Breathe You In (A Sexy Romance) Read online

  I looked up at my flat. The lounge window was in darkness. I had absolutely nothing to do tomorrow and knew no one but Ruben in this town of museums, champagne bars and hot-air balloons. “That sounds nice.”

  He smiled. “It’s just a picnic, no pressure, no date presumptions.”

  “You’re very sweet, you know that?”

  “Oh, no.” He groaned. “Not the sweet word. Can’t I be tough and manly, or maybe even tall, dark and handsome?”

  “You fit into the tall, dark and handsome category,” I said with a smile and then suddenly felt shy and silly. I looked at my feet, took my hand from his.

  He laughed. “Did you forget to put your contact lenses in?”

  “I don’t wear them.”

  I giggled again. Ruben had a way of diffusing my emotions, he’d done it all evening. Whatever I’d said, it had just worked out all right.

  “So shall I pick you up about five?” he asked.

  “Perfect.”

  A purple sports car purred past. It caught Ruben’s attention, and he followed it with his gaze until it went out of view.

  “You like that car?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  “You said about Silverstone when we were at the park,” I said, studying the way the orange glow from a street lamp above cast the angles of his face in shadow. “Working with Formula One.”

  “I did indeed say that.”

  He pushed his fingers through his hair; several strands stayed sticking up wonky. I had a sudden urge to flatten them down, see what his hair would feel like. Matt had always kept his hair super-short, it had almost been sharp when I’d ran my hand up it the wrong way. Ruben’s, however, looked soft and silky, like it would fill my fingers, flow around my knuckles.

  “So are you going to tell me about it?” I asked. “This fancy job.”

  He shrugged. “Tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” The no pressure thing could work both ways. “Five o’clock, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “What shall I bring?”

  “Just yourself.”

  Chapter Six

  I was hot and weary. We’d walked almost halfway around the huge reservoir. It was more of a meander really, because the sun was still strong despite the fact it was early evening.

  Ruben carried a rucksack on his back, and I had a blue blanket beneath my arm rolled up like a sausage.

  “We should stop and eat soon, save you carrying all of that stuff,” I said. “What have you got in there anyway?”

  “Ah, now that’s for me to know and you to find out.” He tapped the side of his nose.

  I laughed. “Man of mystery.”

  “Mystery is better than sweet, I suppose.” He grinned and pointed. “How about over there, away from the path?”

  It was a nice spot by a copse of silver birches. The grass was long and pale, the slight breeze whispering through it in waves.

  “Suits me.”

  We left the path, and the soft blades of grass tickled my legs. When we reached the spot Ruben had suggested, I spied a better one, over the next mound.

  “Is over there nicer?” I asked. “It has some dappled shade.”

  “Looks good.”

  After another short stomp, I spread the blanket out. The long grass was holding it up a little, like it was on springy bubbles. I sat and tapped it down, trying to flatten it.

  Ruben patted it, too, then slipped the bag from his back and set it to one side.

  “Oh, that’s good to be off my feet,” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me. I was wearing denim shorts, soft canvas shoes, and a white t-shirt teamed with a pale blue silk scarf.

  “I’m sorry, have I worn you out?” He sat next to me.

  “Everything is an effort when it’s hot, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, it’s even hard to breathe.” His gaze caught mine, then he looked away, busied himself with the bag. “So, we have chicken skewers, cucumber sandwiches, sausages…” He was pulling plastic containers out. “And crisps and carrot sticks and dips, also hard-boiled eggs.”

  “Hard-boiled eggs?” I said with an amused grin.

  He held one up. It looked small in his big fingers. “What’s wrong with hard-boiled eggs?”

  “Nothing, it’s just funny that you brought them.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “I like them. But I’m afraid there’s no cheese, I hate cheese.” He pulled his mouth downwards and shuddered. “Can’t even bear it in the house these days.”

  “That’s okay, I’m used to not eating cheese, and it looks like there’s plenty to keep us going.” I snagged a cucumber sandwich, and he passed me a can of Coke. “Thanks.”

  Ruben set the egg down and started on some chicken.

  “You can’t see the path from here,” I said, nodding in the direction we’d come.

  “No, nor the water.”

  “I’ve admired the reservoir plenty.” I sipped my drink. “It’s nice to find a quiet spot.”

  “I didn’t come to admire the reservoir view anyway,” he said with shrug.

  “What do you mean?”

  He set his dark gaze on me. “I have the perfect view right here.”

  I resisted the urge to check my clothing and fuss with my hair as I felt heat prickle its way up my neck to my cheeks. “Thanks, I think.”

  He smiled and dipped his hand into the bag.

  Much as my cheeks had no doubt flared, his were stained a little red too.

  I finished my sandwich and reached for a carrot stick, dipped it in a pot of hummus.

  What were we like, the pair of us? We were both messed up, both misfits, both been dealt a really shitty hand in life. Though, of course, he didn’t know I knew that about him, that his cards just hadn’t added up. Maybe it was time to get that onto the table.

  “So tell me,” I said, crunching my carrot and doing my best to act casual. “What made you stop changing Formula One tires in fifteen seconds? Isn’t that what you said at the café? Fifteen seconds?”

  He popped a crisp into his mouth then flicked a tiny black bug from his gray t-shirt. “Yeah, sometimes quicker.”

  “Big career change, Silverstone to the museum.”

  He must have been asked the question before. In fact, he’d seemed surprised that first day I’d met him when I hadn’t probed further. It was a bit like my wedding ring question, I supposed, one that kept being innocently asked by near strangers.

  But was I a near stranger? Or had Ruben and I moved onto friendship? I liked to think so.

  He took a deep breath, as though stealing himself. “I got ill. I couldn’t work for a few years. It knocked my career in Formula One on the head.”

  I nodded, took a sip of my Coke.

  “I had a heart condition, bummer really, it came on quick, messed me up big time. I had to give up work.” He hesitated, glanced up toward the birches wending in the breeze. “To start with, the doctors thought they’d be able to control the cardiomyopathy—that’s what it was called—with drugs, but soon it became apparent that wasn’t going to work.” He shrugged. “Not if I was going to have any quality of life anyway.”

  “So how did you get this er…cardiomyopathy? Was it something you did, something you caught?”

  “No, just bloody bad luck. It can run in families, but no one else in mine has it.”

  “And it made you really, really sick?”

  “Yes.”

  “How sick? What couldn’t you do because of your bad heart?” Perhaps I’d sounded hard, but I needed to know, had to understand why he’d needed a new one so badly.

  He sighed. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “From the beginning.”

  “Okay, to begin with I was just a bit short of breath, my ankles were swelling, I was tired, headaches. I felt like an old man, even though I was young and fit. So I went to the doctor thinking he’d say I was working too hard, or maybe I’d picked something up from when we’d been abroad racing. But he
sent me straight into hospital for tests and within a day my world had turned upside down.”

  “I know what that’s like.”

  He leaned forward, rested his index finger on my wedding band. “I’m sure you do.”

  I pressed my lips together as a sudden vision of Matt, myself and Ruben all standing in a triangle, holding hands, hit me.

  “It became apparent,” he said, pulling me from that image, “pretty quickly that the drugs weren’t working. Even on high doses I could hardly breathe, it was like sucking in air through a wet rag most of the time, my damn floppy-muscled heart just couldn’t get the oxygen around my body. Working was impossible then going out became too much. I moved back in with my parents. It took me all of my time to get out of bed, dressed and walk to the living room each day. I’d sleep then, after mum brought my breakfast and a mountain of pills, often till mid-afternoon. I was quite literally slipping away.”

  “That’s awful.” I looked at him now, slim, tanned and with a sparkle in his eye. I couldn’t imagine him being so wrecked.

  “Awful is the word, but without my parents those four years would have been so much worse. They were my rock.”

  “You didn’t have a girlfriend or anything?”

  “No, I’d been traveling a lot, with the team, we’d just come back from Monaco, had a blast.” He smiled, looked wistful. “I was living the dream, flying high, there wasn’t one special woman in my life—will you hate me for saying I was just having fun with lots of special women?”

  I smiled. “Nothing wrong with having fun. I used to have lots of fun too. I like fun.”

  He caught my gaze then glanced away, put the lid on the tub of sandwiches to deter a tiny fly. “I was put on the list pretty quickly, but they manage your expectations so you feel like it will never happen, then if it does…” He lifted his hands, raised his eyes Heavenward. “You feel honored.”

  “What list? Like what will never happen?” Of course I knew.

  He dropped his hands to his lap and looked at me, his gaze boring deep into mine, penetrating to my core.

  “What list?” I asked again, needing Ruben to tell me. Desperate for him to say he had a new heart, a heart that had belonged to a person who was good and kind and had given him back his life. Changed him from that ruined shell into a vibrant, handsome man again who was now enjoying a picnic in the sunshine with a girl.

  Still he said nothing; instead, he curled his fingers beneath his t-shirt and began to peel it off.

  I studied his belly, slender with a dark trail of hair rising from the waistband of his jeans. A little higher and his navel was revealed, the hair here sparser and fanned to the sides. Another few inches, and set in the very center of his torso was the base of a smooth pink scar. It continued, as Ruben lifted his t-shirt up and off, right over his sternum, to just beneath the hollow of his throat.

  He tossed the t-shirt aside and looked down at his chest. It was sprinkled with hairs, but none on the scar; that was flat and pale and a couple of finger-widths wide.

  I stared, too, knowing that beneath that scar was Matt’s beating heart. Through that wound Matt’s heart had been carefully passed, filling the space of an old, defunct heart that was no longer up to the job. Surgeons had carefully joined arteries and veins, made one working, functioning body out of scraps. It was Ruben who’d got possession of the sum total.

  I moved onto my knees, sitting the same way Ruben was, and pressed my palm over his chest.

  He sucked in a breath and placed his hand over mine.

  “You were on the transplant list,” I whispered. “You have a new heart.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were dying.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I was.”

  His skin was warm, and his hairs tickled my fingertips. The thud-thud-thud of Matt’s heart vibrated through my palm. “A new heart was the only thing that could save you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I didn’t really need the lungs, but they say it’s easier to move them as a package, something to do with all the blood vessels.”

  I nodded. I’d heard that too. “What does it feel like? To have a part of someone else inside you?”

  “Gratitude is the strongest emotion, the fact that a grieving family made such an amazingly difficult decision on the worst day of their lives to benefit a stranger. The gratitude is scarily consuming at times.” He paused. “One day, soon I hope, I’ll say thank you in a letter or perhaps face-to-face, my coordinator says that can happen when I’m ready. But words just seem so inadequate, not enough to express my appreciation. I wish there was something I could do for them in return. I need to work on those thoughts a bit more before I can put pen to paper.”

  I bit my bottom lip. Put all my concentration into balancing. I needed to hear the rest of this. “Go on. What else do you feel?”

  “There’s relief, I’m not dying anymore, but there’s still fear, my body is constantly trying to reject what’s good for it, and then there’s the absolute determination to just be normal and move on.” He shrugged. “Move into my new way of being anyway. Can’t be quite the dare-devil, adrenaline junkie I once was. Well, not for a few more years at least.” He gave a half smile.

  “Well you have to look after it.” I nodded at his chest. “That heart.”

  “Yes, I intend to, but Katie, I understand if you don’t want to…” He looked away.

  “What?”

  He turned back to me, shook his head. “I’m as out of the whole dating game as you are. I’ve just found myself a quiet job in a quiet place and I’m just happy to be alive. I haven’t been looking for romance or love, just trying to put the pieces back together. You might not want to be around someone like me.”

  As he’d spoken his sweet, cola-laced breath had washed over my face. I breathed it in. This was air that had been inhaled and exhaled through Matt’s lungs.

  Matt’s lungs.

  I breathed deeper, breathing him in, allowing that air to fill my chest, circulate my body—air from lungs that I had gasped and panted with in a hundred beautiful memories.

  A full body tingle attacked me. My eyes stung, but I fought for control. Maintained it, just. “You’re alive,” I whispered, not wanting to move my hand from his chest. Feeling Matt’s heart beating was like coming home. How many nights had I gone to sleep listening to that rhythmic sound?

  “I’m alive.” He paused, softened his voice. “And so are you.”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “So?” He used his other hand to tilt my chin, bring my attention to his face.

  “What?” I whispered.

  He paused, worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Can you cope with a broken man?”

  “You’re not broken, you’re fixed.” I bit back a sob that was threatening to erupt. “You have a wonderful new heart that feels perfect and strong, like it will beat forever. You’re not broken anymore, Ruben. You’re fixed. They made you better.”

  He frowned. His eyes were moist too. “I hated being broken.”

  “Me too.” I let a tear overspill, unconcerned by its track down my cheek.

  Without a doubt the decision I’d made when I’d sat in Intensive Care holding Matt’s lifeless hand and with the organ retrieval team waiting for my answer had been the right one. It had been painful, torturous, and as Ruben had just said the worst day of my life, but it had been the only thing that had made sense.

  He caught the tear with the pad of his thumb. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just happy for you. You’ve been through hell. And I know what a horrible place that is.”

  “Right now it feels like I’m in Heaven.” He smiled. “I can almost hear harps.”

  A slightly hysterical little giggle burst from me, and then I did what I’d been wanting to do all evening. I slipped my fingers into his soft hair, cradled his skull, and pressed my lips to his.

  Chapter Seven

  “Katie,” he whispered when I pulled back from our soft kiss.


  “I’m sorry.” I could taste him, just a little. It hadn’t been a big, open-mouthed snog, merely a touch. But still, it had spoken a thousand words, and it was the first time I’d kissed anyone other than Matt in nearly a decade.

  “No, please don’t apologize.” He placed his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs grazing my collarbones through my t-shirt. “I liked it, but…are you sure?”

  “I’m trying to put my life back together, too, Ruben. Matt will always be with me, no one can replace him.” I paused, juddered in a breath and put my hand on Ruben’s chest again. “Our time together was cut short, but the memories I have, they’re good memories.” I tried to find the right words; my emotions were tangled, my thoughts jumbled, but basically I just wanted to be with Ruben, it felt right. In a very basic, limbic part of my brain Ruben was someone I needed. “But I want to make new memories, happy ones, fun ones. I can’t be a sad widow who everyone feels sorry for anymore. It’s not what Matt would have wanted for me, I know that.”

  “If he loved you he would have wanted you to find happiness again.” He stroked his thumbs to the dip at the base of my throat, shifting my silky scarf. It was a small, delicate caress that sent a shiver of something scarily like desire tickling over my skin.

  “He did love me,” I said, “with all of his heart.” And did that heart still love me? The one I could feel beating right now? Is that where love was stored, in the fibers of the cardiac muscle? And if so, did that mean Matt’s love had been transferred into Ruben when Matt’s heart was transplanted? Did Ruben love me already, because of the reassignment of an organ?

  “Katie?” He frowned a little.

  “For the first time it feels right to hear that said.”

  “What?”

  “That he would have wanted me to be happy. Oh, it’s been said to me by lots of well-meaning friends over the last year, since the anniversary of his death, and I’ve just nodded and agreed, put on my usual fake smile.” I shook my head. “But now, here, yes, he would have wanted me to be looking for happiness again and I want to find it. Not because it’s what I’m supposed to be doing, but because it’s what I want. I need to feel alive again, because, like you said, I am alive.”