Page 93 of Tell Me Something

Giggling, I slapped his butt on my way back to bed and glanced at the clock, which indicated it was only four in the morning. I stretched in the bed, loving the feeling of having this time with him all to myself.

“Ready to make out?” he said, returning.

This wonderfully playful mood was contagious, but I made the mistake of trying to see if he was ticklish. Turns out he wasn’t, and then the tables were turned.

“All right, all right. I surrender, I surrender.”

He stopped, thank the good Lord, and grinned.

I had a moment where I contemplated revealing how I felt, but I couldn’t yet. It was too soon. So instead I put all of my emotions into kissing him, loving the fact that we could go from such hot sex downstairs to making sweet love in the early morning light.

LATER WE TOOK a boat out and spent the day cruising. Josh packed a picnic lunch, and we lazed around in the sun and water. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him sail the boat, looking tanned and in charge.

We arrived back at the house in the early evening, and after a nice long, hot, sexy shower, we went down to the kitchen where Josh took some time teaching me how to cook. We were slicing tomatoes and basil with his arms around me from the back as I wiggled against his arousal. I was enjoying the fact that we were essentially engaged in foreplay with every touch when his phone rang.

He glanced at the caller ID and set it down. Then, making the effort to be more communicative, his eyes darted over my face. “It’s Catherine. I’ll call her when we get back.”

We got back to dinner prep, but my phone rang this time. I checked the ID. “Do you think it’s urgent?”

He took the phone out of my hand and put it down. “This is our time.”

I smiled, and then his phone rang again. “Josh, it’s fine. You can answer it. It seems strange for her to be calling me unless she’s trying to track you down.”

He searched my eyes and then grabbed his phone. “Catherine, slow down. Take a deep breath. Now say that again.” He gave me a look that conveyed she was upset, and I could hear her muffled voice on the other side.

While I rubbed his back in support, he gave me a helpless look. Considering I didn’t normally see him at such a loss for words, I sympathized. Obviously, she was upset, and he didn’t know what to say or do.

“Uh, I’m still out of town actually. No, I’ll be back day after tomorrow.” He gave me a pained look, and I picked up my phone to call Catherine back. Time to come to the rescue.

“Yes, I’ll hold.” He mouthed thank you to me.

“Catherine, hi—” That was all I got out before she started.

“He’s engaged. He’s engaged to that little actress. What is she, twenty-one or something? The divorce is barely final, and he’s already engaged. She’s probably pregnant. God, I almost forgot I have Josh on the other line. Let me release him and come back. Can you hold a second?”

“Sure.” I watched as he hung up his phone. He then came over to kiss the top of my head in a gesture that told me he was very grateful.

“So tell me all of it from the beginning. Did he call you?”

This led to a long story of finding out from a friend of a friend and then a story about the twenty-one-year-old wannabe Broadway star, who evidently was dumber than a box of rocks.

I walked around the kitchen, watching Josh chop vegetables and enjoying the little touches while he kept reading my face to ensure I was all right with the conversation.

“Okay, I’m going to give it to you bluntly. You ready?” I tried to ignore Josh, who had turned around with his arms folded as if wondering what I’d say. “Do you want him back? I mean, is there any part of you that misses him and wishes you guys could be together right now?”

“No,” she admitted in a small voice.

“That’s what I thought. So now he’s someone else’s problem. You need to flip your way of thinking. You think of it as losing him, but in fact you tossed him back. The only woman who will have him now is one who’s dumb enough to believe he’s a catch. Honestly, if he had ended up with some foreign correspondent with a PhD and Nobel Prize, I’d be just as upset as you are, wondering why the world is so unfair. But it sounds to me like he got the only girl who would put up with him.”

“I know, but it still hurts,” she confessed.

I instantly felt sympathetic. “I know it does, and I’m sorry you’re going through this. You don’t deserve it.”

“Turns out he’s coming with her to the same New Year’s Eve party that I go to every year, and I really don’t want to see them there together.”

“Then don’t go. Why put yourself through that?”

Josh turned around to watch me again.