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“Ohmygod, you did not really just do that whole caught illegally driving at fifteen, but it’s totally fine, officer, because my birthday is almost here bullshit!”
“That scenario is quite specific.”
“And I have specifically lost my mind having you here! Having you over! Do have any idea how fucking old I am?!”
“Somewhere in your 30s,” Tate answers with so much confidence it ceases all my movements except for a concerned eyebrow lift. “I’ve seen your license, remember?”
Phew.
Cool.
You can’t just tell that shit from one look at my very lightly made-up face.
Fuck.
I probably should’ve put on more before I came prancing out here like a twenty-year-old having her first sexy slumber party.
Giving him an actual number for myself seems to be the right thing to do despite how much I don’t want it to be. “I’m thirty-five.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” His lack of a lengthier answer causes me to squawk again. “Okay?! Just okay?! What does that mean?! You think I’m just on the cusp of being fucking ancient? I’m not ancient!”
“I never said you were.”
“You didn’t exactly say much!”
“Bella,” the man I am much, much too old for cautiously calls, diverting my thoughts away from the unhappy path they’re skipping down, “your age is the thing I care least about.”
“That makes one of us.”
He flashes me the very grin that got him here in the first place. “How can I make it two?”
Purring the question like that is a damn good start.
All of a sudden, my teeth quickly clamp down on my bottom lip to keep that answer tucked away out of his earshot.
“You are more than a race, more than an age, and more than a recently divorced single woman.”
“I don’t know that I would call me recently divorced…”
My attempt at humor is well-received by the way he lightly chuckles. “You’re sexy and brilliant and so captivating that I’m not sure how any man could ever let you walk out their life. And yet, I’m grateful that they have because you out of theirs, can mean you in mine, and there is not a single thing on this earth I want more.”
Any ability to breathe is successfully stolen.
“The question is,” his voice dips as his frame leans forward, “what do you want, Harper?”
There’s no stopping the response from slipping past my parted lips. “You.”
Tate gives his lips a slow, seductive lick. “Then come have me.”
Abandoning the dishes can’t possibly be done any faster. And regardless of how loud my mind screams to get my frame moving, it scientifically can’t move any quicker. Relocating from where I was to where I want to be takes what feels like an eternity, yet the second I’m standing in front of the man who seems incapable of losing his cool, it’s as though I’m right on time.
Like I’m exactly where I want to be.
Need to be.
In spite of his turned chair nature, he doesn’t reach out for me.
