Damaged: A gripping short read, the perfect escape for an hour

The man having a beer inside with her dad and her brother did not look underfed. Nor down on his luck. He looked … the word that popped into her mind was ‘gorgeous’.

Allison’s visceral reaction to this splendid creature so startled her that she felt a blush flooding her face. That was the trouble with being a ginger. People could tell what you were feeling by the colour of your skin.

Since she couldn’t do what her body was telling her to do, which was to crawl onto his lap so he’d have to hold her with those muscular arms of his, she settled for a strained, ‘Hi, I’m Allison.’

The man at the table didn’t say anything right away, even though Riley and Jimmy were looking at him expectantly. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded as if he was out of breath.

‘Hi,’ he said back to her. ‘I’m Mike Dennison.’

Mike (#u524cd948-53e5-5614-83bf-bb7d463954d7)

Manhattan

Mike drove back to Manhattan that night with the top down, despite the early-spring chill. He needed to clear his head.

Jimmy Jones had been at him about meeting his sister since he had transferred into Mike’s National Guard unit last fall. ‘She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s talented, she’s starting her own business,’ Jimmy had claimed.

In Mike’s experience, when a guy went on and on about his sister, and how she was God’s gift, sure as the devil the sister would not be as advertised. So what the hell just happened back there in Breezy Point?

He had had no intention of meeting Allison Jones tonight. But he liked Jimmy and when he suggested they grab a beer after work, Mike readily agreed. Jimmy texted him directions to what he assumed was an out-of-the-way bar on the beach. That’s how he had ended up sitting at Jimmy’s kitchen table when this half-frozen goddess in a wool cap had walked in and knocked him for a loop.

Allison was much better looking than advertised. But that’s not what had Mike driving into the city on a freezing-cold night with the top down. He knew a lot of beautiful women. It was what had happened to him when she walked into the room that had surprised and baffled him. It was almost as if an electric shock had run through his body.

If her father and brother hadn’t been in the room, and if they weren’t cops with Glock 19s on their belts, he might have walked across the room, picked her up and made love to her right there on the kitchen table.

Thank God for his training as a pilot. You were taught to control emotions, even overwhelming ones like the one he had just experienced. Fly the plane, they had taught him. No matter how you feel, just fly the plane.

So he sat there, chatting with Riley and Jimmy, as if his head wasn’t exploding with possibilities. And he flew the plane.

His feelings clearly were not reciprocated. Allison had spent the evening banging around the kitchen as if she was mad at the whole world. She hurled a chicken into the oven and chopped vegetables as if they had committed a capital crime. From time to time, he caught her looking at him with such intensity that he realised she must have taken an instant dislike to him. Or maybe she just didn’t like unexpected dinner guests.

Whatever it was, he was going to fix it. He had spent two hours in Allison Jones’ presence. She had said maybe ten words to him. But he wanted this woman. And when Mike Dennison wanted something, there was no way he would quit.

A little later, in the warmth of his apartment near Gramercy Park, he sat pondering about Allison. Should he talk to Jimmy about her, ask him if she had mentioned him after he’d left? No way. Mike liked to play things close to his chest. He’d known other women, but none had made this kind of impression. He had a great need to see her again, as soon as possible … He let the thought go, and eventually went to bed. But sleep eluded him.

Allison and Mike (#ulink_d40fbed4-dc19-5d80-9975-9b47b6f1f4f1)

New York City

Allison was on strike. She hadn’t spoken more than two words to her brother for five days. She would put dinner on the table and take her plate to her workroom. She ignored Jimmy’s texts and her father’s attempts at intervention.

It didn’t matter that Mike Dennison was about as hot a guy as you could dream up. She didn’t care that he had been a pilot who had risked his life to fly wounded fighters out of harm’s way when he’d been in the National Guard in Afghanistan.

It didn’t matter that she had dreamed of him every night since she had discovered him sitting in the kitchen.

What mattered was that her brother had disrespected her wishes. Jimmy was so sure he was right that, despite her refusal to be set up by him, he had brought his friend home anyway.

So what if he had been right? Her mother didn’t just teach her about fashion and eclectic styles in that closet of hers. She taught her to fight to make her own decisions.

‘Honey,’ she had told her daughter, ‘as the only woman in a family of men, you need to learn to stand your ground. They love you so much they’ll want to plan your life, and choose your friends. Don’t you let them. No one knows what’s right for you but you.’

Allison had learned that lesson well. The rub was that she did like Mike Dennison. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She had Googled him; learned all about his war exploits, and his work as a storied copywriter. She knew he had raised his kid brother after his parents had been killed. It was hard to ignore the fact that they had that kind of loss in common.

It was impossible to ignore the pangs of jealousy she felt when she learned he was one of the most eligible bachelors in New York City. He had probably driven out to Breezy Point to see if the cop’s sister would be another notch on his belt.

The fact that he was willing to come to their home, even though she had declared she didn’t want to meet him, said something about him. It was something she didn’t like.

‘Mike had no idea he was coming here!’ Jimmy insisted. ‘He really wasn’t that keen to meet you either.’

‘Why not, I wonder?’ Allison addressed her comments to her father since she was not speaking to her brother. ‘Am I not good enough for Mr Bachelor of the Year, do you think?’

‘So you do like him,’ Jimmy blared, looking triumphant.

‘I said no such thing!’ Allison growled, slamming a dinner plate on the table in front of Jimmy. ‘I hardly noticed him.’

‘Ally, check yourself,’ her father said. This was his Detective First Class Riley Jones voice. Felons had been known to crumple when hearing that voice. ‘Those are your mother’s dishes.’

Allison didn’t answer, but the next plate was placed gently in front of her father.

‘I’m going to eat in my studio,’ Allison said, beginning to make a plate for herself.

‘If Jimmy said Mike didn’t know he was coming to meet you, then he didn’t know,’ Riley said, not looking up from his food. ‘Your brother may like to play cupid, but he’s no liar. The Joneses don’t lie.’

‘I know that, Dad,’ she muttered.

Allison didn’t believe Jimmy. Or maybe she chose not to. Maybe she was frightened by the intensity of her response to Mike Dennison. Or maybe she was just stubborn enough not to want to be with a guy her brother had picked out for her.

And so she took her plate and headed for the safety of her little apartment atop the house. Instead of eating, she watched the waves crashing against the jetty and wondered what on earth had happened to her the night Jimmy brought a friend home for dinner.

She spent the next week putting Mike Dennison out of her mind, or trying to. She immersed herself in her business plan. She had decided to turn Lydia’s Closet into an Internet Boutique. No rent, no insurance, no overheads. Just her group of stay-at-home moms: taking orders, packaging what they’d made, and shipping them out.

All she needed now was to figure out how to get Lydia’s Closet noticed among the seemingly trillion websites on the Net.

Whether she did it consciously or not, she would never know. But her research eventually brought her to the conclusion that what she needed was a killer advertising plan, something that would really create buzz, get people talking.

When she finally did speak to Jimmy, it was to ask for Mike Dennison’s phone number.

‘It’s just business,’ she insisted. ‘Frankly, I didn’t care for the guy.’

To his credit, he didn’t laugh out loud. ‘That’s good,’ Jimmy said, ‘because he wasn’t that into you either. Guess I need to stay out of your dating life from now on.’

Both Allison and Jimmy pretended to believe that what the other was saying was true, but neither did.

Allison told Mike she would meet him at O’Lunney’s on Forty-Fifth Street in Manhattan. She made it clear when she called that this was a business meeting and she wanted to do the paying.

She had chosen the meeting place because she knew she would be on safe ground. Cops hung out there. Her family had been bringing her for as long as she could remember. That was when they lived around the corner, before her mother was killed and her father swept her away to the world’s safest community.

She was running behind, so she had to splurge and grab a taxi from the subway station. For some reason, it had taken her forever to get dressed today. She must have changed her clothes four times before she was satisfied that she was presenting the perfect balance of business-woman and trendy chic.