by K. A. Linde
Those red lips were calling my name.
I tilted her backward and planted my lips on hers. She wrapped one arm around my neck and kissed me back just as hard. I faintly heard whistles and catcalls at the show we were putting on, but I didn’t care.
This was where we were meant to be.
She pulled away breathlessly and giggled as she tried to smudge the red lipstick off of my lips. “I seemed to have gotten some…”
“There’s no point. I’m just going to kiss you again.”
Her smile brightened the room. “That so?”
“Definitely.”
“Can you two get a room?” Lewis called teasingly.
“Not a bad idea,” I suggested.
Natalie disentangled herself from my arms. “Never a bad idea,” she agreed. “But I do really want to see Chloe. And Lewis knows every word. So, we have to stay for his benefit.”
“Don’t go telling him my secrets,” Lewis muttered.
It was only Katherine who looked put out by the whole thing. Natalie sank into a seat next to her and thanked her a million times over again for the tickets. I was pretty sure that Katherine was regretting this entire evening. I took the seat by Lewis and shook his hand.
“Thanks for hanging with Natalie while I dealt with Katherine,” I told him.
“Hey, no problem. She’s great. You got that all worked out with Katherine?”
“Honestly, I think I made it worse,” I told him.
“You think? That kiss probably made her go nuclear,” Lewis said. “Not your smartest move.”
“Can’t help myself around Natalie.”
“Well, watch out for Katherine. When she gets mad, she fights dirty.”
“I know,” I said, glancing over.
Natalie and Katherine were talking as if they were old friends. All those nasty things Katherine had said about Natalie came to the surface, and anger coursed through me all over again.
“It’s not too late to end this,” Lewis said with a lifted eyebrow.
“I just suggested that, and she wouldn’t bite.”
“Eh, it’ll all be over soon anyway,” Lewis said dismissively.
“Yeah,” I agreed and ignored the unease that shot through me.
Natalie turned back into my side just as the lights dimmed. “That was probably the hottest kiss of my life.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded.
“How about this one?” I asked and then kissed her again. And again. And again.
Actually, the show wasn’t so bad when I got to kiss Natalie on and off through the whole thing.
Natalie
24
“Penn!” I shrieked.
I raced down the hallway and burst into the master bedroom. We’d moved my stuff in before the show, and I’d thought it would take some getting used to. But I already felt completely at home, living in this enormous master suite with Penn. I swore that it was larger than my entire parents’ house.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, appearing out of the bathroom in nothing but a low-slung towel.
I’d discovered he was the kind of guy who went for a run every morning and came back and showered. Apparently, I’d caught him at just the right time.
My jaw dropped. “Holy abs.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that nothing is wrong?”
“Sorry, you are incredibly distracting,” I said with wide eyes.
“Am I now?” he asked, purposefully striding forward.
“Uh…yeah. Just look at you.”
“Me?” he asked. “You’re only wearing my T-shirt.”
I glanced down at myself and laughed. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. But I couldn’t find anything to wear when my agent called this morning.”
“She called? What for?” he asked with excitement in his eyes.
“She read my new manuscript and wanted to gush on the phone,” I said, bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet.
“That’s great! Are you going to submit the new book?”
“She said that she wants to start right away. That she couldn’t get enough and wants to read the rest. She thinks this is the one!”
I did a little jig, and Penn just laughed.
“You’re adorable. This is huge news!”
“I can’t believe it. I mean…it doesn’t really mean anything. Just because my agent likes it doesn’t mean that the publishers will. She liked the last two books and the sample of my road-trip book, but no one bit on anything. So…I don’t know.”
“Okay, hold on. Let’s not sour this,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Your agent loved your new book and thinks it’s the one! That’s a great feeling. We don’t have to think about the next part of the process yet. Just revel in the fact that you are clearly writing in the correct direction.”
“You’re right.” I let the negativity of future rejection fall off my shoulders.
My agent loved it. She wanted to shop it immediately. And she had only seen fifty pages. That was astronomical odds! I’d never gone out on proposal before. Super scary to think about, but I wanted to be happy.
“This is the best news I’ve had in weeks.”
“Then we should celebrate.”
I grinned and gestured to the king bed mere feet from us. “I have a few ideas for how we can celebrate.”
Penn groaned. “I want to sweep you up right now and ravish you, but…”
“But?”
“I have to go into the city for a meeting.”
“Really? Today?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Penn veered into the walk-in closet, and I followed, waiting for that towel to drop. I arched an eyebrow at the goods. “Getting a good enough look?”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a good, long look with my mouth,” I suggested.
His dick twitched at my words. “Maybe we have time for a quickie.”
“Nope. You’re just going to have to wait until after your meeting.”
He moved into my personal space, backing me up into the closet wall. He was an Adonis sculpted out of marble and just as gorgeous. “Do I?”
“Well, you don’t have to,” I said as he stroked me through my thin panties. I tilted my head back and sighed. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Tonight,” he said with a cocky grin as he stepped back and started to get dressed.
“Tonight…what?”
“I’ll be back tonight.”
“You want to make me wait all day for you?”
He slid into a blue-and-white button-up. “I want to have enough time to celebrate your book and to celebrate you. If I took you now, it would be three hard thrusts and a kiss good-bye.”
“I’ll take both,” I said, helping him with the buttons.
“And I’ll give you both,” he said devilishly. “Both tonight.”
“Ugh! You’re killing me.”
“This tie?” he asked with a grin. He held up a navy-blue tie, and I nodded.
“Yes. Everything you wear is hot as fuck. Though I’m not used to the suits anymore. You’re so relaxed here.”
“Honestly, the suits are more who I am. It’s strange, not having to go into the office every day in one. And we had to wear them all through high school as part of our uniform.”
“Well, this is me.” I gestured to my outfit and then remembered I was only wearing his T-shirt. “I mean…whatever. You know what I mean.”
“I know who you are.”
My heart melted.
He finished with his tie and then pulled on the black suit jacket. “I’ll see you tonight. Don’t wear anything you don’t want to get destroyed.”
“Guess I’ll have to be naked,” I said suggestively.
“Perfect. I will see you tonight, completely naked.”
“Deal.”
“You don’t mind watching Aristotle? I can take him to the apartment.”
“Oh no, Totle can stay with me.”
Totle—who, up until this point, had b
een too busy lounging in the sun—trotted into the master bedroom to find out why we were saying his name. His tail wagged, and his ears were all floppy. I scooped him up into my arms and kissed him a dozen times.
“Just you and me today, buddy. You know what that means?” Totle licked my face. “That’s right. All the treats you want, and your dad won’t be here to tell me to stop spoiling you.”
Penn rolled his eyes. “You two are trouble.”
I gave him the most innocent look I could muster. “We’ll behave.”
“Only until I get back,” he said with a wink.
His mouth dropped hard on mine in a lingering kiss that made me want to reconsider letting him leave. How important could this meeting really be? But Penn pulled away, looked back at me once regrettably, and then disappeared. I watched the Audi leave and sighed.
“Now, it really is just me and you,” I told Totle as I let him out onto the back deck.
It ended up being a productive day without Penn. More like what I’d expected every day to be like when I first signed on to the job. I’d met with the decorator and seen the progress in the guest bedrooms. As much as I’d loved the feel of the house before, the decorator was a genius, and I hadn’t even seen the end result. But everything was already so much more modern while still holding on to the traditional aesthetics of the place.
With the motivation from my agent’s call, I managed to write two whole chapters on the new book. Totle and I took a good, long walk on the beach, and I even got in a swim. Thank god the pool was heated because the temperatures were dropping. I knew they’d have to close it down soon, and I wanted to get every chance I could to swim.
While Totle finally fell asleep on the bed, I took a luxurious shower and blew out my long hair. I didn’t normally wear much makeup, but if we were celebrating tonight, I thought it would be worth it. I added the red lipstick he loved so much and then threw on his T-shirt and a pair of sweats while I waited. When I found out what time he’d get back, then I’d strip.
A thrill ran through me at the prospect.
I sent him a text to see if he had an ETA but didn’t get a response.
I shrugged. Maybe he was driving.
My phone buzzed noisily, and I reached for it. My heart sank when I saw it was Melanie and not Penn.
“Hey, Mel. What’s up?”
“Michael and I got back together,” she unceremoniously told me.
“Wait, what? Why?”
Truly, I wasn’t that surprised. Considering how she’d acted when he started texting her and their history, I’d had a feeling she’d go back to him. I just wished that she hadn’t. That she’d been stronger and held him off.
“I don’t know, Natalie. I thought about how I felt when I was in New York with you, but I can’t stay mad at him. He regrets everything that happened with Kennedy, and neither of us is talking to her anymore. I’ve completely cut her out of my life.”
She could do that to her best friend but not to the douche who had broken her heart on a whim.
“Are you sure about this? I mean, he did just toss you aside so easily.”
“He said it was all Kennedy’s idea.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not that naive.”
“I know. I know,” she said softly. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Because I’d tell you the truth.”
“Kind of.”
I laughed. “Well, it’s okay, Melanie. You shouldn’t worry about talking to me about things. I love you. I just want what’s best for you.”
“I know. I really think that Michael is it. We’ve been together so long.”
“I get it,” I lied. Because I didn’t. If a guy ever treated me like that, I’d throw him to the curb so fast that he wouldn’t have even seen it coming.
I let Melanie talk it out. She really just needed someone to listen as she convinced herself that this was the right move. I wasn’t super great at that, but I also knew that I couldn’t change her mind. She was as stubborn as I was. And she didn’t want me to tell her that she was making a huge mistake. Even if she was.
When I finally got off of the phone with her an hour later, I still didn’t have a text from Penn. It was getting late. Already nine o’clock, and I hadn’t heard a peep. Had he gotten stuck in the city?
I debated between sending him a text and letting it lie. He’d said he was coming back tonight and made the plans for us to celebrate. So, it wasn’t like I expected him to stay in the city. But, if I kept sending texts, would I look like a nagging girlfriend? I sighed and decided against it.
Instead, I pulled my computer up and scrolled through Crew while chatting with Amy about Melanie and Michael as I waited to hear back from Penn.
An hour rolled past.
And then another.
No text.
“What the hell?” I grumbled.
I was irritated that I’d put makeup on to sit around the house. This wasn’t how I’d thought tonight would end up.
I shot him another text to try to check in. At this point, I just wanted to make sure that he was alive. He wasn’t the kind of guy who blew off plans and didn’t text. Or at least…I didn’t think he was like that anymore.
Before in Paris, I would have absolutely said he was that guy. But now? After the weeks we’d spent together, I’d actually been thinking he was an upstanding guy. He warred with who he was because of his past, but overall, he was actually one of the good ones.
So, maybe he had gotten into a car accident. Maybe he’d been taken to the hospital, and no one knew to call me. Maybe…
A million other horrible scenarios ran through my mind.
This wasn’t about our missed night. We could have another night. This was worry. That was all this was. Yep. Definitely.
I pulled my phone out and tried to call him. The number went straight to voice mail. I furrowed my brows. Did that mean it was off? Or dead?
Well, shit. I couldn’t get ahold of him like that.
I scrolled through my phone and stopped on the two numbers that I had who might know where he was and if he was okay.
My finger hovered over Katherine, and then I thought better of it and pressed Lewis’s number instead. If Penn was with Katherine, I really didn’t want to know about it.
“Natalie?” Lewis answered. He sounded surprised.
“Hey, sorry about this. I know it’s late.”
“No, no, it’s fine. You can call me anytime. What’s up?”
“I just…Penn went into the city this morning for a meeting. He told me that he’d be back tonight, but I haven’t heard from him all day, and his phone is off. Normally, I wouldn’t think about it, but he definitely promised to be back. I’m kind of worried he might be hurt or something.”
“Shit,” he said. I heard rustling, as if he were moving around. “Sorry about that. That’s my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“After he finished his meeting, we went out for drinks. He told me he had plans, but one drink turned into a bottle. He’s drunk, and his phone is dead. He’s literally asleep on my couch right now.”
“Oh,” I said softly. “Well, I feel stupid.”
A laugh escaped me. I’d really worked myself up to think that something was wrong. I should have texted Lewis earlier, and maybe I wouldn’t have let this worry creep in.
“Hey, don’t feel stupid. I didn’t realize that his plans were with you.”
“Yeah, well, no big. I’ll talk to him tomorrow when his phone charges. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Anytime, Natalie. Anytime.”
I hung up the phone, feeling like a moron. We weren’t dating. I wasn’t his girlfriend. I was the casual sex that I’d offered him. He didn’t owe me an explanation for why he was staying out all night when we had plans.
With a sigh, I grabbed the last piece of cold pizza we’d ordered in the night before from the place in East Hampton that I was now obsessed with. I ate it on the way back to the bedroom t
o snuggle with Totle…alone. Happy celebrating to me.
Natalie
25
My arms viciously cut through the pool. I hadn’t swam like this in a long time. Needing the release of diving into something and not coming up for air. Just me and the water. Slicing through the water, exerting my body to its max, racing my own thoughts. I’d be sore tomorrow, but I didn’t even care. It was the only thing that really quieted everything down.
I was still disappointed about yesterday.
And irritated with myself for being disappointed.
I was the one who had started this casual thing. I had known it was a bad idea. I’d let Amy talk me into it. And then the sex had just been so good.
But I’d be stupid if I said yesterday hadn’t proven just how much the casual thing did not work for me. I’d tried to rationalize. Truth was harder to look in the face.
Truth was…I was falling for Penn Kensington.
I was leaving in a matter of weeks, and I was catching feelings for someone I knew I couldn’t have. Our worlds didn’t connect. Our lives were so far from normal.
I didn’t want to want this. I didn’t want to want him.
It’d be easier if I didn’t.
Easier if I hated him still. If I had never seen him as anything but the asshole who had left me in Paris. So, so much easier.
I came up gasping for breath and saw a figure in a black suit standing over the pool. His hands were in his pockets. He had stubble on his jaw. And he looked like hell.
“Morning,” he said when I looked up at him.
“Nice of you to show up.” I swam over to my water bottle and took a long drink.
“I’m sorry about last night.”
I waved my hand at him. “Why would you be? You don’t owe me anything.”
“Well, I told you I’d be back last night. I made plans with you, and then I broke them. I didn’t even let you know I was breaking them.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like we’re dating.”
“No,” he agreed, “we’re not dating. But I should have called, and now, you’re mad at me.”