Page 360 of One More Kiss

Falling For Her

J. Saman

Silas

For the lasthour since I sat down in this bar, I’ve been watching her. Hoping she’ll see me while simultaneously relieved she hasn’t. She’s been laughing with her friend, sipping martini after martini, and looking so beautiful it hurts. Long, dark hair down her back in soft waves. Makeup sexy with smoky eyes and glossy lips. Black dress tight and low cut, revealing the heavenly swell of the tops of her breasts. And even though I can’t see her feet, I’d bet my house she’s wearing a pair of colorful Docs.

I’ve never seen her in anything else except sandals on the beach.

Tonight is one of my only nights off from life. No hospital and my son is with his mother. And even though I hate the latter, I should be not only enjoying myself, but attempting to meet someone to potentially spend the night with. It’s been… shit, it’s been at least six months.

But all I can do is watch her.

As it is with every time I’ve seen or been near Delaney Banks, it’s a sucker punch to the gut and a kick to the teeth. A woman I wanted instantly upon meeting her, was drawn to like a moth to a flame, only to be reminded time and time again she would never be mine. She hasn’t dated my brother Liam for about a year now, but that doesn’t make her any less off-limits to me than she was then.

Brother’s girl or brother’s ex makes no difference.

It’s an automatic do not even think about it. But I am thinking about it. Maybe it’s the two drinks I’ve been nursing or the lack of sex or the monotony of my life or the way she looks tonight or the idea that some other asshole is going to get his shot with her when I won’t.

An asshole like this one…

My molars gnash together as yet another guy comes up to her, this one brazen enough to slip his arm around her waist and whisper in her ear. I look away, wondering for the hundredth time tonight why I’m torturing myself.

“Just go up to her already,” my buddy Ben says, sipping his beer in one hand, his other around a girl he met not even twenty minutes ago.

“Can’t,” I tell him.

“I have a friend,” the girl whose name I never caught offers.

“Oh yeah?” Laughter curls around the edges of his words. “Is she here with you?”

“She works here. She’s in the back, waitressing. Do you want me to introduce you?” she asks, turning her attention back to me. “You’d like her,” the girl continues when I remain silent, giving me a once-over. “She’s pretty and smart. Funny too. She’s finishing up graduate school in bioengineering.”

“Silas isn’t looking for a love connection. He has no time for anything other than tonight.”

“Oh.” The girl frowns. “Well, yeah, I don’t think she’s really the hookup type. Did that a bit too much in college, you know?”

“Not really,” I grumble because I don’t.

I didn’t party much in college. I barely met women. I was focused and busy working my ass off. Then I went to med school and met Ann and now here I am. A divorced single dad cliché, a notch shy of thirty who spends all his time either working in the emergency room or with his kid.

A man whose ex did a real number on him and now he has no time or desire for romance or relationships.

Except that’s not entirely true because I would have done anything for a shot with her.

Delaney.

Beautiful, smart, funny, quirky, young, sweet Delaney. My brother was obsessed with her, but that didn’t stop him from fucking up as young twentysomethings do. She ended it with him and that was it. I haven’t seen her since.

Until now.

Turning back to her, I instantly shoot out of my seat, my fists reflexively balling up.

“Whoa. Where’s the fire?”

“He’s getting rough with her,” I grit through my teeth, watching as the guy who had put his arm around Delaney snarls in her face. She’s shoving at him, yelling something I can’t hear over the crowd noise, and before I know what the hell I’m doing, I’m moving, storming in her direction.

“It’s over, Jason. I’ve told you that a hundred times. You need to stop calling and texting and showing up where I am. It’s creepy.”

---