“Oh, you are so apple pie and smiles for everyone.”
He sets it on the burner and turns on the gas. “I can be when I have to be,” he says, eyeing me. “When I want something.”
“Because you always get what you want.”
He smiles.
We drink our cocoa, and later we order Chinese and eat it while we watch an Avengers movie on his couch. It’s the most couple-ish thing we’ve ever done. When it’s over, I stretch out and lay my head in his lap. “What should we do now?”
He looks down at me, and for once I can’t read his expression. My belly tightens as his hand slides onto my cheek. He leans down and kisses me, all spicy and sweet; then he kisses the crook of my neck.
There’s no forbidden game to it at all. I’ve never felt so naked with him. We feel like a couple, exactly what we can’t be, for oh-so-many reasons.
“Why do you even need Locke so bad?” I ask, forcing us off the romantic slippery slope. “You have wads of money and your own company.”
He stills. “They have partnerships and trust built up with charitable organizations across the world,” he says. “It’s a lot less hassle to jump through their PR hoops than to set up my own network. Giving is actually more complicated than people think.”
“Well, the Locke people should be grateful. That’s what I think.”
“They’re into image. A strong image attracts the best people and makes them more effective. I can appreciate that.”
“You just don’t want to bother,” I say.
“No.” The tip of his finger traces my jawline. “They’d be especially grateful if I’d worked out the new formula.”
“More gratitude, motherfuckers,” I say.
He chuckles softly. I feel it from his lap. “Yeah, motherfuckers.”
He traces my jawline back the other way, and a strange thrill stirs through me, wonderful and dangerous.
This is nice, I think, and I suddenly want to say it. But I don’t. I can’t.
He touches my right cheekbone. “This is my favorite freckle of yours. My second favorite is the one on your right thigh.” He touches my right thigh. “Here.” His touch is a magic wand, awakening my thigh and nearby pussy.
“I never think about that one.”
“I always do. And there’s another one here at two o’clock from your belly button.” He sets a finger over the spot. My belly undulates under his touch, but it’s his gaze that gets me. “I like every place on you, Lizzie.”
My belly lurches. He’s not doing any kind of look, not playing any sort of game. It’s just him, open and frank.
“I don’t want you to leave,” he says.
“Theo—”
“Please stay.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Unless we decide to make it possible.”
“Don’t. We talked about this. You said you wouldn’t get involved.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to change your mind,” he says.
“I can’t change my mind on an emotion.”
He gazes miserably out the window.
“Please respect that I need this to happen on my own steam. I need you to stop trying to change my mind on it.”
He sighs.
I sit up and touch the inner edge of his right eyebrow. “This is one of my favorite places on you.”
He doesn’t want to play anymore. He just stares out the window, secret thoughts flowing behind stormy gray eyes.
“Your other one whorls perfectly, but this one refuses to whorl. It marches to its own drummer. It’s something you don’t see until you’re really up close. A secret eyebrow rebellion.”
He finally meets my gaze. “Do I need to quash it?”
“Maybe,” I say.
He contracts his brows.
“Still there. You can glower and furrow all you want.” I kiss it. “You’re not the boss of this eyebrow.”
He still looks sad.
“You think you’re the boss of everything,” I add, sliding a finger over his lips, another favorite place. I let my finger linger there, pushing in a little.
He watches me, rebelling along with his eyebrow, refusing to play.
I smile and slide my finger back and forth over his bad-boy lower lip. The energy between us is shifting.
The subtext to our interaction is that if he wants to fuck, he has to do the stern boss thing.
Suddenly he growls and nips my finger. I squeal and pull it out, but he has my wrist. And then he slides his hand around my waist. Because in the end, Theo’s a man with a cock.
He flips me over and presses me down to the couch, holding me still. “Everything always has to go perfectly your way. Is that it?”
“Yes,” I say. Because that kind of is it. “What are you going to do about it?”
He begins undoing my buttons. “I think you know.”
What he does about it is to carry me to his bedroom, and go down on me, and then he plunges into me, thick and hard, breath warm and ragged at my neck.
* * *
I tell myself I shouldn’t sleep over. Lying in his bed, legs and arms twined perfectly with his, I do a positive visualization of myself getting up and gathering my clothes. I picture myself putting my outfit on. I would then grab my phone and kiss him goodbye. And then I’d head down and get a Lyft. Even as I’m drifting off to sleep, I’m picturing it.
I wake up with an inexplicable glow of well-being blazing through me. I open my eyes and meet his.
And I know he was watching me sleep—in a sweet way, not a creepy way.
I love this. I love his eyes on me. My belly does a nervous little twist.
“Good morning,” he whispers, kissing my cheek.
“Good morning,” I whisper back. “Wow.”
“What?”
“Here it is, morning,” I say. “How did that even happen?”
He props his hand on his head, creating folds in his stubbly cheek. He smiles sleepily. “An effect of my amazing, savage lovemaking—”
I smash my fingertips onto his lips, heart squeezing. Is this all too good? Am I getting too close to the fire?
“What are you thinking, baby?”
I’m thinking a man has never made me feel like he does. I’m thinking I want nothing more than to spend the day making him as happy as he makes me.
I slide my fingertip over the bad-boy bump on his lower lip. I’m thinking I would give him anything. It makes me scared as hell.
“I’m trying to decide which microwave-popcorn-of-the-month subscription to order for you,” I say. “I’ve narrowed it down to empty cheesy aroma or whiff-of-buttery-nothingness delight. What do you think?”
He kisses my finger. That’s what he thinks.
I grab his shirt and go to the window, as if I really, really need to see the view.
Thirty-Two
Theo
* * *
She wraps herself up in my shirt and wanders over to the window. The sunrise lights the mussed edges of her pale brown hair, a goddess tipped in flame.
She stands there a long time, gazing out over the park, and I have this sense that she belongs here, that she’s always been here in some impossible way. As if her being here stretches beyond time.
I want to tell her that, but I don’t. One strong shift in the breeze and she’ll disappear like a wisp of fog.
I want to thank her for going to the bridge with me, too. For being who she was there. For listening and saying what she did. Not that she changed anything. I don’t feel absolved, much as she wants me to, but there was this sense—just for a moment—of her sharing the load. Carrying it with me, if only for a little while.
This nameless, faceless woman who was so easy to talk to on the phone is ten times the miracle in person.
What we have is something special, and I feel like she’s killing it with her plans to leave. She’s killing it before it has a chance to grow. I wish she’d see that.
I wish she’d come back to bed, too. I want to kis
s her cheekbone freckle. She smiles in a lopsided way every time I do that—a happy, what-the-heck smile. The eye-rolling version of a smile. The smile of a woman who doesn’t get how hot she is.
Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie, I think.
I reach out. “Get over here,” I growl, giving her the edge she likes, just stern enough so that she can tell herself we’re back to playing wake-up-call girl.
That’s what that jackass Mason did to her—he made her skittish for an honest relationship. Ruined her financially to the point she has to move.
To freaking Fargo.
I’d like to find him and wring his worthless neck.
I can’t let her leave. I just can’t. But for now, I need her back in bed.
I lower my voice to a deep register. “Now.”
She comes. I wrap her up in my arms. I kiss her on the freckle and hold her against me, the clench of a lover, even as my words are cold. “You’re going to stay right here as long as I require your services.”
She snorts.
I require her services on top of me, as it turns out, and then on her knees in the shower.
Eventually we find our way out to the kitchen. I start some coffee and pull her huge bag of sugar out of the cupboard.
“You kept it!”
I crowd her against the kitchen island, growl in her ear. “It has your phone number.” I kiss the shell of her ear. “How the hell else would I call you?” I kiss her neck.
Of course I kept it. It’s so her. So wonderfully, perfectly her.
“Do you have eggs?” she asks. “Veggies?”
“Yeah.” I pull back. “I have eggs and veggies. But I don’t have the stuff for breakfast.”
“You just listed the stuff I’d need to make breakfast.”
“Not so sure about that.”
She slides a finger over my chest, tracing the edge of my left pec through my T-shirt. It’s hard not to grab her and carry her back to bed. She turns me primal in a way no other woman has. Sometimes I barely know myself.
But I fight the caveman urge. I like how she’s touching me. I’ve shunned affection for so many years. Now this woman has me like a beggar.
More, I think.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“Telling me about the bridge.”
My heart soars at this.
She trails her finger down my abs. “And I accept the challenge. I’m going to make an amazing breakfast for you. Right here.”
A few minutes later, we have coffee going, and she’s riffling through my kitchen, disgusted, while I sit on the counter, enjoying the way the long-tail cut of my Oxford brushes against her perfect thighs. She’s all about breakfast, like I knew she would be.
“You have no butter, no oil, no pan.” She spins around to look at me, mystified.
“I told you.”
“What are you doing with the eggs? Poaching them somehow?”
“I thought you were the kitchen expert here.”
“Do you microwave water and poach them like that?”
“You can do that?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes. “You’re not hiding kitchen stuff?”
“What? No. This is all I have. Coffee maker and a blender.”
“Have you been throwing the eggs off the balcony at people? Is that what you use them for?”
“I blend them,” I say. “It all goes in the blender. Veggies. Raw eggs.”
“What? Yuck.”
“Food is fuel. Not recreation.”
“Are you one of those people who wouldn’t eat at all if you didn’t have to?” She holds up a hand. “Don’t answer that. God, at least you’re consistent. What if you want meat? Don’t tell me you put that in the blender.”
“It’s called restaurants,” I say.
She presses her hands to the counter, thinking.
“You’re hot when you’re stymied.” I jump down and slide my hands around her waist.
In the end, my shitty kitchen is no match for her. She poaches eggs in a coffee cup full of boiling water while we wait for a delivery of a loaf of warm rosemary bread from a bakery she has a catering relationship with.
The concierge texts, then comes up with it. And I’ll admit, it smells like heaven. She cuts the bread and toasts the pieces over the gas burner and puts the poached eggs on top.
“Ordering isn’t fair,” I say, biting into the insane deliciousness of the simple meal.
“I know,” she says. “But please. What you’re doing? It’s like those pills that astronauts used to eat for food.”
“Astronauts are efficient.”
“Why don’t you just feed yourself to the worms and get it all over with?” she asks. “That would be even more efficient.”
“Because I have things to do. I have to nail this deal with Locke,” I say. “I need to develop the dehydrated version.”
When I look up, she’s gazing at me sadly. As though what I just said was incredibly tragic.
“We need to get you a few pans,” she says. “Jesus.”
* * *
Women are frequently disgusted with my one-track, workaholic mind. It’s not something I cultivate, but sometimes it works out.
Case in point: the disgust that compels Lizzie to take me to the kitchen store down the block, a store that may as well have sold bagpipes as far as I was ever concerned.
But these are her people. “He doesn’t have any basics whatsoever,” she says to the woman who helps us. “He doesn’t even have a good egg pan.”
The woman looks concerned. “A man needs a good egg pan.”
Apparently, a man needs several good egg pans, a selection of pots, a pepper mill, and the utensils made of the same material as the space shuttle.
She buys an entire kitchen’s worth of stuff—more than we can carry. I have to call Derek to come with the car.
Back up in my kitchen, we start unwrapping things, and she finds a specific place for each and every implement. She holds up a flat metal sheet with an evil grin. “For cookies.”
I go to her. “In what universe?” I kiss her head. “In what universe am I making cookies?”
“Maybe you want to impress some date.”
Everything inside me stills. I know it was a joke, but it’s not funny. That’s not a universe I’m interested in inhabiting. Not unless the date is her.
I kiss her head again.
“Or whatever.” She turns away and picks a place for the cookie sheet. I unwrap more things, and she finds more places.
She’s in the middle of explaining what large utensils go in which drawers when Willow bursts in through the archway, holding the black garment bag in the air. “Are you even planning on trying it on to see if the alterations worked? Dude, you’re going to be on a Jumbotron holding a Locke Award statue and making a speech. You can’t be all—” She freezes when she sees Lizzie there. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
Willow has keys, of course. My doorman knows her. I’ve always been fine with her coming in. She smiles, trying to cover her surprise at finding a woman in my kitchen.
“Hi.” Lizzie’s smile is friendly, but she’s standing straighter, a little standoffish, and in a flash, I see that she’s feeling territorial. I find that I like that.
Willow lays the garment bag over a chair and comes around the island. “Hi! I’m Willow, Theo’s sister,” she says.
They shake. Is Lizzie relieved? I like to think she’s relieved. Willow’s overjoyed that a woman’s here.
Lizzie looks over at me. “So the ridiculous banquet is for you? For you to get the Locke Award? The Locke Award is a big deal!”
“I know, right?” Willow says to her.
“A ridiculous award?” Lizzie says, marveling.
“Is that what he called it?” Willow shakes her head, disgusted.
“You’re giving a speech,” Lizzie says. I see it when things click in her head. “And speeches will be given about you.”
“That’s right,” I say. Speeches will
be given about me. Tales will be told about me.
Lizzie nods somberly. It means everything that she gets it. That she’s with me, at least in this.
“It’s a very huge honor,” Willow says.
Lizzie keeps her gaze on me. We’re our own world.
“I’m off,” Willow says. “I came to drop a few things—”
“No, look at the time,” Lizzie says. “I have to go to work.” She grabs her purse, her jacket.
“Please don’t go on my account,” Willow says.
“I really have to be at work. There are quiches to make. It was great to meet you, though.” She turns to me. “Thanks for…breakfast,” she says in the tone of air quotes.
“I’ll walk you out,” I say, taking her arm, giving her no choice. I walk her through the foyer to my elevator and hit the button for her.
She turns to me. “It’s a huge honor. Even though I know you’d rather get poked in the eye with a stick. Or have people sitting there flipping you off.”
“I would so prefer it.”
“You’re terrible.”
I touch her collar. My affection feels bigger than my heart. Bigger than me. “Come with me,” I say. “Be my date. Be the one there that flips me off.”
“I can’t, Theo.”
“Because of our fuck buddies thing?”
“Um…yes?”
“Screw it. You’re leaving in two weeks.” I pull her to me, slow and hard, whisper into her ear. “Rules were made to be broken.”
She snorts, as if I’m being ridiculous.
“Come. It’ll be a delicious dinner if nothing else—that’s what everyone keeps telling me. They say Locke knows how to put out a damn fine spread.” I kiss her ear. “There will probably be lavish desserts. And then you can sit in the audience and flip me off.” I kiss her neck and draw back, look her in the eye. “Be the one person who’s with me, really, really with me.”
She shakes her head. “Theo.”
“I’ll get that Funny Face dress back for you.”
The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl Page 22