Do You Take This Man (61)

RJ: I can stay away from you.


Lear: No, you can’t. I’m the best you ever had.

RJ: Cocky much?



He replied with an eggplant emoji and I rolled my eyes, but the phone rang and his name flashed on my screen before I could answer.

“Tell me I’m wrong.” His voice was rumbly in a relaxed, delicious way. I imagined him spread out on the couch, shirt tossed aside, sweatpants riding low on his hips. “I want to hear you say I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong.” I ignored the flutter through my core at hearing his voice. “I tell you you’re wrong literally all the time.”

“A guy can dream.” It sounded like he was stifling a laugh. “And we both know about your dreams.”

“I’m hanging up on you.” I shifted my impromptu desk and stretched out my legs in front of me after deciding I didn’t care if that put me within a few inches of Mr. Seat Stealer.

“No, don’t go,” he said as his voice evened out, the laugh gone along with the charming voice he’d put on sometimes. He sounded tired, and comfortable, and sexy in a new way. “I like talking to you.”

“You like giving me a hard time.”

“Yes, but I kind of missed you today.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. He’d said that so openly, without a hint of the sarcasm or one-upmanship I was so used to. I didn’t know how to respond.

“I guess you’ve gotten used to getting lucky at weddings, huh?”

The seat stealer gawked at me, and I returned his gaze, eyebrow up, wishing I didn’t need this outlet so badly or that this guy’s flight would board soon.

“Sure, but, you know, other stuff, too. Joking around with you.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I have to be drunk to tell you I like spending time with you?”

“Well . . .” I searched for the words. “Kind of. I think you got bored with that other officiant not putting you through your paces.”

“You’re deflecting,” he said, clearly stifling a yawn, and the words stretched between us, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable pause. “My sister tells me that all the time.”

“Is she a therapist?”

“Gynecologist. And a know-it-all.”

“I’d probably like her.”

“She’d love you.”

I bit the inside of my cheek again, glancing at the flurry of activity as the seat stealer and those around him stood, gathering their things. Love? Why was he now bringing up love?

I yelped when a kid tripped over my leg, leaving my ankle throbbing.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just got stepped on. I’m on the floor next to an outlet.” I rubbed my leg, happy for the distraction.

“I can’t quite picture it. Describe what you look like.”

“You can’t be serious.” I smiled at his ridiculous come-on and shielded my mouth with my hand, dropping my voice. “I’m not going to have phone sex with you in the airport.”

Lear’s laugh reverberated through me, that familiar warm sensation making me cross my legs. “I’m not trying to have phone sex with you. I was just trying to picture you camped out on the floor in one of your dresses.”

“I’m wearing pants.” I rolled my eyes. I should have ended the call and grabbed my laptop to tackle the most recent swath of motions. “What about you?”

“What am I wearing?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you didn’t want to do this,” he said, and I could picture the smug expression, that little smirk he’d give me sometimes.

“Call it curiosity. How do you look at home?”

“What if I told you I was naked?”

I swallowed, the memory of my fingers sliding over his hard stomach filling my head. “Are you?”

His voice grew lower. “Would you like it if I were?”

“I’d worry you were cold.” I lowered my voice, too. “Shrinkage and all.”

His chuckle was low. “I’m still in what I wore to the rehearsal,” he said on a laugh. “Sorry. Nothing too sexy.”

My mind flashed again to his slacks sliding down and the buttons on his shirt as I undid them. “So—um—what’s up? Why did you text?”

“I already told you. I missed you tonight.”

“Lear, c’mon. You missed hooking up with me.”

“Yeah . . . That’s not all, though.”

I felt antsy, the temperature around me suddenly rising, and my fingers got twitchy at the return of his softer tone.

“It’s not that weird, is it? We’ve gotten kind of close.”

I looked around as if someone in the seating area would give me the right answer. “I don’t know,” I said finally.

He was quiet, and I rushed to fill the silence, a silence bracketed by the creeping anxiety at this shift. Was it even a shift? Whatever it was, it scared me, because I’d missed him, too, and that wasn’t acceptable. Letting “maybe” linger in my brain wasn’t acceptable. Missing someone, wanting them, thinking about them outside the tightly drawn boundaries I’d created was a recipe for getting hurt.

“I mean, no. It’s not weird, it’s just . . . you know what we are.”