by Aly Martinez
“Did you confront him about it?”
“Yeah. I called him and of course he denied taking it. But I still lost my shit and we argued for over an hour. It was stupid and I played right into his hand by reaching out to him even if it was only to yell at him. But damn, who steals a freaking fish?”
“A dick,” I replied curtly. “And he’s the worst kind of dick, babe, because he’s the kind that has just realized he’s losing the best thing he’ll ever have. Trust me, it’s going to get way worse before it gets better. Change your locks. Avoid him as much as possible. Though, working in the same office with him, this might be difficult.”
Her hair fell into her face as she tipped her head to the side to peer up at me like a shy child. “My brother is changing the locks today and I’m looking for a new job. I’ve got a few leads.”
“Good. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with that. In the meantime, how much longer until you can finalize the divorce?”
Groaning, she lifted her head off my chest. “There’s a mandatory thirty-day wait in Georgia, but fortunately and unfortunately, my brother went through something eerily similar with his ex, so we were able to get Greg served pretty quickly. Less than two weeks left now, but that’s assuming he doesn’t try to drag it out.” She screwed her eyes shut. “God, do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to tell you all of this?”
Brushing the hair off her face, I allowed my fingertips to trail down the soft slope of her jaw. With gentle pressure, I tipped her chin up. “Why is talking to me about your life embarrassing?”
Her eyes opened and immediately focused over my shoulder. “I… I don’t know. Have you seen you, Tanner? Airing my dirty laundry in front of a guy like you is a little, well…intimidating.”
I tried not to let the “guy like you” comment sting by assuming she was referring to my good genes.
“So this is about looks? Have you seen you, Rita? Trust me when I say I am not stalking you for your dazzling personality. Honestly, you scare me sometimes. But you have a nice ass, so here I am.” I winked to be sure she knew I was kidding.
She glared at me, unimpressed. “I’m serious.”
“Fine. Then seriously, Greg is a dick, but whatever bullshit he does or doesn’t pull doesn’t reflect on you. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” I paused. “Well, except for the fact that you mounted me when we first met. I can’t wait to tell our kids about that one day.”
“Talking about children is not casual!” She shoved at my chest. “I should have hit you harder when we were playing Slapsies.”
Refusing to let her go, I stole a peck at her lips. “See. Scary.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Maybe. But you can talk to me. I told you that the other night and I meant it. You can even look at me when you do it too.” I swirled a finger around in front of my face. “I promise you won’t see anything but understanding up here.”
Her face got soft. “You’re a sweet guy, Tanner.”
“I know.”
“And so humble,” she deadpanned.
I tsked my teeth and shifted her deeper into my front. “Aw, shucks. Now, you’re just flirting.”
Her eyes were twinkling with humor, but her face remained stoic. “Are you going to take me to lunch or what?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to unload on me instead of ignoring my texts from now on? You’re giving me a complex with all the chasing I’ve had to do in the last few days.”
Her sexy mouth fell open in mock horror. “You? A complex?”
I nodded, bending to nip at her bottom lip. “I know. I know. It’s hard to see past all of my raw sexual magnetism. But believe it or not, I have feelings too.”
“Oh, yeah,” she purred. “And what are those feelings right now?”
Unable to hide my smile, I dropped my mouth to hers and whispered, “Asiago mac and cheese.”
Her lips parted, a gasp fluttering out. “Dear God. Who’s flirting now?”
“Me. Absolutely. Unquestionably. Me. Christ, it’s been three days and you’re just now catching on to this?”
When she burst into laughter, face-planting into my chest, her arms folding around my hips as she hugged me, I realized how wrong I’d been.
The terror and exhilaration of jumping out of a plane at fourteen thousand feet had nothing on the pure adrenaline-fueled high of finally finding a woman like Rita Hartley.
* * *
I was sitting on a rickety wooden bench beside a food truck in downtown Atlanta when Tanner Reese changed my life. My arteries and waistline probably did not view this change as being for the better. Though my taste buds and stomach adamantly disagreed.
Eight words: Asiago mac and cheese topped with crispy prosciutto.
An actual, honest-to-God tear leaked from my eye after the first bite.
My life was never going to be the same after that twelve-dollar paper bowl of heaven. Tanner had gotten Greek mac and cheese, so his was topped with gyro meat, feta, and Kalamata olives. Mine was better and we’d both known it as soon as they had been placed at the pick-up window.
Since he’d paid, I’d been kind enough to feed Tanner a bite of mine between my cheese-induced moans. However, I hadn’t offered him the same generosity when I’d caught him trying to sneak a second bite and had therefore been forced to stab him with my plastic spork.
What? It’s not like I broke the skin or anything.
Food-induced violence aside, lunch with Tanner went a lot like dinner had gone with Tanner: Fun. Easy. Comfortable.
We laughed a lot.
He held my hand every chance he got.
He stared me in the eye, listening intently to everything I had to say even as a herd of women congregated near our little bench, waiting for their moment to catch his attention. If he noticed them, he never let on. And when he took my empty bowl to the trash before I had the chance to embarrass myself by licking the bottom, he offered his clamoring audience a panty-drenching smile and stated, “I’m trying to spend some time with my girl today. I’ll pop back by for pictures later this week. Yeah?”
Their disappointment was palpable, and I had no idea if he was actually planning to keep his word about popping by later in the week (and if he was, if he’d be willing to pick me up a to-go bowl of carby deliciousness). But the fact that Tanner didn’t want to take his attention off me long enough to sign a few autographs or pose for a picture? Well, that was taking the sweet that I’d already known existed inside that man to a whole new level. And, for a woman whose last relationship had ended with her husband in the bed of another woman, there were no words for what that did to the bruises inside me.
Tanner didn’t just act like I was special to him with words. He actually followed it up with actions.
After lunch, Tanner drove me back to the office with his hand anchored to my thigh. The amount of dread swirling in my stomach when he’d put his Mercedes into park was almost comical. I’d taken a two-hour lunch break, but I still wasn’t ready to go back to the real world yet.
He must have felt the same, because the second I reached for the handle, he rushed out, “You want to hang out tonight?”
My stomach dipped and heat filled my cheeks as I slowly turned back to face him, a resounding yes poised on the tip of my tongue.
But the word never made it past my lips when I got a good look at him.
He was just as gorgeous as he had been on those magazines in the grocery store, maybe more so up close. But it was the pinch of his eyebrows and the pained crinkle on his forehead as though he were staring down the barrel of a gun that struck me the hardest.
Tanner Reese. Freaking Fracking Tanner Reese, who I now knew was also just one-named Tanner but no less hot, no less successful, and no less talented—though he was surprisingly more vulnerable than his flashy counterpart—was staring back at me, timid as a teenage boy who’d asked his crush to the prom.
Jesus, my life was surreal.
“Tann
er, honey,” I said, reaching for his arm.
He caught my hand, lifting it to his mouth to kiss my palm before saying, “Come on, Rita. Don’t make me work for this one.”
So I didn’t. “My place. Say, seven?”
An epic smile split his handsome face. “Your place?”
I shrugged. “I have the better hammock.”
“Oh, please.”
“Take it or leave it, Reese.”
He gave my hand a tug, dragging me in for a lip touch. “Oh, I’m taking it, Hartley. But let’s make it eight. I have a meeting with Porter at The Tannerhouse tonight. But even if you forget how your phone works again. I’ll still be there. Possibly in your bushes, peering in your window, but there nonetheless.”
A laugh bubbled from my throat. And it felt so amazing after the last few weeks of emotional upheaval.
After another of his signature lip sweeps, I climbed out, shut the door, and headed inside, my steps light, my stomach fluttering, and the craziest high pulsing through my veins.
Not surprisingly, Greg was waiting for me when I reached my office.
Also not surprisingly, I slammed the door in his face, locked it, and spent the day tying up loose ends, all the while fighting the losing battle of keeping my mind from drifting back to a pair of ocean-blue eyes.
The TV droned in the background as I sat on my couch, scrolling through a local staffing website. There were several doctors looking for a new office manager. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that anymore. Short of my years waitressing in college, my experience was limited. But this was my chance for a fresh start. Even if I had no idea what that entailed.
Giving up, I closed my laptop, set it on the end table, and checked my phone.
There were at least a dozen new messages from Greg.
Since he’d found out about Tanner, his messages had been coming more frequently, and the tone of them swung like a church bell between anger and desperation.
Some of them stated that Tammy’s baby wasn’t his—as if that would matter.
Some of them were profuse apologies, begging me to give him a second chance.
Some of them were insults about Tanner.
And some of them were long streams of consciousness with the general idea being that I was a gold digger who had never loved him because I was quitting on our marriage at the first sign of trouble.
Call me crazy, but having six months of unprotected sex with another woman who eventually fell pregnant was a little more than the first sign of trouble, but whatever.
The hardest part was that he still believed he could fix us. And that did not bode well for me. As long as he saw even the tiniest flicker of hope for our marriage, he’d never sign those divorce papers.
Therefore, I was stuck in some weird purgatory for stupid women who had given up everything for a no-good man. But as my doorbell rang, I got up to answer it with a smile on my face because, in my purgatory, I had the witty Tanner Reese to keep me company.
I pulled open my front door, my smile fading as I drank him in.
Tanner was definitely hot. No mistaking that. But he was also pretty. Like movie-star pretty. He had a strong jaw and an angular nose that made him purely masculine, but his light eyes and his long lashes softened his face. And that smile? Forget about it. It was charming and flirty, yet somehow innocent and gentle all wrapped up in a gleaming white package.
I knew he was thirty-two, but he looked like the type of guy that should have been out chasing the latest up-and-coming twenty-something actresses in Hollywood.
Instead, he was on my front steps, grinning from ear to ear, ready for a boring night of sitting on my couch. Or at least that’s what I’d thought we were doing when I’d gotten dressed. He, however, was in a pair of dark slacks, tapered at the ankle, and a white V-neck T-shirt covered by a snug gray button-down cardigan. (Yes, a freaking cardigan like the world’s sexiest Mr. Rogers impersonator.) His sleeves were pushed up, revealing muscular forearms, and his pecs cut at hard angles through the thin fabric of his sweater.
He was downright edible but entirely overdressed for a night of hanging out.
Raking his gaze over me, he fired off, “What the hell kind of witch-craftery is this?”
I curled my lip and leaned against the jamb without inviting him in. “Why do you always ask me that?”
“Uh…because Saturday night, I raced over here in hopes of finding you in yoga pants and a tank top and you were wearing a little red cocktail dress. And tonight, I rushed over here thinking about that little red cocktail dress and hoping it had a strapless sister only to find you in yoga pants and a tank top.”
I giggled as he took my hand and spun me in a circle.
“Not that I am complaining because I was right about your ass in yoga pants, but this is hardly going to cut it for The Port.”
My body turned to stone. “The Port?”
His hands found my hips. “Oh, that’s right, baby. You didn’t think Lenox was the only ace up my sleeve now, did you?”
“Ace? No. But The Port is more like a two of clubs in my deck.”
“What?” he exclaimed. “Wait, you do realize I don’t mean, like, a real port. The Port is a private bar downtown.”
I stepped away, allowing him space to enter. He turned around, clicking the locks on a gunmetal-gray Range Rover before following me in.
Leaning around him, I twisted the deadbolt. “The Port is not a bar, Tanner. It’s a nightclub for rich people, and I’d rather be shot out of a cannon into a pool of hungry sharks than brave that place. Besides, I thought we were just hanging out tonight.”
“Yeah. At The Port.”
“Uh, no. That is an excursion that should be limited to New Year’s Eve when I momentarily forget that I’m not twenty-two, so I put on a tiny dress, drink too much overpriced wine, and then dance the night away.”
He stuffed a hand into his pocket and grinned. “Oh, so you do see why I want to take you there.”
I rolled my eyes, sauntering into my living room, very aware that he was probably staring at my butt. “It’s a school night, honey. I have to work tomorrow. I can’t afford to spend the next two days hungover, sore from head to toe, and paying the price because I am actually a boring thirty-year-old with a bedtime of eleven.”
He followed behind me. “Okay. Fine. Where do you normally hang out? Let’s go there.”
Swooping my arm out to the side, I did my best Vanna White wave across the length of my couch and then dramatically sat down. “Club Rita.”
“Club Rita?” he repeated, incredulous.
“Yep.” I patted the leather cushion beside me. “It’s Atlanta’s most exclusive nightclub. But don’t worry. I know the owner, so I was able to pull a few strings and get you an invite tonight.”
One side of his mouth crept up. “Is there a bar at Club Rita?”
I pointed toward the kitchen around the corner. “Sure is. I picked up some beer and wine on my way home from work today. I wasn’t sure what you’d want, so I grabbed a couple things.”
Something strange sifted through his features when he asked, “You stopped on your way home from work to pick up beer?”
“Yeah,” I drawled suspiciously. “But if you want something else, we can run out and grab it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “So this is what you meant by hanging out. Sweats. Beer.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Maybe a little TV.”
“Yeah,” I breathed when an odd sense of unease settled over me.
He drew in a deep breath, his shoulders pulling up toward his ears, and planted his hands on his hips.
And then he held it.
Just. Held it.
His chest puffed, full of air. He aimed his gaze down my hallway at nothing in particular.
My nerves rumbled as I tried to get a read on his face, but all I could see was his profile.
My pulse quickened, a heat rising in my cheeks as I slowly stood up. “I mean, if you’d rather go out
, I guess I can get dress—”
I didn’t finish before his head snapped my way, his blue eyes blazing like a wildfire, melting the rest of my sentence.
“You’re wearing yoga pants,” he whispered on a rushed exhale.
I looked down at myself. They were actually a pair of black-and-pink leggings cropped above the ankle and riding so low on my hips that they would have been a nightmare to do yoga in. But they were soft and tight. They made my ass look fabulous and were the closest thing that existed to sexy lounge wear. I’d paired them with an equally soft pink tank I probably could have worn to the gym if I’d been desperate, but a sports bra would have ruined my subtle cleavage.
When I’d been standing in my closet, trying to figure out what to wear on a “hang-out date,” it had been the most obvious choice. Classy. Comfortable. Flirty.
Now…I just felt odd.
“Tanner, I—”
I got absolutely nothing else out because, in the next second, he was across the room, both of his hands cupping my face as he pulled me up to his heavy and demanding mouth.
I moaned when his lips parted, his tongue twisting and tangling with mine. It was a desperate duel, raw and needy. It was so unlike the sweet Tanner usually gave me, but the pure brilliance of it threatened to take out my knees.
Using his hips for balance, I shifted closer until our bodies were flush, my breasts molding to his front. The brush of his hard chest against my nipples as I pushed up onto my toes sent sparks to my clit. My entire nervous system ignited with frenzied need. The feeling was so overwhelming that I momentarily lost purchase of his mouth on a panted, “Oh, God.”
“Fuck, woman,” he mumbled, raking my bottom lip with his teeth. “You are so goddamn hot.”
And then I was off the floor, dangling with his arm hooked around my back as he carried me the last few steps to the couch. Gently, he laid me down first, pausing long enough to strip his cardigan and shirt over his head in one swift movement.
“You know how many women have put on fucking yoga pants when they knew I was coming over?” he rasped.
My breath caught as I got my first real look at the sculpted beauty that was Tanner Reese’s body, but it was his ravenous gaze locked on mine that made heat pool between my thighs.