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I reach to take the other shoe from Elliot. “Actually, I really need?—”
“I’m so glad you came,” he says gently, unable to hear the voices screaming inside my head.
His face is bright, his smile warm, his eyes filled with all the care and attention he showed me the night I was sick.
His lithe fingers pull the knot free.
Oh Christ. I can’t do the same thing to him that I did in the hallway. I can’t run out on him again. And I can’t cut him short the way I did with the text. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like that.
I need to get a grip and be strong. I came here to put our friendship back together. I can be a grown-up and make myself do that.
My brain quiets.
I take a deep breath and get back to work on my shoe.
“Me too. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I tell him, my chest palpitating with every breath. “It was great. You did a great job. And it’ll be great for the kids.”
I just need to get these shoes on, go to the possibly-not-terrible Italian place, crash out in my room two floors below, and then fly back to New York with our totally platonic friendship reinstated.
Elliot pulls on one of the laces. Slowly. “I missed you the last couple days.” He says as he seductively undresses my shoe.
He missed me? My fingers freeze in their fruitless lace-undoing efforts. What the hell am I supposed to say? That I missed him too? I can’t say that. We can’t go around missing each other.
“How come?” What kind of a ridiculous response is that? Thank you, mouth, for not listening to my brain before operating. “I mean, we never see each other on weekends anyway.”
“I’d like to, though,” he says. The loop in the bow gradually gets smaller as he continues to pull on the end. “I get that nothing can happen. Max might have lightened up a bit since being with Polly, but the nonfraternization and subclause things…” He shrugs. “He’s like a starving dog with a fucking bone when it comes to them. But we’re friends, right?” The loop shrinks and shrinks until it finally pops free. “Maybe we could be friends who hang out sometimes.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I hope I can get to that, eventually. But it will be hard to be friends with someone who renders me completely unable to undo my own shoes.
Elliot stretches the sneaker open and nods at it. “Allow me.”
He wants to put on my shoe? Like I’m fucking Cinderella and he’s my Prince Charming?
“Oh, it’s okay. I can do it.” I finally get my fingers into the knot and undo the first tie.
Elliot drops his knees to the floor and rests my sneaker on his thigh. “Please.”
It would be rude to refuse a second time. I nod and slip my white-socked toes into the shoe.
As I push in the rest of my foot, he presses back against me with his strong, firm leg.
How is shoving my foot into my shoe suddenly turning my insides to vibrating jelly? Because Elliot Dashwood’s thigh is on the other side of it, that’s how. And because his hand just slipped around to cup my heel and gently, carefully, almost caressingly, ease my foot on its way.
Jesus, the tingle flying from his touch up the back of my calf, re-routing to my inner thigh, and exploding when it hits the bull’s-eye is something to behold.
“But imagine you didn’t work for Max,” he says, looking down at my foot.
Asking my brain to cope with this arousing shoe thing and also imagine something else at the same time is way too much multitasking to expect. Right this second I’d struggle to come up with my own name.
“What do you mean?” My other shoe lies inert in my lap.
“Imagine you worked for some other random big New York company.” He yanks on the ends of the laces, pulling the sneaker tight to my foot as if it were a corset. “And we met somewhere through friends, like at a party or something.”
“If us meeting depended on you being at a party, we would be strangers for life.”
He looks up at me over his glasses. That’s my favorite way he looks at me, always has been. It’s like it removes all barriers between us. But right now, he’s serving it up with a side of flirty eyes and playful smirk. A flutter deep in my belly moves lower. Oh crap.
“Fair point.” He smiles and goes back to my shoe. “My point remains, though. Say we just met and became friends.” He loops the lace around his finger. “And we spent time together with me helping you digitize your planners. And you kept resisting. But I kept pushing you to change. And it irritated you. But also you kind of liked it. And then eventually…” He completes the bow and pulls it tight. “I asked you on a date.”
