Big Rock(56)

He wouldn’t let me call Charlotte though.

And yes, I do know her number. It’s one of maybe two I have committed to memory. Hers and the Chinese food delivery joint. Instead, he called her, and inquired politely if she was still available to see me tonight. Evidently, she said yes, so he told her I would be arriving at six.

As the town car I hired pulls up to her building, I feel a bit like a teenager arriving for prom. Except I don’t have a corsage, or teenage stamina. Grown past that one, thank you very much.

But the nerves are the same, and mine are sky-high. I step out of the car and head to the doorman. He buzzes her, and I wait, pacing in the entryway, checking my watch, counting the number of tiles on the floor. Three interminable minutes later, Charlotte crosses the lobby.

She wears a cranberry skirt and a black top. It’s the outfit I took her ring shopping in. The fact that she’s wearing it knocks the breath from my lungs. It feels like a sign. As she nears me, I take in every detail. Her hair hangs loose and beautiful down her shoulders. Her lips are red and glossy. Her legs are bare, and she wears black high heels. I’m not sure I’ve ever told her that those shoes are my favorite, and somehow it turns me on even more that the ones she likes wearing are the ones I like seeing her in.

I can’t believe it’s been only eight hours since I’ve seen her.

She stops in front of me. Narrows her eyes. Points. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or punch you. Because I’ve been sending text messages all day. To my purse,” she says, dropping her hand into her purse and hunting around.

She grabs my phone and thrusts it at me, and the first text I see makes me grin.

THAT WAS THE BIGGEST LIE I EVER TOLD. CALL ME.

Her jaw is set hard, and she glares at me. “Oh, and I called you several times, too, before I remembered I had your phone. I was basically messaging myself all day. You had the ringer on silent, you idiot.”

“Idiot seems to be the theme of the day when it comes to me,” I say, but I’m smiling because this is another reason why I love her madly. The fact that she marched up to me and called me out.

She parks her hands on her hips. “Do you even want to know what my messages said?”

“I do,” I say, taking her hand and lacing my fingers through hers. God, it feels good to touch her again. It feels out-of-this-world amazing when she squeezes back, her hand fitting mine so perfectly. “But right now, I want to take you out.”

“To the restaurant in Chelsea?” she asks, as we reach the door of the gleaming black town car.

“Yes, but not yet. First, I’m taking you on a themed tour of New York.” I gesture to her building. “This is stop one on the Lessons I Learned in the Last Week Tour.”

She arches an eyebrow, inviting me to say more.

“Right here is where I was really dense,” I say.

“How were you really dense?”

“Because the day I asked you to be my fake fiancée, I actually believed I could pull it off and it wouldn’t change a thing,” I say, as I lift the handle of the car and hold the door for her. I watch her slide into the cool, air-conditioned backseat. She looks edible.

“Did it change things?” she asks, her voice rising on the question.

I nod as I get into the car next to her and pull the door shut. “It did.”

She swallows. “What’s stop two then?”

I gesture north. “A restaurant called McCoy’s. Heard of it?” I ask, as the car zips uptown, weaving through Saturday evening traffic.

“I believe I’m familiar with it. I’m so curious what you learned there.”

When we reach the restaurant where we had our first dinner with the Offermans, I hold her hand and escort her out of the car. We don’t go inside, though. We stand under the green awning, and I touch her hair, stroking the strands that fall onto her shoulder. Her breath hitches as my fingers make contact with her skin.

“As you may recall, we were here only one week ago. We had practiced kissing on the street, and in your apartment,” I say, then lean in to brush a kiss to her cheek. She trembles. “But none of those practice sessions prepared me for the lesson I learned here when you kissed me at the table.”

“What lesson was that?”

“How much I liked fake kissing with you.”

A grin spreads across her face. “And real kissing?”

“Even better. In fact, let me just refresh your memory of how much we both like it.” I cup her cheeks and capture her delicious mouth with mine. I kiss her hard, like I’m reminding her of all that’s in store for us. Her arms loop around me, her breasts press to my chest, and she melts into the kiss, making those sexy sighs and murmurs that are like a current surging through me.

Other things will be surging soon, too, if we keep this up. And while that’s precisely what I want, I’m not done yet with the tour.

Twenty minutes later we roll up to Gin Joint, and I lead her into the sultry, sexy bar where she drove me wild. “This is where I was a complete idiot.”

Her hand slinks up my arm, and a shudder wracks through me. “How?”

“Because of that,” I say.

“Because of what?”

“Because when you touch me, it turns me on like nothing ever has in my life,” I say in a husky voice as I tug her close. “Yet for some crazy reason, I thought I could resist you.”