From This Day Forward (The Wedding Belles 0.5)(5)

“If what?” Leah asked, eyes narrowed.

“If you’ll have dinner with me.”

She was already shaking her head no when he reached across the table, laying his hand alongside hers so his thumb could rub along her little finger. His pulse leapt. That simple, harmless touch, and he was seconds away from being hard.

And he knew from the way her breathing quickened that she felt it, too.

Whatever it was.

“Come on, Red,” he said, moving his finger just briefly so the edge of his nail nudged her knuckle. “Wedding events don’t start until the crack of dawn tomorrow. Give me tonight.”

Leah slowly pulled her hand away from his, dropping both hands to her lap, and Jason swallowed his disappointment. It was time to get over her. Time to stop thinking that she might ever—

“Okay.”

His head snapped up, his eyes locking on her green eyes. “Okay?”

She calmly lifted her wineglass, not breaking eye contact as she took a sip. “Okay, I’ll have dinner with you, but as a working dinner. Not a date. I’m convinced we can figure out how to work together in spite of our thorny past.”

He resisted the urge to pump his fist in triumph, and Leah lifted a warning finger. “Again, dinner. I’m not sleeping with you.”

Jason picked up his bourbon and threw it back in one swallow before standing and grabbing his bag. Before Leah had a chance to react, he’d moved toward her, shamelessly invading her personal space as he bent down and placed his lips near her ear.

“Sweetheart, by the time I’m done with you, sleep will be the last thing on your mind. Guarantee it.”





The first time Leah had seen Jason Rhodes, she’d lost a little part of her soul.

Or at the very least, a little part of her dignity.

Never in her thirty-one years had she encountered a man who’d been able to turn her on just by looking at her.

But then she’d walked into the camera shop on a random Tuesday, and just like that, she’d become one of those women.

The kind that wanted sex all the time, wanted it now, and wanted it with him.

The problem was . . .

Leah was far from the only woman who had that response to Jason Rhodes.

The man was pure fantasy material. Tan skin, perfect white teeth that were displayed to perfection in a cocky, come-hither grin, ever-present stubble that gave him a just-crawled-out-of-bed look. He had black hair that he kept short, likely a holdover from his military days, and his eyes were the color of the richest, most decadent dark chocolate.

Jason Rhodes had been out of her league then and now, and yet . . .

And yet here he was, wining and dining her as though she mattered. As though he hadn’t been doing this very thing last week with some other woman, and wouldn’t be doing it next week with yet another woman.

No, the danger in Jason wasn’t just that he was charming, although he was—hopelessly so.

The problem was he made her feel special—wanted.

Once upon a time, she’d loved that feeling.

Now she knew that it was just that—a feeling, and one that wasn’t based on a scrap of fact. She wasn’t special. Not to Jason.

She’d learned that the hard way when she’d shown up at his apartment with his favorite breakfast sandwich and her heart on her sleeve, only to realize that while she’d spent Saturday night at a rowdy wedding in Queens, shoving her way through the crowd to get the perfect shots, he’d had his own rowdy night in bed with a gorgeous brunette.

Leah would do well to remember that moment, standing on his porch, her dignity in pieces at her feet. She would be smart to remember the way her heart had literally hurt when she’d realized that the man she’d been falling in love with had been sleeping around on her.

Because right now, when he was sitting across the table from her, making easy conversation, even as he occasionally reached over to scoop up a bite of her risotto as though it were his right, it was hard to remember that he was a complete pig.

Hell, she wasn’t even sure how the heck they’d ended up there. She’d assumed dinner would be a quick bite at the hotel, but somehow she found herself in one of the trendiest restaurants in town, sharing a meal that felt very much like a date.

“So tell me what you’ve been up to in the year you’ve been avoiding me, Red,” he said as he topped off both of their glasses with an excellent Bordeaux.

“You mean in the year since you decided to cheat on me?” she shot back, not liking the way he continually spun their murky history to be entirely her fault.

His brown eyes flashed anger then, but she held up a hand to stop whatever he was going to say. “I know. I know, okay? We never agreed to be exclusive. I’ve spent the past several months trying to train my brain to remember that, so let’s just . . . let it go.”

“Leah—”

Her stomach flipped a little. He’d only ever called her Leah in bed. Otherwise it was always Red. “Please don’t,” she whispered.

The anger faded from his gaze, and his mouth flattened with something that looked like resignation. “Fine.”

She swallowed. “You asked how I was.”

He nodded slowly, and she felt a little stab of gratitude that he wasn’t going to force them down memory lane.

“I’ve been . . . good,” she said, swirling her wine. “Really good. Busy, but then I guess that’s the perk of our line of work, right? People will never stop falling in love.”