AllFreeNovel
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“Friendly. Sue me. Stop smiling at me like the Joker. I’m not apologizing for my reaction to your smoking-hot body.” Yep. Playing this aloof. It’s the only way out.
She hums but isn’t done with me yet. “Nope. I still want to know. What’s a while?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug, uncomfortable. “Couple months.” But I do know. Ten weeks, five days. Give or take a few hours.
“Wow. You were telling the truth. You didn’t sleep with your Cooper’s date.”
Discomfort sparks a touch of bitterness and before I mean to, I say something I shouldn’t.
“What about you? Did Xavier give you one last roll in the hay before he turned on you and made you national news?”
Her playful smile vanishes. Regret hits me like a truck.
“Nice.”
“Allie, wait.”
She cuts through the water toward the ladder, but I’m faster. I intercept her, loop my arms around her waist and tow her out to deeper water. Here, she’s forced to hold on to me or tread water to keep herself afloat. She doesn’t move away from me, resting her hands on my shoulders. I skim my fingers along her baby-soft skin. There’s enough space separating us that we could avoid kissing if we wanted to, but with her taking up most of my vision I can’t think of a single reason not to put my lips on hers.
I lean in as she softens and comes closer. A breath away from touching my mouth to hers, she whispers my name.
“Jackson.” Followed by not the best news I’ve heard today. “We can’t.”
“We can,” I insist. I earn a smile for that. She wraps her arms around my neck. Water drips off my beard and runs down my neck as I hover there with Allison Murphy hugging me tight. It’s beyond testing boundaries at this point. It’s an out-and-out dare. “We should.”
“Should!” she repeats on a nervous laugh. “We have some seriously bad history suggesting we shouldn’t.”
“We’re not who we used to be, Mini. Who says we can’t kiss and go back to being friendly tomorrow?”
“Um. Everyone on the planet? Didn’t you watch Friends with Benefits?”
“No. Did you?”
“Mm-hmm. I was at the premiere. Sat two rows behind Justin Timberlake.”
“Bragging is uncool.”
She drags a finger along my beard as her gold-flecked eyes search mine…I have no idea what she sees, but she must’ve found what she was looking for. She shocks me with a gentle kiss on the center of my mouth. I haul her against me with one arm, her breasts smashing against my chest underwater, her legs twining around my waist. I tread faster in a clumsy attempt to keep us afloat.
“I’m going to drown us if I’m not careful,” she purrs.
“Careful’s overrated.”
“So am I.” In a blink, warm, cozy Allie leaves the building. Now I’m left with calm, cool, collected, famous Allie. Not my favorite version. “Sorry for blurring the lines, Burke.”
I frown when she uses my last name. She’s never done that. That’s reserved for guys like Barrett or my employees. Distant people. Allie may have been distant when she first returned, but she changed that thirty seconds ago.
She escapes this time, climbing out of the pool to grab a towel. Rather than watch in envy at the water rivulets trickling down her legs and body, I turn and do a lap. Then another. I keep going until I’m out of breath. When I finally haul myself to the side to rest and catch my breath, Allie’s gone and her towel is drip-drying on the fence.
