Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2)(31)

He slid a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. It started as an innocent peck. It did. But Rosie coughed into her fist and had to look away when Travis slipped Georgie the tongue and she curled her hands in his collar, pulling him closer. It made her think of Dominic and how he used to reassure her with touches and words when she got overwhelmed. Or vice versa. And it opened a pit of yearning right in the center of her stomach. It might have been the tequila warming her blood, but she couldn’t help aching for the feel of her husband’s mouth against hers, taking, giving.

“Take your time. I’ll be outside in the car,” Travis murmured to Georgie, loud enough for the dead-silent room to hear, nuzzling their noses together. “Ah, baby girl. You just wait until I get you home tonight.”

No one said anything for a full minute after Travis left, but several women fanned themselves and at least half freshened their glasses of wine—filling them straight to the brim.

“Well,” Rosie said, clearing the rust from her throat. “We definitely have to talk about sex now.”

“Seconded.” Bethany sighed, finally picking up her dropped marker and placing it on the silver tray of the Positivity Board. “We’re all thinking about it.”

“Not all of us are allowed to have it, though.” The words were out of Rosie’s mouth before they’d fully formed in her head. Heat climbed her neck and cheeks as every head swiveled in her direction—and she had zero choice but to elaborate. “Dominic and I are in couples therapy and we’ve been given homework. And rules. One of them is no sex.”

“This is the best meeting yet,” someone whispered at the edge of the room.

“So let me get this straight,” one of the older members said, moseying forward. “You’re so active in the bedroom that you need a rule against sex . . . and you still need therapy?”

Rosie tucked a curl behind her ear. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll say.”

Georgie handed Rosie her margarita, and Rosie drank half before handing it back. “He wrote me a letter,” she said, smiling as Bethany picked up the marker and wrote “love letter” on the board with a flourish. “He told me this old memory. About us. And I . . . I don’t know, it made me remember myself somehow. I feel like me today, even if things aren’t perfect.”

“And what does Rosie want?” Bethany encompassed the room with a sweep of her arm. “That’s what this club was founded on, right? Going after what we want?”

“I want to make an appointment with the realtor,” she breathed. “To tour that restaurant space on Cove Street.”

“The old diner?”

Rosie nodded.

A beat passed.

“Well, let’s make the call,” Georgie said, sitting forward, her face still flushed from Travis’s kiss. “There’s no better time to take the leap than when you’re surrounded by all this support. Someone grab Rosie’s phone. She keeps it charging by the coffeemaker.” Georgie bounced, bumping Rosie with her hip. “Restaurant! Restaurant!”

Everyone joined in the chant, but they quieted down when Rosie dialed the number she’d been keeping stored in her phone for a month. Her heart was going a million miles an hour . . . and somewhere around the third ring, she got the sinking feeling that something was missing. No, not something. Someone. She was in a room full of people she adored, but there was only one person whom she needed to hold her hand. And so, while she wanted to be ecstatic as she made the viewing appointment and everyone cheered, a sense of wrongness continued to eat at her.

Someone approached and laid a hand on her arm, jarring Rosie from her thoughts. “These cookies are amazing, Rosie!”

“They’re called alfajores—and thank you.” Desperate for a distraction from whatever foreboding gnawed at her gut, Rosie shot to her feet and escaped the living room. “I’ll just, um . . . whip up a fresh batch.”





Chapter Eleven


When Dominic arrived for their second therapy appointment, Rosie was already inside the office, her skin cast in a purple lava lamp glow. Today had been a particularly messy day on the job, so he’d chanced a quick stop at home to shower and change, but unfortunately that decision had made him three minutes late. He searched her face upon walking into Armie’s office, surprised when she seemed relieved that he’d shown up. Did she actually think he’d bail?

Every day that passed made him even more determined to fix what was broken, by whatever means necessary. The other night, when her name had popped up on his cell-phone screen, the world around him had come spinning back into motion. It did the same now. Being near his wife simultaneously settled the chaos in his blood and stirred it with lust. He knew damn well they were in therapy to talk, but tell that to his excess testosterone. He’d been on the verge of insanity since he made Rosie come over the phone, closing his eyes and trying to conjure her taste at the oddest times. Like during a foundation inspection that afternoon.

Focus.

“I was covered in grout,” he muttered, sitting down beside her on the floor in the pillow fort, unable to keep himself from absorbing the sight of her. God, she always looked fucking fantastic, but after a few days away from her? The way she curved and dipped in all the tastiest places made him dizzy. His gaze ran hungrily over the juncture of her thighs, climbed up her belly, and clung to her tits. “I didn’t want to show up dirty.”