Sex, Not Love(60)

***

Hunter had a few hours of work he needed to do, so I went down to the Italian grocery store I’d spotted at the corner to pick up something for lunch. We’d stayed up until after the sun rose and finally fallen back asleep until after ten. I’d woken to Hunter’s erection prodding me from behind as we spooned. The man had an insatiable appetite for sex.

I picked out all of my favorite finger foods to snack on for lunch—black olives, stuffed grape leaves, fresh mozzarella and tomatoes with basil, marinated mushrooms—rather than just a boring sandwich or something. By the time I got to the cash register, my handheld basket weighed a ton, and I’d managed to ring up eighty dollars worth of crap.

Hunter had given me a key to get back in, but my hands were too full, so I used my foot to knock. He came to the door with a pencil behind his ear, a pair of low-hanging sweatpants, and no shirt. Damn. All these good Italian snacks—and him.

“Sorry. I didn’t want to put everything down to use the key because one of the bags is starting to break. I think the olive container spilled because my hand is holding the groceries in.”

Hunter grabbed the two bags from my left arm and attempted to take the other.

“No, I got this one. I don’t want it to break.”

In the kitchen, Hunter peeked into the bags. “What is all this stuff? I thought you were going to the deli to get lunch?”

“This is lunch.”

He furrowed his brow and reached into one bag. “Cannolis?”

“It’s dairy. One of the four main food groups.”

Pulling another item from the bag, he held up a container of rainbow cookies.

I pointed. “That falls into breads and cereals.”

He lifted a brow.

“What? It has the same ingredients. Flour, salt, eggs…”

He set it down and pulled out a package of stuffed grape leaves. My mouth watered. “Fruits and vegetables.”

He shook his head. “It’s the leaf of a fruit. Not quite sure it counts as a fruit or vegetable itself.”

I took them from his hand. “Semantics.”

Chuckling, he reached in again. This time, he came up with a large jar of Nutella. “This one I know.”

“You do?”

He ignored me and opened the jar, peeling back the silver freshness seal before sticking his finger in and scooping out some of the heavenly creamy stuff inside. I knew from the cheeky grin on his face when he looked up that his interest had nothing to do with the deliciousness of the spread. Leaning in, he ran his finger along my exposed collarbone before bending to suck the hazelnut off.

“Body paint. This goes in the bedroom for later.”

I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but he disappeared into the bedroom with that jar. My mind started to race with what I’d be painting and sucking later.

When he returned, he squeezed me from behind and kissed the top of my head. “Thank you for going to the store. I’ll help you unpack and then finish up. I only need ten more minutes or so.”

“Don’t be silly. Go do your work. I’ll get everything unpacked and put away and make us a nice spread of snacks.”

Hunter kissed my forehead. “Thanks.” He walked halfway to the dining room table and turned back. “Almost forgot...Derek called while you were out. He’s coming to town for business in two weeks. Wants to meet us for drinks.”

“Okay. That sounds great. Anna mentioned he had a trip coming up.”

I took my time with the groceries and made a sampler platter of all the goodies. Hunter had blueprints spread all over the table, and when I saw him begin to ravel the top one back into a roll, I brought lunch and some plates to the table.

“Looks awesome,” he said.

“Did you get done what you needed to do?”

“Yeah. This project’s been going on for years. We’re the third builder on it. Whenever there’s more than one builder, there’s a reason.” He wrapped a rubber band around the roll he’d been working on and tapped it to the table. “Owner is from Dubai and doesn’t realize New York City has a byzantine building code. The building is old and needs structural reinforcements for everything he wants to do. Which is fine, but when you change the weight of what you’re building three times during the renovation, and the first builder used beams that barely supported the first set of plans, you’re basically starting over. And even though almost all blueprints and plans are done on a computer now, he wants to see every set of changes on an old-school, pencil-and-paper blueprint drawing.”

“What does he keep changing that makes it so heavy?”

“The house on top of the building.”

I’d thought I’d heard him wrong. “He’s housing something on top of the building?”

“Yeah. A house.” Hunter chuckled. “He’s building a house on top of the roof of an old cast-iron building.”

“A whole house?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why? Is the building not residential?”

“No, most of it’s residential except for the commercial storefronts on the bottom two floors.”

“So why not just renovate an apartment instead of building a house on top of the roof. I don’t get it.”

“Building is a playground for the extraordinarily wealthy in New York. You can’t look for logic. The answer is always the same—because they can.”