And there was the part where he smelled inexplicably good. She leaned in and took another sniff, not even bothering to be subtle about it.
“How did he propose to you?”
“What?” She shook her head. What did that have to do with anything? And weren’t they back to normal—i.e., fighting?—now that she had insulted his mother?
“Humor me. I just want to know how he proposed.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, debating whether to set herself up for his scorn. Well, why not? She probably couldn’t sink any lower in his estimation. “He didn’t—well, not really. I basically told him last year that I expected him to propose at Christmas. Honestly, I’d gotten tired of waiting.” I was on a schedule. But she didn’t say that part—that sounded stupid now, even to her. “So I just laid down the law. I thought he might do it in front of the tree or something. But then one morning at breakfast the week before Christmas, one day when he was going to do some shopping, he said, ‘Do you want to come with me and pick out a ring?’”
“That was it?”
She didn’t miss the derision in his voice, but she thought maybe it was directed at Mason and his lame proposal and, for once, not at her—which seemed odd because Dax was decidedly not the romantic type. On account of the fact that he was too busy being the jerk type. “Um, yes, I guess that was it.”
“And did you go pick out a ring? At the mall, I suppose?”
She looked down at her hand. All this time, all this drama, and she hadn’t realized she was still wearing the engagement ring. “Oh my God.” She tried to twist it off, but her fingers must have swollen on the hot afternoon because it didn’t budge. “I can’t get it off.” Frantic, she planted her left elbow on the bar and tugged with her right hand but still couldn’t dislodge it. “I have to get this off!” The ring might as well have been around her neck. That little band of platinum was suffocating her as surely as a noose would have.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Dax gently tugged her arm until it lay flat on the bar. He gave her hand a squeeze, and the pressure of his touch was somehow soothing. Her heart slowed a bit. “Want me to try?” She nodded, and he picked up a napkin and blotted her finger on both sides—the condensation from her beer bottle had made her hand a little damp. Then he laid his fingers at the base of her ring finger. His touch was featherlight, but she almost gasped at the contact. The ring started to move. Was he a Jedi master or something? That thing had been good and stuck. Slowly, slowly, he slid it up, pausing slightly to work it over her knuckle. Warmth was pooling in her chest and, embarrassingly—hello, this was Dax!—between her legs. Man, Mason had done a number on her. She had temporarily lost her mind. But probably she could blame the booze. Note to self: never go drinking with Dax again.
He set the ring on the bar in front of them and she stared at it, trying to get her shit together. It was beautiful in its way. She had picked it out, after all. But lying there in the dim light of the bar, the emerald-cut stone and shiny platinum band looked so…common. Like something you’d see on every third Pinterest board of women her age. She took a deep breath. “Well, a man removing a ring from my finger was not how I’d imagined this day going.” She’d been going for levity, thinking a bit of self-deprecation would pierce the weird, thick awareness that crackled between them. But instead of wry, it came out sounding sad. Pathetic.
Dax cleared his throat. “My point earlier, which I stand by, is that Mason is a tool. What kind of idiot proposes over cereal? Even I, who will go to my grave never having proposed to anyone, know better than that. And you know what? Mason is not just a tool. He’s a boring tool. You might be a lot of things, Ms. Morrison, but boring isn’t one of them. So Mason left you—so what? You didn’t really lose anything.”
He might as well have punched her. Because although he was, as usual, mistaken, he’d managed to get right to the heart of the matter with that last comment. “I have, though,” she squeaked, appalled at how her voice came out sounding like she’d just inhaled the helium from one of the Canada Day balloons hanging above the bar. “I’ve lost everything.”
“Okay, that’s just patently not true. You’ve lost this guy, Dr. Vajayjay, whom I believe we’ve already established you’re better off without.” Dax’s voice dripped with disdain, and Amy wanted to point out that it was he who’d established that she was better off without Mason. She had murmured nary a word of agreement on the topic. But on the other hand, she hadn’t exactly jumped to Mason’s defense, so perhaps that was telling. “So I fail to see how you can say you’ve ‘lost everything.’” He made air quotes with his fingers before wrapping them around his beer bottle and taking a long pull.
The truth wasn’t very flattering. But hey, if ever there was a time to engage in some ruthless introspection, it was just after being jilted. And if you were already talking to a dickhead who disliked you, what was a little more ammo?
“I had this idea of our future, see?” Her voice had lost that squeaky quality, but it was still a lot shakier than she would have liked. She cleared her throat. “I started dating Mason when I was twenty-two. Last year of college. It felt like the last big decision I would make. Once I made it—once I chose him—it was like I was settled on a certain path.” She sighed. There was no need to fill in the details: the boy and girl—Irish twins, because you might as well get it over with all at once. The house in ritzy, old-money Forest Hill. The weekend cottage on Lake Muskoka. But she wasn’t as shallow as that sounded. It wasn’t about the stuff. It was about the life the stuff signified. There were also birthday parties for the kids, bake sales, neighborhood book clubs. It was hard to think of a way to sum it all up. “I have the career thing covered,” she finally said, aware that he was waiting for her to continue. “And until a couple hours ago, I thought I had the family part nailed down, too.”
“Yeah,” Dax said. “But Mason. He was so…dull.”
Some switch inside her chest flipped, and she started to sob. It was that same feeling that had railroaded her in the elevator, the sense that everything had been yanked away from her with no warning. The night before, she and Mason had parted ways all lovey-dovey. She had gone to her parents’ for the night. She hadn’t been able to sleep imagining their life together. She’d fancied herself an astronaut, wakeful the night before liftoff.
And then it was over. And not even because there was someone else, apparently. Because Mason didn’t love her anymore. Because she wasn’t enough. Because her vision of their shared future had been insufficient.
This was worse than in the elevator, though. It was one thing to lose your shit, quite another to lose your shit in front of Dax Harris. She couldn’t look at him as a pit of embarrassment opened in her stomach. So now she was sobbing and mortified—lovely. She might as well just quit her job because there was no way she could face him in the office after this.
“Sweetheart.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, and it had the effect of halting her tears immediately. That, and it scared the hell out of her. She could deal with Dax’s disdain—she’d been doing it for years—but she couldn’t handle his pity.
So she shrugged his arm off, shivering at the loss of what had actually been a not-unpleasant sensation, and said, “Don’t call me sweetheart.” Then she took a long drink of her beer. “This is good.” She held up the bottle to examine it. She hadn’t paid any attention when he’d ordered.
“That’s because it’s not that light beer crap you usually drink.”
She swiped her tears and smiled. That was more like it. “I’m going to the bathroom for a sec. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be right here.” He caught her eyes in the mirror behind the bar. “Sweetheart.”
…
Goddamn. Amy Morrison was a hot mess. Emphasis on the mess part. No, emphasis on the hot part. Well, it was a tie. Dax blew out a breath, feeling a little like he was in the eye of a storm. Hurricane Amy part one had passed, and he was hunkering down for part two. Who knew which version of her was going to come
out of that bathroom? The brokenhearted girl who didn’t yet see that her asshole ex had stopped her from making a huge mistake, or the maddening little tart who thought she could just lean in so close she was practically on his lap. She smelled like strawberries, for fuck’s sake. Had that always been the case and he just never noticed, or was that some kind of special wedding perfume bullshit?
He sighed. Contrary to what she thought, he wasn’t a total cad. She brought out the worst in him. Really, he was just a partial cad. Anyway, he couldn’t have just stood there, watching her sob in her office. So a drink at Edward’s, the office watering hole, had seemed the logical thing to suggest.
But now what? Was he going to be stuck babysitting all evening while his charge got drunker and drunker and overshared about Dr. Vajayjay? But since she and Mason lived together, it wasn’t like she could just go home. Maybe he could put her into a cab to her parents’ house, or even to Jack’s. Jack and Cassie could deal with her.
He had just pulled out his phone when he spotted her, weaving across the bar toward him.
The red lips were back.
She’d cleaned herself up in the bathroom, and now “hot” was definitely winning out over “mess.”
“My phone is going insane,” she declared, crashing into him as she overshot her stool. He was forced to bring his hands to her upper arms to right her. It was impossible not to notice how smooth they were, how ridiculously soft. As soon as she was safely upright, he dropped them like hot potatoes.
“Cassie is trying to hold them off.”
“Them?”
“Everyone. My parents. My brother. Everyone’s trying to find me.” She grabbed her beer bottle and drained it. “That can’t happen. I gotta get out of here.”
“Where do you want to go? I’ll put you in a cab.”
Eyes narrowed, she looked around the bar like she was casing the joint. “Not where. Who.”
“Excuse me?”
“Is this dress too obviously a wedding dress?” She looked down at herself. “I don’t think so, right? Ha! Finally vindicated in the nontraditional choice that gave my mother the vapors!” She scanned the room. “I’m going to pick up a guy.” Her eyes lit on a pair of fortysomething men on the other end of the bar, and she tilted her head, considering.
A hot jet of anger shot through him. “Like hell you are.”
Still-narrowed eyes turned on him. “You are not the boss of me.”
“You’re drunk.” He picked up the engagement ring that was still lying on the bar and tried to hand it to her. “It’s your wedding night.”
She recoiled from the ring like Superman facing kryptonite. “It’s not my wedding night. Haven’t you been listening? That’s the whole point.”
He didn’t miss the little hitch in her voice. She was putting on a brave front. But she was drunk. And delusional if she thought he was going to sign off on her going home with some random guy in her current state. He hadn’t missed the looks she’d been getting. The stockbroker types who frequented this bar thought she was with him, which was the only reason she didn’t have a lineup of them vying for the job of taking her home.
“I’ve been with Mason since I was twenty-two. That’s seven years, Dax. Do you know what that means?”
He pocketed the ring. He’d give it back to her later. She couldn’t be trusted now not to throw it away or give it to a stranger. Not that he thought Mason deserved it back, but she should at least pawn it and fly off to Vegas with her girlfriends or whatever women did in situations like this. “I see what you’re saying, but—”
“That means,” she said, pounding the bar for emphasis, “that I haven’t had sex with anyone but Mason for seven years. Almost my entire twenties.” She lowered her voice. “He cheated on me once, you know.”
“What?” There was the rage again, but stronger this time. His fist twitched like it had a mind of its own and wanted to punch someone. “And you were going to marry him anyway?”
“We worked through it,” she said. “It was a long time ago. My point is that it’s my turn.” More bar pounding. “My turn. And, conveniently, I find myself suddenly single.” She got up and moved over a stool, leaving an empty one between them as she surveyed the bar again. “Stop cramping my style.”
“I can’t argue with your logic, but you’re drunk.” And ten minutes ago, you were sobbing. “You can’t trust these guys. These are bankers, stockbrokers.”
She aimed a megawatt smile at one of the bankers in question as she answered him under her breath. “So bankers aren’t as trustworthy as, say, doctors? Or software CEOs? Is that what you’re saying?”
He moved over onto the empty stool. “I’m saying that if you’re looking for a hookup, you need someone you can trust. And you can’t trust these guys, not with your judgment impaired.”
She swiveled, a finger raised, which he assumed she was going to shake at him. Instead, she froze with it aloft. “You’re right.” She tilted her head as if pondering a great riddle. “Who can I trust? That is a very good question.” Scrunching up her nose, she said, “I’m going through my mental Rolodex of male acquaintances here. Unfortunately, they’re all either from the office or they’re Mason’s friends.”
“You can trust me,” he said, meaning you can trust me to protect your goddamn virtue and get you out of this pit of vultures intact.
That, apparently, was not what she heard, though, because the finger was back, and this time it landed squarely in the middle of his chest. “Yes,” she said, a slow Cheshire Cat smile blossoming.
The single syllable sped up his heart and caused him to hold his hands up like she was mugging him. Holy shit, she was drunker than he’d realized. Of course, he thought about having sex with Amy Morrison pretty much every time they had a conversation—or, more accurately, a fight. He assumed that was normal. She had that effect on human males. But the sight of her outright offering herself to him, the idea of those red lips beneath his own—Jesus Christ, it was almost too much to bear. “No, no,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s perfect, though!” she exclaimed, slurring a little. “You’re a total womanizer, and we pretty much hate each other, so it’s not like it’s going to get weird the morning after.” She threw her head back and laughed. “And it’s not like I’m in any danger of doing what I did with Mason, imagining a whole future, naming our grandkids and all that.” Then her laughter stopped abruptly as she sought his eyes in the mirror behind the bar. “You’re the opposite of Mason. The antidote.” When he didn’t say anything, she floated her hand over and rested it on his forearm, her gaze still locked on his in the mirror. “Take me home and make love to me, Dax.”
His arm was on fire under her hand. Turing the tables on her, he shook off her hand and grabbed it with his own, pressing it down on the bar. Without breaking their eye contact in the mirror, he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I don’t make love, sweetheart. I fuck. If I take you home, I’ll fuck the living daylights out of you in a way I guarantee Mason never has. You won’t even remember his name when I’m through with you.”
Chapter Three
Dax wasn’t planning on making good on his threat. Apparently he’d grown a conscience when it came to Amy. Who knew? A week ago he had “forgotten” to tell her about the Lakefront Centre’s annual fire drill. When everyone else had vacated in advance on the elevators, she’d had to walk down forty-nine floors in her heels. Yet now he was, apparently, her goddamned protector. Because although she would never believe it, he did have some principles. Well, one: consent was essential, and since consent couldn’t reliably be given when under the influence, he made it a practice to deflect the advances of any woman more than a little tipsy.
Still, there were usually plenty of suitably sober alternate candidates if he was in a bar doing his principled deflection, so if he was looking for companionship, he generally found it. So taking a girl home and planning not to fuck her? Especially one who, as she doggedly snuggled against him in
the cab, rubbing her bare legs all over his jeans, was so eminently fuckable? This was new territory. Which was why, instead of taking Amy to his condo, which was just a few blocks from the Lakefront Centre, they had cabbed to the ferry docks. In addition to taking a lot longer, the boat portion of the trip would cool them both off. Even in the heat of summer, the evening air on the lake was chilled.
“What are we doing?” Amy asked, trailing behind him as they lined up for the next boat. It was late enough that the Canada Day hordes making the crossing were already across. He glanced at his watch. The fireworks would start soon.
She pouted as he paid for her ticket and flashed his own pass. “I thought you were taking me home.”
“I am.”
Her eyebrows shot up in an adorable caricature of surprise. “You live on the island? I thought you had a condo on Front Street.”
“I do. That’s my public-facing house. I actually live on Ward’s Island.”
She snorted. “Your public-facing house? What are you, the White House?”
Ah, there was the prickly Amy he knew. Maybe she was sobering up. His dick stirred at the thought.
“Having to ferry back and forth can be a pain, and they don’t run all night. And the island houses are tiny. So I keep the downtown condo for if I work late or have parties. But the island is home.”
Her phone pinged again, which it had been doing since they left the bar. She looked at the incoming text and scowled.
“Besides, they’ll never find you there.”
She looked up from her phone. “That is a very good point.” Then she grinned. “And anyway, I’ve always wanted to see the islands.”
“You’ve never been to the islands? Not even Centre Island?” he said, naming the biggest of the connected islands that dotted Toronto’s inner harbor, the one with the amusement park, public beaches, and bike rentals that drew crowds of day-trippers from the mainland.
“Nope!” she said. “I always wanted to go, but Mason’s med school schedule was impossible.”
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