After tossing her belongings in her bedroom, she came back into the living room to tell him that she was heading out for a birthday party.
Ben took one look at the file full of documents on his desktop before shutting the laptop and turning to face her.
“Can I come?” The moment the words came out of his mouth, Ben knew he had lost any coolness he may once have had.
But seriously, now that he could no longer socialize with his former work friends and he’d lost the rest in the breakup, his social life consisted pretty much of one woman. One incredibly sexy, beautiful, and intelligent woman. Who was leaving to go to a party without him.
“I mean, I don’t want to crash a private party or anything,” he added. But please let me come. He contemplated giving her puppy eyes but thought that may be pushing it. She was already giving him an adorably knowing look.
“Of course you can come, and you won’t be crashing anything. A bunch of us are meeting up at Cagney’s to celebrate Tamara’s birthday.”
“Cool, I like Tamara.” For the life of him he couldn’t remember which of her friends was named Tamara—the blonde, the supermodel, or the pregnant lady—but it didn’t matter, since he’d liked them all.
As if reading his mind, she cocked a brow as she moved past him to get into the bathroom. “Do you even know which one Tamara is?”
He pulled his best offended look and scoffed. “Of course. She was the pretty one.”
She gave him a skeptical look before shutting the door on him. He heard the shower turn on and had the overwhelming urge to join her. But then she would never make it to the party on time.
An image of her gloriously curvy body dripping wet under the shower’s spray filled his mind until he thought he’d go mad with wanting. Dammit all to hell, he was going in there. Just as he neared the door, he heard the shower turn off.
Damn.
Later. They would definitely be taking a shower together at some point this evening. When she came out wrapped in a towel, her wet hair piled up on her head with only a few loose tendrils framing her heart-shaped face, all hope of being on time was lost.
She gave him a warning look as he moved toward her. He was positive that his intention was utterly obvious by the hungry look on his face and the erection that he made no effort to hide.
“I have to get out of here,” she said, but he saw the change come over her, the transformation that he knew and loved. Each and every time they’d slept together, her cheeks flushed with arousal, her eyes grew heavy-lidded with desire, and she wet her lips in anticipation.
God he loved to see that transformation. Watching Caitlyn transform from the sexy librarian into the sexy sex goddess was quite possibly the best aphrodisiac in the world.
She was backing up into the bedroom, her hands teasing him as she slowly let the towel slip lower and lower until her nipples threatened to peek over the edge.
“We’re going to be late,” she said as he got so close he could smell the clean scent of her shampoo and body wash.
“Then we better be quick.”
Her eyes closed and her lips parted as he leaned in to claim those sweet, soft lips. He tugged gently and the towel that clothed her slipped out of her fingers and dropped to the ground.
He pulled back to take in the full length of her, standing there in all her seductive glory. He couldn’t stop the groan that escaped him. She was remarkable. He should be grateful time was of the essence—he was so turned on he wasn’t sure he could hold out for more than a quickie.
He leaned down so he could draw one of her rosy nipples into his mouth while his hand toyed with her other breast. Her soft gasp almost made him lose control.
Easy, boy. Even if he was about to explode with wanting, he needed to make this good for her, too.
He slipped his free hand between her thighs to stroke her core. She was dripping wet and panting for air. She wanted this as much as he did.
Thank God.
Moments later they tumbled into the bed, arms and legs intertwined as they ground against each other, lips and hands everywhere at once as they devoured one another until they came in a quick but thoroughly satisfying climax.
A little while later she emerged from the bedroom and stood in front of him in the kitchen. “What do you think? Do I look okay?”
“You look amazing.”
It was true. She was wearing a simple black dress and black knee high boots, but it was the flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes that made her more of a knockout than ever.
But then, maybe it was because he knew what had brought on tonight’s glow and that he had been an integral part of it.
She toyed with one of her brown curls, looking adorably soft and sweet and kissable and annoyingly self-conscious. He took her hand in his and leaned down to kiss her lightly. “You look fucking gorgeous. As always.”
Her blush deepened and her smile made his heart expand at a frightening rate. “Grab your purse, we’re already late.”
Chapter 8
“You’re late,” the pregnant friend said the moment they arrived.
“Sorry, Meg.” Caitlyn leaned over and kissed her friend on the cheek. Meg turned her radiant smile on him.
“Nice to see you again, Ben.” The knowing look was subtle but it was there. Yup, this little ball of belly knew he was sleeping with her best friend. Well, at least she looked happy about it.
He had the sudden desire to pump this woman for information. What had Caitlyn said about them? About their extracurricular activities?
“You’ve met the others,” she said as she led them over to a booth in the corner where he recognized Marc and the two women—the pretty blonde and the striking supermodel. Now if he could only figure out which one was Tamara and which one was Alice.
“So glad you could make it for Tam’s birthday,” the supermodel said with a grin.
Supermodel, Alice, and dainty little blonde was Tamara, check. He took Tamara’s hand in his and gave it a kiss, which got a laugh from the crowd and an inscrutable look from his date.
No, not date. His roommate. Dammit.
The pregnant one’s husband came over to greet him with a manly slap on the back—the ever-popular, not so subtle “don’t you mess with my wife’s best friend” gesture known the world over. “What can I get for you, man?”
And they were off. Ben was tagging along. Again. But he didn’t care because he was also having fun again. The group of well-wishers grew and their little group extended across several booths and around the bar. At one point a three-man jazz band came in and started setting up in the corner—live music was a Friday night regular event at Cagney’s, he discovered.
He was having fun talking to the birthday girl—surprisingly funny once she warmed up a bit—and her roommate, Marc, who was equally entertaining. Together, they had a Gracie and Burns quality to them. When he told them that, they got excited. Very excited. And judging by the looks exchanged between them, his off-hand comment had just earned the equivalent of street cred from this old movie crowd.
At some point while he was talking to Tamara and Marc, Caitlyn wandered off to mingle with some of the other guests. He spotted her at the end of the bar talking to a group of friends he hadn’t met yet. For a second, his lungs dropped to his stomach. God, she was beautiful. She tipped her head back to laugh. How was it that every man in this place wasn’t all over her? Were they blind?
Alice sat next to him with a fresh drink. “It’s nice to see her so happy.”
He looked over to see her watching him watching Caitlyn. Oh shit. She was giving him that knowing smirk. Here it comes. She thinks they’re really a couple. She wants to see Caitlyn settle down. Of course her friends would want her to find a boyfriend, a real one, not a fling that happened to be crashing at her place.
“Relax, Romeo, Caitlyn made it clear you guys are just temporary.”
“She did?” Of course she did.
“Of course she did.” The s
upermodel’s smirk grew to a grin. Oh great, he was entertaining her.
“What else did she say?” He instantly wished he could suck those words back in. But despite her evident amusement, Alice answered seriously. “Enough to know that you’re one of the good ones.”
Oh shit. Wait, what did that mean? Had she said that?
As though reading his mind, she added, “Don’t worry, she doesn’t think you’re the one or anything.”
He let out a breath. That was a relief. That should be a relief. So why did it feel like the supermodel had just stood on his chest with her high, spiky heels digging directly into his heart?
The amusement faded from her eyes and her tone dropped an octave. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
He maintained eye contact as one does with a crazy person. “I believe you.” He really did. The woman was beautiful but intimidating.
She was clearly waiting for him to say more. “You said it yourself, she knows this isn’t going anywhere. How could she get hurt?”
Alice was studying him with an intensity that was unnerving. He had the unpleasant feeling she was finding more there than he knew. “She’s not like you…or me.” Alice gave him a rueful grin. Whatever she’d seen in him, it was clear she recognized it. They were comrades. Birds of a feather.
They were bastards.
He tipped his glass back until there was nothing but ice left. “Meaning?”
She arched a brow at him.
She’s too good for you, dumbass.
Alice used her straw to toy with the ice at the bottom of her glass. “I’ve known Caitlyn for a long time. She’s not the type to just have a fling and walk away. I know she thinks she knows what she’s doing but…”
He glanced over at Caitlyn, looking so alive and happy and confident. “Maybe you underestimate her.”
He enjoyed the surprised look on her face before she responded. “Maybe. But if you hurt her—”
“You’ll kill me,” he finished. “Yeah, I got it.”
He raised his glass. “And if I hurt her, you have my permission.” She burst out in a laugh and raised her glass to cheers his.
At least they understood one another.
He looked back to Caitlyn and caught her looking at him. “You. Look. Beautiful,” he mouthed.
A pink flush rose in her cheeks and she rolled her eyes. But she was grinning and that made him smile.
“Oh man, I got it all wrong,” he heard Alice say beside him. “She’s not the one I should be worried about, is she?”
Before he could muster up a proper response, he was distracted by the sudden and drastic change in Caitlyn. All the color drained from her face and her eyes widened to the size of saucers.
What the hell?
He followed her gaze toward the door where a lanky, nondescript man had just entered with a slinky blonde on his arm. He didn’t need Alice’s muttered curse to figure out who he was.
It was Tamara who actually said it. Her sweet, girly voice said, “Fucking shit, it’s Cait’s ex. Who invited that twat?”
* * * *
Caitlyn’s hands were sweating. Why were her hands sweating?
Oh no, he’d spotted her. And so had Becca. They had spotted her and they were smiling a weird “we know this is uncomfortable but let’s be adults” kind of smile that made her want to scream.
She found her lips forming a matching smile of their own as if of their own accord. “Yes,” her lips seemed to be saying. “Let’s do put all this breakup unpleasantness behind us and let bygones be bygones.” Her lips had a decidedly prim and proper British accent.
Meanwhile her brain, her heart, and every other organ in her body was screaming in agony. They stopped to greet Jake and Meg at the far side of the bar. That bought her a couple minutes at least to gather the scattered contents of her brain.
She did not want to deal with this. She did not want to see him. Especially not with her. The other woman. The woman he wanted to marry after being together for a matter of months. They’d lived together for five years when he’d hemmed and hawed over whether they should share a bank account to pay rent and bills.
“Caitie,” Robert said. That was it. He said her name. And then he went in for a hug.
The smile on Caitlyn’s face stiffened into a grimace at the familiar touch and feel of this man. Just the smell of him was an onslaught of memories and emotions. And not a single one was pleasant.
When he let her out of the awkward embrace, he moved to the side so Becca could smile at her in that condescending “poor loser, I’ve got your man” kind of way. “You remember Becca?”
“Of course.” She forced a smile. “How are you, Becca?”
Before the other woman could answer, their stilted conversation was interrupted by an impossibly merry British man.
“There you are, love,” Ben said as he burrowed his way between Caitlyn and the man seated next to her at the bar.
She looked up in surprise and was greeted by a sweet, lingering kiss. What the—
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Ben asked, eyes wide with false innocence.
Caitlyn bit her lip to keep from laughing. Of course Ben knew. She glanced over and saw her friends in the booth watching the soap opera unfold. They were grinning like fools over Ben’s timely kiss.
“Ben, this is Robert and Becca,” she said.
She determined then and there that Ben had missed his calling as an actor. He launched into conversation with Robert and Becca, taking over the introductions and charming the pants off everyone in a one-mile radius.
All the while, he was making quite a show of touching Caitlyn. While asking Becca about business at her bar, he took one of Caitlyn’s sweaty palms in his and interlaced their fingers, absently drawing it up to his mouth at one point to place a kiss on her knuckles, sending a jolt of electricity through her.
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in close so they were quite literally joined at the hip, and when Robert started boring them all with a story about his office Christmas party, he leaned over under the guise of asking her if she needed another drink and whispered something so dirty it made her laugh out loud.
They were saved from any further conversation when the band struck up its first song, a soft, slow oldies tune that had a number of people on the makeshift dance floor.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Ben said, looking only at Caitlyn as if no one else was in the room. “My gorgeous girlfriend promised me a dance. Isn’t that right, Cait?”
She didn’t have a chance to reply before he had tugged her out of her seat and away from the most unpleasant conversation of her life. Well, it had been until Ben showed up.
“You were incredible,” she said with a sigh as he pulled her into his arms and they swayed to the music.
He was grinning down at her. “I have to ask you something, Caitie,” he drawled her name with an over the top American accent to sound like Robert.
“What’s that?”
“How the hell did you stand that boring prick for so many years?”
The ball of emotions that had threatened to turn into tears shattered into a million pieces as she burst out laughing. “I have no idea,” she managed to say.
He was watching her with a smile, shaking his head in disbelief. “You deserve a medal of honor.”
“I know.” And she did. It had been so long since she’d seen her ex that she’d forgotten what a bore he was. Not just a bore—a self-absorbed, patronizing snoozefest. Next to Ben, he’d looked like a Pez dispenser—his mouth just kept flapping, but there was no passion or humor there, just utter crap.
The three-man band was playing a jazzy swingtime number, and Ben twirled her so quickly she gasped and then laughed.
“You’ve got an audience,” Ben said when he pulled her back into his arms, nuzzling her neck and looking for all the world like an honest-to-God boyfriend.
He was right. Robert and Be
cca were watching them—no, staring. Her friends in the corner were outright gaping, and they were smiling. She would have to explain to them later that this was all a show. But in the meantime—Ben spun her around and she could no longer see any of them—in the meantime, she would enjoy the show.
Neither of them could be called professionals but they knew enough steps—and improvised the rest. Several songs later, she was gasping for air, partly from the dancing but mainly because Ben kept making her laugh.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like this. Or the last time she’d had fun like this.
Certainly never with Robert. Look at him sitting over there like a lump on a stump. Poor Becca.
Ben wrapped an arm around her as he led the way toward the bar and ordered them both another round of drinks. “How do you feel about a little PDA to really seal the deal?” he asked.
He was already leaning in for a kiss, and she met him halfway.
The bar ceased to exist.
That’s how it was when he kissed her in her apartment, but she’d had no idea that magical ability could happen anywhere and at any time. But no, here she was, surrounded by friends—and Robert—and one kiss had her thoroughly addled.
“That was nice,” she murmured when he lifted his head.
“Mmm,” he agreed. He looked like he was going to dip his head again and come in for more. Yes, please.
An hour and several PDA’s later, they were still cozied up at the bar talking when Meg came up to them.
“Well, if it isn’t the happy couple,” she teased.
Caitlyn blinked up at her friend as if in a daze.
How long had they been sitting there, talking by themselves? This was supposed to be her night out with friends. Shoot.
But Meg was grinning at her with a knowing look. She knew that look. Oh no, her friend was getting ideas about her and Ben.
She looked over at her group of friends at the end of the bar, all of whom were watching them. Yup, it was unanimous. She was going to have to explain that this was all for Robert’s benefit.
Robert and Becca’s—wait, where were they? She scanned the bar and they were nowhere to be found. Ben leaned over the bar to order them another round, and Meg leaned in so only she could hear. “They left ages ago.”
Her Leading Man Page 10
