She let loose a low moan. It had been involuntary. “I think I do know.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.” But happily, he didn’t seem inclined to press the matter because he pulled almost all the way out of her. Even though logically, she knew he was going to come back, the loss prompted her to cry out and wrap her arms and legs around him, as if she could prevent him from fleeing. It should have been embarrassing, but it wasn’t.
He thrust into her again, increasing the pressure with his palm, and she gasped.
Again, but this time he replaced the meat of his palm with his thumb and two fingers and rolled her clit between them. He thrust again, a little harder this time. And again, harder. She wanted to scream, from both the gutting pleasure and the extreme frustration of feeling like she kept rushing toward a cliff, but never reached the edge.
“Is this too hard?” he rasped.
She shook her head vigorously, unable to form the words but needing him to know that he shouldn’t stop. He should never stop.
Another thrust, punctuated by the slap of his balls against her. “You like it like this?” He sounded like he was taunting her.
“Yes,” she gasped. He was taunting her, hammering into her, never letting up for one moment on the relentless rhythm of both his hips and his fingers. “Just like this.”
“Like what?” He stopped then. The bastard stopped, and she cried out her displeasure, pulling knees up to her sides and trying to arch her hips up to get him going again. “Tell me how you like it.”
“Hard,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. There. There was one of those wicked grins. He was pleased with her answer. “I like it hard,” she said again.
“God,” he groaned. And with a mighty push he was back inside her, and his hand was moving over her clit again.
It was all it took. She was finally at the edge of that cliff, and she couldn’t have stopped if she tried. She screamed, feeling like every muscle in her body was spasming as a tidal wave of pleasure battered her.
“Fuck!” Dax shouted, as his hips started to jerk, but this time in a wild, irregular rhythm.
“Yeah.” Amy smiled as his body went limp. She ran her hands over his sweat-slicked back, unable to hold back a giggle. “We totally did.”
…
“I’ll finish up in here,” Kat said after Dax had placed the last washed dish in the drainer to await drying.
“You had a baby two weeks ago. Shouldn’t we still be waiting on you?”
“Nah,” Kat said, her eyes dancing. “Turns out I’m a natural at this motherhood thing. Who’da thunk it?”
It was true. Dax pretty much thought his sister could do anything, but she really had taken to being Gloria’s mom like it was meant to be.
“Go back in there and make sure our mother isn’t terrorizing your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Kat tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “I dunno. You guys went canoeing today. Then you brought her to Sunday dinner.” She grinned. “The only thing missing is fornication.”
Dax schooled his features into what he hoped was a neutral expression. God, if only she knew. “Fornication? Have you been reading the Old Testament along with all those baby books? Anyway, you’re the one who invited her tonight.”
Kat stuck her tongue out at him and tried to slap him with her dish towel.
“I’m going!” he said.
“Looks like a duck, walks like a duck,” she called after him in a singsong voice.
Ignoring her, he rounded the corner from the kitchen and paused at the threshold to the dining room, where Amy and his mother were bent over the stack of house sale ads Kat had printed out. Kat and Amy had combed through them before dinner and made a short list of places to go see, and it appeared his mother was now opining on them. No one had sensed his arrival, so he watched for a moment. To think, a few short hours ago, Amy had come apart in his arms. Or had it been him coming apart in hers? He hadn’t meant to lose his cool like that. It was a little unsettling, truth be told. All those years he imagined what it would be like to be with Amy. He’d had no idea.
“Dax!” She’d spotted him, gracing him with one of her huge, guileless smiles. He shifted a little, praying his parents wouldn’t notice the…effect she had on him.
She waved him over to the table. “It turns out your mom has a lot of thoughts on Kat’s housing situation.”
He pulled up a chair. “What a shock.”
“So I was thinking, maybe we could use your mom for the McQuade development.” She turned to his mother. “I work for a real estate development company. We’re working on a mixed-use development—retail, including probably a couple big anchor tenants, like a grocery store and a movie theater. There will be several condo buildings.”
“And…” Where was she going with this?
“We won’t develop the condos ourselves—that’s not our thing. We’ll sell to other developers, but one of the things we always try to do is make sure we have the right mix of stuff to appeal to the sorts of people who are going to buy the condos. We do a lot of market research.”
“You do?” He’d never heard of that. But then, when he and Jack hung out, they tended not to talk shop.
“One of the market segments condo developers are always after is active retirees.” She beamed at his mother. His father, who had been sitting off in a corner reading, lowered his newspaper. “Your mom is really good at this.” She tapped one of the house ads. “She can see faults I never would have.”
Dax didn’t doubt that. His mother could find fault with the Baby Jesus dressed in christening gown made of flawless diamonds.
“So I was thinking.” Amy turned to address his mother directly. “Maybe you could come and look at the site, give me your thoughts. Then we could visit a few comparable places that are already developed—the Shops at Don Mills, for example. You can tell me what you like about them and what you don’t.”
Holy crap. He knew what she was doing. Damn, she was good.
Then she delivered her final pitch, guaranteed to find favor with his mother. “You’d be doing me a huge favor, actually.”
He knew the Shops at Don Mills. It was exactly the sort of spot he could imagine his parents. Vibrant, lots to do, but no upkeep, no need to drive. So Amy was going to get his mom touring around spots like that, and maybe the stubborn old woman would start to see the possibilities. And because she thought she was helping Amy, the angel who had delivered her grandbaby, she would have the perfect cover.
His mother looked at his father, and Amy shot Dax a wink.
The woman was pure genius. He wanted to kiss her in gratitude.
Actually, he wanted to do more than kiss her.
After some logistical wrangling, his mother bit. They made arrangements for Amy to pick her up next Wednesday evening. “We’ll just do a little bit, so I don’t take up too much of your time,” Amy said. “We can go again the following week.”
He noticed he hadn’t been invited and was about to remedy the situation by barging in on their plans when Amy pushed back from the table and stood. “Thanks so much for dinner—excellent stroganoff once again, Mr. Harris—but I’ve got to be going. It’s been a long day.” She glanced at him but then quickly away. Was it his imagination or did her skin flush a little? When Kat came in wiping her hands on a dish towel, Amy smiled at his sister. “So I’ll see you and Gloria Saturday for the viewings.” Then she turned to his mother. “And you on Wednesday.” She clapped her hands. “Dates with three Harrises this week—lucky me.”
“Dax, drive Amy home,” his mother commanded.
Disconcerted by how quickly everything was moving—hell, disconcerted by the idea that Amy was apparently planning to hang out this coming week with nearly every member of his family except him—Dax stumbled to his feet to obey his mother.
“He can’t drive Amy home and mow your lawn,” Kat said. “I’ll drive her.”
It was true—th
e lawn came practically to midshin. Because they’d moved dinner to Kat’s place last week, he hadn’t been here for a couple weeks.
Just then Gloria, who had been sleeping in the living room, let loose an ear-splitting shriek.
“You go,” his mother said to him. “Your father can do the lawn.”
“I’m fine!” Amy said. “I was actually looking forward to walking to the subway. It’s such a beautiful evening.” She proceeded to shoot down everyone’s protests as she gathered her things. After they’d gotten out of bed this afternoon, she had changed into a pink floral sundress that was messing with his mind. How could someone who had been so wicked in bed come out the other side in such a demure dress, looking like an innocent Disney princess? The juxtaposition was maddening. It made him want to muss her up.
He followed her to the porch after she’d said her final good-byes and slipped on his shoes. “At least let me walk you to the subway.”
“No, thanks. Really.” She wasn’t meeting his eyes. Rummaging through her bag, she produced a pair of earbuds. “I’ve got my music. I’m good.”
When he tried to overrule her, she held up a hand. “It’s been a very…social day. I’m looking forward to a little solo walk.”
Okay. She didn’t want company. Message received. He wondered if he should kiss her good-bye, even just on the cheek, but before he could move, she’d hopped off the porch.
“Bye.” She waved, but she still wasn’t looking at him.
Right.
When she’d said, while they were having sex, that she wasn’t looking for anything serious, he’d agreed hurriedly, reflexively. It hadn’t been news to him—that had been the whole point, right? She’d been singing variations on the same refrain for weeks now. So he’d thought she was saying that, in the heat of the moment, to remind herself. To keep herself to her plan. Because Amy Morrison was nothing if not a planner.
He leaned against the doorframe and watched her disappear around the corner.
At the time, in the heat of the moment, he’d thought she was talking to herself.
But no. Apparently she’d been talking to him.
Because he’d needed to hear that.
He thought of Allison. And why he didn’t do relationships.
This was not good.
Chapter Thirteen
It wasn’t like she expected him to call. Why should she? She’d told him she wasn’t looking for anything serious, and apparently he’d taken her at her word.
Still, by the time Wednesday rolled around and Amy hadn’t heard a peep from Dax, hadn’t even laid eyes on him at the office, she started to get a little weirded out. She was driving over to his parents’ house that evening to pick up his mother, for God’s sake.
She needed a handbook. Probably there was unspoken etiquette for what to do after you slept with your colleague and arranged to manipulate his aging parents into moving into a condo, but she must have called in sick the day they covered that. Or been too busy planning out her life with Mason.
The worst part was she kept thinking maybe she had done something wrong. Made an idiot of herself without realizing it. She should have stuck with her plan to keep her personal life separate from the office. That’s what she’d told herself about why she had rejected Steve, so what was different with Dax?
Dax turned her insides to goo, that’s what was different.
And when she pulled up out outside his parents’ tidy bungalow that evening, she was immediately goo-ified. Because there he was, dressed for the office in a gray summer suit, his lavender tie loosened, long limbs sprawling as he sat on the top step of the porch.
She grinned. She couldn’t help it. Tried, in absence of the “how to behave” handbook, to temper it, but failed spectacularly. How could any woman with a pulse not smile when presented with the prospect of all six foot two of besuited Dax Harris jogging down the stairs to meet her, an answering grin on his stubbled face?
“I’m crashing your little party.”
She flicked his lapel—he didn’t wear suits every day. “You clean up nice. What gives?”
“Raising a round of venture financing for a new app. Met with some potential investors today.”
“Yeah? What are you working on?” Amy realized that other than a couple of their high-profile products, she really had no idea what Cherry Beach Software actually did. More surprising, she was genuinely interested in knowing the answer.
“It’s an app you use at restaurants. When you eat somewhere, you enter what you had, and how you liked it. It learns your preferences, and it scrapes reviews from everywhere on the web. So the idea is when you go to a restaurant you’ve never been to, the algorithm figures out what your ideal order is based on reviews and your tastes.”
“That’s actually kind of cool.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“It’s like an app guaranteed to prevent order envy,” she said. “I hate it when I feel like I haven’t ordered the best thing.”
“Of course you do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer because Lin came out then, dressed like she was headed out on safari. A huge sunhat and Yoko One-style wraparound sunglasses totally obscured her face, and without a word she passed them and got into the front seat of Amy’s Fiat.
“You’re never gonna fit in the back,” Amy said to Dax.
He rolled his eyes. “You would have a Fiat.”
She punched his arm before sliding into the driver’s seat. “Hey, at least it’s not the two-door model.” When she glanced in the rearview mirror to back out of the driveway, she burst out laughing. He was sitting sideways with his back to the rear passenger door, his legs extended along the backseat as if reclining on a chaise longue.
He just raised his eyebrows. “Next time, I’ll drive.”
“Oh, and I suppose you drive a Land Rover or something.”
“Mercedes M-Class, actually.”
“What’s that? M for millionaire?”
“Ha ha,” he deadpanned. “It’s an SUV.”
It was her turn to roll her eyes. “So practical. For all the off-roading you do.”
“Said the woman who drives a fire-engine-red Fiat.”
“Hey!” she protested. “This is the perfect urban car! I can park it anywhere.”
“Well, I transport surfboards sometimes. Can’t do that in a Fiat.”
Lin cleared her throat. Oh, crap. Amy had forgotten about the part where they had an audience. And so had Dax, apparently, because he suddenly sat up straighter. God knew what his mother was making of their flirtatious/prickly banter thing. She shifted in her seat, suddenly feeling like it was going to be a very long, uncomfortable evening.
Well, she’d wanted to see Dax again. She was getting her wish.
…
“All right, Mrs. Harris,” Amy said, slowing down to enter the parking ramp at the Shops at Don Mills. “Pretend this is actually a ramp in a condo building you live in. How would you feel about it? What features would be important?”
“My mom doesn’t drive,” Dax called from the backseat. He wasn’t trying to be pushy, just to prevent his mother from opining all over something she knew nothing about. Not that anything could really stop her from doing that, but still.
Amy glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “I’m sure your mother is capable of imagining a scenario even if she isn’t literally going to be in it.”
“Light,” his mother said. “Parking ramps should be well-lit. And you want the driving space to be wide if you expect blind old coots driving Buicks not to crash into everything.”
“Good, good.” Nodding vigorously, Amy met his eyes in the mirror again. “Can you write this down?”
Man, she was going full force with this charade. But, ever obedient, he pulled out his phone and opened the notes app.
After they parked and took the elevator down to ground level, Amy took his mother’s arm, leaving him to trail behind them. “Let’s star
t at the northern edge here.” She walked them to the arterial that banded the cluster of shops and nodded across the street. “Your public library is there, along with a drugstore.”
“They could use a bridge across this street,” his mother said.
Amy nodded. “That would be a city thing, but yes, I agree that would be a great idea.”
She turned around. “I’m writing it down,” he said before she could issue the command.
They turned and started strolling through the complex itself. He had been thinking of this as a potential locale for his parents to move, based mostly on Kat’s testimony. He’d only ever been here himself once, meeting an investor at one of the restaurants. He had to admit, as they strolled the place, that it was a pretty nice spot. Narrow streets and paths crisscrossed through upscale stores, restaurants, and coffee shops. There was even a movie theater.
“Now I know it’s not really your cup of tea,” Amy said, turning his mother to face west and pointing at the ring of high rises that surrounded the retail area. “But imagine you live in one of those buildings. What are your thoughts about what’s here? Just free-associate as we walk.”
He watched his mom observe a group of old men playing cards on a patio outside a tea shop. She didn’t say anything. They peered into store windows and stopped for an iced coffee. Nothing. Took a stroll around the green, where a jazz trio was playing. Still nothing. Passed a gelato place. No verbalization, but his mother’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
Amy was looking increasingly worried, furrowing her brow and gnawing at her lip. She didn’t yet know the ways of the Matriarch. It was actually kind of adorable how invested she was in this little project.
Finally, when they’d meandered all the way down to the far southern corner, his mom shrugged and said, “This place is okay.” Victory! But of course Amy didn’t know that. “It needs a grocery store,” she added.
“It has one!” Amy exclaimed. “There’s a Metro just around the corner!”
His mom made a dismissive-sounding sigh. “Metro is too expensive. I shop at Food Basics.”
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