Overnight Wife(18)

But John just grins, unrepentant, as I pat myself dry. “Yes. We’re definitely going to need to get you accustomed to being spoiled.”

My cheeks flush with heat again, and I manage to flash him a glare. “If it winds up with me spilling half my drinks in my lap, then I’d rather not, thanks,” I reply.

He only laughs and lifts his own glass in a toast.

When I do manage to actually try a sip of the cocktail rather than throwing it across myself, it’s delicious. Light and fruity, with just a hint of alcohol… That’s the kind of thing that could prove dangerous. Not like those shots we were doing in Vegas where you feel every burning sip of the booze. No. This is a sleeper drink, the kind where you don’t even notice you’re drinking it until suddenly you’re drunk.

I set it aside, resolved not to drink too much around John. Not again. God knows what would happen this time. We’d probably wind up buying a house, or with me getting pregnant.

My cheeks flush bright red at the thought. Why am I thinking about babies all of a sudden? I have got to stop this. I must be ovulating or something.

Still, the thought leads to thinking about how that baby would get made, which leads to yet more flashbacks to the last time he and I were completely naked together, in the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever seen, but far too focused on each other to even notice our surroundings…

I clear my throat, mostly to get those memories out of my head. When I glance up, I find John watching me closely.

“Why were you in Vegas last weekend?” he asks, and I swear it’s like this man can read my mind sometimes. I wonder if he learned how to do that in business school or if my face is too easy to read.

Or maybe he just gets me, adds a voice in my head. The way nobody else I’ve ever met has seemed to…

“Oh, I…” I shrug one shoulder. “It was on a dare. Lea wanted me to let loose, have some fun for once.”

He chuckles. “Ah, so I’ll have to thank her the next time I see her.” He flashes me his own left hand, and my eyes widen. Somehow, in all the time that’s passed since that weekend, I hadn’t really noticed his ring. But there it is, a band of gold with… is that a layer of green beneath?

I frown. There’s something familiar about that… Something that brings back a flash of fuzzy memory from the weekend, something I’d all but forgotten. A pawn shop, dingy lighting, but we were too drunkenly happy to care, laughing it all off. And… “Wait, did I give that to you?” I ask.

“Give is a rather nice word.” He laughs. “Don’t you remember how hard you struggled to force it onto my finger?”

I grimace. That doesn’t sound familiar, yet it sounds sadly believable, given the state I was in. “Sorry. Clearly I couldn’t afford actual gold.” I hold out a hand and he lets me take his hand, tracing my fingers over the metal. I glance up at him, my cheeks bright red again, for reasons I can’t quite put a name to now. “You don’t have to wear it, you know,” I say.

“I know,” he replies, those dark eyes fixed on mine, inscrutable, impossible to tear my gaze away from. “But I want to,” he says, so simply that it feels like a bolt to my chest, a spark of sheer desire that ignites me.

He wants to. This wealthy as hell billionaire businessman, who could have anyone and anything in the world he wanted, wants to wear the shitty, green ring that I bought him in a pawn shop.

“Where did you get this one?” I ask, with a smile, fingering the ring on my own hand next. “The same shop, or did we do a pawn shop hop all down the strip searching?”

Something flashes across his face. Hesitation? But it’s gone the moment I glimpse it. “That was my mother’s ring,” he says, and whatever answer I expected, it isn’t that.

My stomach does a strange little flip of desire, and my thighs tighten, as I consider the ring in a whole new light. “But…”

He shakes his head. “She gave it to me years ago. Family heirloom. I usually carry it with me as a sort of good luck token, but after we met, well… it seemed like the right moment to part with it.”

My throat works tightly when I swallow. “How does your mother feel about it?” I ask, not sure whether I want to know the answer just yet. Did he tell her about us? “About you giving this to someone you barely know, I mean.”

“I didn’t tell her yet,” he answers, simply as that, his gaze still fixed on mine.

It’s the yet that catches me. “Why not?”

“I want you to meet her.”

I snort. He just stares at me, and I realize he wasn’t kidding. “Meet her? What, like this is an actual…” I shake my head. “We barely know each other, John. And now, you’re my boss, it’s not proper, there’s—”

“We were married before you started working for me.” He waves a hand, as if that wave can make all the worries fade away. “And I don’t give a damn about propriety. I know what I want. Do you?”

“I…” I clamp my mouth shut. No. I have no idea. That’s what I want to say, but I stop myself.

It doesn’t seem to matter. He can read it all over my face, just like he can read everything. All my moods, as easily as if I were a neon sign. His expression shifts, hurt flashing across his face briefly, and it settles in my gut like a stone.