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I couldn’t miss the thrumming pulse at the base of her neck. I wanted to lick that spot, feel it throb against my tongue. See her subtle response to me had me pushing on with the truth.
“I want you, Lindy Beckett. Since the first time I saw you.”
Her mouth dropped open, then she snapped it shut. “We… we barely know each other.”
“Mav and Bridget barely know each other,” I countered. They hadn’t even been together two weeks.
“They’re different,” she countered.
“How? Mav saw her and wanted her.”
Like I saw you and wanted you.
“So that’s it? I’m yours now? I don’t get a decision?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. It should have made her look imperious or snooty, but it only made her look hot with those tits pushed up in her top.
I learned from the slow down talk that I shouldn’t tell her exactly that, that she didn’t have a decision. That she was going to be mine. I knew it and she’d catch up.
So instead, I said, “I’m patient. You’ll want me back soon enough.” Before she could debate the point, I started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Let’s get you home so you can start working on that list.”
Home. She may have thought staying with me was a temporary arrangement, but she was wrong.
6
LINDY
* * *
Dex carried my bags inside. I followed and stopped just inside the door, setting my purse and laptop bag on the couch.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, cutting past the tiny dining table and down the short hallway to put my bags, I assumed, in the guest bedroom.
The small house was in the oldest section of town, two blocks off of Main Street. Prime real estate and even something so little was valuable. I stood in the main room, with seating and eating areas separated from the small kitchen by a butcher block topped peninsula. The house had been beautifully restored with crisp white walls and glossy refinished pine floors. It was minimally, but attractively, furnished.
Dex told me in the car Mav’s assistant found the place for him. He wanted to stay in town for a few weeks and didn’t like hotels. Besides, he didn’t want to get in the way of our siblings’ newfound togetherness. By togetherness, I meant sex. Lots of sex.
I wasn’t bitter that Bridget was getting some–okay, probably a whole hell of a lot–from Maverick James, hot billionaire who blatantly loved her after only a week. Bridget’s happiness was hard to witness, which made me feel like a bitch after all I learned she went through recently. Maybe I wasn’t bitter, but definitely jealous. I admitted it.
Bridget was twenty-two. Twenty-two!
Younger than I was when our parents died and she became more my child than little sister. And she found her forever guy in Mav. Who was thirty-seven. She got her dream guy and me? At thirty-five, I was still trying to find Mr. Right. I had the same job, the same house, the exact same life.
Now the job was boring, the house had holes in it like a block of Swiss cheese.
Dex leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his broad, muscular chest. He had on a pair of gray pants and a t-shirt with University of Minnesota across the chest. He made looking hot effortless.
“Since we abandoned our groceries at the store, how about we walk to the pizza place on Main? Their sauce rivals anything I’ve had in New York.”
“We should get the food in my fridge before it spoils,” I replied, making sure I stayed on track.
He pushed off the wall and came my way. Stalked my way. I held my ground even when I wanted to retreat from his intensity.
“That’s number nineteen or something on your list. As long as the fridge door isn’t opened, it’ll stay cool until tomorrow.”
He was probably right.
He reached out, brushed my hair back just as he had at the store. “Pizza?”
I didn’t know what he had to eat in his kitchen, especially since he only moved in a few days ago. I wasn’t going back to Van’s to pick up things to make.
