Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(39)

“Shut up.”

“I’m counting the days until you lose your cool, man.”

“Trust me, that should be the least of our concerns. It’s her I’m worried about. One wrong move, and the whole thing will fall apart.”

He leaned in a little, smiling wide enough to make me want to hit him. “Better lock her down quick then.”

“You act like that hasn’t been the job all along.”

With a laugh, he helped me plate the food, the two of us serving the women in our life. Our mother, who’d given the best years of her life to raise us alone. Tommy’s wife, who’d saved him in more ways than one. And Katherine, the one who would extend our family to another generation. The one who’d gotten her hooks in me without intention.

The one I’d have for my own.

Everyone was chatting, getting settled in, and I sat next to Katherine. She met my eyes, the meaning behind hers clear.

I leaned into her, pressing my cheek to hers as if for a kiss. But instead, I whispered with lips close to the curve of her ear, “I’m gonna fuck you the second this meal is through, Kate.”

Her breath caught. My lips brushed her flushed cheek.

And I smiled, smug as all hell as I laid my napkin in my lap.

“Did you get unpacked?” Amelia asked, beaming and upright in her chair.

“I did, thank you. The only thing left to do is organize my bookshelves.”

Tommy dished out his dinner. “How do you file them? Amelia’s are all by genre, then subgenre, then author.”

“By genre and alphabetically by author, and my reference materials are always in Dewey order. It’s the only way I can do it without flying into a panic,” she answered. “I follow a bunch of bookstagrammers on Instagram, and the ones who organize their shelves by color give me anxiety. Sometimes, I’ll zoom in on them just to see how bad it is and have to remind myself not to look. Like when you see something in the road that might be a dead animal—the best thing is to avert your eyes and assume it’s a T-shirt.” Immediately, she flushed. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t appropriate conversation for dinner. I’m…I’m a little nervous.”

The admission affected every face at the table, mine most of all. I reached for her hands, which were clutched in her lap. But it was Ma who spoke.

“I, for one, love a good inappropriate conversation,” she said as Tommy served her. “With boys like mine, it was inevitable. When they were little, they’d bring bugs to the dinner table and hide rats in shoeboxes in their closets. When they were older, someone was either getting in a fight, getting in trouble from a fight, or had a wound that needed medical attention from a fight.”

Laughter rumbled between Tommy and me.

“Ma’s a saint,” I noted, squeezing Katherine’s hands, which disappeared under mine.

She offered me a grateful smile.

“How many boxes of books did you have to lug?” Tommy asked me.

“Seven or eight,” I answered.

“Thirty-two,” he said. “Amelia had thirty-two boxes of books. I was sure Katherine would have her beat.”

“Oh, these are just the first wave,” Katherine assured him. “I have way more at home.”

Amelia nodded. “It’s true. Although she’s more of a discerning reader than I am.”

Katherine shrugged. “I mostly prefer the classics. There’s something familiar and far away about them that appeals to me. I don’t enjoy reading much fiction that takes place in contemporary times. Harder to suspend my disbelief, I suppose.”

I let her hands go but trailed my fingers across her knuckles, the touch lingering as long as I could. Her fingers relaxed their iron grip on her napkin, smoothing it out.

The conversation drifted around the table as we ate, but my body was attuned to her. I wished we were alone. I wished she’d waited until my mother wasn’t in the room to put that fucking lipstick on. I wished I could speed up dinner so I could drag her upstairs and do all the things I’d been thinking about for a week.

We’d spent more than two nights, one week apart, wrapped up in each other, the “no sleeping in the same bed” rule almost moot when she left my place at four in the morning. But, alas, she’d stuck to the rules, and though it took all my power, so had I.

But she couldn’t get away from me here.

I wondered if she really would continue to resist. If she’d tire of me. If she’d get me out of her system and call the whole thing off. Dismiss the phases, throw on the brakes, shake my hand, and put me in my place somewhere in the friendzone.

The only comfort was this: I got the distinct impression that, as planned, the physical contact had made the longing worse for her, not better.

I knew it had for me. Difference was, I was prepared.

Judging by the delicate fluttering of her lashes when I hung my arm on the back of her chair, brushing my knuckles against the back of her neck, she had not been prepared at all.

She’d put on that lipstick without understanding that she’d declared war.

I took every opportunity to touch her in the most modest and unassuming of places. And every touch seemed to affect her a little more, tightening the string until she was thrumming, her energy pitched as high as the thinnest guitar string. My thumb on the meat of her palm seemed to set her on fire, my knee brushing the outside of hers under the table quickening her breath.