Suddenly Dating (A Lake Haven Novel Book 2)

by Julia London

  The jury was in—Lola did casual sex about as well as she bowled: terribly.

  When they arrived at the lake house, Lola walked into the living room, dropped her purse beside some clothes on the couch that she hadn’t finished folding, and turned toward the kitchen. She sagged when she saw it. It was a wreck. “I forgot all about it.”

  “Come on,” Harry said behind her, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s knock it out.”

  She much preferred to knock out a bucket of wine—that was her go-to response after a day with her mother—but Lola followed Harry into the kitchen and started in on the cleanup.

  It didn’t take much time with two of them, and there was only a bit of washing left to do. Harry picked up a towel. She handed him a pot, and Harry asked, “What about Will?”

  “Will?” she asked, startled.

  “That’s his name, right?” Harry asked. “Your ex? Are you over him?”

  Lola stared down at the soapy water, recalling the day they’d met at the café. “I am so over him.”

  Harry put the dry pan down and picked up the second. “How do you know? What’s the cosmic sign that says, I am over this guy, or this relationship has changed and it’s not what I thought it was?”

  Lola could feel the shame in her cheeks rising up at just the memory of how hopeful she’d felt the last time she’d seen Will. She snorted.

  “What’s funny?” Harry was smiling, as if he expected a joke.

  “Nothing, trust me. That is unless you find total naïveté funny. You want to know how things have definitely changed, Harry? That you don’t feel the way you used to? When the puppy appears—that’s how.”

  He smiled with confusion. “You’ll have to elaborate.”

  Lola told him about the last time she’d seen Will. It was something she’d tell a friend like Mallory, or Casey. But telling Harry made her feel ridiculous. It made her look ridiculous. She wasn’t even sure why she told him, other than she felt like unloading. And there was something about Harry that she trusted on an almost primal level. She must, because she told him the whole ugly truth. About getting dressed up, about thinking this was it, that Will had asked to meet her to apologize. She told him how she hoped he would ask her to take him back, because part of her really wanted to be Will and Lola again. “But what he wanted was for me to take a puppy.”

  Harry’s expression of sheer horror reaffirmed what Lola’s siblings had said—Will was the worst. “The sad thing is, if he’d apologized, I probably would have taken the puppy,” she said, trying to make a joke of it.

  Harry didn’t laugh.

  Well, of course not. Lola was very good about laughing off her deep hurts, pretending to the world that they weren’t so deep, that she was okay—it was hard for her to let other people see her pain. She never felt entitled to it. Yet even she could recognize the puppy story was god-awful, a glimpse into a relationship that had gotten terribly unbalanced along the way.

  “Are you okay?” Harry asked, and put his hand on her back. “I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m over it, I really am. I learned a lot from my marriage, like how you never really see all sides of a person. I mean, you can believe you know someone so well, inside and out, and then suddenly a new facet pops up from nowhere, and you never saw any hint of it. And you’re so confused how you might have missed that side, how you could sleep with someone and never see that side, and the next thing you know, you’re trying to make sense of the whole fucking world.” She threw the washcloth into the water and braced her hands against the sink. “It just makes me so furious that I fell for it. That I let my hope convince me it was something it wasn’t. Hope is for idiots.”

  Harry gingerly stroked her head. “Maybe that’s part of making sense of the world.”

  She nodded. “You’re right!” She pulled the towel free of his hold and dried her hands. “Just look at me now, Harry Westbrook. I’m in East Beach, living illegally in someone’s house, writing a book like I know what I’m doing, and sharing benefits with a roommate who wasn’t even supposed to be here. See? The world is making sense again.”

  Harry grinned. He pulled the towel from her hand, tossed it onto the counter, and then settled his hands onto her waist. “You know what I don’t get? How a man could be such an asshole to you.”

  Harry didn’t put any particular emotion in those words—it was just an observation. Nonetheless, those words moved like rockets through Lola’s heart. “That is very kind of you to say right now,” she said, smiling lopsidedly. “But in fairness, it takes two, and I—”

  “Don’t say another word,” he said, touching his finger to her lips. “I like my fantasy of rooming with the world’s most perfect little lunatic. Don’t spoil it for me.” He kissed her.

  “What are you doing?” she muttered against his mouth.

  “Collecting my roommate benefit,” he muttered back. “You owe me.”

  “I do?” Lola closed her eyes and sank into his kiss.

  “Yes, absolutely. I helped you clean up this mess. I’ve never seen anyone treat a kitchen like you do. There ought to be a kitchen support group.”

  Lola slid her hands around his neck. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you owe me?”

  “Oh yeah? For what?”

  “Give me a minute,” she said, and smiled. “Okay, I’ve got nothing. I just want you to owe me so I can collect.” She rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his, very lightly, very softly.

  Harry drew a deep breath, cupped her head, and kissed her with a little more urgency. That kiss struck Lola like a bolt of lightning. A million thoughts of why casual sex was really a bad idea in so many ways flitted about her brain like butterflies, but a big net of sheer want swept them up and deposited them in some dark corner.

  Lola caught Harry’s collar in her fist and pulled him closer, pressing her lips to his, trying to pull him down, right there on the floor, so that she could have her way with him.

  “I thought we agreed—I do the choreography,” he said into her hair, and suddenly lifted her up and put her on the countertop and moved between her legs, bracing his arms on either side of her.

  “Did we agree? Because I have some moves, too.” She took his face in her hands and angled her head, kissing him thoroughly, exploring him with her tongue. Harry grabbed her hips and yanked her into his body; she could feel his erection, hard and insistent against her.

  She moved her mouth to his ear and nibbled his earlobe.

  A groan rumbled in the back of Harry’s throat; he picked her up, and Lola locked her legs around his back. Somewhere, a pan and something metal clattered to the floor as Harry twirled her around and pushed her up against the fridge. He was kissing her wildly, devouring her. Lola sank her fingers into his shoulders to hold on. She was overwhelmed with his touch and his scent, and so quickly turned on that she was beginning to pant. She forgot about everything, forgot they were roommates, and her mother, and the novel she was writing. She forgot about everything in the world except this man holding her, biting her nipple through her shirt. This man wanted her, and she wanted him back in the most desperate way.

  “Couch,” she said breathlessly.

  “Bed,” Harry countered, and still holding her wrapped around his waist, moved in the direction of her room as he continued to kiss her. They slammed into the door frame—Lola’s head took the brunt of it—and then stumbled over something on her floor. He tossed her down onto her unmade bed, and with one sweep of his arm, sent most everything on top of the bed—shoes, her purse, some papers and a notebook—onto the floor.

  She was going to regret this, Lola thought as he yanked at her jeans, pulling them off her body. Tomorrow, she would be confused and wondering if they were a thing now. But it was too late—she’d dived in with all her emotions and yearnings and pheromones firing left and right and pinging off the walls. She assisted when he lifted her up to remove her shirt and bra. She closed her eyes
as her hands wandered his chest, now wonderfully bare. She could feel her lips stretch in one very happy smile as he kicked his pants off, felt her smile grow wider when he planted his lips on her abdomen.

  There was no going back to roommates, Lola thought dreamily as Harry took her breast into his mouth. This was too good, and it went too deep. She felt like she was shimmering as Harry’s hands ran wild over her body, her bare breast, her thighs . . . and then deeper, into the folds of her body.

  She mindlessly scraped her fingers down his arms and chest, over his hips.

  Harry suddenly came up for air and touched his damp forehead to hers. “This can’t be right.”

  “What?” she asked, suddenly frantic that he was going to stop. “Because you can’t do casual sex, either?”

  “Huh? No! Because it shouldn’t be this freaking hot.”

  “Do you want me to open a window?”

  “I am talking about you, Lola. Us.” He rolled over, pulling her to straddle him. “You’re killing me.” He put his hands on her hips and lifted her up, and Lola’s heart fluttered wildly. She slid her hands down his slate of an abdomen and took him in hand.

  “Do you have a condom in the cyclone debris?” he asked roughly.

  She reached for her cosmetics bag, still on the bed, and frantically dumped the contents beside them. Lipsticks and mascara rolled down to nestle in Harry’s side. A tube of ChapStick, a mint she’d picked up at some restaurant, a Fitbit she could never remember to latch onto her waistband, and a tampon scattered across the sheet. She dug into a small interior pocket and produced a condom whose wrapper was turning brittle with time and held it up triumphantly.

  “Give me that thing,” he said, grabbing it from her hand, and in a flurry of sheets and flying tubes of lipstick, he slipped it on, then grabbed Lola’s head between his big hands and kissed her again. But this kiss was different; it was slower. Deeper. It wasn’t the frenzy with which they’d started this beneficial meeting, but much more reverent. As if it meant something.

  Oh, God, her heart was pounding now—did it mean something to him? He returned his attention to her breasts, and Lola lifted herself up and slid down onto him.

  “Damn,” he groaned as she began to move on him. Harry put his hands on her thighs, anchoring her, and began to move with her. When he looked into her eyes, Lola saw the same fire that burned deep inside of her, beneath all her baggage. She began to move faster, and the spark in Harry’s eyes seemed to grow brighter and brighter as she slipped closer and closer to release.

  He suddenly flipped them over, onto her back, and began to push deeper into her. His gaze was locked on hers, and he didn’t look away, didn’t lose himself in the throes of ecstasy. He kept looking at her eyes.

  Why did everything suddenly seem so serious? So fraught with meaning? All of the emotions she had been careful not to let loose were clamoring to get out of her, to envelop this man.

  Lola closed her eyes, tried not to let feelings of tenderness and affection interfere with a really good orgasm. But it was too late—Harry rocked into her, pushing her over the edge, and Lola cried out with her release and with all the unattended desires she had promised herself to never let see the light of day.

  Harry growled and thrust into her once more, joining her beneath her blanket of bliss.

  Lola had nothing left; she was jelly. She wrapped her arms around his head, sighing with great contentment.

  “God . . . you slay me,” he muttered against her breast.

  At least that’s what Lola thought she heard. “What?”

  “Nothing, never mind,” he said, and lifted his head. “I have an idea—let’s go skinny dipping.”

  She wanted to ask him what that meant, that she slayed him. She wanted to attach the proper gravitas to it without going overboard as she was wont to do, so she could remember it again and again. But Harry was already moving. “Come on, don’t you want to?”

  Lola wanted so many things in that moment. She wanted love, she wanted babies, she wanted stability and someone to love her and a life to look forward to, and more sex like this, a lot of sex like this, and a new lipstick because she was pretty sure that tube was now smeared on her sheets—but she was at a loss to say any of those things.

  Harry looked at her, expecting an answer, and she was too afraid to say she wanted more, too afraid of the rejection, the look of impatience on his face and the listen, we need to talk denouement of their fling. “Are you reading my mind?” she blurted. “I swear I was just thinking the same thing.”

  He grinned. “What, then, do I need to get the wheelbarrow to get you out there?” He hopped off the bed.

  Lola hopped off, too.

  Whatever she was feeling, she would bury. She was a pro at that.

  Twenty

  Harry didn’t see much of Lola the week after that mind-blowing Sunday. He left early and arrived home late, having run into another obstacle when his crew accidentally cut through a main water line.

  She left him notes. There’s a hunk of lasagna in the fridge for a hunk. And Mallory and friends are coming over tomorrow for yoga on the terrace. Bring an open mind and your mala beads.

  He responded. Thanks so much for the hunk of lasagna. You might have saved me from extinction. And As much as I would love to watch you doing yoga, I have no idea what mala beads are. Plus, I have to repair a water line.

  He didn’t see much of her . . . but they managed to find their way into each other’s bed at night. “Where have you been?” she asked him one night when he slipped in between her sheets.

  “I’ve been in water main hell,” he said. “Ouch—what is that?” he asked when something sharp dug into his hip.

  “Hey, don’t break my flash drive,” she said, sliding her hand under him.

  “I’ve got a flash drive for you, baby,” he said, and gathered her up in his arms.

  The sex between them was fantastic. Harry was too tired to analyze why it was so fantastic, but he knew innately that the spark between them was not anything he’d experienced before. At least not as sharply or intensely as this.

  One night he came home to a dark house. Lola was not at home, and after he showered, he collapsed into bed. He was awakened by the pleasantly soothing sensation of a caress. “You’re snoring,” she said softly. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “Have any ideas?” he asked groggily.

  “One or two,” she said, and slid down his body and took him in her mouth.

  On yet another night, he arrived home very late—half past midnight—and found her in the kitchen, sleepily tapping away at her laptop.

  “Wow,” she said, taking in his grimy shirt, his soiled jeans, his caked work boots. “Were you working in the dark?”

  “Site lights,” he said. Another expense he hadn’t counted on.

  “You should take a dip in the pool,” she said. “The water is really warm.”

  “That sounds like a great idea. Will you join me?” he asked, holding out his arm.

  Lola grinned and stood up. She opened her bathrobe to reveal a new, very sexy bathing suit. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  It was a warm, humid night, and they ended up at the side of the pool, their arms folded over the pool’s lip while the rest of their bodies floated. They gazed out at the lights on Lake Haven. They talked companionably—Lola had hit a rough patch on her book, and wasn’t sure if Sherri was going to kill again before Lola allowed the detective to figure a few things out. Harry told her about the nightmare of the water main, and how it was draining his bank account. It felt nice to talk about it without a debate over whether or not he was doing the right thing by starting this company.

  And yet, a tiny part of Harry had begun to wonder if he was doing the right thing. It seemed as if every step forward was met with two blows to knock him back.

  When Harry wasn’t with Lola, he thought of her. A lot. At weird times, too, like he was a fourteen-year-old all over again. When one of his subcontractors w
as reviewing the blueprints with him, Harry was thinking of Lola. When the drainage pipe repair cracked within twenty-four hours, he thought of Lola. On the long drive to and from work, he made himself crazy by reliving those nocturnal moments in her arms.

  If he could trust himself to be objective about this sudden dating thing, he would say there was something happening within him that he hadn’t quite plumbed. He was intrigued by that notion in some ways, confused in others. It felt a little like he was turning over on himself; old notions about life and goals were suddenly on shaky ground, and new what-if scenarios were popping up in his head. He didn’t fully understand these thoughts, and moreover, he didn’t want or need the entanglement of a relationship or relationship angst right now . . .

  Wasn’t that exactly what had happened with Melissa? Hadn’t putting his career first cost him the woman he meant to marry? Didn’t he need the time now to get his company off the ground, and then think about issues like life and marriage? Yes, he needed that time. And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about Lola.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her so much that he’d stopped noticing the state of the lake house. One day it was tidied up, the next day a wreck. She even washed two of his shirts and said in the note she left that they’d mysteriously appeared in her laundry basket. He could only imagine how that had happened in the way she tossed clothes around, then gathered them up. But in return for her thoughtfulness, he picked up the kitchen one night and made sure he programmed the coffee machine before he left.

  He worked Saturday with his crew. The general contractor on the project was breathing down his neck about all the delays. Harry had calculated that what he would make on this job—assuming it was clear sailing here on out—would barely cover what he’d put into it. For the first time since embarking on a career in civil engineering, Harry’s doubts were growing. He had yet to make any money building bridges and had done nothing but pour money into it. If he didn’t get a shot at contracting soon, he wasn’t sure where he was going to end up.