Ashe was leaning against her front door when Riley reached her floor, the sight of him making her catch her breath as the elevator doors opened. Still wearing his skin-tight shirt and jeans, the addition of a long dark coat made him look so...so English, just like in the movies.

"I thought Bob dropped you off," she said as she stepped off the elevator.

"He did," Ashe said. "But I needed to make sure that you were all right. Your sister wasn't happy, and I don't blame her. She must think I'm such a cad for making advances toward you."

"Does it really matter what she thinks? You're here anyway, aren't you?"

He sighed. "Not for what you must be thinking. If anything, I'd like to talk, Riley. At least, let us talk."

"How'd you get up here?" Riley asked.

Ashe bit his lower lip sheepishly. "I'm afraid I bribed Frank. Being recognizable has its perks."

Frank Rogers, the doorman, was good at his job and it wasn't easy to get past him as long as he wasn't helping the elderly tenants who often needed help with their groceries. Though he could be a bulldog about visitors, he was nice to Riley and loved to talk about what his teenage daughter, Marie, was up to. Lately, it was social media, something about Twitter, though Frank had no idea what it meant.

"He's going to get into trouble when I make a complaint."

Ashe frowned, moving away from her door as she approached. "I wouldn't want him to get into trouble, not when all he wanted was an autograph and a picture for his daughter. But if I leave right now, will you promise not to report him?"

"You'd actually leave?"

"I would. It's not his fault I needed to make sure you didn't get into too much trouble because of me."

"Then I won't report him. Frank's like a father to me, and I don't want him getting into trouble on account of me being a bitch," Riley said. "But if you're here to get laid, you've got it wrong. Maybe you should call Betty and have her arrange something for you. I'm sure she can think of more interesting people than me for you to hook up with. You won't have to work so hard at trying to get someone to give you a blow job or whatever."

His face darkened. "Is that really why you think I'm here? This is what your sister thinks, isn't it? That all I want from you is sex because of something Betty must have told her about the parties she must have set up for other...people?"

"Does it matter what Betty told her?"

"Yes, it does, Riley. Because as much as some of what Betty says might be true, it doesn't mean it applies to every single one of her clients. She doesn't babysit me, nor supply me with models or drugs, if that's what Paige is implying." Ashe replied, taking a step closer. "I will leave right now, but not before you answer me this. Do you always let your sister run your life?"

"She's just worried about me. She doesn't want me to get hurt again," Riley said, biting her lower lip as she gazed up at him. Ashe had such a magnetic presence, and it was overwhelming at times. The broad chest, narrow waist and muscles along his jaw that tensed as he looked at her all made her feel weak, unable to put up defenses strong enough to hide from him. "So, if you're not here to get laid, then why are you here?"

His expression softened. "Just talk."

"I bet you can get laid a hundred ways from here till Sunday if you wanted to, even without Betty's help," she said, exhaling. "Why the hell would you give that up just to know me better? To talk?"

Ashe didn't speak right away. He watched her, observing her face go through all the emotions she was feeling—anger, confusion, regret.

"That's Paige talking now, Riley, not you," he said, taking a step away from her. "I want to speak to the Riley I got to know tonight. The Riley who is the perfect narrator to my Sam-I-Am, the one who knows how to assemble a Lionel train faster than I can without needing to read the directions. The one who can convince three boys that macaroni and cheese with corn chips mixed in tastes so much better because Vitamin F means fun."

Riley felt her face burning with embarrassment and she lowered her eyes.

"The Riley who doesn't believe she's as beautiful as she really is, who is more intelligent than she lets everyone else think," Ashe continued. "That's the Riley I want to talk to."

"Well, now that you put it that way, then I guess we can talk," she said as she unlocked her front door. "But just talk, okay?"

"Just talk," Ashe nodded as he followed her into her apartment. "I meant every word I said."

"I was afraid of that," Riley said, remembering the way he had kissed her earlier that evening, the butterflies in her belly fluttering again. Talking was starting to seem overrated.

* * *

"Would you like coffee?" Riley asked as they entered her apartment.

"Coffee would be perfect," Ashe said, slipping off his coat and hanging it behind her door. He followed her into her small kitchen, which was just a little space behind a counter, before stepping back as if realizing just how small the space really was.

"I hope you're not allergic to cats," she said as Ashe walked toward the living room. "Miss Bailey is here somewhere, but she's a little nervous of people she doesn't recognize, so she might be under the bed or the couch. Just don't be alarmed if you notice something moving, maybe rubbing against your leg or whatever."

"I won't," Ashe said. "I grew up with animals, and it will be a pleasure to meet Miss Bailey when she comes out of hiding."

While she prepared coffee, Ashe browsed through her books, pulling one out here and there to open it and flip through the pages, and always taking care of how he opened them. She could have sworn she caught him smelling the books, especially the vintage ones that belonged to her mother. Jane Eyre was one that he pulled out and flip through the pages, and Riley caught him smile to himself when he pulled out her mother's copy of Madame Bovary.

"Do you like to read?" she asked.

"I do, yes," Ashe replied as he returned a book to the shelf. "Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to read these days, unless it's to research a role. If I have some time, I read on my phone, but I do miss the feel of a real book in my hands."

"I know what you mean," Riley said. "That's why I have these books here in my apartment. Some of them belonged to my mother. She was such a voracious reader, and she loved collecting old books."

"Are these hers?" he asked, pointing to a row of old books on one of the shelves.

Riley nodded as the Moka pot bubbled and she turned away from him, taking the pot from the stove and dividing the contents equally between two cups. While she brewed espressos with a commercial machine at the Library Cafe, at home Riley preferred to do it the old-fashioned way, on the stove. Besides, her little kitchen had no room for an espresso machine. She extracted a carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator and a bowl of sugar from the cupboard.

"Having them around makes me happy. She died when I was ten," Riley said, taking both cups to the living room where she set them on the coffee table and sat on the couch.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Ashe murmured.

"She had MS, and she was in a wheelchair, and—" she paused, not wanting the conversation to go down a path she hated to go. But as she gazed at Ashe's face, she marveled at how honest he looked, like he was truly saddened by the news that her mother was dead. "I was too young to remember what happened."

But that was a flat-out lie. Of course, she remembered what happened. Riley had been with her mother when the next door neighbor's apartment caught on fire from an unattended cigarette. The thick scar on her left arm was her reminder every day of how she'd been too small and too weak to help her mother down the stairs where they would have been safer from all that smoke—and her father's hatred of her.

He still called Riley weak and useless whenever he saw her, and that if it weren't for her, Millie Eames would still be alive. Riley sighed and forced herself to smile as Ashe sat down on the couch next to her.

"This is from that fire," she said, straightening her left arm out so he could see the broad scar along the inside of her forearm. What a crybaby she'd been then, Riley thought, crying at the pain of debridement and whatever else they did to graft new skin where the old skin had burned away. But that was before she saw other children who had been burned worse than she'd been from other incidents, and Riley learned to stop complaining. She grinned, wishing to close the topic. "They're all healed after all the skin grafts. Good as new."

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. They simply drank their coffee though Riley could feel Ashe watching her. As she looked at him, she was relieved to find no pity staring back at her, or anger though he would have no reason to be angry at what she had just shared. Still, it was time to change the subject or send him home.

"So, the Englishman who is not posh, what about you? Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?" She nudged him playfully with her foot, trying to lighten the mood. "How come it's always me talking about myself? It's your turn to open up, or are you hiding something?"

"No, I have nothing to hide, at least not at the moment," Ashe said, nudging her with his leg in return. "But you can always ask me whatever it is you want to know."

"You said you aren't from London, and that you're not posh. So where are you from?"

"Are you familiar with Yorkshire?"

As he said the word 'Yorkshire' Riley noticed a change in the way he spoke, an accent she had never noticed before. Riley shook her head. "Does that mean you speak differently from the way you talk in the movies and all?"

"What you hear on many British TV shows and movies is what we call RP, or Received Pronunciation. It used to be that actors who wanted to make it in the business needed to master that mode of speech, but you don't have to lose your native accent if you have one."

"Like a dialect?"

"Exactly, just as there are dialects here," Ashe laughed.

"Can you say something in your dialect?"

Ashe cleared his throat. "It takes me a while to get back to the way I talk, but here goes. Are you ready? 'Tis a poem my gran used to say all the time," he said, and already the way he said Gran sounded different.

"Ready," she said, grinning.

"Hast tha seen our Mary's bonnet, it's a stunner and no mystak, yella ribbons yella roses n a great big feather hung downt back. Our Mary went to church one Sunday morn, alt folk did gawp n stare, 'nt preacher said, 'Mary this is a house of God, not a flower show.' Ar Mary stood up, fit to swallow church n all't folk in and said, 'Fatha, thy head's bald, nowt in it, nowt on it, wouldst tha like a feather owta my bonnet.'"

"I have no idea what you just said, but it's the coolest thing I've ever heard," Riley said, laughing.

"Thank you," Ashe grinned. "Anyway, that's how I speak when I'm back home. It's just a regional dialect, like here, where Louisiana folks have their accent and those in Minnesota have theirs as well."

"And we New Yorkers have ours, though we hate to admit it. As far as everyone else is concerned, we don't have an accent."

"Right, and that's exactly how we feel in Yorkshire," he chuckled. "I hope you're not disappointed to learn that I'm really not from London, nor am I posh."

"Why would I be disappointed? I think there's more to you than meets the eye, Mister Hunter."

"Well, there's more to all of us than meets the eye, so it's not like I hold a monopoly on it," he said sheepishly. Pointing to the TV set in front of them, he said, "You're the only person I know who still has one of those—well, the only young person I know."

"Next thing you'll tell me that I'm an old lady inside," Riley said. "That's what Paige keeps telling me."

Ashe chuckled. He had finished his coffee and was leaning against the back of the couch, his right index and middle fingers rubbing absentmindedly along the top of his right thigh. "You're far from an old lady, Riley," he said. "But if I remember correctly, someone did say that I was an old fart when she first met me."

"Well, I have been known to be wrong about so many things," Riley said.

"Not entirely wrong," Ashe said. "I may not have an old TV set, but I do collect old records. Vinyl records."

"You mean, for a turntable?"

He nodded. "I had to scour the Village for one when I bought my flat. Fortunately, I found one, and it's heavenly."

"Are you serious? You like vinyl records?" Riley asked though she didn't have to wait for an answer. He was still pink-cheeked and smiling shyly.

"I might go all-out nerd on you, so I hope you don't mind," he began. "Original sound is analog by definition, and a vinyl record can capture the whole sound wave, which then feeds it into your amplifier, which then produces the sound you hear. The grooves on a vinyl record mirror the original sound wave, while in a digital recording, as in CD's these days, they mainly just approximate the original sound with a series of fixed steps. Your CD player, let's say, merely converts the digital signal into analog and sends it to the amplifier—your speakers." He peered at her. "Have I lost you yet?"

"No, not yet." He could read the phone book out loud to her for all she cared. Still, what he said did make sense for her mother always insisted on playing her old records even when her father bought her the latest music on cassettes.

"So while a record can pick up fast transitions of a trumpet, let's say, Dizzy Gillespie, a lot of those transitions may be too fast to be converted into digital. The downside, of course, is that any dust or damage to the record will often produce static. Otherwise, there'd be silence," he continued, looking sheepish.

"It's official then," Riley laughed. "You're a bonafide nerd."

"Excuse me, but I prefer to be called a collector. I have the first editions of the Sex Pistols, the Beatles, and many others," Ashe smiled. "Who knows? If acting doesn't work out, I can always sell them to pay my bills and then work behind a bar."

Riley laughed, swatting at his leg but Ashe caught her hand. He wove his fingers through hers and Riley's breath caught in her throat as his thumb traced her palm. For a few minutes, they didn't speak. Riley allowed herself to enjoy the sensation of his thumb stroking her palm, amazed at how such a simple caress made her belly tighten and her insides turn to mush.

"I haven't stopped thinking about you since we first met," Ashe said, his voice deepening.

There was something about the way he spoke that made Riley lightheaded just from listening to him and feeling his thumb maddeningly sensuous against her palm. It was a heady mix of man and sound in the way it was perceived by the human ear; sound waves traveled through a medium that could turn someone on or turn them off. In her case, that medium was Ashe's velvety voice, deep and sensuous, and boy, did it turn her on.

"When was the last time you were with someone?" she asked.

His eyes narrowed. "Is this 'Twenty Questions' again?"

"No, it's just one question," Riley replied. "I just want to make sure you're not shitting me, that's all. I mean, this isn't the Middle Ages, and a woman can ask whatever she wants, right?"

Riley knew she was forward. But she also knew that, just as Paige had said that evening, Ashe could hurt her more than Gareth ever had.

"If you're asking me when I was last in a relationship, that was six months ago. I've been unattached since then, but if you're asking me when I last slept with someone, then I'm afraid I can't answer you. That's a hell of a personal question, Riley."

"Look, I just need to know that you're not playing me like—" Riley paused, not wanting to raise the ghost of Gareth between them. It was ancient history after all.

Ashe let go of her hand and began rubbing the top of his thigh, frowning. "What's so wrong with trying to get to know you? Is this the way you want to live your life, just doing whatever your sister decides is right for you? Do you even have an idea what you want without Paige telling you whether it's acceptable or not?"

Riley sighed. Was she pushing him away because of Paige, or was she afraid of him hurting her the way Gareth had? Why did she have to run into someone she did like, only to find out that he worked with Gareth? It was like a bad joke the universe was pulling on her, and it wasn't the least bit funny. At least, she wasn't laughing.

Ashe got up from the couch and dusted invisible crumbs from his jeans, probably just to keep his hands busy. "It's late, and I need to go," he said. "Thank you for the coffee, Riley, and thank you for allowing me to spend the evening with you. I enjoyed myself immensely."

Until I opened my big mouth and channeled Paige, she thought.

Ashe walked toward the door, and Riley trailed after him, not knowing what to say. She used to be so funny, she thought. She used to be happy and spontaneous. Used to be. Now everything was an act, a finely crafted pretense to fool everyone into believing she was happy when deep inside she was lonely. Miserable, even.

As Ashe got to the door, he reached for his coat hanging from the hook but stopped when she said his name. He turned to face her, a questioning look in his eyes, but this time, Riley didn't want to say another word.

This time, she wanted to use another medium to relay what she wanted to tell him. A look, a touch, even a kiss—but only, if she were brave enough. Riley took another step toward him, her hand touching his face and feeling the stubble scratch her fingers. His brow furrowed, but his mouth was no longer set in a thin line. Instead, his lips were half open, about to speak, but he, too, stopped himself when his gaze met hers.

Riley stood on her toes and kissed him gently, inhaling his cologne and something else, his personal scent, heady and exhilarating. Her other hand curved softly around his waist, resting against the rippling muscles beneath his tight shirt. The kiss was gentle, hesitant almost. She was grateful that he didn't pull away.

"I don't want you to go," she whispered.

Ashe took a step toward her, his arm around her waist, guiding her backward against the wall. His movements were so fluid, reminding Riley of a cat. Stealth in tight jeans. His arms circled her, pulling her closer as he bent his face toward her.

"I'm not going anywhere."

Riley closed her eyes as he kissed her, tasting coffee and cream on his lips, and smelling the scent of his cologne. They kissed for a few minutes, her arms circling his neck, her body melting against his. She felt Ashe's tongue slip between her teeth, tasting her, sweeping along the sides of her mouth as his kiss grew deeper, making the butterflies in her belly flutter wildly, wanting more.