The Ex Files (Ocean View #1)(30)

“But we’re… you’re a client. We’re not…”

“I’ll let you keep thinking that.” What the hell does that mean? “How’s your day goin’?”

“Uh. It’s uh… okay?”

”Mine’s been shit.” I move again when a large man with killer B.O. smacks into me.

“Oh, I’m sorry, why?”

“Mind is all over the place, can’t concentrate on anything.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I say, thinking about the blinking line on the email I opened this morning and still haven’t written. “Seems to be an ailment that’s going around.”

“Pretty brown-eyed girl runnin’ through my mind non-stop.” Once again, I stop in my tracks. This time it’s a pretty woman in a business suit smacking into my back.

“Learn to walk!” she shouts at me as she moves around me.

“What was that?”

“I uh, I tripped.” The scoff in his voice tells me he might not believe me, but he lets me have it.

“So you’re wearing boots tomorrow?”

“I told you, I don’t own boots. I wear heels.”

“Flats?”

“Heels, Luke.”

“Why do you only have heels? That sounds like a terribly uncomfortable life to live.” My mind flits back to a conversation I overheard my dad having with stepmom number one while I visited them not long after my parents split.



“New shoes?”

“They’re the ones you bought me,” she had purred in a way that made my stomach churn.

“Love a woman in heels. Makes her look feminine, gorgeous. A woman not in heels says she doesn’t care.”



Instantly I’d thought about my mom, who spent most of my childhood wearing cute but comfortable clothes that fit the life of a stay-at-home mom whose life revolved around the PTA and volunteering.

I threw out all of my flats when I got back to school.

“I wear heels. I date people for a living. Heels make a woman look feminine. Pretty.” The words come out tasting of the acid in my stomach, but I persevere, the coffee shop now in my line of sight.

“That’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not.”

“A woman in flats says she’s comfortable with who she is. Not trying to impress anyone.”

“So you don’t like a woman in heels?” I ask.

“Oh, I love when a woman wears heels.”

“Then why—”

“A woman in heels is sexy as fuck. A man looks at a woman in heels, he instantly thinks about wrapping them around his back or bending her over to fuck her from behind while she’s still wearing them—”

“Luke! Not every—”

“Every man, sweetheart. And I guaran-fuckin’-tee every man who has seen you in your heels with your pretty skirts and your tight dresses has thought the same thing.”

“There’s no way—”

“I sure as fuck did that first time, side of the road. Bending you over the hood of your car, eating you while they dug into my back.” Any remaining drive to argue his point, to cut him off, has completely evaporated in the heat of unexpected lust running through me. For a split second, a reel of images runs through my mind, images that are absolutely filthy staring this all-American man whom I never in a million years would have pictured saying this to me. I bite my lip as the center of my panties grows suspiciously damn.

“But a woman in flats?” His voice is lower now, growly and untamed, similar to how he said goodbye after our last date. After that kiss. “A woman in flats tells me she’s comfortable with me, a woman I can take home to meet my parents, a woman I can take out for a night with my friends, show off, and then take home, strip naked, and do unbelievably dirty things to.”

And fuck if that stupid ho of a sex fiend doesn’t speak before the straight-laced librarian can chain her in her dungeon.

“What kind of dirty things?” Am I… am I dirty talking a potential match? While standing in the middle of a busy street? That’s not happening right now, right? Like… no. Not at all.

“Oh, Cassie, sweetheart, you give me the chance, and I’ll show you a whole new fuckin’ world.” Once again, a reel of inappropriate clips pulsates through my mind, the throb mimicked in my needy clit that’s been woefully neglected over the past weeks, months… years, if I’m being honest. But before the librarian or sex fiend can break through to make the situation worse, a noise on the other end of the line breaks through, and the receiver is muffled before his voice is back. “Gotta run, babe. Flats, yeah?”

That’s all he says, and I should argue, tell him I need to break the date, that we can’t meet up, that this is so out of my comfort zone and so far from what is acceptable, but the only words that come from my mouth are, “Okay, Luke,” before the phone line goes dead. Then, I’m standing in front of the coffee shop, staring down the road, the cold biting my nose and wondering if maybe I should bronze those heels I wore the night I met him.

And then I turn around, skipping the coffee shop to head to a shoe store to buy my first pair of flat shoes other than running shoes in over 10 years.

For a man.