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“Oh, boy.”
“That blond woman?” I said, “who paid me all that money?” I pushed past the tension in his face, the chill in his eyes. “Who is she?”
“She’s no one,” he said. “Absolutely no one.”
“Porterhouses?” Our waiter arrived from nowhere and started to unload a giant tray of food.
“Holy…is this all ours?” Carter asked as the baked and scalloped potatoes hit the table.
“Welcome to my world,” I said.
And dug in.
CARTER
I walked Zoe up to her door, my hand cupping her elbow like I was holding a little fire in my palm.
“You know if teaching dance stops working for you, I think you could go cross-country and enter eating contests. You like pie, right? Hot dogs?”
She tried to look offended but I just laughed.
“I have never in my life seen someone eat like you just did.”
“I am going to choose to take that as a compliment,” she said, sticking her little nose in the air. It was cute. She was cute.
She was funny and opinionated and elegant and goofy.
A combination I hadn’t seen in a woman in years. This fake date, this task I’d had to take on, had begun to feel good. And my irritation with the elf had turned into something else entirely.
Maybe it was watching her put away all that steak.
I liked her. Was intrigued by her.
“Where are all the reporters?” she asked as we climbed the steps to her apartment building unbothered. “Maybe we’re already old news.”
“Don’t be too sure,” I said. “They might be lurking in the bushes.”
“I doubt it,” she said, pausing in front of the glass security door. “I think in terms of scandals we’re pretty tame these days.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, turning to face her.
The moonlight slashed through the courtyard, cutting ribbons of white out of the darkness and her eyes glimmered in the half-light.
She licked her lips, leaving them damp, and the moment melted into steam and heat.
“I didn’t tell you how beautiful you look,” I whispered.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
“I should have.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. The sounds of crickets deafening in the sudden silence. Her hands smoothed over her belly. God, my need to touch her. To grab her even—it was nuts. I’d never in my life felt this way. Compelled.
Like I wanted to open my mouth and inhale her.
And before I knew it, before I could stop it, I was leaning down to kiss her. My fingers slid from her elbow to the fine skin of her neck.
Velvet. Every inch of her was velvet.
“Carter,” she whispered, her lips inches from mine.
“Yes.”
“I don’t usually do this.”
“Me neither.”
“It’s the hormones,” she said. “The pregnancy. They’re making me crazy.”
I laughed and, oddly, it didn’t ruin the mood. “Okay.”
“And your suit. I love a man in a suit.”
“I have lots.”
“And the steak—”
“Zoe?”
“Yes?”
“Can I please kiss you?”
Her smile illuminated the darkness, a neon sign in the midnight sky. “Yes,” she sighed.
I’d never kissed a woman while smiling and it was a hot sweetness. Honey on my lips, fire on my tongue.
We were careful, the reality of “us” was a hard thing to overcome, but slowly we melted into each other. She let out a breath, her body softening against mine. I kissed her again. She opened her mouth, letting me in.
It was the kind of kiss other kisses wished they could be. We were perfect together and I felt her all along my body. Her arms around my neck pulled me closer. My brain wanted to remind me of all the reasons why this was a mistake and I leaned back, breaking the kiss.
But then she was beautiful in the shadows, her lips so pink and I leaned back in.
And then the night exploded in flashbulbs. The whirr and click of cameras. Zoe jerked away, stumbling slightly and I grabbed her to hold her steady, my palms melting into her skin.
“Give us a kiss, Zoe!” yelled the scum-sucking paparazzo standing in the shadows beside the bushes.
Zoe flinched, and even in the moonlight I could tell all the color had leeched from her skin.
Her eyes, vulnerable and angry, crushed me.
“I didn’t know that guy was there,” I said, but she pulled her elbows into herself, becoming tiny against the night as she slipped away from me.
“Come on, sweetie, don’t be mad!” the photographer yelled, and Zoe ducked her head, fumbled in her pea-green bag for her keys. Her fingers shook and tears poised themselves on the edge of her eyelashes.
“Zoe—”
The door cracked open and she was gone. A flash of pink, a long leg and I was alone in the night, my blood hammering hard through my body.
“Not your night, huh?” Jim Blackwell emerged from behind the bushes like the devil stepping into the light.
Don’t hit him. You can’t hit him.
Hitting him would only make things worse.
But the urge was a wild dog at my heels.
