“Actually, I was the one who paid for the tick—”
A glare from me keeps Alex from completing that thought, but he does take a few steps in my direction. “You can deny it all you want,” he says, “and honestly, I didn’t realize how close the movie hit to home until we were watching it tonight, but the heroine is a beautiful redhead.” He gestures at my copper tresses, which have started to escape my topknot so that a few wavy tendrils are now hanging down in my face. “And the hero is a handsome blond.” He places a hand on his chest.
I snort. “You wish you looked like Ryan Gosling.” Truthfully, I think Alex is way hotter than the Gos whose lips are too thin for my taste.
Ignoring my jibe, he continues, “They fall in love against the backdrop of LA and are crazy about each other until their careers get in the way.”
“And that’s where the comparison ends because it wasn’t our careers that made this . . .” I wave a hand between us, loosening the makeshift bandage around my finger. “. . . implode. It was your career, your ambition, and your ego that led to our breakup. You cared more about moving ahead and being top dog at Pinnacle than you did about me.”
Alex shoves his hands in the pockets of his shorts and expels a loud breath. “You’re right. I was short-sighted and I messed up what was probably the best thing in my life.”
Finally, he admits it!
“But maybe neither one of us would have achieved all that we have over the last four years if we’d been together, putting time and energy into each other instead of our careers.”
I open my mouth to protest just as I did many moons ago when he claimed marriage and children would be impediments to his professional goals, but he holds up a hand to silence me.
“Hear me out. I’m not just talking about me. If we’d stayed together, gotten engaged, married, and started a family, would Straight from the Hart even exist? Would you have had a fire in your belly to leave your comfortable position at Jacqueline’s and become your own boss, doing something you love and are very good at?”
He’s got me there. The thought of being a romance concierge had never even crossed my mind until several months after our breakup when it occurred to me that I could be doing more with my life and career. As much as I enjoyed being in the matchmaking business, I felt like it was time to take working with couples a step further. I considered going into wedding planning or relationship coaching, but I wasn’t keen on dealing with bridezillas, and coaching felt way too close to counseling, which was my mother’s territory. So I did my research, made a business plan, secured a loan from the bank, took a leap of faith, and here I am a few years later with hundreds of satisfied clients, an efficient staff, and a company that has some name recognition and is in the black. I’ll be damned if I give Alex credit for any of that, though.
“We’ll never know, will we? Maybe you were holding me back, or maybe I was fully capable of having a solid, satisfying relationship while pursuing my dreams. Unfortunately, you decided for both of us that that wasn’t possible. Why are we even rehashing this again?” I throw my hands up in frustration, and the napkin on my index finger starts to unravel. “This is my least favorite subject, and it all happened a million years ago.” I attempt to rewrap my finger, but the paper no longer wants to stay in place.
“Revisiting the past isn’t fun for me either,” Alex declares. “I’d love nothing more than to forget about our breakup and how badly I handled things. But it’s clear from your overreaction to the movie that you still have unresolved feelings—”
“Stop acting like you have some deep insight into my emotions!” I stab my finger in his face, and the motion makes the bloodied napkin fall to the floor. Not having that binding around my finger reopens the puncture wound, as well as a scratch from the thorn I hadn’t noticed before, and a new dot of bright red appears.
“You need a Band-Aid,” Alex says. “I think I saw a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Come on before you get blood all over this expensive carpet and we have to pay for the hotel to clean it.” Taking me gently by the wrist, he pulls me toward the bedroom.
“But we’re in the middle of a fight,” I protest as I follow him.
“Which we can resume as soon as your finger is properly bandaged.”
We skirt the king-sized bed, passing the fireplace and large closet on our right, and Alex pushes open the mahogany door to the bathroom. Tugging me over to the sink, he twists the hot water knob and tells me to, “Clean the wound with lots of soap.”
I do as he says, washing away the blood, while Alex roots around in the different baskets of hotel freebies sitting on the granite countertop. “Aha!” he shouts in triumph, lifting a small plastic kit in the air.
I turn off the faucet and grab a hand towel to dry my finger, then present the digit to Alex for dressing. He moves around to stand in front of me, his face scrunching up with concern while he examines the wound.
“That must have been a really sharp thorn,” he says before letting go to rip open the packaging of the medium-sized Band-Aid he selected.
“It was my fault. I know better than to clench a rose stem in my hand. You’re supposed to delicately pinch the stem between two fingers to avoid getting stuck. I’m not sure who the hotel is getting their roses from, probably some local grower, but they should really be covering each stem with tissue paper or better yet, use a florist who has the tool to strip all the thorns from the flowers. That’s what I have the florist I work with do for my clients.”
“Because you think of everything,” Alex says with an affectionate smile while carefully wrapping the Band-Aid around my finger.
“I try to. Details are important in my line of work.”
“You said that earlier.” He raises his slate-colored eyes to mine. “At the church.”
“I did?” It’s hard to remember much of anything when I’m caught in his tractor beam of a gaze. It feels like I’m being towed in, closer and closer, and soon I’ll be completely absorbed by those blue-gray orbs.
“How’s that?” he asks. “The Band-Aid’s not too tight, is it?”
Still staring into his eyes, I reply, “Nuh uh. Feels good.” That description applies more to how tenderly he’s holding my hand, not the bandaging, so I hasten to correct myself. “I mean, fine. It feels fine.”
“Glad to hear it,” he replies.
I expect him to drop my hand now, but he doesn’t. Instead he swipes the pad of his thumb across my palm, and the whisper soft touch makes me feel tingly all over.
“I’m sorry we’re headed back to LA tomorrow,” Alex admits, his thumb continuing that slow, sensuous rubbing motion on the sensitive underside of my hand. “I’ve really enjoyed this weekend. It’s been a nice change of pace.”
“From all of those glamorous premieres and star-studded parties you’d normally be at?”
“Those are for work.”
“That’s why we came here,” I remind him.
“That’s why you came. I came to be with you.”
Hard not to get weak in the knees over a line like that, but I’m not sure I trust it. Maybe Alex is being sincere, or maybe he’s just looking to get laid. Either way, I’m not interested in getting hurt by him again, so my guard goes up and I query flippantly, “Because you’re in between blondes at the moment and you’re bored?”
“Because I’ve realized over the last few weeks that there’s no one else I’d rather be with. No other woman challenges or fascinates me the way you do, Nessa.” He clutches my injured hand to his chest where I can feel his heart thumping. “You’re the most clever, intuitive, passionate person I’ve ever known. And you have real emotional depth, unlike all the fake, shallow people I’m surrounded by in my business.”
Okay, now I feel guilty. Alex is lauding me for being so authentic when my relationship with Ian is a big, fat lie. Should I come clean? He’d probably understand that I did what I had to in order to make Straight from the Hart a success. He crafts public images that will further his clients
’ careers every single day, right? On the other hand, it’s not like I owe him an explanation, and having a fake boyfriend for as long as I have would make me look kind of pathe—
“You always have a comeback or opinion on every word that comes out of my mouth. What’s wrong?” Alex wonders. “Have I stunned you into a fugue state?”
I frown. “No, I just . . . this is a lot and I’m not sure what to think or how to feel . . .”
“Think about this.” Alex cups my face in his hands. “Our story, unlike Mia and Sebastian’s, isn’t over. Fate brought us back together for a reason, and it wasn’t just to make things right for Jax and Jaz. We deserve our happy ending too.”
Well, shoot, now he’s talking about our relationship in cosmic terms. How can a diehard romantic like me resist that?
Placing my hands on his forearms, I lean forward so that I can press my mouth to his. Part of me is hoping that the spark I used to feel when Alex and I kissed will be gone and I can put our relationship to rest once and for all. But the moment our lips make contact it’s not just a spark, it’s an explosion of heat and hunger that’s such an overwhelming rush of sensation it’s near-orgasmic.
Our mouths fuse feverishly, lips kissing, tongues tangling while I dig my fingers in Alex’s thick hair and massage his scalp. I remember how much he loved me doing this, especially when I followed it up by . . . he groans, the guttural sound reverberating in his chest, as I scrape my nails lightly down the back of his neck and his response is such a turn-on that it makes me want to strip him naked and rake my nails over every other sensitive part of his body. I’m making a mental list of those parts starting with the insides of his muscular, soccer-forged thighs when Alex pulls back, panting and flushed. I see the same heady desire I’m experiencing mirrored in his eyes, which look as though they’ve darkened to a stormy gray.
“This,” he rasps, taking a misbehaving strand of my hair and caressing it between his fingertips, “should be down. I love your hair when it’s loose and curly—the wilder, the better.” Dipping his head so that his lips are just a breath away from my ear, he whispers, “Like that night in the garden at the Taglyan.” While speaking, he plucks out the bobby pins that are holding my hair up and I hear them clinking in the sink behind me. “You looked so damn gorgeous, like a goddess, the goddess of beauty and love.
“Aphrodite’s already got that job,” I say breathlessly, gripping his hips so that I’ll stay upright since his words and the feel of his hard, athletic body pressed up against mine are making me lightheaded. “And artists usually depict her as being fair-haired.”
“Then they screwed up.” His tongue darts out to lick a spot behind my ear, and my body reacts with a shiver. “Because the embodiment of passion should be a redhead; there’s nothing sexier than a woman with red hair.” He unravels the knot I’d twisted my hair into earlier. “Do you know what I wanted to do to you in that garden?”
“What?” The question comes out sounding more like a moan because he’s just released my hair from the elastic band that was holding my pony in place and now he’s running his fingers through my liberated curls.
His lips brush against my ear when he confesses in a husky voice, “I wanted to drag you off to some private spot, lay you down in the grass, and . . .” He pauses to drop a series of openmouthed kisses down the side of my neck.
As much as I’m enjoying what he’s doing, I am desperate to hear how the rest of his steamy (hopefully!) fantasy plays out. “And?” I prompt and feel Alex’s lips curl into a smile against my neck.
Lifting his head to gaze into my eyes, he asks, “Do you want me to tell you . . .” He drags the pad of his thumb across my lower lip. “. . . or show you?” Replacing his finger with his mouth, he gives me a long, soulful kiss.
When he finally releases my mouth, I gasp. “Show. Definitely show. As soon as possible.” Slipping my hands beneath the hem of his T-shirt, I skim my fingertips up the muscled contours of his abs, relishing the feel of his deliciously warm flesh and the tickle of his chest hair when I reach the divot between his pecs. I want him shirtless so that I can kiss and nibble my way back down to the waistline of his shorts and Alex must read my mind because the next thing I know he grabs the sides of his tee and pulls it up over his head.
His torso is even more glorious than I remembered. In the last four years his lean frame has filled out: his shoulders are broader, his arms thicker and more sinewy, his belly so flat you could serve one of the hotel’s gargantuan margaritas on it. He just looks so mature and manly; all I can think is, “Gimme!”
I explore his bared upper half with my hands first, refamiliarizing myself with the body I once knew so well. He’s very patient, letting me have my fun without doing anything to hurry me along, but when I start focusing my attention on one of his nipples, laving it with my tongue, then blowing on it, he shudders with pleasure, swears under his breath, and grabs my butt, pulling me up against him so that I can feel just how aroused our foreplay is making him.
“My turn,” he growls, yanking down the zipper on my playsuit, then sliding the shoulders of the garment down my arms to reveal what I’m wearing beneath. “Amazing,” he says, his hands going straight to my breasts which are on display in a push-up bra made of embroidered tulle and guipure lace. “You never disappoint with the lingerie.”
He drags his thumbs across my tight, aching nipples and the friction of the lace against them is the most exquisite torture. He boosts one breast from beneath so that it comes perilously close to spilling out of the demi cup, then bends down to take the tip in his mouth, sucking on it through the material while kneading the other breast with the just the right amount of pressure. My head lolls back and I moan my appreciation of his efforts, which compels him to slide the massaging hand beneath the underwire of my bra. The feel of his hand on my bare breast is almost too much to take. I don’t know whether to push Alex down on the floor and jump on top of him or suggest that we go for it right here on the sink. Before I can act on either of these thoughts, Alex glances up and asks, “Are you wearing matching panties?”
“Do you want me to tell you, or show you?” I repeat his inquiry from earlier with a mischievous glint in my eye.
“Both. Either. Doesn’t matter.” Alex reaches for the fashionably frayed waistband that’s holding up the bottom half of my playsuit.
“Naughty!” I chastise him, giving him a shove back.
Taking a few steps away, I kick off my shoes and hook my thumbs beneath the fabric covering my hips and slowly ease the playsuit down over my butt. Once it hits my thighs, I let the garment drop to the floor. “You like?” I ask, holding my hands in the air and doing a slow twirl so that he can see my lace cheekini from the front and back.
Striding forward with purpose, Alex takes my hand and presses it to his fly where there’s an old friend trying to bust out so that we can get reacquainted. “Does that answer your question?” He wonders with a smirk.
Knowing that I still have this effect on him makes me feel more desirable than I have in ages. I lost my inner sex kitten toward the end of my relationship with Alex when he seemed to be more stimulated by work than me, and the guys I dated after that never revved my engine, which made me less than enthusiastic about sex to the point that I opted for a life of celibacy. But here I am in sexy lingerie, fondling an impressive erection that I brought into existence, which makes me feel proud, powerful, and most of all, excited. I want this, I want him, I want to feel all the things I used to when we were together and it was really good.
I give Alex one last squeeze, then wedge my fingers between his waistband and abs, delighting in the way his muscles contract in response to my touch. Gazing up at him, I lick my lips and murmur, “Let’s go to bed,” then tug him forward, out to that big sleigh bed where I hope neither of us will get any sleep tonight.
CHAPTER 39
“Good morning!” I trill as I walk beneath the pergola where our family’s Sunday brunch is spread out on a long table cove
red with a sunny yellow jacquard tablecloth. “Looks like Chef has outdone himself today. Crème brûlée French toast . . . yum!”
Picking up one of the Versace china plates from Viv’s Butterfly Garden set that’s sitting in a stack at the top of the table, I begin to load up my plate with several pieces of the custardy French toast with its caramelized brown sugar topping, then add some macerated strawberries.
Suddenly materializing at my elbow, Matthew, who appears to be the only member of my grandmother’s staff on brunch duty today, offers, “Powdered sugar?”
“Definitely!” I enthuse, handing my plate to him so that he can sprinkle the confection on top. “I’ll be needing some of that frittata too.” I point at the egg dish with asparagus and tomato that’s too far across the table for me to reach. “And some breakfast potatoes please. Ooooo, maple-glazed bacon!” I grab a couple of sticky strips out of the chafing dish, using my hands, which Viv will probably rebuke me for momentarily.
I take my usual seat, crunching on my bacon, while Matthew sets the piled-high plate in front of me. I’m about to thank him and also ask if there are any lemon poppy seed in that basket of muffins off to my left when I notice my mother eying me like I’m part of a control group she’s studying while Viv is straight up gawking. “Is there a problem, ladies?” I wonder.
“You said you’d be out of town this weekend and couldn’t make brunch,” my mother replies, still gazing at me in a very unnerving way, as if she’s attempting to burrow into my brain and read my thoughts.
I shrug and cut myself a hearty bite of the French toast. “I was able to wrap things up early, so I decided to come home.” And I realized halfway down Route 60 that my fridge is empty except for a bottle of coconut water and some five-day-old takeout Chinese, and dropping in for brunch with the fam seemed like less of a pain than going grocery shopping.
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