Chapter Nine
“Seriously?” I said.
He just shook his head. “These people are some kind of messed up.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s a shocker to anyone around here,” I said, looking back at the door. “Did she tackle you?”
Nick blew out a breath, taking my hand and walking us both away from the house. “Let’s just say the appetizers she wanted me to taste weren’t food related.”
My mouth fell open and my feet stopped cold. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I knew we weren’t a real couple. He knew we weren’t a real couple. But these people didn’t know shit. For all they knew, we were madly in love and fucked like rabbits every night.
“I took care of it,” he said.
“Oh, she’ll see taking care of it,” I said, turning on my heel. “That bitch has some nerve—”
“Lanie,” he said, pulling back on my hand. “You don’t have to. I seriously told her that she was completely out of line. Let’s just walk away.”
“Excuse me? Do you remember the ten years or ten minutes conversation a few weeks ago when you first met Alan?”
He gave a look of concession like a boy caught telling a lie. “Okay, touché.”
I felt like a hot mess. “Oh my God, what is with all these people, hell bent on calling us out.”
“You think it was a setup?”
“Oh I know it was,” I said. “Divide and conquer. Katrina snags you for a little taste test, and Alan whisks me off for a touchy-feely trip down memory lane.”
“He touched you again?”
All his muscles bowed up at attention, and it was adorable.
“Now who’s going off the rails?” I said, turning back to walk with him. “He fed me peppers slathered in honey. Want to get in the pool?”
Nick reached back and pulled his shirt over his head without another word, bringing appreciative gazes from every woman there and maybe a few men too.
“Need to cool your jets?”
I didn’t know if I could pull off the move that smoothly while we were walking, but I gave it a hell of a shot. I nearly tripped over a decorative rock while my tank top was still over my head, but thankfully Nick guided me around it.
“And take down the silicone ratio in there,” I said.
He chuckled. “You saying you’re all what God gave you?”
“One hundred percent.”
After tossing his shirt on an empty chair and kicking off his shoes, Nick walked down into the pool. I hesitated to watch him. He was truly spectacular.
I mean, yes, I saw the towel-version of this every night, but I always felt like I shouldn’t be looking and made myself look away. This was fair game, and I feasted on it. He wasn’t hairy; just the right amount of hair peppered his chest and led a dark line down to—and the abs on this guy were absolutely lickable.
I blinked that thought away as I dropped my shirt onto his and tried to remember how to unzip my shorts.
It felt like too many eyes were on me as I walked into the pool. Not that I was all that, but I’d walked up with Superman here, so naturally the envy comes out and where he is silently celebrated, I knew every inch of my body would be picked apart and studied for flaws. My lack of visible lickable abs for one thing. Of a hard body. My waist was small, but my love of food made me soft and curvy.
I felt every one of those curves as I paraded in front of so many nosy eyes, but a burn started in my belly at the look in one pair.
Nick was all the way across the pool, against the far wall, watching me in a way that heated my blood. So I did what any logical-minded woman would do. I went under. Pushing off in the silence, I passed legs of all kinds, some intertwined in ways you wouldn’t guess from the surface. And then there was the bottom half of Nick in all his glory. Until I was about ten feet away, and he went under to wait for me.
Something slammed inside my chest as his eyes met mine. Something hard and soft and cold and hot and about to be squeezed as a move so random and playful and harmless was so damn intimate. My feet stopped kicking but my momentum kept me moving forward, slowly inching toward him.
It said I’ve got you. Like out of all the legs I swam by, he was there for me. I pulled my feet under me and pushed to the surface. He popped up too.
“Most women refuse to get their head wet at a party like this,” he said, slicking his wet hair back.
I leaned back to rewet mine and let it slick itself. And give myself something to do besides think. “I’m not most women.”
Nick laughed. A low, deep sound that did nothing to settle my inner shakes.
“No doubt about that.” He stretched both arms out along the pool wall. “So what did Mr. Loverboy have to say?”
“That I should let Bryce have the house so that I can get on with my life,” I said. “He reminded me that I couldn’t wait to leave here.”
“So what do you think his stake is in this?”
I shrugged. “His property butts up to mine. I’m willing to bet he and Bryce have struck up some kind of deal if he wins.
Wins.
Like it was some sort of game.
There was familiar loud laughing and splashing behind me, and Nick’s expression told me what I needed to know.
“Crap,” he muttered.
“There y’all are,” Katrina said, cozying up against Nick’s outstretched arm.
All I could see through the resurging anger that filled my head was naked Katrina trying to seduce him.
“You were looking for us?” I asked through my teeth. Heat flooded my head so hot I had to be glowing.
“Of course,” she said, laying a hand on Nick’s chest. His bare chest. Something I hadn’t even done yet. Did I just say yet? “Nicky left before he could finish sampling my snacks.”
Oh no.
I could not be expected to tolerate this. Fuck no.
“Aw, did he?” I said. “Damn that’s a shame, because I sampled some of your husband’s snacks over there, and oh my God. Melted in my mouth.”
Katrina’s eyes narrowed in that way of hers that showed a brain, and I knew she was questioning what Alan might have done. I didn’t care. My heart was pounding so hard in my ears it hurt.
“And for the record,” I continued, my words flowing on a fog of red haze that took me past logic and good sense. “My husband doesn’t need any of your snacks, Katrina.” My hands went to the strings around my neck and pulled them free, before palming my boobs and pushing them up for her. There was a collective gasp heard around the world. “He has these to snack on whenever he pleases.”
“Okay, enough,” Nick said, pulling me to him protectively, wrapping his arms around me as he pressed me against his chest. My naked boobs against his chest, that I bared for the town. Oh my God. What had I done? “The show’s over, you can all go back to talking about people. Katrina, can you maybe go chat with someone else?”
I felt her storm off. Felt, because I was facing Nick’s neck with my eyes shut.
“I’ve got you,” he said against my ear.
The irony of his words almost broke me.
“I just did that,” I whispered. “Fuck balls, I really just did that.”
He chuckled. I felt that too. Naked chest to naked chest. God help me.
“Yes, you did,” he said.
“I can’t face these—oh my God, my cousins are here. And Dean,” I said, pressing my forehead into his shoulder. “And Bash.”
“And they are?”
“People I went to school with, who should have never seen that,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. That’s not me. She just made me so crazy.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said, chuckling again. “That was the hottest thing ever.” I chanced looking up, and instantly knew I was too close, and too undressed, and just too everything. “You fought for me with your one-hundred-percent boobs. I can honestly say no one has ever done that.”
“Oh God. Please try to forget that.”
His face came down lower, a teasing look in his eyes. “Oh, I will never forget that.” He grinned. “It’s okay.”
“Can we leave?” I asked.
“No,” he said, looking down into my eyes.
“Why?”
One hand slid from its hold on my back, down to right above my ass, and pulled me tightly against the biggest rock-hard hard-on I’d ever felt. And where he settled? Was spot on. I sucked in a breath.
“That’s why,” he said against my ear, his voice sounding strained.
I went dizzy. All the blood in my body rushing to one spot in two-point-two seconds will do that. His hand sliding lower to curl fingers into the soft skin of my ass cheek didn’t help. My hands went to his sides automatically, my nipples grew hard against the coarse hair on his chest, and my legs wanted to wrap around him in response. But I wouldn’t let them. If I did that—
“And I’m thinking that a raging boner in response to my wife’s tits probably doesn’t say we’ve been married for a while,” he said, his breathing a little rougher against my ear.
“True,” I said. Or someone said, using my mouth. I needed to get dressed. To get my shit together and my head back on this planet. I slid my hands up between us, bringing my bikini top back over my breasts. “Can you hold me while I tie this back? I can’t reach the bottom here.”
Both hands went to my ass, pulling me tightly against him, and my control wiggled as my mouth went dry.
“Not quite what I meant,” I said hoarsely.
“Sorry, I’m a little drunk on no blood right now,” he said. “All roads are leading there.”
I tied it back as well as I could with shaky hands, and then pushed back gently, my hands on his chest. There, now I’d touched his chest.
Yeah, a little distance might be good,” Nick said, sliding under and coming back up. “And some cold water on my head.”
“Good id—”
And I was under, the sound of my own bubbles closing over my head. I came up spitting water at him.
“Now, that’s sexy,” he said, laughing.
“Cute,” I said, splashing water in his face.
And just like that, he set everything back on its axis.
He had that talent.
I moved to the wall next to him and tried to will my body back into compliance.
“Thank you.”
“For?”
“Coming to my rescue,” I said. “Even though it was awkward and uncomfortable.”
A smile pulled at one corner of his lips.
“Anytime,” he said. “But before you go making me all noble, let me assure you that nothing in the last five minutes was a sacrifice.”
I laughed. “For me, either. In fact—” Should I go for the admission? What the hell. I had already shown him my boobs. “Probably a good thing we’re in public.”
“It’s a very good thing we’re in public,” he said. “Although honestly, a few more moves and I might not have cared.”
The heat rushed back with a vengeance.
“Oh?”
I was playing with fire. And he knew it. The mischievous spark flashing in those dark eyes told me so.
“Do you need a do-over?” he asked, his tone all shades of delicious.
I smiled and gripped the concrete like a lifeline.
“I’ll take a rain check on that.”
What. Did. I. Just. Say.
The pool had to be drugged. With aphrodisiac water. Maybe Alan threw oysters in it before the party. I clapped a hand over my eyes that really should have been over my mouth.
“Okay, we really need to leave this place before I say or do one more thing.”
Nick laughed heartily and removed my hand. “Lanie, relax.” He glanced around and lowered his voice, leaning in. “I think we both know that this game we’re playing with—it’s fire and matches. We live together. We’re always in each other’s space.” His gaze dropped to my body and water splashed as he ran a wet hand over his face. “And you drive me mad. It’s probably gonna happen eventually.”
You drive me mad. Jesus, that didn’t help. At all.
“I’m just shooting for the later side of that,” he continued.
“Me too,” I whispered. Thank God we were on the same page. Sort of.
“Because—”
“We have a long way to go,” I said.
He nodded. “And if we went there now,” he began.
“It could—It would get—” The words froze in my throat.
“Complicated.”
Boom.
Exactly. I saw my every thought looking right back at me.
Translation: It wouldn’t just be once. And more than once equaled need. Need turned to feelings.
Neither of us could afford that.
“Yeah,” I said. “So—”
He glanced down at himself. “So I need to quit talking about this or we’re never getting out of this pool.”
Was it bad that him being turned on by me was a hot rush? That I really wanted to reach over and feel it for myself? Yes. Yes it was, Lanie. I smiled.
“So tell me about your daughter, then,” I said.
He frowned. “That’ll do it.”
“Her name is Addison and she’s brilliant and beautiful and wants to go to art school,” I said. “That’s all I really know about my stepdaughter.”
“Oh man, that sounds weird,” he said. “Shit, I need to tell her.”
“You haven’t told her?” I said. “You talk to her every other day.”
“I talk to her once a week, thank you very much,” he said. “She just texts a lot. Teenagers do that.”
“And?”
He blew out a breath. “Tell her over the phone that her old man got married for the money to send her to college?” he said quietly, lifting his eyebrows. “No. That hasn’t come up.”
All the hot steamies and the warm and cozy moments of the last half hour felt decidedly cooler.
“I’ll tell her tonight,” he said on a weary exhale.
“That’s still over the phone.”
He shook his head. “I’m headed home tonight.”
“You’re—what?”
I had no claim and he owed me absolutely nothing, but something in that sentence stabbed me in the gut. He looked at me funny.
“It’s Addison’s graduation on Monday. I put it on the calendar on the fridge.”
That sounded so married and domestic. Except that truly married and domestic would have probably involved a conversation. And possibly travel for two.
And that’s where my brain shut down my heart. Right there on that thought path. With a roadblock from hell. Where in this journey had I ever thought he’d bring me home to meet his family, his daughter, his life? That was never in the plan, and I was breaking my own internal rules.
I shook my head and laughed. “Of course. I’m sorry. I just—never think to look at that.”
“So you’re okay with it?” he asked, looking a little confused. Probably wondering why he was asking.
I scoffed. “Please. It’s your daughter’s graduation. Go! Enjoy!” I pushed at his shoulder like a friend would. Like a buddy. “Video like all the other nerd parents.”
He chuckled. “That’ll be her mom.” He shook his head. “For someone who never wanted to grow up and be a mother, she loves these big moments. Goes all out.”
The woman who always got under his skin was going to be there. Fuck, of course she was going to be there. Where else would she be on her daughter’s high school graduation?
“Tell me about her,” I said, sensing he was actually open for once.
“About Tara?” I nodded so he’d continue, but his eyes took on that slightly pissed off look they always did when the subject of his ex-wife came up. “She’s usually the person I try to avoid if at all possible, but this time is out of my hands.” He exhaled slowly and stared off into something I didn’t see. “She was the spoiled rich girl I had no business having. Then she was the love of my life. Until that wasn’t enough.”