Friends to Lovers (Aisle Bound)

by Barth, Christi

  “I am partial to vanilla pudding.” Gib swallowed a laugh. He could practically see the cogs turning in her head, trying to figure out how to make him crack. This felt more like a strategic chess match than a seduction. Either way, he was having scads of fun.

  Daphne shifted until she knelt on her chair. She squinted for a second, as though trying to get a read on a wary target. After hitching in a quick breath, she picked up the goblet. “Tip your head back and close your eyes.”

  “Why?” Last summer, after working nine days straight during the political convention, he’d fallen asleep on her couch during an Iron Man marathon. Her soft heart allowed him to nap there for four hours, undisturbed. Her wicked streak, however, woke him up by pouring a tumbler of ice water over his head. Gib was no fool, about to fall for the same trick twice. “Play nice, Daph.”

  “It’s Daisy,” she corrected. Her shirt slid off one shoulder as she raised her arm to bring the goblet nearer. Suddenly there was a whole lot of creamy skin a breath away from his face. The long, perfect line of her neck, the hollow of her collarbone—on any other woman, he’d be unable to resist the urge to map a trail of kisses along it. Gib gripped the edges of his chair. Hard. And thanked God he’d spread a napkin over his lap. Otherwise she’d see about eight rock-solid inches of wholly unsuitable reaction to her proximity tenting his trousers. Now that he’d acknowledged—just for tonight—his attraction to her, the intensity of it overwhelmed him.

  “Now close your eyes, or the dance is over.”

  What did she have planned? Closing his eyes, he tipped his head against the high, tufted chair back and waited. A droplet of liquid hit the seam of his lips, and Gib flicked out his tongue to catch it. The rich darkness of wine swirled with spices warmed his taste buds. The feel of her finger grazing the tip of his tongue shot heat straight to his cock. Gib’s eyes flew open.

  “Tastes good,” he said.

  Daphne smiled, a Mona Lisa smile, both innocent and mysterious. Then she dipped her finger back in the wineglass and rubbed it against his lips once more. “Does it taste like lust?”

  It tasted like eight kinds of trouble. Like there should be sirens blaring and red lights flashing. “Tastes more like Christmas, I’d say.” He sat up straight again, and she slid back onto her chair. Now he had space to breathe without inhaling the citrus scent of her. The scent as bright as her hair, and as cheerful as her smile. She so rarely wore perfume, not wanting to conflict with the aromas of all her flowers at work. Gib always noticed when she spritzed herself with the sunny scent. “But I wouldn’t want to pass judgment without its proper food pairing.”

  “Good point. Let’s try everything once, make our notes for Mira and then we can go back to our favorites.”

  “Did you pre-snack or something? This is dinner. I’m eating everything in sight, favorite or not.” He grabbed the nearest plate. Pushing Daphne to pretend-seduce him might have been a bit wrongheaded. This evening was supposed to be nothing more than a bit of playacting. There’d been no way to anticipate Daphne actually turning him on. Whatever she set her mind to, she accomplished. He’d always admired that mix of bullheadedness and perseverance in her.

  “Here we’ve got goat cheese drizzled with honey on a baguette. ‘Honey was used by the Egyptians as a cure for impotence. Medieval honeymooners drank honeyed wine to sweeten their marriage.’”

  “I don’t care how good it tastes. Mira can’t use this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Being forced to think about impotence and marriage in the middle of foreplay demolishes a man’s amorous intentions. You might as well stick his dick into a bucket of ice.” He jammed a piece of bread into his mouth. Once you overlooked the description, the flavors melted together into an amalgam of sweet, creamy tanginess.

  “Why are men so allergic to the slightest mention of marriage?”

  “Why are women so single-minded about the topic?”

  Daphne popped a piece of bread into her mouth and chewed slowly. “Mmm, that’s good.” It almost came out a purr. Did she do that on purpose? Make sexy noises over a simple, three-bloody-ingredient hors d’oeuvre? Was her end goal now to drive him stark-raving mad with desire? Damned if he’d let her take the upper hand.

  Picking up the goblet, Gib drank deeply, taking a moment to switch gears. He’d ease off the sexual throttle for now, let her get comfortable with him again, and then he’d go in for the kill. What topic could clear the tension from the room? Ah, nothing would relax her more than talking about her great passion in life.

  “I see you’ve got a new arrangement on the table.” Gib took another sip, then waved his hand at the low centerpiece. “Tell me about these flowers. Do they have a hidden meaning?”

  “Yes. Not that all my arrangements do. The language of flowers isn’t that vast.”

  “There’s no flower that says I had a crappy day and really need a glass of wine?”

  “Much like Latin, I’m afraid it’s a dead language.”

  “You should think about changing that. Imagine how much extra you could charge for carnations if you convinced people they were the official sorry you lost your cell phone for the fifth time flower.”

  Daphne chortled and popped another fig. “Gibson Moore, you are a marketing genius. I swear, your talents are wasted at that hotel.”

  “As long as they pay me well enough, I’m good with the status quo. So, these flowers?” he prompted.

  “I had some orange lilies in the shop left over from the wedding at the Cavendish. And orange lilies just happen to signify desire and passion. With our plans to attack romance head-on tonight, I was compelled to bring them home. But lilies stuffed all alone in a vase either look like a funeral or Easter. So I made a nest for them out of balsam pine boughs, signifying ardent love. The frilly green stuffed in between the blossoms is coriander, for lust. I know it’s silly. But I have fun with it.”

  “How’d you even find out about such a dead language?”

  “My mother.”

  “Was she a florist, too?”

  “No, just desperate to find a way to cheer me up.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “School didn’t go so well for me at first. My teachers, and my parents, swore I was smart, but I couldn’t do the simplest things. Luckily, it didn’t take too many years for them to figure out I had dyslexia.”

  He couldn’t believe she hadn’t revealed that in all the years they’d known each other. Gib never would’ve guessed. His respect for her as a businesswoman, already sky-high, shot up into the stratosphere. “Wow, I had no idea.”

  “Good. That means that years of practice and frustration paid off. There’s no cure, but if you work hard enough, you can figure out ways around it. Tough going at the start, though. Just because you’re diagnosed doesn’t mean there’s a magic pill to fix it. I still felt like the stupidest person in the room most of the time. I was angry, and I was a handful. My mom talked to my tutor, my teacher, my therapist, but they all just said everything would work out in time. That’s when Mom remembered hearing about a flower language. We learned it together. I was so thrilled there was an entire vocabulary without words. Within days I memorized it by rote. And got the self-confidence boost I needed to start to make real progress.”

  “Quite a story.”

  “Yeah. I had a great mom.” Turning to skewer him with that laserlike gaze, she said, “You never mention your mother.”

  “That’s right. Very observant of you. And you know what I observe? There’s one more appetizer that goes with this wine.”

  “Can’t we skip right to the main course? It looks like lobster salad. I love lobster.”

  “Lobster and fennel salad, to be precise. But no, we can’t skip ahead. There’s a different drink for that course. Pink, again, I see.”

  “What, you’d prefer a Blu
e Hawaiian, so you can feel masculine?”

  “That drink comes with a half-pound of fruit as a garnish. There’s nothing masculine about it.”

  “Fine. Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. ‘Three courses of asparagus were served to nineteenth-century bridegrooms due to its reputed aphrodisiac powers, most likely because of its phallic shape.’”

  “There she goes, hinting at marriage again. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Mira was trying to sell engagement rings along with this picnic.”

  “Hush.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s off-putting. When I see something described as a miniature penis, I’m not going to be in the mood to stick it in my mouth.”

  “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” Daphne picked up the asparagus spear and held it between her fingers like a cigarette. “Whoops! I almost forgot about my character. Daisy will now commence to feed herself, as Graham’s apparently not feeling up to the task.”

  Once again, she pursed those red lips into a tight circle. Gib’s heart lurched. That must be what happened when all the blood drained out of it in a single pump and relocated south of his belt. She bit off the tip, staring at him like a master hypnotist. “Salty. Delicious. Sure you don’t want a bite?”

  Christ, he wanted more than a bite. Gib yanked the asparagus out of her hand and dropped it back on the plate. Then, his own glass already drained, he reached for Daphne’s wine and finished it off.

  “What’s wrong? Gib, you can’t stop now. You have to sample everything.”

  “You’re right. I do.” He didn’t care that it was stupid, and idiotic, and inappropriate and complicated. All he cared about at that moment was tasting her. So he did.

  Gib pushed out of his chair and kicked it behind him, out of the way. Then he sank to his knees and framed Daphne’s face with his hands. The face he’d stared into a million times. He knew the glacier-blue tint to her eyes. He knew intimately each one of her smiles, and the different degrees of each. He knew the pert tilt to her nose. But tonight he looked at the amalgam of all those parts, and saw a deeply beautiful woman who’d completely entranced him.

  Where to begin? In the normal course of a seduction, he’d go slow, to tease both of them. A few light butterfly kisses just below her eyes, following the slash of her cheekbone, now as red as the spiced wine. Or maybe a nuzzle at the sensitive curve where her graceful neck connected to her smooth shoulders. If they were both in a playful mood, he’d rip that ugly flannel shirt apart right down the front, and bury himself in the valley between her breasts. Not tonight, though. They’d teased each other enough. So he dipped his head and took her glossy lips.

  Daphne opened for him eagerly, as though they’d kissed a hundred times already. They latched on to each other hungrily. Gib couldn’t believe he’d thought the champagne sweet, and the honey even sweeter. Nothing they’d tasted tonight compared to the singular sweetness of her kiss. And yet, even as he thought that, as she fell forward into his arms and straddled him, the sweetness disappeared.

  Passion, raw and demanding, replaced it. Gib tried to take in the exquisite feeling of her thighs across his. The way the notch between her legs rubbed against him as her firm, wondrous breasts rubbed against his chest. But really, all he could concentrate on was the dark heat of her mouth. The slickness as her tongue twined with his as he explored her mouth. Finding just where to lick and nip to make her breath catch.

  Driven by the need to make her purr again, he shifted his hands down to hold her close in a proper embrace. As he settled them loosely at her waist, a memory settled in place as well. Déjà vu, but a hundred times more real. He’d held her body like this before. Well, without the straddling. Just the embrace and the kiss. Gib would swear to it on every designer suit in his closet. He’d kissed this woman, held this body not two nights again, in a pitch-dark ballroom.

  The memory cemented itself on top of the reality, like placing a negative on top of a printed photo. The match was seamless. Daphne Lovell, his Daphne, was his Cinderella. Gib pushed her back to stare at her in shock.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What?” Her eyes slowly fluttered open.

  “You’re her. You’re my mystery New Year’s Eve kiss. Don’t even try to deny it.”

  Daphne slid backward off his thighs onto the floor. “Yes. I am.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her expression turned defiant, with pursed lips and glowering eyes. “I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

  “Are you insane? I spent the entire Rose Parade going on about how much I wanted to find that woman.” He thought of how close he’d come to embarrassing himself all over the internet looking for the woman right in front of him.

  “I mean, I didn’t think you’d want to know it was me.” She turned her head, dropped her gaze to the floor.

  Gib stood, held out a hand and pulled Daphne to her feet as well. Then he surveyed the room; the chair he’d pushed onto the floor in his haste, the untouched lobster and a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert. And then he looked back at Daphne’s face, now as white as the snow falling in clumps and sticking to the dark windows.

  “I have to leave,” said Gib.

  Chapter Five

  He who wants a rose must respect the thorn

  ~ Persian proverb

  Gib slammed the door of his town house and shook himself like a dog. A thick coating of snowflakes flew onto the floor, the end table, the drapes and the damn white armchair that Milo adored and Gib detested. What good was furniture that you couldn’t sit in to eat? He dropped his briefcase and a white paper sack onto the floor to shrug out of his overcoat.

  “You’re home early.” Milo took in the dusting of snow on the green velvet drapes covering the bay window and rushed into action. With the speed of a fireman wielding a hose, Milo whipped the satin sash off of his kimono and used it to brush off each flake. Gib averted his eyes. He didn’t know what his flamboyant roommate wore under the ankle-length blue robe, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  Gib let his coat puddle onto the arm of the tufted, burgundy leather sofa. “Taking sex out of the equation makes for a shorter night.”

  With a disapproving tsk, Milo picked up the heavy coat and hung it in the closet. “That would be true, if you were with any woman but Daphne. I’ve seen you wander home from her place, bleary-eyed, in the middle of the night after watching a string of horror movies.”

  “Movies weren’t on the agenda tonight.” Of course, kissing hadn’t been either. Still shell-shocked, Gib picked up his takeaway bag and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

  “I thought dinner was, though. Why do I smell Indian food?”

  What would it take to shake his bloodhound of a roommate with a nose for gossip? If he wanted to talk about the implosion of his night, Gib would’ve stayed with Daphne. “I fancied a curry.” He kicked out a white, wooden stool at the breakfast counter to make room. After rolling up his sleeves, Gib pulled out the carton of curry. Then the bag of garlic naan, and cartons of samosas, rice and dal.

  “Is Daphne coming over here now?” Milo asked. “There’s certainly enough food for two of you. Probably for all three of us, if you were willing to let me stick my spoon in, too.”

  “Get your own damn dinner,” Gib growled.

  “Crankypants. You’ve had a burr under your saddle since you walked in the door.” Milo perched on the stool and gasped. “What is that?” He pointed at Gib’s trouser pocket with a shaky finger and a look of terror widening his brown eyes. Saying that Milo had a tendency to overdramatize situations was akin to saying the Pope liked to pray. Or that lingerie models looked good in their underwear.

  “Just my tie.”

  “But it’s crumpled up, hanging out of your pocket.”

  “I shoved it in there earlier.” The moment he�
��d fled Daphne’s apartment, it got hard to breathe. And his head began to pound so hard he swore he could hear his own blood pressure rising. “Christ, what do you care?”

  Milo started to answer. His mouth opened, but then he shut it again. Then he got up and retrieved plates and silverware. Silently, he opened each carton, set two places on the counter and ripped off two paper towels for napkins.

  “Thanks.” Gib dug a spoon into the curry. He’d ordered it extra hot, hoping the spices would sear away the lingering sweet flavor of Daphne from his mouth.

  “My wonderful roommate, Viscount Gibson Moore, loves clothes almost as much as he loves romancing the ladies. We first bonded over a Ralph Lauren gray cashmere sport coat. Of course, he wanted to wear it over a dress shirt, and I wanted to pair it with a Douglas tartan kilt. Made more of a statement.”

  Gib remembered that day. He remembered wondering how crazy you’d have to be to wear a kilt on the streets of Chicago. The two of them had gone out drinking that night, trading the jacket back and forth every time they changed bars. Milo might be a fashion lunatic, but he was also a hell of a lot of fun. Except for when he got on a soapbox, like this.

  Working up a good head of steam, Milo came back around and braced one hand on the stool, and the other on the counter. “My roommate has more ties than most women have earrings. He treats his suits with the amount of devotion other men show their dogs.”

  Gib heaped rice and dal onto his plate, then mixed everything together. He shoveled in a few bites. At least he didn’t have to worry about being called upon to speak with his mouth full. Though Milo seemed disinclined to let him get a word in edgewise. Not that Gib wanted to talk. The big plan for the rest of the evening was to achieve a food coma as fast as humanly possible, then go to bed.

  Milo leaned forward, a hard glint in his flat, brown gaze. “I care when my roommate appears to have undergone a psychotic break. This erratic behavior indicates one of two things. Either the Gib I know has been bodysnatched by an invisible alien, or something is very wrong.” Whipping a cleaver out from behind his back, he brandished it at Gib. “If you are an alien, I’m prepared to defend myself.”