Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(64)

It was, but I had to know. I raised my eyebrows.

“Nothing is ‘up with us.’ We’re taking a break so that when we come back together at the engagement party, it’ll feel a little more romantic. We’ve been together for ages. It’ll be nice to kind of…hit reset.”

I kept my face expressionless. I remembered everything she’d told me about her and Drew in the bank and, given the way she was watching me, she knew I remembered. The last thing I wanted was to embarrass her by bringing up all that personal stuff told to me in a time of high stress, but the disappointment of her explanation still bit me. Hard.

What did you expect? That she’d break it off with him? This isn’t your life, living with her. This is a temporary solution to your own f*cked up situation, and don’t you forget it.

“No hotel,” I said finally. “You stay or I go. One-dollar-a-month lease or not.”

Her expression was inscrutable now, and I wondered if she felt as I did—that it was a dangerous thing to live together; wondering if the urge to touch was as strong in her as was in me.

“Okay,” she said finally. “But I should take the couch—”

“I’m on the couch. That’s also non-negotiable.”

Alex huffed a sigh. “Fine.” She offered her hand.

I took it, shook it, let go quickly. You’re both adults. It’s for a few weeks. She’s a workaholic, anyway. She’ll be at the office all day and probably late into the night.

“So,” she said. “I guess I’ll go unpack and let you get settled. Later, we can plan out the changes to Callie’s room.” She started down the hall to the master bedroom.

“Don’t you have to work?” I called.

“I’m on paid leave for a few weeks,” she said over her shoulder, and disappeared into the room.

“Of course you are.”

I ran my hand through my hair and glanced around the house. This is a test, I thought. A test of my self-control and…Alex came back out of her room with her hair loose from the severe coil; it settled around her shoulders in vibrant red waves. Her impeccable suit replaced by curve-hugging workout clothes. Not a test, I amended watching her move in the kitchen. Torture. This is going to be torture.





Chapter Twenty-Three


Alex



“So let me get this straight,” Cory said, his eyes on the light Sunday morning Wilshire Boulevard traffic. “You live a nanosecond away from the beach and you never go.”

“Turn right at the light,” I said. “I’m too busy. My job—up until now—takes up all my time.”

“Then why buy a place so close?”

I shrugged and looked out the window. After spending Saturday getting Cory settled in, we’d decided to spend Sunday purchasing the items necessary to transform the office into a little girl’s room. We took his truck to hold the furniture and I felt a peculiar sensation upon first climbing in. I still felt it ten minutes later.

The interior was a foreign land, filled with foreign scents. It was an older truck but Cory had taken great pains to maintain it. It smelled of cleaner and some sort of polish, and below that a scent that I knew was him; cologne and clothing and debris from his worksites, all combining into one heady, purely masculine scent.

I hadn’t been in another man’s car in years. It brought me back to my early dating days, getting picked up by a date in his car, and an old thrill awakened. This is not a date, I reminded myself for the hundredth time, but it did nothing to diminish that feeling.

“I bought the house after I started work at Lawson & Dooney, three years ago as an investment property. It started to build equity the nanosecond I bought it. But even so, I was already with Drew and he bought his place in Pacific Palisades at about the same time. I live there most of the time anyway. Turn left here.”

“I don’t get it,” Cory said, turning the wheel left. “I mean, I do. Investment property and all. But most people would kill to have a house like that and to you it’s extra. Like a spare tire.”

I crossed my arms and faced him. “And lucky for you I have it.”

“I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Cory said, nonplussed. It seemed he was nearly impossible to rile up. “I just can’t imagine having a great place like that and never using it. I mean, you don’t even have a dog. That place is made for a dog.”

I laughed despite myself. “I had the same thought not long ago.”

“So get one.”

“I don’t have the time to take care of a dog,” I said. “Dogs need to be walked and they chew up your shoes if you’re away for too long. When I’m working on a trial, I don’t get home from the office until eleven o’clock at night, typically. Sometimes later.”

Cory nodded. “I’m lucky, I guess. On a site, we quit when the sun goes down, though I’m going to have to pull some late nights if I’m going to pass this GC license test.”

“Is it hard? This test?”

“Not as hard as the Bar, but hard enough.”

“So, what do you do, exactly?” I asked as we stopped at yet another red light. “You build houses? From nothing?”

“That would be a pretty sweet gig,” Cory said. “Lately it’s only remodels. The guy I work for, his operation isn’t big enough to take on a ground-up. The biggest we might do is an addition.”