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26
Bella
Irun into Carm’s condo building, dodging the rain. It feels more like spring today than summer.
“Miss Scott, Mr. Mancini is expecting you.” The doorman presses the up button on the elevator for me.
“Thank you.” I slide in and he reaches in, pressing Carm’s floor number.
“Enjoy your evening,” he says as the door slides closed.
On the way up, I debate if I’m spending too much time here. I mean, he rarely comes to my place, but we’re usually together a few times a week now. Plus our time in the Hamptons. It’s all becoming a cozy routine, which I don’t mind, but Evie’s words about what exactly we are to one another and whether I’m settling stick in my head.
I step off the elevator and there’s Carm in the open door of his condo, in his slacks with bare feet, his button-down untucked as he waits for me. The first time I saw him like this, I tackled him, and we had sex before dinner. It’s becoming normal, like I expect to see him like this when I step off the elevator.
“Hey, beautiful, you kept me waiting.” His perfect white teeth snap down on something green, which, as I grow closer, I realize is a snap pea. He offers me the other half, and since I’m running on a half sandwich and a pickle, I welcome it. Carm drops it on my tongue and kisses me on my neck. “I should punish you.”
“I totally think you should.” I giggle and slide around him into his condo.
“Is that your sly way of telling me you’d like me to be rougher in the bedroom?” He walks into his open concept kitchen and stirs whatever is in the pan.
I stop short. “Did you cook for me?”
“You answer my question first.” He glances over his shoulder.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to some ass slapping or tying me up.” I blush just thinking about it as I slide out of my heels and unzip my skirt. “I gotta change. I’ll be back.”
I head down the hall to his bedroom and strip out of my office suit then into a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt I keep here now. I leave the room, pulling my hair into a messy bun, and stop in my tracks—again—seeing him plate our meal.
“Did you really cook?” I ask.
He looks up and smirks. “It’s one of the fresh meal kits. All I really had to do was put it in a pan and heat up the rice, but it’s a meal.” He shrugs as though it’s no big deal.
Instead of taking a seat at the breakfast bar, I wrap my arms around his stomach, kissing his back. “Thank you. Now all I need is a foot rub and you’ll be my prince.”
The pan slips from his hand. Shit. As soon as the word prince slipped out, I knew he’d misinterpret my words into thinking I mean happily ever after. Unlatching myself from him, I round the counter and head back to the safe zone of the stool.
He puts down some forks for us and pours two glasses of wine. Then he pulls a file folder off the other counter and slaps it down beside my dish. “I was hoping you could help me. It’s a garden unit, and it’s getting stale on the market.”
“You’re asking me for advice?” A part of me feels honored that he’d consult me.
“You were a broker once upon a time, and even though you won’t tell me why you got out of the game, I’ve heard enough to know that you were successful.”
He opens the folder and goes over the property with me, the good and the bad features, and we brainstorm the options of what he could do—the demographics of who would love it, some fresh marketing ideas that might get it some attention and whether or not the price needs to be adjusted—all while we eat the stir fry he prepared. The entire thing feels way too similar to a relationship, and I fear we’re veering off the course we thought this was headed, his obvious uneasiness when I made the prince joke serving as a giant red flag.
* * *
“I love yoga pants.”Carm yanks them down my legs as I’m brushing my teeth. “Especially since you never wear panties with them.”
I bend over and spit out my toothpaste and he slaps my ass. Hard. I scream, my head almost crashing into the mirror. After I rinse, I cock my eyebrow. “Been waiting all night for that?”
He shrugs, but his big grin says yes, yes, I have.
Stepping out of my yoga pants, I strip off my T-shirt and strut by him. He’s still in his slacks, although he’s undone his belt, button, and zipper so the fabric hangs open on either side. His shirt is unbuttoned too, revealing his mouthwatering chest. Sometimes I wonder how I caught his eye and kept his attention this entire time.
“I have a question.” He throws his shirt in a ball in his closet where I assume his maid picks up his dry cleaning for him. One of my suits was hanging in a nice plastic bag last week and it made me feel as though I should tip the poor woman.
“What could that be?” I set the alarm on my phone and place it on what has lately been my side of the bed.
