One glass. How are your folks?” She didn’t really want to know. She wanted to know if he was dating anyone. Her brother had only given her the sketchiest of details about J.D.’s recent divorce.
“Dad’s horrifying the neighbors down in Florida, last I heard, with Mom following behind him to apologize. Some things really don’t change.” He grinned with his mouth shut, a twisted line that sank into bitterness. Bracing his hands on the crutch’s crossbars, he swung over to the couch and indicated with a toss of his chin as he passed it that she should drop the bottle and glasses on the end table. Then he changed the subject, lightening the mood once more.
“I saw your mom the other day at Tyler’s pub, looking fantastic as always.” J.D. had always worshipped the Tyler matriarch with the pure love of a boy whose own mother was a walking disaster. “She recognized me instantly, of course. But she could have warned me about you. I hardly recognized you when I opened the door. You grew up just fine, Sarah.” He winked at her. “Didn’t you have a crush on me at one point?”
She stuck out her tongue at him, pleased that she could take his teasing with barely a flutter of uneasy excitement, and went to search the kitchen for a corkscrew.
“Yeah, well, as a girl I was easily impressed. Remind me to beat up my brother for not keeping his mouth shut about it. And of course Mom recognized you—you were standing next to my brother. The terrible twosome, reunited. You’ll have to come to her birthday party next month.” She ducked her head, as if J.D. might be able to see on her face the dozen voice mails about party planning she’d ignored from her family. Although, he was probably the one person who’d understand wanting to avoid family for a while. “Ah ha,” she said after another moment of searching the cluttered drawer. She lifted the corkscrew in the air, and then strolled back to the couch, where J.D. had eased himself down onto the cushions.
No longer able to restrain her burning curiosity, she heard herself asking, “You got a new celebrity girlfriend we should put on the RSVP list?” Yeah, that was subtle. And sheesh, it was hot in here. Seriously. A drop of sweat trickled down her spine. No sweating in Armani, she reminded herself. Dropping the corkscrew in his lap, she headed off into the dimmer corner of the apartment. “Is there a bathroom back here somewhere? And maybe some beachwear for this sauna you’ve got going on?” she said. “I’m inappropriately dressed.”
He groaned and tilted his head back to rest on the high cushions of the couch. The light flickered around the edges of his profile, outlining the bump on his nose. It had been broken by a wild curveball thrown by her brother a dozen summers ago. “In the corner. Look in the closet for a T-shirt and shorts if you want. I keep workout clothes down here. Bedroom’s upstairs. And I never should have sent Tyler the picture from that magazine,” he called after her. “I go to one Hollywood premiere with the supporting actress and your brother tells everyone within a two-hundred-mile radius.”
She found the bathroom back by what looked like a weight room, barbells and weight plates stacked along the walls. She pushed the door halfway shut behind her and started to shuck off her clothes while she shouted back to him. “You could have knocked him over with a feather when the next picture he saw was your wedding picture. Same blonde, different slinky ten-thousand-dollar dress.” Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she hoped she could blame the flush in her cheeks on the heat of the fire.
“Get a grip, girl. You’re just two old friends sitting in front of a fire while drinking some wine.” She brushed a strand of long brown hair behind one ear and smiled at herself in the mirror. “Yeah, he’s an old friend who just happens to be a phenomenally hot man too injured to escape.”
Oh, for crying out loud. Now she was flirting with herself in the bathroom mirror. She shut her eyes, threw every fantasy of seeing Joseph David Damico naked out of her brain, opened her eyes and turned to the open-faced linen closet. The uninstalled door was propped against the wall next to it. Now that she knew he hadn’t changed as much as she’d feared, she saw this place a bit differently, too. It had gone from a barely habitable, starving-artist space to a cool, incomplete renovation. Reaching inside the open closet, she grabbed the first things she found and pulled them on.
“Where is the ex-Mrs. Joey, sorry, J.D. Damico, by the way?” she asked, determined to nail down details about the dreaded ex-wife. “All the lunchtime construction boys at the pub were hoping for her autograph.”
“Lost her in the Amazon,” was his reply, but she decided to wait until she returned to the living area for a translation. This place was like a cavern.
Leaving her own clothes neatly folded on the counter, she flipped off the light and padded back to the couch in her bare feet. She twisted one hand in the loose waistband of the silky running shorts and used the other to yank the wide neck of one of J.D.’s old baseball T-shirts back up her shoulder.
He was still sitting on the couch, two glasses of deep red wine on the table at his knees, watching her walk toward him. Her own gaze bounced around the room so she wouldn’t have to look directly at him. Even though only her legs and arms were bare, she felt like she was naked and under a spotlight. She was extraordinarily self-conscious about wearing his clothes, the scent of his laundry detergent rising all around her, the slippery nylon sliding between her bare thighs.
“That’s a nice look for you, Sarah Bearah.”
The childhood nickname had an unfortunate effect on her maturity level. She stuck out her tongue at him.
That’s twice now. What are you, twelve?
When she reached the couch, he patted the cushion next to him.
She didn’t even need her mind to protest, “Bad idea!” She was already sinking to the floor next to the couch. She patted the cushion herself. “Throw your gimpy leg on up there. You know you want to.” With a groan, he stretched out, leaving her face a less-than-comfortable twelve inches from his lap. She scooted a little closer to the head of the couch, and he pulled a pillow from beneath his head and tossed it to her.
“You’re so right. Sit on this.”
“Thanks.” She scooched the pillow under her butt and propped her arm on the couch. Manageable. Closer to his face, which was distracting, but much less so than his crotch, which would have made coherent, non-blushing, non-stammering conversation absolutely impossible. “Your ex-wife’s lost where?”
He grimaced as he handed one of the glasses of wine to her.
“She’s not lost. In fact, I guess you’d say she found herself.” He took a swallow of his wine and stared at the glass. “What I said was that I lost her in the Amazon. That’s where we broke up. She was filming, of course, and I was working on the scrapbook for the movie.”
Sarah snorted into her own glass at his use of the casual term. J.D.’s “scrapbooks” as he called them had started out as a private project and become all the rage, first with the filmmakers in Hollywood and then with the general public. The first scrapbook had been a gift for his friend, Ben, the director of a small but beautiful documentary about a Hollywood legend’s relationship with his daughter, who directed him in her first independent film. The documentary had explored the intense relationship between father and daughter, actor and director, during the shooting of the film. J.D.’s photos had captured slivers of private time away from the cameras, intimate moments with the cast and crew that made you feel like you’d been allowed to peek through a window on the set.
“I love that you call them scrapbooks,” she admitted and looked up at him. He had his head propped on one hand and was staring at her with unwavering dark eyes. “That makes it sound
