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Chapter 17
Michael found Chloe sitting on the couch in the living room. She was chewing on her thumbnail and worrying so hard that she had grooves in her forehead.
He didn’t like knowing he was contributing to her discomfort, but he was pretty uncomfortable too. In a lot of very pressing ways.
“You hungry? Because I am, extremely.”
And he was only partially referring to pussy. Her pussy, in all its likely sunset glory.
“I’ll eat after you go.”
“Tsk, tsk, trying to shoo out a guest, and after I’ve been so helpful.” He sat down beside her on the couch and slid his arm along the back to toy with the ends of her hair. “Something has been bothering me since you took off.”
“What’s that?” She not so subtly moved her head away from his wandering hand and he suppressed a smile.
“I started wondering if maybe you hadn’t forgotten everything about that night after all.”
“Of course I didn?
?t forget everything. That isn’t how drinking works. You remember stuff until you get really loaded, then your memories get muddled. But the last time I got drunk before this weekend was a very long time ago, so my tolerance was down.”
So what was his excuse? His tolerance was too high?
“Maybe you should tell me what you do remember, and I’ll tell you. We’ll see if we can fill in some of the holes.”
Instead of looking relieved at his suggestion, her brows furrowed. “Look, Michael, I have to go to back to work soon. Someone called off, so I picked up a later shift.”
He frowned. She had to go back out in that insanity? “But you already worked today.”
“Right. I often work a couple of shifts. I work at the bar, and I temp through the agency whenever they need me. Right now, I’m counting on the bar because my most recent positions with the agency just finished.”
He glanced toward the hall. No crying yet. “What about the baby?”
“Oh, he’s old enough to stay by himself.” When Michael’s eyes widened, she nudged his arm. “Sucker. I told you my dad’s coming over. He’s going to watch him.”
Right, her father was en route. If being in a kid-saturated environment didn’t freak Michael out enough, she had to add in some parental unit action. He should be positively itchy to leave by this point.
So why wasn’t he?
Michael swallowed and reached for her hair again. Somehow curling it around his fingers settled him. “Want me to start with what I remember?”
“No, I really don’t.”
He traced his fingers down her shoulder. “It started onstage. I didn’t notice you at first.”
“Why would you? You had Juliet.”
“Nothing has ever happened between me and Juliet. Nor will it ever. We do what we do for the crowd. In fact,” he brushed his nose against Chloe’s hair, “she slid her hand in my pocket after you and I started eyefucking the hell out of each other, and she found me hard. And she took off.” He chuckled and pulled back enough to see Chloe’s eyes. “Did you see her book across the stage? She never came back to my side for the rest of the set.”
A wrinkle appeared between Chloe’s eyes. “She thought you were really into her.”
“Yes, and it freaked her the hell out. But I wasn’t. I’ve never been hard for Juliet Reece.”
“It doesn’t matter. God, we never even had a conversation before this crazy weekend, so we might as well have just met a few days ago.”
He picked up her hand and grazed his fingers along her soft skin. “Where’s your ring?”
“That again?”
