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“Thank you,” Nola said, “but I’m not letting it go. What do you mean that time?”
If Astrid could have run out of the pub without jiggling her six-pack of Diet Coke into bubbled-up oblivion, she’d be in the wind right now. As it was, she really didn’t have much choice other than to ’fess up.
She stared down at one of her unmarked bingo cards as if she was trying to memorize it. “We only had actual sex once.”
“Define actual sex,” Nola said.
How did she come up with an explanation for not-quite-naked, blow-her-back-out, fill-her-up-so-good, damn-she-wanted-it-more, blissed-out-beyond-words sex? She couldn’t, so she didn’t.
“P in the V,” she muttered.
Thea rolled her eyes and took a sip of her gin and tonic. “You know, for someone who went on a whole dicks-of-the-world tour, that’s a pretty narrow view of sex.”
Astrid jolted back in her seat. Did she just get called a prude? She was most definitely not that.
“He got me off inmydad’spantry,” she said, the last bit coming out in a rush as if it was one long word.
“Did you just say your dad’s pantry?” Nola asked, looking fucking delighted at the possibility.
Astrid nodded, wanting to sink down farther into her seat but refusing to give in. “There was the sexting, too, but I swear that only happened because I thought he was jerking off. I mean, what else was I supposed to think with the noises coming through my ceiling?”
Nola’s smirk slid off her face and landed somewhere on the pub’s black cement floor. “Oh fuck. Wait, one second. You work with this guy and he lives above you?” She took a healthy drink of her stout.
Astrid nodded, no clue where this was going but not liking it anyway.
Nola glanced over Astrid’s shoulder and grimaced. “Just remember you love me too much to kill me.”
Somehow Astrid knew what—or more specifically who—she’d see as soon as she turned around. Still, she managed to go into a little zone of oh-fuck-me shock. Zach Blackburn and a woman who looked like she put up with absolutely no shenanigans had just walked in with Cal right behind them. Astrid’s stomach did a little flip-flop thing at seeing him.
“So before I left Dewy, Fuck’Em, and How, I had reviewed a couple of Ice Knights contracts for a friend’s clients,” Nola said, regret seeping into each word. “I told Lucy not to worry about the hourly billing, just that I’d need a favor someday. I called it in this week, asking her to have some Ice Knights royalty come to bingo to help pump up attendance and increase bar sales, which it is doing.”
“That doesn’t explain him,” Astrid said.
Or the fact that he would wear something so indecent as jeans and a henley in public. Okay, fine, on most people it would look normal, but the sleeves hugged his biceps and the waffle material was giving its all to stretch across his chest. And the way he looked in jeans? It was basically thigh porn.
Nola continued, “Zach had a few requests of his own. First, his wife had to be welcome to come if she wanted.”
“Ahhh, that’s sweet,” Thea said, all heart eyes and happy sighs.
“The second was he wanted to bring a friend who happened to live in the apartments above the pub.” Nola reached over and squeezed Astrid’s hand. “If I’d known that he was that guy, I would have told him to fuck off, but I didn’t, so I said sure, bring your friend.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Astrid said.
And it wasn’t. Really. What did she care? She didn’t.
But then Cal spotted her, and that first doubt crept in. Then one side of his mouth curled up in a sexy, crooked grin, and Astrid realized this just might be a very big deal—especially for her panties.
Chapter Nineteen
For the past week, Astrid had been like a ghost. Cal would spot her in the hallway, and by the time he finished doing a double take, she’d be gone. Collaborating to fix their problem child? All done via company email and the occasional two-minute chat under the watchful glare of Jones. They lived in the same damn apartment building, and she managed to avoid him like he was the human personification of the stench wafting off an industrial hog farm.
But she was here.
Now.
Just a few feet away.
And she was ignoring him so hard it was probably going to leave a mark in the morning.
