Thank You For Riding

By Cara McKenna

The last train of the night might just be the start of something good.

Stung ego or not, Caitlin’s relieved her fizzling relationship is over, even if she’s just been unceremoniously dumped between the copier and a dead ficus tree. At least she has an excuse to ditch the lousy office Christmas party in time to catch the last subway home…to her cat, and early-onset spinsterhood.

Instead of a lonely, chilly ride, she gets an unexpected holiday treat in the form of a nearly familiar face—a handsome stranger she encountered last week at the blood drive.

At the end of the line, neither can seem to let their chance meeting end—until their extended flirtation finds them facing the prospect of spending a frigid winter night locked in an unheated subway station. And they wonder if keeping each other warm is merely a delightful form of rebound therapy…or a memorable first of many more dates to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094452371

Cara McKenna

Meg Maguire has published nearly forty romances and erotic novels with a variety of publishers, sometimes under the pen name Cara McKenna. Her stories have been acclaimed for their smart, modern voice and defiance of convention. She was a 2015 RITA Award finalist, a 2014 RT Reviewers' Choice Award winner, and a 2010 Golden Heart Award finalist. She lives with her husband and baby son in the Pacific Northwest, though she'll always be a Boston girl at heart.

Book preview

1

Caitlin squeezed the stress ball in her fist.

Actually it was half a stress ball, one lobe of a foam heart. Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release. Blood snaked from the crook of her elbow through a tube, up to the benevolent, boxy robot standing beside her recliner, a red ribbon passing through a dozen whirring, rotating doohickeys.

Maria, Caitlin’s favorite tech from the donation center, pressed gently where the needle met her arm. Feels okay?

Yup. Fine. Squeeze, release.

The machine bleeped, and Maria squinted at the monitor. Your first return should be here any time.

Caitlin waited for it—the funny chill of her blood coming back into her body, sans platelet cells. Zing. Ooh, there it is.

Still feels good?

Caitlin nodded. Like a refreshing ocean breeze.

Maria laughed and taped the tube in place, covering the insertion point with a wad of gauze. Let me know when you want a blanket.

Will do.

Maria wandered off to check on the other donors, and Caitlin relaxed back in her seat.

The donation took just under two hours. Two hours when she couldn’t use her right hand for anything but stress-ball pumping. Couldn’t reach the phone she’d intentionally left in her coat pocket, couldn’t check email, couldn’t accomplish a damn thing. Bliss. People would ask if she was cold, thirsty, hungry, how she’d been since she’d last donated, ask how she’d like to be entertained and if they could fetch anything for her. Like being a toddler again.

She fumbled left-handed with her earbuds and queued up the audio book she’d downloaded. Other donors watched movies on ceiling-mounted televisions, screens angled around the crescent of recliners, but Caitlin’s eyes were tired from a near all-nighter at the office, the one that had earned her this rare afternoon off.

She hit Play, ready to be sucked into the drama of the latest bestselling espionage novel. She could use the escape after the last few seventy-hour weeks at work. Get her head out of the spreadsheets and charts and into some made-up person’s grand adventure. Her job had her feeling so compressed, so stuffed into the bottom of a dusty box and weighed down by deadlines, this break was like surfacing after a long dive, the idleness deep gulps of cool air. Of course, it would have been less physically exhausting to relax at home, but at home she could give in to the compulsions and check her work email, sit down and fill out just one report…which always turned into three or eight or a dozen. But here she had her hands tied—not quite literally, but close—and it was heaven, this forced laziness.

A few years ago, she’d never have let herself enjoy a moment’s laziness. Young people new to finance had to appear eager and industrious at all times, go-getters to the nth. But she was seven years out of school now, her identity no longer defined solely by her job title. She ought to have a life outside of her clients’ balances and returns, but it was a hard habit to break. Squeezing the stress ball, she wondered what other hobbies she could take up that would keep her this thoroughly occupied. Rock climbing, maybe. SCUBA diving. Plate spinning.

Just as the hero heard the baddies’ footfalls down the echoing marble corridor, a tech interrupted to switch on Caitlin’s heating pad and offer her the snack basket. She picked hastily, mind off in a bank vault in Eastern Europe. The tech opened her animal cracker package and left her be.

An hour into the book and two packets of cookies and one candy bar later, the author went off on a dull tangent about encryption methodology, and Caitlin woke from the storytelling trance. She glanced around the space as a tech across the semicircle of chairs got things set up for a new donor. Nice to see the place so busy this close to Christmas.

The donor emerged from the men’s room, and Caitlin noted with a dreamy, fluid-deprived curiosity that he was awfully cute. Though since things with Kevin had become so…meh, it seemed she’d been noticing cute guys all over Boston.

No, bad eyes.

After the holidays and the end-of-year work madness were over, she’d have time to see Kevin again. See him properly, make a real, girlfriendly effort once she had the hours and energy. She wouldn’t force the relationship to work, but she wouldn’t quit because things had temporarily flatlined. Kevin was her colleague, after all. A secret office romance had been risky, so surely there was something there worth gambling on. Right? It’d be a waste to not at least try. Plus, he was just as stressed as her. If he’d been short and snippy lately, she of all people could appreciate why.

But she stole another guilty glance at the guy across the linoleum, now busy having the crook of his arm swabbed with antiseptic.

He looked about Caitlin’s age, early thirties, but from perhaps a different side of the tracks, professionally. His jeans bore multicolored paint spatters, and he wore a gray thermal shirt, the sleeve of one arm folded up to accommodate the blood-pressure cuff. Dark, tousled hair, handsome eyebrows, pale skin, straight, dignified nose. He said something that made the tech laugh, and he smiled in return, a wide, uncensored grin that lit up his face.

His eyes rose and caught Caitlin’s for a second. His smile wavered, and