by Lex Martin
He snorts. “Nope. I gave that woman the world. At least the world I could afford, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy her.” He shakes his head, the rueful expression on his face making me regret bringing her up. “But you’re not that kind of girl. You’re the kind who makes a man feel special. I know because you’re always there for me. When I had that hernia operation, who made me dinner every single day for weeks? My sweet daughter. You have a good heart, Evie. I just don’t want to see you compromise what you want in life for someone who might not be worthy of it. My girl deserves a man who will love her like I loved your mother. Except you’re someone who will appreciate that devotion.”
Aww, Dad. I blink quickly to stop the sting in my eyes. Is Josh that man? And I’ve ruined everything?
“Hey,” he says, dipping his head to get my attention, his voice softening. “I know what I said earlier about not getting married so young, but I’m all bluster, because the truth is I wouldn’t change a damn thing. One amazing gift came out of my relationship with your mother.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” I ask, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice.
He reaches across the table and taps my nose. “You, goofy gander.”
I give him a big, stupid smile because he’s such a softie. “Love you, Dad. You’re still my favorite guy.”
He clicks his tongue. “And you’re still my special French fry.” With a grumble, he points at my plate. “Now make your old man happy, and eat your breakfast. Then tell me about the assholes at that fancy party you went to last weekend. I’m sure there’s some juicy gossip in there somewhere that will give me a chortle.”
“A chortle?” I laugh, unable to contain my smile, everything feeling just a little lighter. I guess a girl sometimes just needs her dad.
15
Josh
“I don’t think they’re offering you the best price. You can get more. I’ve researched it, and there are other companies out there we can approach—”
I let out an annoyed breath. I’m sitting in a black swivel chair in a plain conference room in Evie’s office a week after she agreed to be my attorney, aka the same day she broke up with me—that is, if we were even together in the first place. Under the guise of needing to discuss my architecture firm, I made an appointment with Penny, her flighty secretary, to meet with Ms. Evelyn Mills, Esq., in person. Of course, in reality, architecture was the farthest thing from my mind. I had deadlines and needed to make a decision on these sex toy contracts—but I could hardly tell her secretary that was why I needed to come.
Besides working through the paperwork, I had another reason to stop by. Evie had emailed me, letting me know that she’d received product samples from Caligula, and asked if she should mail them to me or if I wanted to pick them up. I figured I’d be my own courier rather than risk someone opening the package.
And, of course, I wanted to see her. She’s drawn me in like an essential nutrient I didn’t know my body needed, and now that I’ve had it, I know what my body is missing.
I have to spend more time with her, even as friends.
Friends. Dammit, Evie.
All week, Drew had given me ever-loving shit about how upset I was. Finally, last Friday after a twelve-pack of Lucky Lab that turned into Jaegermeister shots, he slurred out that he was going to come up with a new bet to get me to stop moping. I sent his drunk ass home in an Uber after that comment.
Seeing her again was a bad idea because it reminds me how much this week sucked without her.
Now she sits at the head of the large, oblong table, pen poised in her slim fingers, telling me in her erotic voice why the contract I want to sign is a bad idea.
I don’t want it to be a bad idea. I just want to sign the damn thing.
But I can’t help staring at her.
Her black blazer has a single black plastic button. Nothing special. It’s about the size of a quarter. But it fascinates me. It’s positioned right below the swell of her tits, anchoring them in. I have to remember to look up, but then I catch her striking gray eyes, and I can’t look there either, because she’s too intense and they’re too beautiful. She’s wearing sober lawyer attire—a black pantsuit that emphasizes her legs and a cream blouse tied at the neck—and while she looks polished and professional, I notice the way her curves shape her clothes, making a standard business suit downright sexy.
And here’s the problem: I know what she looks like naked, and it’s glorious. She’s a curvy, soft, feminine fantasy come to life—all covered up. But I can’t think that way. I need to focus on her words, because I’m paying for them.
Boy, am I paying for them.
And I’ve never been more frustrated.
I adjust my pants. Subtly, I hope.
I’m sitting to her left, listening hard, and getting pissed. Not just because her legal advice is delivered by plump lips that will never again be wrapped around the dick we’re talking about replicating with a molding kit. No.
It’s because I want this to work, and she’s telling me all the reasons why it can’t.
Both the contract and the girl.
I adjust my tie, push up my glasses, and slouch. “That part sounds fair to me.”
“No offense, Josh, but I don’t think this offer is right for you as written.”
She’s killing me. She’s so goddamn professional that it’s pissing me off, because she’s not telling me what I want to hear. She’s telling me what I should hear.
I don’t like it at all, and somehow I love it, because finally someone has the fucking balls to stand up to a Cartwright.
I finger the contract. She leans over, her bangs falling over her face as she points to a clause, and I smell the sweet almond-honey scent of her hair. I grip the side of the conference table, hoping she doesn’t know that I’m white-knuckling the ride in a lawyer’s office.
My voice comes out raspy. “You really think you can broker a better royalty rate?”
“I do. At the very least, I think we should ask. I’ve done the research, and I can backup a significantly higher percentage. There’s no harm in asking.”
I can think of a lot of things that would be harmful for me to ask: Would you mind if I kissed you? Would you mind if I ripped your clothes off? Would it matter if we had sex in the conference room?
Would you go out with me? Maybe to dinner or a movie?
She makes notations on the contract, oblivious to my misery.
But there’s no point in trying to convince her when I know she’s trying to do the right thing, so I lean back in my chair. “Sweetheart, I trust you. I know you’ll look after my best interests.”
Especially since she already has. This whole setup is for my best interests, so that she can do her job well and I can be properly taken care of by an outstanding attorney.
She stiffens at the word “sweetheart.” But I don’t mean it in a sexist way. I mean it like, God, she makes my heart race, and it’s fucking bittersweet.
Somehow I make it through the rest of the contract discussion, mostly by concentrating on the words on the paper instead of her presence. That voice. Those lips. That hair. Fuck me.
After we go through the other clauses, and we agree on a game plan for the next round of negotiations, she gestures to a cardboard box big enough for a toddler to hide in. It must be lightweight, though, given the ease with which she shifts it over to me.
“Here’s the delivery I received on your behalf,” she says, punctuated with the click of a ballpoint pen cap. Her cheeks flush. “I opened it because it’s addressed to me, but it’s for you. Make sure they sent everything in case we need to request any replacements or return anything.”
She pushes the package toward me.
So now I’m amused. Are we really going to look at sex toys in a conservative lawyer’s office?
We are.
I open up the box, pull out a packing slip and peer underneath. The box is chock-full of cheekily-named toys. Hastily looking around to see if anyone can pe
er into the conference room—they can’t—I take out several boxes of male vibrators, butt plugs, cock rings, a vibrating cock ring, and some crazy thing that looks like a cock ring with a tail made out of pink plastic beads.
Oh. That part goes there. An anal plug.
I look over at Evie. She’s blushing furiously, and it’s sexy as hell.
We both burst out laughing. I can’t help but feel embarrassed. It’s difficult enough to discuss sex toys with anyone, let alone a woman you’ve slept with—who is also your legal adviser. “So this is totally normal,” I say.
“Absolutely.”
Five clear plastic cylinders holding kits to make molds of my dick come out next.
They look intimidating, actually. I read the instructions on the label. You have to mix up plaster and figure out how to hold your dick in there long enough and hard enough for it to make a mold.
My eyes widen. “I’m not totally sure how to use these.”
“I think it’s just like making a Popsicle,” she says. And I laugh. “You know, you have to put the liquid in the mold, and it takes on that shape. But first you have to make the mold.”
I grin, but it’s sort of a grimace, because I’m fighting getting hard, and I don’t want to be a perv. Not everything is about my dick. I cannot allow myself to imagine using these things with her, and I don’t want to have a hard-on in my lawyer’s office. Even if my lawyer is as hot as Evie.
Trying to keep it under control, I dive back into the box and fish out a box of vibrating thong panties controlled by a remote.
Yeah, I’m totally at semi-staff, immediately thinking of uses for this.
“Ohmigod,” she breathes. “I’ve never heard of those.”
I hastily put them to the side.
Can’t use those.
At the bottom of the box are several bottles of lube, some sort of flavored gel, and a bumper sticker.
Won’t be using that last one either. They couldn’t pay me enough to put a sex toy manufacturer’s bumper sticker on my car or anywhere you could see my face, even though I’m thinking about accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from them to plaster a different body part on their website.
Hypocritical? Maybe.
“Did they send everything?” she asks.
“They told me they’d be sending the molds and an assortment of products to try out. So yeah, it looks like what they described.”
We pack everything back up again, and she stacks her papers.
I watch as she tucks her hair behind her ear and beams that gorgeous smile at me.
Fuck, I miss her. I miss the way she laughs when we’re joking and the way her cheeks flush when she’s embarrassed. How she’s all fire when she’s pissed and gentle and refined when she’s not. And the way she looks at me like we could be so much more than friends.
I’m going to keep torturing myself, because this—just being friends—is more tolerable than being apart.
“How’s the remodeling going?”
She perks up and relaxes. “The master bathroom is coming along. I’m looking for the perfect pedestal sink to replace the hideous harvest gold monstrosity in there now, which, you know, is inappropriate for the style of the house.”
I can think of lots of things that are inappropriate here, and I really could care less that she knows it. Instead of making a comment, I close up the top of the box. “I did some research and found a few architectural salvage places I’ve never been to. I can take you if you like.”
“Josh,” she warns.
“As friends.” I hold up my hands like I’m harmless.
She eyes me skeptically. “As long as you’re on your best behavior.”
“Like I would ever misbehave.”
We stare at each other and start laughing.
“Fine,” she says, “since you’re the model of good behavior, I guess I trust you.”
As those words leave her lips, I know I have to tread carefully. Because I would never do anything to hurt her.
I need to convince her that what we have is too good to be just friends.
But being her friend is a good place to start.
After work on Wednesday evening, I lift up my hand to knock on her door, but it opens before I make contact. Evie’s purse is on her shoulder and her keys in hand as she shoves Chauncey behind her. She beams like we’re going to Disneyland.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Yes!” She follows me to my car, almost skipping, and we drive to the salvage store I found online.
This dingy place is like the storeroom at the end of Indiana Jones, but instead of wooden boxes of who-knows-what, it’s chock full of bathtubs, light fixtures, cabinets, and other house parts—with an attitude. A hand-painted sign reads, “We don’t decorate, we RESTORE.” We walk past old doors stacked like books on an oversized shelf to a counter with a cash register that’s so antiquated the numbers pop up, like in cartoons. A portly man who looks like an old sea captain, wearing the Skipper’s hat from Gilligan’s Island, stands behind it, arms crossed over his chest, and growls at us. “What kind of house you got?”
He’s had extensive customer service training, I see.
Evie stutters out, “A 1927 Craftsman bungalow.”
He relents. “Okay, you can look.”
When he turns away, she leans into my ear, her lips brushing it as she whispers, “This is the snobbiest store I’ve ever been in. You need the right kind of house to even look.”
“I know, right?” I murmur back. Not like the snobbery that I’ve grown up with, but snobbery just the same.
“What’s your project?” Sea Captain asks over his shoulder.
“I’m restoring a bathroom,” she says, and pulls out her phone to show him pictures. I notice that she’s careful not to use the word decorate. “I’m looking for a pedestal sink to go here.”
Squinting at the pictures, he says, “You don’t want a pedestal, you want a wall-mount.” He disappears into the back.
She looks at me. “I think I know what I want for my own damn house.”
I give her a half-smile.
Snobby Sea Captain comes back and hefts a white, wall-mounted sink up onto the counter. It has separate holes for a hot water faucet and a cold water faucet, as well as a space for a soap dish.
“Take it or leave it. This is what belongs in your house.” He goes off to snarl at another customer who has the audacity to ask for subway tile.
“You can just go to Home Depot,” I say. “You don’t have to do what he says.”
But she looks delighted. “This place is the exact opposite of Home Depot. I think he may be right, though. This would look great.”
She runs her fingers over the sink. It has rust stains at the bottom, but it really is the perfect sink, full of character and patina, and it would go well in her house. Maybe Sea Captain knows what he’s talking about.
“I’ll take it,” she calls, and he nods, placated that she listened to him. She also picks out a matching faucet set and soap dish. After he rings her up—he takes credit cards, but he handwrites a slip on carbon paper—and helps her get the sink out to my car, we take off home.
When we get to her house, we bring it into the master bathroom. Even on the floor, it looks like it’s been there the whole time. It belongs. I’m itching to get it set up, and it’s not even my house.
“Need help?” I ask. “I can come over on Saturday.”
“You know about plumbing?”
I nod. We’re standing so close in her vintage bathroom, and I think about the last time I was here. Best to not do that. We’re friends now.
Her face falls. “I can’t do it Saturday.”
Suggesting another day is on the tip of my tongue, but her eyes shift away, so I’m guessing this is about more than a scheduling conflict. “What is it?”
She nibbles on her bottom lip. “My boss wants me to have brunch at his house. With Nathan.”
My stomach drops. I hadn’t thought about this. Since
we can’t be together, she’s totally free to see other people. Even that ass-kisser.
Seeing the pissed look on my face, she hastily continues, “I don’t want to go, but I think I have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Josh, I think you understand when you have to do something because it’s expected of you.”
She’s absolutely right. I do. But it doesn’t mean I have to like this.
16
Evie
Straightening my sweater, I debate this outfit for the tenth time, but I’m going to be late to brunch at my boss’s house if I don’t get my ass in gear. A chime from my phone on the bathroom window ledge sends a little jolt of excitement through me when I see it’s from Josh.
You kicked so much ass this week. I’m an idiot for ever doubting your instincts.
A thick wave of delight washes over me, and I take a second to calm my nerves before responding. You made it easy by snagging a second offer.
Leveraging the proposal from another sex toy company lit a fire under Caligula to improve their rates, which they did—beyond what I’d even hoped for. Yesterday, the vice president of the company faxed a new contract before my morning coffee had cooled enough to drink. After reviewing the new terms, I gave Josh the thumbs up, and the deal was inked by the end of the day.
It was the most fun I’d had at work in ages.
Unlike so many of the firm’s other clients, Josh wasn’t out trying to scam his customers or screw over his employees or find some legal loophole to avoid paying taxes. I honestly hadn’t realized how much that aspect of my job had weighed me down.
When Josh doesn’t respond, I set the device down, needing to rein in my longing.
He’s my client. My very off-limits, sexy-as-hell, sweet-as-a-lollipop client.
No matter how badly I want him, no matter how intense the desire, I need to put my feelings on lockdown and focus on his business interests. Even if it kills me.
Clenching my eyes, I try to forget the way he moved against me. How he moved inside me, stretching me and making me come so hard, I thought I’d seen the Northern Lights. But the hardest part is how much I miss him as a friend. Even though we haven’t known each other long, Josh Cartwright has carved an indelible mark on me, whether I want to admit it or not.