6. Have sex
That was easy. Maybe there was something to be said for lists. I grinned at her. God, if she only knew my thoughts.
“Of course. What can I do to help?” I wanted to get the cleaning out of the way.
I turned to the wall and did a double take. She’d patched it up. A heavy weight lifted from my chest. The room was whole again. A stark white blotch showed where the hole had been, but the surface was smooth and ready to be painted over. I forced myself to exhale when a slow burn spread inside my lungs.
She walked around me and gave me a brush. “You could start painting. I’m still cleaning the water damage in the sink and tub.”
“This is new.”
“What is?” she asked, rosy cheeks and pouting lips.
God.
I wrapped my hand around her wrist, and her breath hitched. “You accepting my help without complaint or turning to the door calculating your escape.” I took the brush from her.
“I only have a couple of days to finish up.” She yanked her arm, and her fingers slid through my grip.
“Right. Your list.” I pointed to the counter.
Her face went from rosy to red. “Don’t mock the list.” Her dimple appeared again on the side of her mouth. I wanted to touch it. Kiss it.
“I’m not. See? I’m painting.” I couldn’t stop smiling. Giving this place a new purpose had been a good idea. Now all I had to do was keep my mind off Valentina. I could leave, but then what would I do with the rest of my day? I dipped the brush in the pan she had already set up and started cutting at the top, making sure the line was straight.
By the time Valentina joined me, I was rolling on the first coat of paint. She grabbed a roller and got to work on the opposite wall, inching her way toward me.
“What?” She slanted a glance at me.
“Just wondering.” I shrugged. “I don’t see a ring on your finger. What happened to Max’s dad?”
Her eyes turned dark, and the lines around her mouth hardened. I’d hit a nerve. Her wince was like a kick in the nuts, but the need to know what’d happened made it impossible to feel sorry for asking.
“He got spooked when I told him I was pregnant.” Her response was mechanical, as if she’d explain this small fact a million times. “I never heard from him again.”
“Wow, an asshole of epic proportions.”
She laughed, a deep laugh that warmed me to my core. She shrugged, skimmed the roller front and back on the paint pan, and turned to the wall.
“Was this your first year in college?” I knew she was twenty-four from her rental application, which meant she was nineteen when the asshole left her.
She puffed out her cheeks before she blew out air. “I finished the school year, but then I quit after Max was born. It wasn’t fair for him, you know.”
“But you went back to school.”
She nodded, beaming. Max canceled out anything else that was bad in her life. “Yeah. My parents were willing to help out. I didn’t really have a reason not to. And I had to finish. For Max.”
“God. I can’t imagine walking out on my kid.”
“You mean, if Wednesday got pregnant, you’d marry her?” She raised an eyebrow, a cute wrinkle trimming the corner of her eye.
“Her name’s not Wednesday.” I hated myself for letting Nikki invite herself to my house Tuesday night. The whole scene made me look like a womanizer. No doubt that was Em’s intention when she “forgot” to get Nikki out of the house.
“Oh no. I got that.” Her laughter was infectious.
“It’s not what you think. At all.”
“Well, I’m thinking you bring a different girl home every day. Em can’t keep track of them, so she calls them by the day of the week instead. Is that right?”
“Okay. So it’s exactly what you think. Or it was.” This wasn’t the time to explain how fucked up my life was right now. Nikki was a replacement for something, or someone, I couldn’t have. Until now. “Anyway, she could never get pregnant.”
She gasped, dropping the roller in the pan. I froze when she reached for my hand. Her smell was calming and exhilarating. She knocked my hand against the wall. I let it go limp, a burst of a laughter building up in my chest.
“Never say never. You’ll jinx yourself.”
“I’m sorry.” I knocked on the wall. No reason to tempt the jinx gods.
“What makes you think it could never happen?”
“I never do it without a condom. So the chances of a baby are extremely slim. I mean, we’d be talking about a miracle baby here.” She blushed at my words. Why in the world were we talking about sex? “But if for some reason it did happen, I would take responsibility for the baby. Marriage is not really for me. But I would definitely be there. All the way.”
She looked down at her hands. I shouldn’t be turned on right now. I closed the space between us and cradled her face to make her look at me. This close, her irises looked more chocolate than espresso. I never knew brown eyes could change colors.
“I’m not sorry for what I did. I would never be sorry for having Max.” She swallowed her tears and quickly recovered.
“Is that why you try so hard?” My left hand brushed hers, and she wrapped her fingers around it. “Sweetheart, you have nothing to be sorry about.”
Standing in the middle of the room, Valentina met my gaze, and everything else fell away, the loneliness and the pain. Tears brimmed her eyes again. I traced the wet trail down to the dimple forming near her lips. When she glanced down, the sunlight touched her face at an angle, adding to the glow on her cheekbones.
“I should go.” She peered up at me, eyes slowly moving down to my mouth.
Yeah. That was the look. My chest hurt.
“I need to get home,” she said.
“Valentina, you are home.” I bent down and kissed her cupid’s bow.
So much for staying away.
I meant only to comfort her. But she parted her lips slightly, and I couldn’t resist taking what she offered. I covered her mouth with mine, and my heart pounded when she didn’t reject me. The need she aroused in me was strong, painful. I wanted her more than I thought possible.
A quiet moan escaped her as she pressed her breasts against my chest and slipped her hand under my shirt. Her touch was like hot wax pouring over my skin. I buried my fingers in her soft hair and kissed her neck as I worked my way down to the front of her top, tasting sweat on her gardenia-scented skin.
“No,” she whispered on the top of my head, pushed me gently, and stepped back.
And just like that, my entire to-do list fell to pieces. I nodded, stuffing my hands in my jean pockets, lungs fighting for air.
“Derek, you’re my landlord. Remember? Plus, think of your girlfriend. How do you think this is going to make her feel?”
“Dammit, Valentina. She’s not my girlfriend. You know that.”
“Does she know that?”
“Yes. That’s the deal.” I inhaled to catch my breath. “They want to have fun. I’m their guy. If they want more, they need to move on.”
“Is this supposed to make me wanna kiss you again?” She gave me a nervous laugh, shaking her head.
“I know you want to,” I whispered. Her body still hummed the way mine did.
She swallowed hard. “What I want is irrelevant here. I can’t. I’m here for Max. You can never be more than my landlord. If you don’t think you can agree to these terms, tell me now. And I’ll go to the next apartment on the list.”
“Don’t do that. Please.” My mouth went dry, and legs weak. “We’ll do it your way. Your rules.”
“Promise me you won’t do this again.” Brows pulled in, she trained her gaze on me.
I bit my lower lip and nodded. She needed this as much as I did. “I promise.” I took a step closer to her. A dimple appeared on her cheek, as if she was about to say something. “I won’t kiss you again until you ask me.” She let out a long breath, and the dimple disappeared.
&n
bsp; Oh, sweetheart, I promise you will.
Chapter Seven
He’s Not on the List
Valentina
It was a miracle I still had my clothes on.
God, I wanted his hands on me again. I still wasn’t sure what’d happened. One minute we were painting, and the next he was kissing me. Really kissing me. Like out-of-breath, I-want-you-naked-now kind of kissing. I checked my top and pants again, smoothing out the fabric. Everything was in its place. Wow.
He reached for my hand, cheeks flushed, lips red and puffy. “Valentina—”
“Sorry. I’m…late.” Annie, my best friend, stood in the threshold, brows furrowed.
The early afternoon sunlight came in through the doors and created a dusty halo around her straight dark hair. Her mouth fell open as her gaze darted from Cole, to me, and back to Cole. No doubt her mind was going a hundred miles a minute trying to figure out what she’d just walked into. She pursed her lips. Crap, she knew. And for some reason, she wasn’t happy. Annie, who for the past six years had been on my case about going out on a date and getting some, as she’d put it.
“Um,” I said to buy myself a few seconds and catch my breath. “No worries. Cole’s been helping out.” I winced a little at that. I had no right to call him that.
Cole? he mouthed with a slightly cocked eyebrow before the corner of his lips twitched into a smirk.
I wanted to tell him that a kiss didn’t make us friends, but he didn’t wait for an answer and turned to Annie instead. “Hi, I’m Derek Cole.” He shook her hand.
“I know who you are,” she said. “You own the strip mall where I work.”
“Which one?” He inched closer to me, even though his attention was on my best friend. A glimmer of light slanted on his profile and his incredibly long eyelashes. I could stand here and watch him all day.
“Saigon Cafe on Swan,” Annie said louder than necessary, and effectively snapped me out of my trance.
“I love that place. Their green papaya salad is amazing. You work there?”
“She owns the place,” I said. “She’s also the fashion blogger in all of Tucson.” I put my arm around her. Annie and I had been best friends since kindergarten. She’d been there for me when I got pregnant and had to go back to live with my parents after my first year in college.
“And Max’s godmother.” She set her purse and several plastic bags on the kitchen counter. “Cute place you’ve got here.” She turned to me. “Way better than that shaggy carpet with walls.”
I gave her meaningful look. Cole didn’t need to know there wasn’t really another apartment on the list. What would I have done if he’d called my bluff?
Cole chuckled. “Still needs a bit of work, but we’re getting there.” He eyed the patched hole and the walls on either side of it, the ones we’d been painting for the last four hours. With his hands in his pockets, he turned to face me. His eyes bore into mine, as if he wanted to telepathically explain what’d happened, apologize.
I wanted to tell him we were past it. That as long as he didn’t try it again, we’d be fine. But Annie’s eyes were still on me. I’d already said my piece. I had to let it go.
He beat me to it. “Well, I’d hate to be a third wheel, and I can see you girls have a lot to talk about. I’ll leave you to it.”
“I’ll see you later,” I blurted out while I fumbled with the bags Annie had brought.
He shook his head once, biting the inside of his bottom lip. What did he expect? We kissed. So what? Annie, on the other hand, took pity on him—a rare occurrence. She always handled men with a firm hand. It was how she’d become so successful right after college. She never took crap from anyone.
“Hang on,” she said. Her high heels scraped the terra-cotta tiles as she strutted to the kitchen. She dug through a bag and pulled out a Styrofoam container. “Green papaya salad.” She leaned in and whispered, “Extra spicy. It’s her favorite too.”
As if he would care what I liked or didn’t like.
“Thanks.” He took the container and left, giving me a wink instead of a wave.
Annie and I stood silent in the kitchen for a whole minute. We hadn’t done that since we were in grade school and were given detention for talking during a test.
She broke the silent first. “What the fuck, Valentina?”
“What?” I put my hands up.
“You didn’t tell me you were living with the Derek Cole.”
“I’m not living with him. Just leasing his cottage.” I eyed the front door. Why did it feel like I was living with him? I went to the sink and poured a glass of water. I was suddenly parched. “There’s a difference there.”
“Okay. Fine, I’ll give you that. But what about the moment you were just having. Come on. You could cut the tension with a paintbrush.” She pointed at the brush on the floor to make her point.
My laugh was something between a snort and a cough. “Nothing happened.” I knew that’d be her next question.
“Shit. You kissed him. You did, didn’t you?” She fished the food containers out of the bags.
I avoided her gaze and went to grab a couple of plates from the cupboard instead. The kitchen was the first thing I had unpacked when I arrived earlier. Annie piled the food up high on each dish, expertly working the chopsticks as if they were an extension of her hands.
“Technically, he kissed me,” I said when she set a plate in front of me. I didn’t have a dining table, so we just stood around the kitchen island.
“I’m not saying I’m not glad you finally decided to end your six-year drought. And I’m sure the all-powerful Derek Cole is a spectacular kisser.”
Spectacular didn’t begin to cover it. A warm current surged down my legs, so intense I had to lean on the counter for support and wait for it to pass.
“But, sweetie, you gotta start small. This guy will have you for a morning snack and then forget all about it by lunchtime.” Without asking, she walked to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of bubbly I picked up at Basha’s on my way in. She grabbed a couple of wineglasses and poured.
“I can take care of myself. It was just a kiss. We were both simply caught up in the moment.” I stopped to inhale, hoping to take the defensive edge out of my tone and hide how all-consuming Cole’s kiss had been, how his warm breath on my neck and the feel of his hard abs under my fingertips still burned white hot at my core. Heat rose to my cheeks, and my legs went weak again. Annie was right. I was so screwed.
“Caught up in the moment? You guys were painting. That’s hardly an onset for romance.”
“You know I don’t have time for that kind of stuff. He knows where we stand now. It’s done.” I sipped from my wineglass and shoved a bite of the papaya salad in my mouth.
“Okay, sweetie.” She shook her head, raising an eyebrow. This conversation was far from over. “Oh hey, I brought you some goodies.” She bit into her spring roll.
Clothes. Her blog had really taken off in the last couple of years. So much so that local designers sent her free clothes in hopes of getting featured there. I usually ended up with those clothes. The catch? I had to provide headless Polaroids of me wearing the outfits for her page. She claimed it made the blog look more professional if she had her own models. Something told me she just wanted to give me the free clothes without hurting my pride.
“And since you’re starting a hot new job on Monday, I decided to do a nine-to-five piece. I got some amazing stuff.” She rummaged through the bag, brows furrowed. “There’s a sequined miniskirt in here. You’re just going to melt when you try it on. Wear it with that white tank I brought you last week.” She waved the skirt in front of me. “Right?”
“Thanks.” I put my arm around her, taking the clothes she offered. I never put up much of a fight. Free clothes trump pride. “Can we do the shots later, though? I’m all sweaty.”
“Yeah. Sure. Hmm.” She took a long swing of bubbly. “I also have a gig for you. There’s a fund-raiser next Saturday. I need about ten
girls to wear the dresses being auctioned that night. I’m featuring them on the blog…just trying to do something different, you know? Bring fashion to life.” She wiggled her shoulders. “The Polaroids are getting a bit stale.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Headless Polaroids, I can handle. But a real-live thing. I’m sorry. You know I can’t. Can’t I just play bartender again? That was fun.” I chuckled.
“Come on. This will be fun too. And I’ll be with you the entire time. Hour tops. Pleeeease?”
“I’m sure you have other girls who’re way more qualified.” The idea of modeling clothes made my stomach queasy.
She looked away for a moment before she burst out laughing. “You’re the only one who works for clothes. Everyone else wants money or their face on the landing page. I’m barely making money here.” She gave me her sad puppy eyes. A look she only used on her mom and me.
“Okay,” I said. Annie had done way more than put on a dress for me over the years. “One hour. And I’m not talking to anyone.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll email you the details tomorrow.” She took one last bite of the spring roll and dumped the empty containers in a bag. “So when are you getting Max out here?”
“Next Saturday. I already signed him up for summer camp.” I let out a giggle. It was finally happening for us. Max and I were going to be a family, on our own.
“Good for you, sweetie. But why not this week?”
“Mom thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to have him here while I’m fixing up the place and moving.”
She rolled her eyes. “I love your mom—you know that—but don’t you think it’s time she butt out?”
“She’s just doing what’s best for Max,” I said dismissively, but I knew what she meant. In trying to make up for the lack of a normal family, Mom had become a zealous grandmother. Sometimes she’d go overboard protecting Max, but her heart was in the right place.
Nodding, she patted my arm. “Next Saturday will be here before you know it. You guys deserve this so much.”
“It’s all thanks to Cole, you know.”
“You don’t have to defend him to me.” She gave me a knowing smile.
Love Over Lattes Page 6
