Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  When was the last time she’d been on a date and why now? And what the hell happened? All her limbs were attached and there was no sign of bleeding, but a date. Not in a month of Sundays did he think that’s what he was walking into.

  He cooked, she watched. There was nothing unusual about that. He stored what he didn’t serve for himself and couldn’t tempt her with, because how could she have eaten if she still had lipstick on.

  He ate because he was starving, but it didn’t sit well. She’d given him indigestion. In his wildest imaginings, Sarina on a date stood shoulder to shoulder with a genuine viral apocalypse or a reboot of Firefly.

  He’d been mentally ready to hear about some new drama with Reid, because Owen was back on track again. Or maybe a family problem, because that would rock her, but not this. He had to know how serious it was. As soon as he could think of a way of asking without sounding like her father.

  “Would you stop it,” she said.

  “I’m cleaning the kitchen.”

  “You’re banging around like you’re annoyed.”

  He was Brillo-padding nonexistent watermarks in the sink, there was no banging. “What would I be annoyed about? You went on a date.”

  “Is that why you’re all weird? People do that, you know.”

  He abandoned the sink. “You don’t.”

  “It was a date, Dev,” she said, moving into the living room.

  He called after her, not convinced he’d finished banging around in the kitchen yet. “And it went badly, so pardon me for being a little freaked out about the lipstick.”

  The TV went on with a blast of sound. “What do you want to watch?”

  He kept to the kitchen. He’d watch paint drying, grass growing, the polar ice caps melting. Anything but her caramel lips.

  “Come on, Dev.”

  He gave the countertop and sink one last critical glance and went to sit beside Sarina on the couch in the living room. She let his ass touch down before she said, “What’s going on with you?”

  With him. Oh no. It wasn’t about him. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing terrible happened, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Okay then.”

  “You can’t freak out because I go on a date. You have girlfriends. What about Shushmila? Why is it weirding you out that I went on a date?”

  “Shush is just, you know, Shush.”

  “But you’ve been seeing her a lot more often?”

  “How is this about me and Shush?”

  “What is you and Shush?”

  He took the remote out of her hand. “Are we going to watch something? She’s a friend.”

  “Same as me.”

  He frowned. Shush had been in his life since they were snot-nosed kids, crammed in each other’s lives by fathers who were workmates. They were practically cousins. He’d done nothing to encourage Shush except do what he’d always done, hang with her from time to time, and much as the Patel and Singh families would wig out to see a match between him and Shush, it was never going to happen. Shush was great, and yeah he should never have complicated things by fooling around with her, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Not the same.”

  “No, you suck face with Shush.” He would’ve gagged but Sarina went on. “You date, Dev. You have women in your life. You always have. You have sex. I’m missing out and I turn thirty-one this year. I thought things would be different.”

  Right, okay then. This is why he’d been banging about in the kitchen. This was a thing she was going through and he was only finding out about it now. “How different?”

  “I thought I’d have a partner by now. Know where I was going with my personal life.” She took the remote back out of his hand and stared at the screen. “I thought I’d be having sex at least.”

  Must’ve used too much salt in the stir-fry. His mouth was a dust bowl. “Okay, so you’ve started dating.” Totally, totally reasonable.

  “I want to start dating.”

  “What was tonight?”

  “It was practice.”

  “Practice lipstick?” That sounded smarter in his head. There was egg-scrambling going on up there.

  “Practice dating.”

  “What? Dating is practice for everything else.”

  “Not when you’ve not done it for years.” Sarina curled her legs up and leaned her shoulder into his. “I don’t have the swagger for it anymore.”

  Years? He should’ve realized this. Sarina had been dateless and probably sexless for years. No. He didn’t want to think about that, because what a waste of precious resource.

  “You don’t have to look so horrified.”

  Goddamn his pathetic lack of a poker face.

  “It’s not like it’s Dev Patel’s fault Sarina Gallo is dateless and drying up.”

  Why did it feel like it was? “You’re not drying up. It’s not like you’re forty or you know, really old.” Was it his fault? They spent nearly all their spare time together, not like either of them had acres and acres of it. Uninterrupted nonwork time was a luxury item. He got sucked into project timeline vortexes and she was constantly meeting potential Plus hires after hours.

  She pointed the remote at the movie line-up. “What do you want to watch?”

  Not his best friend drying up. “So, dating practice, is that like an app?”

  She scrolled through new releases. “Tinder for the socially hopeless? Hindered.”

  “Who developed it?”

  She groaned. “It’s not an app, Dev. It’s just, never mind.” She chose a movie and sat back into the couch cushion, her shoulder bumping his deliberately until he lifted his arm so she could snuggle in. “Can we just watch?”

  She watched. He saw random pixels of color, flying about and crashing in to one another. This was his fault. He’d stolen all her spare time, years of it. He felt sick to the stomach.

  “Sarina.”

  She paused the box. “Why do you know so much about my lipstick wearing?”

  “It’s a time-invested thing. I know what triggers your sinus and how red peppers give you gas and how you hate your feet. We’re friends. That’s friend stuff.”

  “That’s pretty intimate.”

  That was the least of it. He knew when she was having her period, because her eyes were different, and so was the way she smelled. Never telling her that. Not until Fibonacci was found a fraud. “You’re my best friend.”

  She sat forward and didn’t look at him. “Next to Shush.”

  “I told you, Shushmila is like a sister to me.”

  “A sister you fool around with.”

  He winced. He might well have shouted the word incest, and nothing he and Shush had been doing lately was in the sibling playbook.

  “You’re sleeping with her. What brought that about?”

  They’d been having a lot of sex; which, now that he thought about it, had come from nowhere. It wasn’t like he’d planned it. Just kind of happened one night after a joint family dinner when he’d dropped her home. She’d surprised him with a cheek kiss that had veered dangerously to lip territory and he’d liked it. Roving hands lead to little breathy moans and he’d stayed the night and cooked her breakfast. It wasn’t like he was Shush’s first. He’d never thought about her in a what would she look like naked, what would she taste like way before she shoved her hand over his dick. She turned out to be gorgeous naked and that shouldn’t have been a shock because she was beautiful fully clothed. But they were Shush and Dev and good sex would probably confuse that. They’d agreed over crispy bacon it shouldn’t happen again, but it’d happened for the last time a lot of times since then.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d gone so deep with her.” Sarina dragged his arm over her shoulder and snuggled into his side again.

  How did she know about the depth charge with Shush? That’s what you got for hanging with a psych major. “We don’t tell each other everything.” He realized that was true when the words were out. He h
adn’t told her everything about Shush, but she’d guessed at it. She hadn’t told him about practice dating and he hadn’t picked up on her unhappiness. That was a goddamn system failure, right there.

  He still didn’t know what practice dating was and he wasn’t sure what was more disturbing, that he’d mishandled things with Shush, or Sarina was out there looking for sex.

  It wasn’t like he was really going to give up having no-strings sex when it was offered, but he didn’t want to give up having Sarina in his arms either; and if she was dating, well then, the date would have to get used to him being around because he was Sarina’s best friend, he wanted her to be happy and he was manning up to help her make that happen.

  THREE

  It was date three so Colby shirtless was no issue, really no issue at all. It’s not like he’d walked in and stripped off. There was a build-up, a three date build-up. And Colby was a man Sarina had paid to have sex with.

  They’d been to that new sushi place in Japantown that Dev wanted to try and now they were in a room at Four Points and Sarina wanted the sex. She’d worked up to it after totally blowing it on date one, ending that evening falling asleep on Dev again instead of in a lover’s arms, and then agreeing with Colby that date two should be something fun without the pressure of sex. They went bowling and it had been a laugh.

  So here she was. Date three. Colby was shirtless. He sat on the end of the bed, with no shirt on.

  Shirtlessly.

  He had muscles she couldn’t name. And a complete lack of self-consciousness she could. This was his comfort zone. He was suntanned all over those muscles, in the little dips and valleys, and finger holds of body where a woman might grip when she was being ridden.

  Tonight was for riding. She just didn’t feel the yeehah.

  Colby shirtless was Sarina sweating. On the inside. She was sweating on the inside. She had to be, the hottie factor he was blazing was too high to withstand without her usual cool baking. He was talking, and she’d have to fess up when he stopped that she’d heard everything he said, but none of the detail stuck. He should’ve left his damn shirt on if he expected her to listen actively, but that was the thing about Colby, apart from being basically designed to always be shirtless, he didn’t expect anything of her.

  She didn’t have to entertain him or express interest in him. She certainly didn’t have to evaluate him as a job candidate, check his ego against his likely capabilities and assess his cultural fit. Colby knew how to fit.

  He was happy to make conversation, telling a story about a modeling job he’d done in the middle of the Mojave Desert, or to listen when she talked. Which she’d struggled with. She didn’t have a lot of conversation that wasn’t about work and she couldn’t talk work with him, it wasn’t safe, and it was boring in a you had to be there way.

  And that was the whole reason she was here. Colby was an accelerated course in getting her groove back, so she had no excuse not to get out there again.

  Modeling in the Mojave Desert would probably be fascinating if Colby didn’t stand and kick his shoes off, then put his hand very deliberately to the waistband of his jeans.

  “You’re doing that, then?” she said, cutting off his sentence and stopping his hand. Smooth, Sarina, like crunchy peanut butter.

  He sat on the end of the bed, all casual as I’m a professional and nothing you can fling at me will throw me off. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  She waved a hand. “Sure, why wouldn’t I want you to?” It was more of an involuntary flap and she folded her arms so she didn’t do it again.

  “Maybe because you’re so far away you might as well be in the lobby. We don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, we do. I’m the Mojave Desert and I need a good spring rain.”

  “But there’s no hurry. We’re not on a deadline. You don’t have concerns about paying for my time. We talked about that, Sarina.”

  He could look awesome and sound like an A-grade counselor, but yes they were on a deadline. More or less. First came getting sexy back with Colby, then came finding someone in real life to be sexy with, knowing that was bound to be very trial and error. Assuming she found a candidate, there was the whole did they share values, could they stand each other’s habits and choices, headaches, bad moods and ordinary drama over the long haul?

  Alternatively, there was the hammering out of an agreement to partner as parents but not in the rest of their lives.

  All of that could take five years and then she’d really be in her mid-thirties and her eggs would be less daisy fresh, unless she froze them. And what if it took longer? What if there were detours to destinations that showed promise on the map but paled in real life? The average American woman had her first baby at twenty-five, a decade earlier.

  Why couldn’t she and Dev be in love? That would’ve made things so much simpler.

  “Sarina.”

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “You’re not into this.”

  She took her kimono jacket off. “Yes, I am.” She unwound the leather belt that wrapped her waist and hips three times.

  Colby’s eyes went over her torso in her loose cami and pants, she couldn’t help the flush of heat his appraisal brought. “No, you’re forcing yourself to do this for some reason that I don’t get,” he said.

  “It’s the plan.”

  “Plan.” Colby’s expression soured as if plan was his version of venereal disease. “Sweetheart, I’ve never been anyone’s plan. Fantasy, sure, therapy maybe, but plan is a new one and it doesn’t sound good.”

  She sat beside him on the end of the bed. “I mean being with you is about getting my sexy back.” She could see them in the mirror on the opposite wall. He looked skeptical so she leaned against his arm in an attempt to make more of a connection with him. “I haven’t been with anyone for three years. I’ve forgotten how it goes.”

  “Okay then.” Colby did what Dev did, maybe all men did it. He put his arm around her shoulders. “I can get with that plan. Let’s talk about what you want me to do for you tonight.”

  “Nugh.”

  He shifted to look at her. “Was that no?”

  That was the sound you made when a man who looked like Colby used the most neutral language possible to ask how you wanted him to fuck you and you felt ridiculous instead of empowered by this choice. And feeling ridiculous wasn’t the deal here.

  The deal was dipping out from under his arm and crawling across his thighs, putting her hands on his shoulders, and when he didn’t sense danger and flinch, it was going in for a kiss.

  They’d kissed before. Outside 55 South and it’d been really good until he’d used his tongue and she’d almost bitten it off. He’d been very nice about being maimed, claimed it hadn’t hurt that badly, but his words came out thick and fuzzy and she’d stood on the street and reapplied lipstick because if biting his tongue wasn’t enough of a disincentive to pick up where they’d left off, Frenzy by Mac was her weapon of choice.

  After that, she’d only wanted to curl up on the couch with Dev and forget about how she’d almost bitten an escort’s tongue off. After that, she and Colby agreed date two would just be ordinary fully clothed fun.

  Remembering that first kiss shouldn’t have been funny, it certainly wasn’t at the time, but she had to break off this kiss for laughter. Colby’s expression was a mixture of what’s going on and guard your loins.

  She messed his hair. “I’m not on day release from a lunatic asylum, I promise. I’m just in the deep end.”

  “You’re nervous, I get it. Slow is good. If all we do is kiss, that’s fine. You set the pace, I’m here for you.”

  “It’s not like I’m a virgin or anything.” She tightened her grip on his hair. “I’ve had experience with actual men with penises and sex and, you know, fucking. And it’s just sex, everyone does it and there’s no reason for me to be nervous.”

  He smiled, all the way to light blue eyes. “It’s okay that you’re nervous.”

>   She scrambled off his lap and stood. “It’s not okay. And you keep having to tell me that. It’s weak and indecisive and I’m not that in the rest of my life. I’m—”

  “I know who you are and what you do. You’re amazing.”

  Except where it comes to relationships. Not amazing. Not even a little bit. Life of the party in her professional life, solitary creature of the dark in her private one. “Thousands of acquaintances and no one to have a baby with.”

  Colby shot off the bed so fast it might’ve bitten him. “Whoa. That’s what the plan is about.”

  “I want a family. If I could go buy one at Walmart, I’d do it that way.” She sighed. “It makes me tired just thinking about how hard it’s going to be to find someone to do this with. I don’t even like dating.”

  He took hold of her shoulders. “There’s been no one all this time?”

  No one special enough to stick. No one she’d held on to. Just the usual collection of encounters, none of them particularly memorable and the frequency of them declining until the long drought. “I half thought a colleague.” She looked down at the floor. “One of my business partners. He was engaged and lost his fiancée in an accident. I was there for him. I don’t know, I thought maybe we might . . . but we didn’t. I love him dearly, and I know he loves me, but he was never in love with me, and I wasn’t with him either. He’s in love now and his partner, Cara, is perfect for him.”

  He let go her shoulders and sat on the bed again. “You’re talking about Owen Lange.”

  And not talking about Dev.

  He patted the space beside him. He was managed by an elite agency and he’d signed a watertight confidentiality agreement as part of their arrangement, but aside from that she trusted him and her people-read rarely failed. “You follow the news.”

  Colby nodded. “It pays to know who’s who in the city.”

  “Owen, Reid and Dev are the best men I know. I can’t imagine my life without them.”

  “You’ll meet someone if you give yourself the time.”