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I glance down the hallway to see her bedroom door closed.
Fuck this.
Both hands knit in my hair. I feel like pulling it out from its roots. Maybe the pain from that would overtake whatever the hell this feeling is that is battering me from the inside out.
My heart is hammering so hard that it’s about to burst out of my chest.
Am I having a goddamn heart attack?
The soft pad of footsteps in the hallway sends my head back in that direction. Naturally, fate doesn’t see fit to make Sinclair appear fully clothed and not freshly fucked.
It’s the dog. Dudley is racing toward me with something bright pink in his mouth.
It’s too small to be a bra, and the only pair of pink socks I own are in a drawer in the walk-in closet of the condo I’m renting in New Mexico.
He drops the item at my feet as soon as he reaches me.
I bend down and grab it, immediately noticing the lace trim.
Panties. It’s another pair of panties.
“Where the hell did you get these?” I ask the little Yorkie. “Who’s in Sinclair’s room with her?”
He sits obediently and tilts his head.
I glance at the white panties again before I shove the pink pair in the pocket of my suit jacket.
As soon as they’re out of sight, I hear the sound of more footsteps on the approach.
I brace myself because I’m about to come face-to-face with the man who took the woman I want to bed.
“Dudley!” Sinclair’s voice calls out. “Where are you?”
I don’t answer. The dog doesn’t move an inch. He keeps staring at me like he expects me to offer him a reward in the form of a treat for bringing me the panties.
“Jameson?” My name leaves Sinclair’s lips as soon as she spots me.
She’s coming at me solo in cut-off denim shorts and a white T-shirt. Her hair is wet and freshly brushed. She looks just as she did the first time she tagged along to Denia’s beach house. We were fifteen, and since a summer vacation wasn’t in the works for Sinclair because of her parents’ commitment to work, my grandmother invited her to join us for a week away from the city.
It was torture for me, even though Kalon was there to distract me.
Seeing Sinclair in a bikini was the best part of that entire week.
“You’re home early.” Her gaze wanders to the coffee table. “Oh my God, Dudley. What did you do with my panties?”
She races past me to bundle the white lace garment into her fist.
This is where I should offer the pink ones I’m hiding, but I don’t.
She tries to erase the embarrassment she’s feeling by centering her focus on me again. “You’re not supposed to come home until tomorrow.”
I’m not about to overlook the two wine glasses or the guy who may be fast asleep in her bed. “It looks like you had fun tonight.”
She chases my assumption away with a flick of her hand in the air and a light laugh. “Molly had more fun than I did. I had to help her down to the lobby and into a cab.”
Molly? So the person the doorman saw entering the elevator with Sinclair was her old friend, not a new one.
Sinclair points at the bottle on its side. “That reminds me of the time we all played spin the bottle. Do you remember that? Kalon kissed that girl…Jenica, or Arnica, maybe… what was her name, Jameson?”
“You kissed Andy Lyver when the bottle landed on you.”
Her mouth falls open. “What?”
“Andy Lyver,” I repeat the name of our thirteen-year-old classmate who was rewarded with a kiss on the lips by Sinclair when the soda bottle she’d spun lined up with where he was sitting.
A bunch of us were gathered in a circle on the floor of one of the many massive rooms in Kalon’s parents’ home. The game had been his idea because he wanted to get his lips on a girl named Jenica. His wish came true that night, but mine didn’t.
When Sinclair spun the bottle, I prayed. For the first time in years, I prayed that it would end up pointing at me, but it raced right on past me.
I cursed under my breath as she planted a kiss on Lyver.
The little bastard took the opportunity and ran with it, pulling her into a kiss that earned him a bunch of oohs and ahhs from every girl in the room.
“How do you remember that?”
I chuckle. “I have a photographic memory, Sin.”
She bites her bottom lip. “That may be true, but how do you remember his name? I forgot it a long time ago.”
It feels like a series of rockets fire off in my chest. I don’t know if what I’m feeling is relief that she can’t recall the bastard’s name or excitement over seeing her like this. Maybe I’m still in the middle of a heart attack, but whatever the fuck it is, I like it.
