“No date. In fact, I just happened to walk along the water and ran into Andrew talking about his new appointment as the C—”
Andrew’s across the room before I can finish, his warm, muscular arms around me, lips on mine. He tips me back, like a stage kiss, as if the way his hands press into my waist and back aren’t more than a surface-level gesture.
He tastes like wine and nearly two years of questions.
I wonder if I taste like beer and nearly two years of frustration.
My thoughts quiver, then fade, as the kiss melts me. If this is just for show, he’s putting his heart and soul into it. And his tongue. Definitely his tongue. His hands snake down and one cups my ass, the other pulling me tight. His tongue takes its time, like he’s at the beginning of negotiations for the deal of his life.
Maybe he is.
The man is in no rush.
“I don’t understand,” I hear Marie say as if she’s a thousand miles in the air, floating on the wind with a hundred helium balloons clutched in one hand. “Andrew is Mr. Anal Gland Hands?”
The spell is broken.
“Does he even have a schnauzer?” she asks a gape-mouthed Shannon, who is staring at me and Andrew like she’s spotted Sasquatch and he’s snacking on little tempura versions of the Tooth Fairy and Santa’s elves.
Andrew pulls away, his mouth covered in my lipstick. Plum Passion. Our eyes meet and he gives me the same damn jaunty grin he flashed the other two times we kissed.
He comes back in to nuzzle my neck. I can’t breathe, yet I’m panting. I’m panting so hard my lipstick should be called Panting Panty.
And then he murmurs, “Don’t say a word about my being named CEO.”
I freeze.
That’s it? That’s the only reason he chased me down and kissed me? To shut me up?
So I do what any self-respecting woman would do to a guy who has now kissed her twice in closets during crisis points in her best friend’s life.
I pull back and slap his face so hard my palm turns purple.
From the lipstick.
Marie gasps. Shannon lets out a little scream.
Declan smirks, the kind of smile that has zero mirth in it, and mutters something that sounds like, “Great. Asshole Boyfriend Summit coming tonight. I’m not getting any.”
Marie’s eyes narrow. Out of the corner of my field of vision, I see her walk up to the enormous stainless steel refrigerator and open the freezer section.
“Shannon,” she stage whispers. “We’re going to need more ice cream for this.”
“Not sure there’s enough for this situation, Mom,” Shannon answers in a high, reedy voice.
It feels so good to slap the bastard. No, really. It’s as if my arm has been coiling, waiting like a hunter sits for days before slaying the perfect beast.
Andrew is a beast. A perfectly gorgeous, one-hundred-percent selfish, modern-day Adonis who thinks he can just kiss me in private and I’ll let him. Like I’m on a kissing retainer and he can access me at will.
“I’ll thank you to stop kissing me. It’s not in the corporate contract between our respective companies,” I snap. My heart is pounding so hard it’s like it’s boxing with itself, my ribs the punching bag, my pulse throbbing in time with some rhythm set by the pure fury of being wronged by a man I can’t stop being attracted to.
Damn it.
His jaw is open, his hand pressed to the growing red spot on his face where I hit him. My palm tingles from the scrape of skin against five o’clock shadow, and the humiliation of realizing all that passion I felt was just a game to him. Those deep brown eyes stare at me with an intensity that belies everything I’m feeling.
“It should be,” he growls.
And with that, he turns and leaves.
“I’ll walk you out,” Declan mutters.
Shannon gives him a look. Declan walks to the door Andrew’s just exited and sighs.
“Salted caramel this time? Two pints or three?” His fingers curl around the doorframe as he waits for an answer.
She looks at me with the deep intensity of a psychotherapist analyzing a feral child. “One bag of marshmallows. One bag of Cheetos.”
Declan’s eyebrow goes up.
“Mom!” Shannon calls out. “Do we have any butter?”
“Yes. Two sticks,” Marie calls out.
Declan flinches. I can see the calculation in his eyes. Dare I ask about the butter? He’s a smart man, though, and chooses the path of least resistance.
Silence.
Andrew uses silence, too, I realize as I will my pulse back to a beat that doesn’t involve breaking the sound barrier. He uses his mouth to silence me.
Why?
“Fine. I’m buying marshmallows and, uh...Cheetos.” Declan’s hand is on the doorknob. He’s giving Shannon a look that says, Please don’t make me buy tampons again.
“Aren’t you sending Gerald?” she asks in a surprised tone. Gerald is Declan’s primary limo driver. Notice that phrase? Primary limo driver. The man has back-ups. I’m sure the back-up limo drivers have back-ups, like understudies for Broadway show stars.
Billionaires live lives of fluid grace, where other people are in charge of smoothing all the wrinkles, preventing any hiccups, and making sure they don’t, you know...
Have to buy marshmallows, Cheetos and tampons at a convenience store on a Friday night.
It’s a wonder Andrew didn’t just send his limo driver to kiss me and shut me up. When you hire someone else to do all your dirty work for you...
The tiniest sliver of panic blooms in Declan’s moss-green eyes. He controls it quickly. I have to give him credit.