by Aly Martinez
She righted herself on the couch and glared at me. “Damn it, I need to find another job.”
“We both do. But until then, I’m in charge of sending Greg scathing text messages.”
She groaned. “Fiiiine.”
Me: You know what I find disturbing? You texting me all freaking day. We are over. You made your bed. Don’t think you can come crawling back to me because you’ve got fleas.
Unknown: All day? This is the first time I’ve… Oh, wait. You don’t think it could have been that terrorist alligator, do you? Dammit, I told you they were dangerous.
It was the most ludicrous, nonsense text he had ever written.
And then it wasn’t.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, a tsunami of realization slamming into me, pinning me in place, and stealing my breath. Chills exploded across my skin.
Greg hadn’t written that text at all, but suddenly, I knew exactly who had. If I tried hard enough, I could still feel his strong arms wrapped around me and that million-dollar grin aimed down at me like a spotlight.
My stomach dipped as I imagined his long fingers gliding over the screen of his phone as he’d typed that message out to me.
To me.
Tanner Reese was texting me.
For ninety-nine percent of the population, this would have been the greatest day of their lives.
For me, it felt like someone had set the room on fire, my whole body heating with embarrassment.
“What?” Sidney asked, once again sidling up close to read the screen as message after message started rolling in.
Tanner: I should probably come over and do a full sweep to make sure those texts didn’t cause a security breach in the cloud.
Tanner: I’m not sure if I told you this, but the only weapon we as a country have against the terrorist alligators is a naked woman.
Tanner: Really, it’s our patriotic duty as Americans to see this thing through.
Tanner: Obviously, I think it would be best if we grabbed some dinner first. A person can’t go to naked war against terrorist alligators on an empty stomach.
Tanner: But first, I’m gonna need that address.
“What the hell is that dumbass talking about?” she asked. “Is he having some kind of stroke?”
He wanted my address. Holy shit. Tanner freaking Reese wanted my address.
Sure, I’d given him my number, but I’d thought it was all part of the show. I’d never considered while I was downing a pint of ice cream and watching Blanche insult Rose that he’d actually use it.
In case I hadn’t mentioned it before…he was Tanner freaking Reese!
Women around the world would compete Spartan-style to land themselves on his radar. And he wanted my address because he wanted to take me to dinner before we got naked and did our patriotic duty of fighting terrorist alligators together. Yes, I knew how stupid that last part sounded, but the first part included the words naked and together. That was more than enough to send my nerves into a frenzy.
Tanner: By the way, this is Tanner. Not your bag of burning manure ex Gary.
Sidney gasped, sucking all the oxygen out of the room. But it didn’t matter. I wasn’t breathing anyway.
Tanner: Or was it George?
Tanner: Grant?
Tanner: Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Soooo… Address?
I was still staring at the phone, my jaw hanging open and my heart in my throat, when Sidney shouted like he could hear her via text.
“Three Fifty-One Stony Bridge Drive!”
“Hey!” I objected, saying it like he really had heard her and, instead of giving my address to the most gorgeous man I had ever laid eyes on, she’d given it to a serial killer who wanted to wear my skin for a suit.
“Hey, what?” Grabbing my shoulders, she gave me a firm shake. “What the hell are you waiting for? Give the man your address.”
I glanced at the phone then back to her, repeating the process as my mind struggled to catch up. But nothing was making sense.
He was Tanner Reese—mouth-watering, larger-than-life television personality who was so mouth watering and larger than life that people referred to him with both names.
And I was Rita. Just boring Rita. Yes, I was attractive—fabulous, really. But no one called me Rita Laughlin. And short of the one time I was interviewed by the local news, I’d never been on TV.
Two-named Tanner Reese had no reason to want anything to do with one-named Rita.
“Why does he want my address?” I breathed.
“Uhhh… Best I can tell”—she reached over my shoulder and used a finger to scroll up a few messages—“to take you to dinner, get you naked, and then wrestle alligators. Which I’m hoping is y’all’s secret code word for hot, sweaty sex.” She gave me a teasing side-eye. “You little liar, pretending you don’t have any sordid details about Tanner. Psh.”
I ignored her and kept staring at the phone, waiting for the Haha, just kidding! This is actually Greg to pop up.
In that moment, I didn’t know what I was feeling.
Excitement?
Disbelief?
Flattery?
An unsettling amount of lingering embarrassment?
Some wicked combination of all of the above?
But no matter what, I couldn’t convince my fingers to type a response. What the hell would I even say? In the two whole weeks since I’d shut the door on my marriage with Greg, I’d never mentally prepared for the possibility that a man would ask me out again so soon.
And it was safe to say I’d never, never-never-never, thought that man would be Tanner Reese.
If I responded now, my knee-jerk reaction would be practical, something like, Oh, honey, you are too sweet. But I’m not ready for anything like that. Best of luck to you in the future.
It would have been the safest option for my already bruised ego and heart. I hadn’t been able to go toe-to-toe with a mere mortal like Greg. What the hell did I think was going to happen with a demigod like Tanner Reese?
But the more I thought about it, my lips pulling up into a smile from just thinking about him, the more I wanted to take that risk.
Screw Greg. I’d spent years trying to be the woman he wanted me to be. And look where it had gotten me. Maybe I wanted to be chewed up, devoured, and spit out by a man like Tanner. As I remembered when he’d held me against his hard chest and brushed his nose against mine, chills radiated over me from head to toe. It kind of made me want to scream out Three Fifty-One Stony Bridge Drive too.
Before I had the chance to decide, I got another text.
Tanner: P.S. I know you’re reading this. You might be the last person in the world who has read receipt turned on. So, on the off chance that you are doing something filthy that requires the use of two hands, I’m going to call instead. Feel free to put me on speaker and carry on.
My whole body jerked when the phone started ringing. “Oh shit! Oh shit Oh shit. Oh shit!”
“Yesssss!” Sidney hissed, her hands in fists and pumping in the most ridiculous victory dance. It made me super happy for her sake that she was already married to a hot man.
“What do I do?” I cried.
Casually sliding her finger across the screen, she accepted the call and smiled. “You say hello.”
“What the hell!” I whisper-yelled, shooting her a glare that I hope scalded her flawless skin.
“You can thank me later with all the sordid details.” Using my hand, she guided the phone up to my ear. “But first, give the man your address.”
With no other choice, I closed my eyes, steeled myself for what was possibly the best or worst decision of my life—excluding marrying Greg, of course—and nervously croaked, “Hello.”
* * *
“Oh, thank God. I was starting to think the alligator already got to you,” I joked, tossing my phone onto the passenger seat when my car switched our conversation to hands-free. “Listen, I’m pulling out now. What’s your address?”
“I…uh… Yeah. Look, Tanner, I’m not s
ure I should—” I heard some rustling on the other end then a muffled, “Ow, shit. Stop pinching me! Ow. Ow. Ow. Stop!”
My head snapped back and my eyes narrowed as if they could see what I was hearing. “Is…everything okay?”
“Oh… Yeah. Sorry, my friend is here. But she was just leaving. Hang on.”
I got more muted and urgent chatter, including what sounded like a woman yelling something about a stony bridge. There was a slam and then complete silence.
I glanced at my dash to see if the call had been dropped. “Rita? You still there?”
“I’m here!” she chirped. “Okay, sorry about that. She has some issues. If you know what I mean.”
I did not know what she meant, but we’d have plenty of time for her to explain over dinner. “Listen, can I get that address?”
“My address?” she parroted as though it were the first time I’d asked and not—literally—the fourth in so many minutes. “Tanner, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Then you would be wrong because it’s an excellent idea.” I sighed, stopping at the large gate at the entrance of my property, and leaned back in my seat.
It had been a while since I’d had to convince a woman to go out with me. Hard-to-get was a game I had no time or desire to play. This was probably why I ended up with overly eager nutcases. Maybe it was time for a change. For as many times as I’d thought about Rita over the course of the day, I’d be willing to make an exception for her.
I’d done some digging after Rita had tucked tail and snuck away while I was still on the second lunch wave. I could barely contain my laughter when I’d caught sight of her trotting away in those sexy red heels. With pink cheeks and shifty eyes, one would have thought she was headed to rob a bank, not making a break from a children’s carnival.
According to the countless women who had stopped by for pictures, autographs, or a flirty chat, her name was Rita Laughlin, soon-to-be ex-wife of Greg Laughlin, balding, boring, and completely average MD. She had been born in Midtown, gone to college at Emory, and married the douchebag seven years earlier. She currently lived in a large and well-decorated house in Buckhead that the majority of my new friends hoped she got when she “took him to the cleaners.”
To hear them tell it, she was kind, generous, and honest to a fault. Definitely not bad qualities.
She loved sushi, wine, cheese, and yoga. I hated sushi, but three out of four weren’t bad. What? Yoga was great for my core.
And some woman named Beth had told me a riveting story about Rita’s drunken dance moves at last year’s Christmas party. From the way she’d told the story, I was positive it was supposed to be insulting. But what my good pal Beth didn’t know was that not only had I seen her conspiring with Tramp Tammy before heading my way, the idea of Rita dancing—drunk or not—was far from a turn-off. Huge fucking stamp of approval.
Smiling at the thought, I turned left. I lived at least twenty minutes from Buckhead. This gave me a full twenty minutes to work my magic.
“Yes, your address, babe. We made a date for eight, remember? I’m nothing if not punctual.”
“It’s currently eight fifteen.”
My gaze jumped to the clock. Damn, how had it gotten so late? I really shouldn’t have taken that call from my attorney while I was getting dressed. Nothing good ever came from an after hours, eight-hundred-dollar phone call. And since this particular call had been about Shana’s latest bullshit, it was even worse than I’d expected. For half a second, I’d considered calling Rita and canceling, but she was a far better distraction than drowning myself in a bottle of Belvedere while Porter cracked jokes about my God-awful taste in women.
Scrambling for an excuse that didn’t make me look like a total jackass, I said, “You didn’t specify Daylight Savings Time or not.” Yep. That was the best I could come up with. Maybe this was why I didn’t like women who played the hard-to-get game. I sucked at it.
“Does a person need to specify that?”
“Apparently.”
“Riiiight,” she drawled. “Anyway, maybe I should take a rain check on tonight. My life is kind of a mess right now.”
“Come on, Rita. You can’t get a rain check. It’s not even raining.”
She laughed softly. “You know what I mean. You’re sweet, honey. And I do appreciate you letting me accost you today. I also would like to formally apologize for that. That wasn’t right.”
“It wasn’t wrong, either. You won’t find me complaining when I pick you up in a little while—this being after you give me your address.”
She sighed. “Tanner, don’t be silly. You’re sweet, really. But I’m letting you off the hook.”
“Who says I want to be let off the hook? You agreed to a date tonight. So I’m taking you up on that legally binding verbal agreement.”
“Legally binding verbal agreement?” she asked, incredulous.
Shaking my head at myself, I turned onto the highway. Eighteen more minutes. I had better get to work. “Okay, fine. Let’s say this isn’t a date but rather just me taking you out to dinner to say thank you for the very pleasurable accosting you gave me today. No hooks. No semantics. Just dinner. Though, just so you know, I won’t take being further accosted off the table. But totally your call.”
She laughed again, and my chest swelled as I flexed my hands around the steering wheel.
Oh, yeah. I was making headway.
“I don’t know. Today was such a train wreck.”
“Excluding the part where you met me.”
“After the ass I made of myself, it was probably including meeting you. You were so nice to come cook for us today, and that was how I treated you. On behalf of the whole office, I really want to say thanks again to you and Porter for not only donating the food, but also your time. I heard rave reviews.”
Shit, she was changing the subject. Next up would be saying goodnight. Then hanging up without giving me that address. Time to turn it up a notch.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say the whole office. I doubt your ex is thanking me for anything right about now. I dropped three hundred bucks on tickets for the dunking booth while my guys were cleaning up. You know, I was never much of a baseball player, but I kept him in the water a fair amount.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Shut. Up. You did not.”
I smiled smugly even though she couldn’t see it. “I sure as hell did. It was a charity thing, right?”
“Oh my God, Tanner.” Her melodic laugh drifted across the phone, causing my mouth to stretch even wider. “You bought twelve hundred balls and threw them at my ex-husband?”
“Well, it wasn’t nearly as heroic as that. There was a cage protecting his face. But if it helps at all, I got five in a row and pretended I was waterboarding him for you.”
“Wow. Who knew unsanctioned torture methods could be so romantic?”
God, I loved that she got my sense of humor.
“I try. I try,” I replied.
“I would have given anything to see his face. You know he seriously believes we’re dating, right?”
“Well, that’s fantastic because we are dating. Or at least I’m trying to take you on a date. And as soon as you give me your address, I’ll show you the pictures I took too.”
She gasped. “You took pictures?”
“Yep.” I popped the P. “Pictures or it didn’t happen, right?”
I heard some rustling on the other end of the line like maybe she was crawling under blankets, and while bed was my second favorite place in the world—second only to being inside a woman while inside said bed—I didn’t see her issuing an invitation for me to join her. “Did you just get in bed?”
“If, by bed, you mean carrying a glass of wine out back to swing in the hammock, maybe.”
I bit my bottom lip, my head falling back against the headrest. For most men, this would have been an innocuous statement. But for a hammock connoisseur like myself, this was the normal guy equivalent of her saying that she li
ked to give blowjobs during halftime.
“You have a hammock out back?”
There was a delay in her response, which was followed by a subtle kiss of her lips on what I assumed was a wine glass. “Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s one of the most underrated luxuries in outdoor furniture.”
“Oh, I’m not knocking anything. Rope or quilted?”
“Mayan, actually.”
“Oh, sweet heavenly baby Jesus, she’s beautiful and knows her hammocks. I’ve never been so turned on in my life.”
She giggled, pausing for another sip. “You know, if you leaked this hammock fetish to the press, you could probably increase demand by five million percent and singlehandedly lower the country’s unemployment rate.”
Okay, so at some point during the day, she’d figured out who I was.
But! Even with this knowledge, she was trying to avoid a date with me and was not elbow-deep in planning our televised wedding. This was a definite plus in my book.
“Yeah, but then, when I talked to beautiful women like yourself, I’d have no idea if the hammock was your idea or a ploy to impress me.”
“Jeez, that’s sad, Tanner,” she said, her sweet Southern accent like a wave rolling over my name.
I’d meant it as a joke, but it was the absolute truth when it came to dating. Once early on in my career, I’d done a rapid-fire interview about my personal life. One of the questions had been: What would your ideal woman order on the first date? Truth be told, the only thing I hoped my ideal woman would order was something she wanted. I didn’t factor into that. But I’d been on my last question in my last interview of the last day of a month-long press tour. My face had hurt from fake smiling, I’d been in desperate need of a shower, a smoke, and sleep, and my mind had been mush, so I’d prattled off the first thing that had come to mind: shrimp and grits.
That one little answer somehow made it onto my Wiki page, and after that, every woman I’d taken out ordered shrimp and grits. One of them even had a shellfish allergy and nearly ended up in the hospital. And this insanity was not limited to women outside of the spotlight.