Rusty Nailed (Cocktail, #2)(65)

“Monica, how’d you like some pizza?” he offered, picking up the box from my desk. The papers underneath were now stained with grease.

I pulled a colored pencil from my head and started to chew.

“Oh no, I already ate a pizza, I mean I didn’t eat an entire pizza, I mean I went out for an entire pizza, I mean a slice! I had a small slice of pizza, and a salad, mostly salad and—”

I stopped her. It was embarrassing. “Yes, Monica, please work on the cost projections for the Anderson account and let me know if you have questions. Thank you.”

“Okay, sure, no problem, I’ll just be naked in the other room—I mean working! I just—crap. Bye!”

I dropped my head to my desk. Monica was the most talented, most mature young woman I knew. I would have killed for the poise she possessed at such a young age—except when Wallbanger was involved. Then she turned to goo. I could relate. And she didn’t even know he had the power to move an entire bed with the strength of his hips alone.

Speaking of hips, they moved into my field of vision, along with the pizza box.

“So, lunch?”

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I was at that point when you either laugh or cry, and the scales just happened to tip toward laughter. I looked up at him, celebrating House Day in his own sweet and unaware way, and cackled like a loon. “Sure, Simon. Let’s have some pizza.”

I took the box from his hands, and right there on the top, surrounded by an army of dancing pepperoni and wearing a chef’s hat, was a picture of the devil himself.

Cory Weinstein. Pizza chain owner. Discount giver. Self-described man about town.

And the jackrabbit f*cker who’d hijacked my O.

My eye began to twitch. The floor, to pitch. My skin he’d seen just once now crawled and creeped and bunched and itched.

The laughter that was ringing out from my lips turned to a shriek that stopped traffic all over town, upset several fruit carts, and may very well have been the slight earthquake tremor that was reported that night on the news. And my knees were kissing my chin as my body turned roly-poly in an effort to protect itself at all costs.

“Oh, will you settle down? There are positively no anchovies on this pizza,” Simon said, rolling his eyes and handing me a napkin.

? ? ?

I’d had flashbacks all afternoon.

Cory, cheers-ing me with his Natural Light beer when I met him for drinks on our one and only date.

Cory, grinning as he slid behind the wheel of his stupid souped-up yellow Small Dick Mobile with the license plate IEETPIE. Point of order, he in fact does not.

Cory, poised over me grunting and blurry while his hips ran a race he would never win.

To be fair, I’d had every opportunity to stop this particular tragedy. And still chose to proceed with the single worst sexual experience of my life, resulting in the Great Orgasm Hiatus, as it came to be known to all mankind.

I now blinked my eyes hurriedly, trying to get the images to stop coming. I turned onto my new street a little too quickly and the contents of my bag spilled all over the floor of the delivery van.

Delivery van, you ask?

Yes, delivery van. In our haste to make real estate history with the fastest decision ever, we both forgot about my commute into the city. Sure, I could take the ferry, but I hadn’t had a chance to figure out the ferry schedule. And I no longer had access to Jillian’s very sporty Mercedes. So I’d purloined the Jillian Designs delivery van, and was using that to drive over the bridge to my new address. As I pulled up in front of the old Victorian that I now called home, my lipsticks rolled around on the floor. I sighed heavily as I turned the ignition off, looking through the windshield at the house.

From the street, it still looked melancholy and a bit run down. I knew that was temporary. Perhaps I was feeling a bit run down? This day had taken it out of me, and I wanted nothing more than to explore my new home, take a hot shower, and crawl into bed.

A bed on the floor.

Shit, I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted a bed. As I shut the door to the van, it squeaked in a way reminiscent of Cory Weinstein’s bed as he jackrabbited his teeny peeny in a mind-numbingly (and hoohah-numbingly) way, and I flinched once more.

I slammed the door shut and walked up the steps. I could see Simon through the front picture window, moving boxes.

I felt my load begin to lighten. And something else begin to tighten. This was my new home, and I was sharing it with Simon.

Suddenly the crappy day disappeared. I couldn’t wait to get inside and make the sweet sweet love. And the nasty dirty love. And everything in between.

I opened the front door, looking past the mauve wallpaper and the Pepto pink carpet and the dingy baseboards and the fingerprinted doorjambs and all of our boxes, and saw my boyfriend. Tall and handsome, strong and lean. He turned when I came in, and shot me a devilish grin.

“Hey, babe.”

“Hey, yourself,” I answered back. I dropped my bags and started to walk across all that pink toward him.

“I waited to order some dinner till you got here. How does Thai sound to you?”

“Sounds great, you big, hot homeowner, you,” I purred, and he looked up from his take-out menus. He grinned as he watched me walk toward him, so I threw an extra bounce into my step.

“What’s got into you?”

“Nothing. Not yet, at least.” I winked. “Now, where’s that blow-up bed? Let’s christen this pile of bricks.”