Do You Take This Man (33)
“Oh.” A little surprised, I glanced at his crotch again, where there was definitely still a very erect penis. “Of course. Thank you for bringing my phone back, and . . .” I looked around for something to do with my hands and awarded myself the prize for the strangest sexual encounter of all time. “Tonight. Good to get that out of our system. Are you sure you don’t want . . .”
He nodded, putting his hands in his pockets and walking with me toward the door, where we, once more, stood awkwardly looking at each other, and I fought the annoying desire to kiss him again. “I’m sure. Will you need anything with the tow?”
I met his eyes. “No, I’ll get my friend to take me,” I said with my hand on the doorknob. “But thank you.”
He nodded again, flipping open the lock on the door.
“I guess I’ll see you around.” I held the robe closed, still curious why he was leaving without letting me return the favor, an unfamiliar sensation nudging me closer to him.
“Oh, and, RJ?”
I needed to get away from Lear and these wayward thoughts, because the last thing I needed was to get fixated on the guy who I wanted to strangle ninety percent of the time, even if he had made me see stars. “Yeah?”
Before I finished the word, his hand was cupping the back of my neck, pulling my lips to his, and his body was crushing me to the door frame. His lips and tongue caressed mine, insistent and like the best kind of punctuation mark at the end of the sentence of this night. I sank against him immediately, and when he pulled his lips from mine, he dipped his head close to my face. His grin tipped up in a cocky way, and he winked. “Next time you can stroke my ego and my dick.”
I glowered at his back as he sauntered to the elevator, admiring the way his muscles moved under his shirt and flashing back to how he’d touched me. “Wait, next time?”
Chapter 18
Lear
RJ’S EYES SPARKLED when she made someone laugh—her face shifted from this serious, imposing presence to something bright. A couple weeks after the gas station wedding and the subsequent late night, we were at a rehearsal and seeing each other for the first time. She’d said something to make the groom and best man crack up on the other side of the room. I wanted to grin along and then reminded myself it was RJ, who hated me, and that I wasn’t supposed to be admiring her smile. If that night in her apartment was an invitation, it was permissible for me to be checking out her body, admiring the swell of her ass. Admittedly, I’d done that, too, but the feeling I knew was jealousy wasn’t about those guys being near her body. It was that she was laughing with them, and I wanted to make her laugh.
“Lear?” The bride’s mom’s voice pulled me back.
“I’m sorry. I thought the altar was off center for a moment. Do you mind repeating that?” She smiled sweetly at me, and I should have felt bad for lying, but I didn’t. The altar was exactly center—I’d measured. Twice.
“How wonderful of you to check that.” She touched my arm and smiled again before launching into a series of questions about the caterers.
Internally, I let out a slow breath. I needed to get my attention off the hot divorce attorney who was having sex dreams about me and put them where they belonged: on this sweet middle-aged woman asking about cream puffs and salmon tartare. I shouldn’t have spent the night imagining how it would feel to kiss RJ again, or what kind of underwear she was wearing. Or wanting to punch myself in the gut for having turned down her offer to take care of me. I definitely shouldn’t have been sneaking glances at the way the dress she was wearing hugged her hips when she walked toward the exit. Her leaving should have put a damper on me wanting her, but it didn’t. And her laugh . . . Focus.
I glanced at my watch as the couple gathered their family to head to dinner. As predicted, we’d run an hour long, and I patted myself on the back for encouraging them to plan a buffer between rehearsal and dinner. At the exit, RJ and the couple spoke as everyone else filtered out, and I pulled my tablet from my bag. I didn’t need to check anything—even the contingency plans for the contingency plans had been checked and rechecked, but I wanted to be occupied when RJ finished.
I’d been jumpy all week, unable to focus on anything except work, and looking for excuses to text RJ. I hadn’t found any, so I sat there night after night with my phone in my hand like a high schooler, typing and deleting messages. That wasn’t the new me, and I needed to get a few things straight with her.
“Bye, Lear!” The couple waved and walked out into the cool night air.
RJ strode toward where I stood, her heels clicking on the wood floors. “That went well,” she said in her professional voice. That one differed from the one she used when she was bickering with me. I liked the bickering voice better.
“Do you—”
Her phone blew up when she pulled it from her pocket and turned it on. “Dammit,” she muttered, tapping something quickly.
“Everything okay?”
“Just work,” she answered without looking up. A crease formed between her eyebrows until she tucked the phone away. “Were you going to ask me something? I already adjusted the order for the ceremony readers. No need to remind me.”
“Reminders never hurt.”
She shoved her things into her bag. “And yet, they are unnecessary, since you watched me write the change in the ceremony.”