took another bite. Chewed. Then said, “I wasn’t a jock.”

      “All the different sports you played? Of course you were.”

      “That’s not all I did.” Damn, he was getting tired of people homing in on superficial qualities. He had the ambition and smarts to do lots of things with his life.

      “It’s not like being a jock was bad. That wasn’t what I meant.”

      “Hey, I just thought of something...about you,” he said, and grinned at the dread on her face. “You kicking ass and taking names when you were editor of the paper. Christ, that one day you were riled up about cafeteria lunches and the faculty doing something stupid. We were all packed into the gym for some announcement.” He took a sip of his soda, his memory suddenly clear as a photograph. “You wore that pink sweater, the one with the cats on it.”

      She gave him a one-sided grin. “You remember that?”

      “You rained down hell on the entire staff. I always wondered if your grades tanked after that.”

      The grin was faint but still there, and now her head tilted slightly to the left. “Huh.” She picked up another stack of bills.

      “I graduated a few months later. I assume you were editor your senior year.”

      Sara’s smile vanished and she looked down at her hands. Guess he’d assumed wrong. He wondered what had done her in, giving it to the faculty or writing a slanderous implication about him. He’d been plenty pissed, but he hadn’t said anything, not to anyone who mattered. Just his friends and Coach Randal. Pissed on his behalf, they’d urged him to file a complaint but he hadn’t.

      “I think the emergency has passed,” he said, although he was still hungry. They’d been talking. Everything was good. But he’d lost ground with her. “Why don’t you put the rest of the pizza back in the fridge, give it to your regulars tomorrow?”

      He stood up and had the unexpected pleasure of watching her walk to the fridge. Not on purpose but he couldn’t have timed it better. “You going home soon?”

      She didn’t respond at first. “About ten minutes.”

      “I’ll stick around and walk with you.” He wasn’t surprised by her hesitation. “You know this neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.”

      “Dom. It’s still

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