And they’d hugged, and she’d tearily rejected his what-the-hell-it’s-Valentine’s-Day offer of as much lobster and champagne as she could consume, and thirty minutes later Romy was back in the town house with a take-out pizza.
She’d been about to indulge in her first bite when Matt walked in, looked at the pizza in its box on the coffee table, at the glass of red wine beside it, and asked, “What’s with the pizza?”
“Can’t a girl order a pizza every now and then?”
“Not when the girl is you.”
“I don’t cook every night.”
“Yes, Romy, you do. You’re obsessed with cooking.” And he’d swiped a slice, sampled it, grimaced, picked up the pizza and taken it to the kitchen, where he threw it in the garbage.
“I haven’t eaten dinner!” she complained.
“If you want pizza, I’ll take you to Vendetta’s.”
“It took so long to get into this dress I can’t be bothered getting out of it just to go for pizza. The whole point of takeout was that I didn’t have to.”
“Yeah, I guess you do look overly trussed for a pizzeria.”
“A real man wouldn’t be deterred by a few buttons.”
“Any man would be deterred by three million of the things, so to save us both the effort...” dragging her off the couch “...I’ll make you something to eat instead.”
He’d tugged her to the kitchen counter, got a beer for himself, poured her a fresh glass of red, tapped the neck of his bottle to her glass, taken a quick swig and started gathering ingredients.
Recognizing the makings of Matt’s infamous cheese, bell pepper, chili and Henry’s Hot Sauce omelet, Romy had spared a mournful thought for her trashed pizza capricciosa. But she knew Matt only made this particular omelet when someone was miserable—there was something about hot sauce and egg that helped take your mind off your troubles, he insisted, to everyone else’s disbelief—and so she’d said, “What happened?” preparing to take one for the team and help him eat the damn thing.
“Huh?” As he roughly chopped the pepper.
“Tonight. What happened with you and Kelsey?”
“Nothing.” Shaking out a ton of chili flakes.
“Nothing as in...nothing?”
“What?” he said, distracted by cracking eggs into a bowl and whisking enthusiastically. And then he paused and looked at her. “Oh no, I don’t mean nothing nothing. I mean nothing interesting.”
He mixed the cheese, chili and pepper chunks into the egg, tipped the mixture into the pan and pushed it around with a spatula. A couple of minutes later he scraped what looked like a lumpy red-and-beige splotch onto a plate. Without ceremony, he poured the hot sauce over it, threw a knife and fork on top and slid the plate across the kitchen counter to her.
“Where’s yours?” she asked, dismayed at the gargantuan size of the thing.
“Shit, I don’t need to eat.” He grabbed for his beer and took an enthusiastic swallow. “I had to eat Kelsey’s dinner and mine because she’s on a diet.” Another slug of beer. “Fuuuucking hell, Romy—a diet!”
“She’s a cheerleader, Matthew,” Romy said, and shoved a valiant forkful into her mouth. She swallowed with some difficulty, then grabbed his beer off him, needing a sip to extinguish the flame in her throat. “She has to wear skimpy outfits, and people have to toss her in the air and...and things. You’re the American—you know this stuff better than I do.”
“So what?”
“Sooooo she can’t eat like the rest of us—she has to keep her weight down.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess.”
“And come on, you know girls don’t look as good as Kelsey without a little self-deprivation.”
“Who cares about looks?”
Romy choked on the bite of omelet she’d just taken. Took another sip of Matt’s beer. “Name one nongorgeous girl you’ve been out with.”
He grabbed his beer bottle back off her. “Names aren’t important. And neither are looks.”
“Ha ha.”
“I’ll qualify that—looks are a drawcard, but not if the rest of the person is annoying.”
“Yeah, well, your problem is you’re spoilt for choice. You get the pretty ones and the creative ones and the smart ones—all the ones.”
“At least I don’t get the nasty ones like you! Don’t make me regret wasting the Omelet of Compassion on you, Romy.”
Romy slowly lowered the laden fork that was halfway to her mouth. “What makes you think I’m in need of compassion?”
“Er...the pizza? Obvs!”
“Try again.”
He ran a hand behind his neck. “Well, you’re here, and Teague’s not.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
Another rub of his neck. “I saw Teague at Flick’s.”
“Flick’s? Teague?”
A look of annoyance crossed Matt’s face. “It’s not a den of iniquity you know, it’s just a bar that happens to show films on Wednesday nights. They went anti-Valentine tonight with some godawful indie horror film. Lots of people were there.”
“Yes, but Teague?”
“Why not Teague? At twenty-one he doesn’t even need a fake ID, even if they could be bothered carding us, so—”
“It’s not that! It’s just... I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like him. It has a bit of a reputation.”
“Oh, so Flick’s is good enough for me but not for him? Yeah, well, he was there, halo and all! So I asked him why you weren’t with him and he told me you two had called it quits.”
“And you assumed I’d be in need of an omelet! Well, let me assure you the split was amicable.” She pushed her plate away. “I promise you it wasn’t worth leaving Kelsey unsatisfied.”
“As it happens, smart-ass, we’d already done the satisfying stuff before dinner.” He grinned. “And after. We were just out for a postcoital drink and the movie, and to be honest I was looking for an excuse to skip the film because there’s a scene with an eyeball being chewed in close-up. Blech.”
“I’m glad I didn’t completely ruin your evening,” she said drily.
“You don’t look glad.”
“Because you threw out my pizza!”
“Hey, I was going to take you out!”
“Oh, great—me eating and you watching!”
“Well, I... Sorry. I got a little ahead of myself with the pizza.”
“That’s because you always act first and think later. But since I don’t need a babysitter, please take yourself back to Flick’s.”
“Don’t make me go back there, Romy! I’ve got a DVD of The Proposal for us to watch instead—much better than a chewed eyeball. Kelsey said you’d like it and she’s a film major so she’d know. She says it’s perfect for V-Day.”
“Kelsey suggested it?” Romy didn’t know how to feel about not being considered a threat; she was living with Matt, after all!
“Come on, Romy, you know how squeamish I am. I can’t take the eyeball. Don’t make me go back there.”
And so she’d laughed—of course!—and let him pour her more wine and put on the movie and tuck them both under a blanket on the couch. And then he’d poured her more wine, and made her do the chant-dance, followed by more wine...
And then came the scene with the ivory satin wedding dress and Romy had started to cry, and as though Matt had been waiting for exactly that, he’d scooped her up and sat her on his lap and patted her back and she’d snuggled against him.
Matt made stupid It’s all right, I’ve got you, You’ve still got me murmurs into her hair, and even stupider than what he was saying was that she’d fallen asleep. Cradled on Matt’s lap she’d fallen asleep! What a waste!
When she woke up, she was sprawled on Matt on the couch, and for the longest time she’d watched him sleep. Awake, he was always so sure of himself, a
nd yet asleep there was something defenseless about him that made her want to hug him.
She’d felt an insane desire to take his face between her hands and rub her lips against his to see what it was that he gave to other women that he wouldn’t give to her. It had shocked her, how much she wanted to do it, not only because it felt wrong to break up with one guy and kiss another all in the one night but because she hadn’t allowed herself to think about Matt like that since that first night they’d met, when they’d almost kissed.
Whatever the reason, she’d sucked in a breath and the small noise woke him. For a moment, he’d stared at her, and then his eyes heated, and hooded. The hands that had been loosely crossed over her back tightened and he’d pulled her in close and she’d felt his erection.
Time stopped. She’d sensed rather than felt his heartbeat, steady and strong. Or maybe it was her own she was in tune with: it was telling her to kiss him, kiss him now because she might never get another chance.
“One thing I noticed last night...” he’d said, and she’d held her breath, dying to know. And then he’d grinned. “You look kind of like a troll when you cry.”
“Oh, you...you bastard!” she’d exploded, whacking him in the chest and oofing her way off him.
“Hey, it’s cute,” he’d insisted, laughing at her disappearing back as she stomped to her room, where she told herself that she was to Matthew Carter what Teague Hamilton was to her. A friend you liked too much to love. A friend you needed in your life but not your bed. A friend, nothing more.
And now, so many years later, nothing had changed...and she still wanted him anyway...
“Hey—remember this bit?” Matt, giving her a nudge and bringing her back to the present. “Betty White trying to find Sandra Bullock’s boobs in that dress. You started crying and said your boobs were too big, so you were going on a diet like Kelsey to shrink them.”
“Yep, got it, thank you.”
“And I had to lift you onto my lap and cuddle you.”
“Aaaand you can shut up now.”
“And I said I’d take a look at your boobs for you and give you an honest appraisal.”
“Shut up, Matthew!”
“And you started undoing those three million buttons on your dress.”
“Yes, I remember,” she said, exasperated. “I also remember that you stopped me.”
He looked at her, eyes heating. “I was a moron. How about I check your boobs now?”
Oh God, oh God, what did that mean? Fork. Done. No! If she asked about it, it would probably turn out to be something about barbecued steak! “Very funny.”
“Except that I’m not laughing, Romy.”
For one perilous minute, she vacillated...but then she remembered that her buttons hadn’t been unbuttoned that Valentine’s Day nine years ago, and she turned back to the television.
“I can hear you sniffling, Romy,” Matt said. “Just saying.”
“I’m not sniffling.”
“Are you, you know, hormonal?”
She looked up at him. “Am I what?”
“When women fall pregnant, they get sort of emotional.”
“Oh, they do, do they?”
“Apparently.”
“Shut up, Matt. And stop reading up on pregnancy. You won’t be here, so you don’t need to know.”
“I could be here. If you needed me. If you...wanted me.”
She swallowed, letting that sink in. “You can barely fit in this flat before I’m fat.”
“I fit better if I do this,” he said, and lifted her onto his lap. “Just like old times, huh?”
Old times? Not quite, Romy thought.
“And yet not like old times, is it?” Matt said, as though reading her mind.
“No, not like old times,” she said.
“You see, Romy,” he said, “I have a feeling the old times aren’t coming back. Which leaves us with a choice of either no times or new times. And I...I don’t want no times.”
Breathless. Wanting. “So what do new times look like?”
“That’s something we’d need to work out.”
“How do we do that?”
“I don’t know yet. What I do know is I still want you. I know, also, that if you didn’t want me, too, you’d be down the other end of the couch. So I have a suggestion, if you’re interested in hearing it.”
Could this be real? Oh God, she didn’t know what to think.
“Romy?”
“What’s the suggestion?”
“That I give myself to you for the night, and you do whatever you want to me and we see how we feel at the end. And if it’s good...I stay. But I stay in your room with you.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Cross my heart, hope to die.”
“Just so you know, I’ll help you with the dying part if this turns out to be a joke,” she said, and tilted her head, closed her eyes, waiting for the kiss.
Long moment of...nothing. And then Matt spoke. “Er, Romy...? I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HER EYES BOLTED OPEN. “I knew it! I’m going to get the carving knife!” she said, as she started pushing off his lap—but he held her tight.
“You don’t need a knife if you want to kill me,” he said. “All you need to do is say no. Because I’ll drop dead if you don’t take me within the next two minutes.”
“Take...you? Oh, take you! You mean I’m in control.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“But why?”
“Because you said no sex, therefore you have to be the one to reverse that order. Because I like the idea of being your slave. And because...I trust you with my body, like I’ve never trusted anyone before.”
She felt tears prickle, as they always did when he said something that moved her.
He groaned. “Hey! Cut that out. Tears aren’t sexy.”
“But big tough guys who turn to putty when they see them are.”
“I’m scared of trolls, that’s all,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re scared of anything, Matt.”
He cupped her cheek in one hand and looked at her, very seriously. “I’m scared of you, Romy, and that’s the truth,” he said. And then he gave a shaky laugh. “But here’s a hot tip to help you with my seduction—I’m an easy lay—it won’t take much to make me come. So the floor is yours. Or the couch. Too bad there’s not a chandelier or you could—”
“Shut up and kiss me,” she said, leaping straight into the fray before anything could snatch the chance from her—and almost before she finished saying it his mouth was on hers, his tongue in her mouth.
One, two, three seconds—and he sat back, took her hand, put it over his heart. “Feel that?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s banging like a drum.”
“I am going to come so hard for you,” he said.
Oh God, just hearing him say that! “I’m going to make you,” she said. “But first, I’m going to kiss you and you’re not going to kiss me back—this is just for me.”
He kept himself still as she brought her mouth to his. First she kissed one corner, then the other.
When she pulled back to look at him, he touched her mouth and breathed out slowly. “That’s just the start, right?” he said.
Instead of answering him, she leaned into him again, trailing tiny kisses between those two corners, sometimes letting her tongue slide between his lips, sometimes not.
She pulled back again, watching for his reaction. “Well?”
“Well,” he said, and licked his lips. “Am I allowed to ask for more? Because I want more, Romy. I want you to kiss me all night.”
And with a little cry of surrender, she planted her mouth over his. “Open,” she said against his mouth. “Now you can kiss me back.”
And obediently, he did, his tongue gliding deep and wet into her mouth, seeming to touch everywhere at once. She swiveled on his lap to straddle him, her arms twining around his neck, knees digging into the back of the couch either side of his hips as she brought her body snugly against his. Her hips moved back and forth, and so did his, as if their bodies were already planning to take over the show. He felt so good there, her toy now, and the thought that she could do whatever she wanted to him was an exhilarating one, even if all she really wanted to do was strip off their clothes and impale herself on him.
But she remembered how in San Francisco, when she was climbing the stairs, she’d wished she could be memorable for him, and so she forced herself to slow down, to throttle back. She would tell him what to do to her, because he wanted her to do that, he trusted her to do that—and being the one he trusted was already something memorable.
Her hands went to the hem of her T-shirt. “Do you know what I want you to do to me when I take this T-shirt off?” she asked.
“Tell me.”
“I want your hands on my breasts. And then your mouth. I want you to coax my nipples out, to not stop until you do.”
“Oh Jesus,” he groaned. “I am so up for that.”
She laughed, low and soft, and scooting back as far as she could on his lap, lifted her T-shirt up and off. Lowering her arms to her sides, she lifted her chin. Displaying the wares. Watching his eyes drop to her chest. Seeing him swallow hard. Her breasts seemed to swell from the heat in his eyes, begging to be released from the confines of her bra.
“Well?” she said.
“Well,” Matt said fervently. “I could drool a fucking river looking at you.”
“Hands. On me.”
And as he raised his hands, placed them gently over her covered breasts and her heart gave a savage leap. He raising smiling eyes to hers and she knew he’d felt it.
He started to move his hands in circles over the white mesh of her bra, and her nipples tingled as though getting ready for him. One firm squeeze, and he pulled his hands back but only far enough for his fingertips to take over the work, drawing the lightest of circles around her areolae, which were on clear display through the mesh of her bra.
Getting Lucky Page 12
