Not That Kind of Guy

by ANDIE J. CHRISTOPHER

  His mother looked at him with a twinkle in her eye that he did not trust one bit. It didn’t tell him that she liked his new wife. It said that she believed Bridget was beneath him.

  “I’m going to introduce you to my father now,” Matt said. “I promise it will feel less like an inquisition.”

  Bridget smiled up at him, but she looked strained. He hated to see it.

  * * *

  • • •

  MATT’S FATHER, BRIAN, WAS a treat. He had the same nice smile that Matt had. Though she knew he was a formidable businessman, he had a soft voice and an easy manner. Bridget couldn’t help but see how Matt was formed out of the best qualities of his parents. He was kind and friendly like his dad, but he also had his mother’s sharp mind.

  She hadn’t minded when his mother kind of inspected her as they’d first come in. If she had a son who’d gone off and married his summer-job boss on a wild weekend in Vegas, Bridget would certainly have concerns.

  And when she thought about having a son, she couldn’t help but wonder how any kids she’d have with Matt would be. She hoped they were more like him than her—kind, friendly, flexible. And she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave them. So maybe she wasn’t a flake like her mother after all.

  Everyone sat down to dinner before Matt got to show her around his parents’ beautiful contemporary home. Dinner was catered and delicious, but the whole production made her feel as though she was a guest star on a futuristic version of Downton Abbey.

  After the appetizer was served—tuna tartare with dashi ladled over it—she leaned over to Matt and said, “You have butlers.”

  He smiled at her and she caught a whiff of his smell. “My parents have butlers.”

  “Whatever.” He’d grown up with butlers.

  “There’s a difference, Snookums.”

  Bridget scrunched up her face. “I don’t like that one, either.”

  “I guess I’ll have to keep trying.”

  “Matthew, it’s rude to have a side conversation,” his mother said. Bridget felt that chastisement in her belly and took a long drink of her white wine to quell it. But then Matt’s mother gave her a look that said she was worried about her drinking, and Bridget just wanted to melt into the floor.

  Of course, Naomi—whom she’d been surprised to meet during the cocktail hour—chose that moment to focus on her.

  Bridget had never really competed for a guy. She’d never had to mark her territory over Chris. Everyone in the neighborhood simply knew that he was hers. She’d never had to enforce it. With Naomi’s cold gaze on her, Bridget felt jealousy for maybe the first time in her life. And she realized that she’d been feeling stabs of it since Matt had first mentioned Naomi and their breakup.

  But she didn’t have time to dwell on how she was really unable to deny that she had some very big feelings for the man sitting next to her. She had to focus on how to make this dinner much less mortifying than the dinner they’d had in Vegas that had caused this whole clusterfuck of a sham marriage that just happened to turn convenient.

  Naomi looked at her, and Bridget could only describe her gaze as dead. She had the same blasé look about her that a lot of the cops who should have retired five years ago had. Bridget wondered what tack Naomi was going to take in trying to diminish her in front of Matt’s family. Because that’s what she was going to do.

  “So your brother was the one who wrote the story that got my uncle arrested.”

  Interesting. She was going with the family angle. Probably to paint her as a working-class interloper who just didn’t understand how things functioned among the obscenely wealthy. “I’m very proud of Jack. He won a Pulitzer for that story.”

  Naomi didn’t miss a beat. “And you’re a line prosecutor for Cook County? Didn’t get a job offer from the US attorney’s office?”

  Now she was going for Bridget more directly, insinuating that Bridget wasn’t smart enough to be with Matt. Bridget also noticed that she’d done this during a lull in the conversation. Matt looked ready to say something, but Bridget put her hand on his forearm. She could have gone for the thigh, but she was thinking about saving his thighs for later. And she wanted the whole table to see that she didn’t need him to speak up for her.

  “Well, after my Seventh Circuit clerkship, I had offers to join the US attorneys’ offices in the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of New York, the Northern District of Illinois, and . . .” She paused for effect. “Oh, the solicitor general’s office in DC.”

  “And you turned those down?” This came from Matt’s mom, whom she’d clearly not won over to her side.

  Bridget wasn’t about to tell her the real reason she hadn’t taken any of the very good offers she’d received after her clerkship—Chris hadn’t received any of the same kind of offers, and she hadn’t wanted to outshine him because she was just going to get married, have kids, and drop out anyway. She had the feeling that wouldn’t get Jane to like her any more. So she said, “I can make more of a difference at the local level. It’s much more rewarding to put a rapist in jail than it is to futilely go after white-collar criminals.”

  She looked at Naomi when she said that last part—given her close relation to certain white-collar criminals.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  BRIDGET WAS QUIET IN the car on the way back to her place after dinner. As they’d left, Matt apologized for Naomi’s presence and his mom’s prickliness. She didn’t think he needed to apologize about either thing, and they weren’t why she was quiet anyway.

  No, she was thinking about the crooked smile he’d given her when she put Naomi in her place. The way he’d slung an arm around her shoulders even though that wasn’t the kind of thing one probably did at dinner at his parents’ house. She thought of the way he’d pointedly looked at his mother, with a silent Enough. And she thought about the way that made her feel safe and cared for—and how she hadn’t realized how much she craved that until Matt gave it to her.

  And she was thinking about how she wanted to ask him for more when the car pulled up outside her condo. Her hands were clammy, and her heart was beating fast, but she knew that she’d regret it if she didn’t say what was on her mind.

  “I think we should revise our schedule.”

  He stared at her, and she was about to take it back when he said, “Really?”

  “I think—um—a newlywed sex glow would be nice. I’d like to add it to my skin-care routine.” She was grasping at straws here. After she’d rejected him the other night because she couldn’t get out of her own head, she knew that he wasn’t going to be the one to instigate. Conscious of the driver in the front, the one who definitely wanted them to get out of his car so that he could pick someone else up, she said, “Do you want to come up?”

  “Are you sure?” Matt asked. One of the many things she appreciated about him. He didn’t ask in a patronizing way, as though she didn’t know her own mind. He asked because he wanted to be sure that she was choosing him. He was so remarkably open and vulnerable. Meeting his parents tonight, she’d wondered how he’d gotten that way.

  “Positive.”

  After that, he couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Her hands shook as she tried to retrieve her keys from her purse. To her relief, Matt took the keys and got them in the lock. She might have fumbled for an hour and lost her courage.

  The time in Vegas was different. It was impulsive and friendly and fun. It had given them both something that they needed in a strange moment and an unfamiliar place. It had seemed right to fuck Matt in a Vegas penthouse and have the fond memory of the time she’d done something wild and out of character.

  He’d still been careful to make sure she was on board, but he’d overwhelmed her senses and caught her off her guard. It had been so much that it had almost reinforced her walls in a way.

  This was a choice.

  And
there were feelings now. Big feelings that she couldn’t label “love” if she wanted to actually go through with this. And she also couldn’t not go through with this.

  She had no idea how he’d walked out of her place the week before if he had anywhere near the attraction to her that she had to him. But she was grateful that he did. Back then, a week ago, she would have been overwhelmed by how much she liked spending time with him in combination with how much she wanted to jump him.

  She’d never had that. Her relationship with Chris had been destiny, an inevitability, and a responsibility.

  This was a choice.

  She was choosing to give him a part of herself that no one had ever seen. Just like he’d chosen to show his family in a not-so-subtle way that he was on her team. When they got into her darkened living room, she stopped short and his body pressed up against hers. His hands came around her waist and he lingered. He was hard and part of her wanted him to take her on the floor right where they stood.

  Her passion for him was sort of shocking, really. She’d never thought herself capable of honest-to-God yearning for another person. Had always read romance novels with a hint of skepticism over her mind. Maybe flakes like her mother could really lose themselves in another person, but Bridget wasn’t that weak.

  But, standing in her living room—with a guy she didn’t know if she could get rid of touching her, waiting for him to do more—she wasn’t so sure she knew who she was anymore.

  His mouth was level with her ear. When he spoke, his breath brushed against her skin and sent a shiver down her spine. “What made you change your mind?”

  She wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. “Do you care?” That came out sharper than she wanted it to, but it was out of need. She didn’t want him to make her think about this any more than she already had. She was at that perfect point of knowing that she was probably making a mistake but knowing that she needed to make the mistake. It didn’t make sense, and if wanting him was a crime, she wouldn’t have any defense. “Do you really want to know?”

  “I need to know, Bridget.” No stupid endearment. He was deadly serious. How had she not really seen him until that weekend in Vegas? Her mind had probably protected her from noticing how his fingers might feel as they trailed up her rib cage to rub the bottom of her breasts through her dress and bra. Just like it had protected her from his smile having a direct dial-in line to her libido.

  She’d been smart enough to be blind to his charms while they were still working together, but her brain wasn’t going to let her protect her heart from him permanently.

  This was a choice.

  By changing the rules, she was allowing herself to give in to the greedy need for another person that she’d thought she’d been able to bury.

  “You’re not in love with her anymore, are you?”

  His hands stopped roaming, and he turned her in his arms. “Why are we talking about Naomi?” He found the light switch and she squinted against the overhead light. Kind of a mood killer, but it was her fault for bringing it up.

  “Because I need to know. This feels like it could be a thing, and I need to know.”

  “Is that what the sex schedule was about?” He looked confused. “You didn’t want this to feel real?”

  “You caught me off guard,” she said, acknowledging that this—right here, right now—was a choice for both of them.

  “Same goes. But why now?” He seemed to insist on knowing the answer before they commenced with filthy fun times, so she looked up at him with a smile that she hoped looked wry instead of like she wanted to crawl inside him and never leave.

  “You’re a good man. And I like being with you. And I want to get naked with you and have orgasms. Why do we need to make it any more complicated than that? I was making it more complicated than that, and I don’t want to anymore.”

  It didn’t even take a full second before his mouth was on hers. And a cocktail of relief and lust flowed through her faster than an IV drip. She was so caught up that she dropped her purse on the floor. He broke contact with her mouth to pull her dress up over her head. She was tempted for a second to rip the buttons on his shirt open until she remembered that the shirt was probably terribly expensive, so she fumbled with the buttons as he backed her up to the couch.

  “Ooof,” she said, as he lifted her by the hips and put her body where he wanted it. “That was smooth,” she said when he relented to give her some air.

  “Are you besmirching my prowess?” he asked with a wink.

  She nipped his bottom lip. “I like it. I like everything you did the other time.”

  He finished undoing the buttons of his shirt and pulled it off. She didn’t even try to stop or hold back from running her hands over his chest. And he rewarded her with a soft growl of approval as he looked down at her with a lascivious hooded gaze.

  “I want to do everything you want,” he said. “Tell me everything you’ve wanted to do but never got the chance.” He left the part about “with Chris” unsaid.

  Although she tried to let her mind run free, all she could think about was wanting him all around her, holding her, inside her. She wanted him to never stop looking at her the way he was looking at her right now.

  “I think naked would be a good start.” She bit her lip as she took off her bra. She expected him to go for the fastening on his pants, but he just stared. In that moment, when she felt fumbling and awkward, too anxious that taking too long would make him change his mind, the way he looked at her shifted something inside her brain. With him staring down at her with his thighs straddling her legs like a titan straddling the earth, she believed every little bit of gossip that she’d read on the Internet about him being an international playboy. In that moment, she wished that he was her impossibly sexy husband for real.

  Goodness gracious, it was sexy to have all of his attention on her almost-naked body. She’d never felt wanted like this, and it was heady and intoxicating. She wanted to bottle it up and keep it close for when this all ended in a couple of weeks. After the wedding.

  “Are you just going to look?”

  “I like looking,” he teased, but then he undid his pants and moved off the couch to pull them down. He lifted his chin at her and said, “Panties,” which sent her scrambling as though it was a serious order.

  He crawled back over her body, on her couch, with the overhead light highlighting every freckle and fold, and he looked enchanted.

  He kissed the freckles on her shoulders, and she shivered. Almost purred in pleasure.

  “Turn around.” She jolted a little bit at that. “I want to pull your hair and see this . . .” He grabbed a handful of her ass.

  What he wanted wasn’t kinky in the slightest, but he could make anything they did together seem like the height of decadence. So she arranged herself facing away from him, supporting herself on the back of the couch while she grabbed a condom from his pants—glad he’d been prepared even after the weirdness of the other night. She didn’t care because she’d been lying to herself about not wanting him. Maybe he’d never told himself the same lie, and that was probably why she was falling for him.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have a really cute butt?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder and answered honestly, “Nope.” Chris had never even told her she looked pretty, but she pushed that thought away.

  “That’s a damn shame,” he said as he pushed inside her and gathered her hair in his hand, cupping her skull.

  Damn, he really was smooth.

  After that, she couldn’t think, didn’t want to, just wanted to feel him inside her, breath in the scent of his sweat, and touch herself until she came. And then he came.

  And, after that, she absolutely could not be bothered to get off the couch while he cleaned up. So he carried her over the threshold to her bedroom. And she tried not to think of it as the beginning o
f something because she knew it was definitely the beginning of the end.

  * * *

  • • •

  MATT KIDO WAS FALLING desperately in love with Bridget Nolan, and that was before he spent the night in her bed. This was a huge problem given the fact that she couldn’t seem to meet his gaze when he brought her coffee the next morning.

  “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

  “No.” Bridget shook her head, and it just made her hair cover her face. He liked how messy she looked right now because it was such a contrast to how put together she usually was. Then she winced. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Matt wanted to laugh. The idea that she could have done something wrong the night before was so out of the realm of things he expected to hear. She could have told him that the sky was brown, and he would have been more likely to believe her. But he didn’t laugh. “I think I should be the one worried about that.”

  She looked up at him. “You have nothing to worry about. I’ve just . . . I’ve only been with one guy my whole life. And Vegas was kind of a blip.”

  Oh shit. He should have known. This was sort of a big deal to her. It had been a big deal to him because he loved her, but it was a big deal to her because he was new dick. And she hadn’t had any new dick.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her nose. Her forehead. The freckle right next to the corner of her mouth. “You’re pretty perfect.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I know, and I wouldn’t dare lie to you.” He tried to coax a smile out of her. “You can spot a liar a mile away.”

  That got her to smile. “Do you have to go?”

  Her question hit him in his chest. He did have to go. At that moment, he hated himself for signing up for a seminar that required him to work on a group project in his third year. If he had his way, he would stay here with Bridget, all day. He’d make sure she knew that she was beyond perfect for him. He’d kiss every inch of her body again and again.