Coming Swoon (Brunch Bros #4)

Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

“I heard you almost had your mother making a very different kind of film today.” Arthur fell into step with Peter as they made their way to the elevator. “I got a peek at the dailies. That kiss might skew the MPAA rating.”

Peter sighed and pushed the down button with his thumb. He’d gotten variations on his father’s comments all day from anyone who had been on set to witness his kiss with Sybil. Especially from Madelyn, who was finally able to work in the afternoon.

“Not a lot of gusto there, sport,” she’d teased after their kiss. “Use up all your energy this morning?”

It was all in good fun and he was used to it, but Sybil wasn’t, and the second she got the go ahead to leave, she was out of there so fast she left smoke trails. They hadn’t gotten a chance to talk about it. He needed to talk about it.

He hadn’t been prepared for that kiss. Peter had imagined a kiss that started slow and built in passion as it went on. He hadn’t planned on her grabbing his shirt and pulling him to her. “Fuck it” wasn’t even in the script. That kiss wasn’t a slow burn, it had been a wildfire, and she’d charred him to a crisp. If his mother hadn’t thrown that water bottle…

“We got told to go for it, so we went for it,” Peter explained.

He’d never lost his head like that before at work. Peter prided himself on always being professional, always being in control of himself, especially in intimate situations. But as soon as their lips had touched, the rest of the world ceased to exist.

Nothing had changed there.

The elevator announced its arrival with a ding, and Peter and Arthur stepped inside.

“Where are you off to this evening?” his dad asked, pushing the button for the lobby.

“Graham’s house. He promised me takeout and a decent enough glass of wine. You?”

“There’s supposedly a stunning little restaurant in another little town called Salty—isn’t that so charming?—and I’m taking your mother there for a romantic night to celebrate a successful first day of filming and narrowly avoiding becoming an adult entertainment director.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Peter insisted, and Arthur snorted his dissent.

The elevator slowed to a halt and dinged. The doors slid open to the lobby.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with Sybil since we’ve been here,” Arthur said as he stepped out of the elevator. “Remarkable young woman. Strong, independent, cutting sense of humor. I felt like I’d known her for a long time when we met. It’s a miracle and a tragedy that she’s still single.”

“She’s…something,” Peter said in a vain attempt to be evasive. There was a suspicious twinkle in his father’s eyes that sent a shiver of cold dread down his spine.

Arthur smiled fondly. “Yes, she is. Now I suggest you scurry out of here before your mother leaves her production meeting and starts interrogating you about that kiss.”

Peter took his father’s advice and hightailed it to his rental car, running through the parking lot as rain pelted him. His zip-up hoodie was uncomfortably damp by the time he turned on the engine.

The great part about a small town like Crane Cove was that it was almost impossible to get lost. If he missed a turn, it didn’t take too long to realize it, and there were only so many directions to go. Peter had a feeling he’d be able to get from the hotel to Graham’s house with no problems in about a week.

The rain had graciously subsided to a drizzle, but he still bounded up the front walkway like he might melt if he got too wet. Peter opened the front door and went inside.

“Honey, I’m home!” he called, his voice carrying in the foyer.

Eloise appeared in the entrance to the front living room with a large glass of red wine in her hand. When he’d met her, he’d told her that she and Graham were going to make beautiful babies. In a different century, she would have been an artist’s muse with her thick, brown curls and big blue eyes.

“Hey, Peter. Graham went to go get pizzas. Do you want to have a glass of wine with us until he gets home? We’re just drinking and complaining about our days.”

“I could absolutely use a glass of wine.” He took off his shoes and placed them carefully on the shoe rack. When he’d lived with Graham they’d had a similar shoe storage system by the door, but his shoes never found their way in that one. He liked Eloise enough to make the effort here. “Who is we?”

“Connor and Sybil,” Eloise answered as they entered the living room. Connor overwhelmed an armchair and Sybil was on the couch with her feet tucked under a blanket and his red sweater wrapped around her body. Their eyes met, but Sybil quickly looked away, her cheeks flushing. She drained her wine glass and reached for a bottle on the coffee table.

“It’s Monday night. We drink wine and whine about our weeks. Do you want red or white?” Eloise asked.

“Either is fine.”

Eloise went to find him a wine glass, and an awkward silence choked the room like smoke. Sybil wouldn’t look at him, and he was avoiding eye contact with Connor, though he could feel the other man glaring at him.

Peter rocked back on his heels, then up on the balls of his feet. “So…”

“So…fancy seeing you here,” Connor said, his tone bordering on hostile, right on the edge of plausible deniability. Sybil shot him a warning look.

“Just waiting on Graham,” Peter assured him and took a seat on the couch next to Sybil. “How’s the school year going so far? It’s cross-country season, right?”

Peter couldn’t remember where he put his keys most of the time, but he did have an uncanny knack for remembering details about people. Connor taught high school English and coached long-distance runners. He was also so anal-retentive about baking that Sam, an infamous kitchen hog, would actually let him help cook.

“The only thing my students care about right now is homecoming,” Connor answered. “It now takes an entire Broadway production to ask someone to a dance, so if I can cobble together twenty minutes of their attention in a fifty-minute period, I’m having a good day.”

“Nice to know the grand gesture isn’t dead yet,” Peter said, which earned him an obvious glare from Connor. Instead of letting the subject drop, he carried on. “I mean, we complain about how kids today are lazy and unmotivated, but when they do get excited about something, we put it down and say it’s stupid. And some of it is, undeniably, stupid, but the creative spark is there. It needs to be channeled.”

“Well if you ever want to come teach, the school district is always looking for subs.” It wasn’t a nice offer. It was a thinly veiled “I’d-like-to-see-you-do-better.”

Sybil was doing her best to make it to the bottom of her wine glass, and Peter wished he had one of his own so he had something to put in his mouth besides his foot. It was clear enough that Connor didn’t like him, and though he didn’t know why, he did know that he needed the big blond grump on his side if he wanted to get Sybil back. If her best friend didn’t like him, he didn’t stand a chance.

Mercifully, the front door opened and Graham came inside carrying two pizza boxes stacked on top of each other.

“Peter!” He smiled, surprised. “You’re early for once.”

“Am I?”

Next to him, Sybil stifled a laugh. If only she knew all the things he’d do to make her laugh. He’d become a clown and throw a pie in his own face to get a giggle.

“Oh thank god, you have food.” Eloise intercepted Graham in the hallway and took a pizza box from him. She came into the living room, handed Peter a wine glass, and put the pizza on the coffee table. She started to open the lid, then hesitated, looking between Graham and Peter. “Um…did you two want to join us?”

It was an offer she wanted turned down, so Peter gave up his precious spot and stood.

“No. Graham promised me boy talk. Gotta dish about cars and sports.”

Graham frowned. “Neither of us cares about cars, and all the cares we gave about sports retired with Jordy.”

Peter shrugged. “So we’ll talk about action movies using monosyllabic words.”

“Don’t ever play Scrabble with him,” Graham warned. “He acts like an idiot, but he’s got an overinflated vocabulary.”

“Doesn’t mean he can spell,” Connor stage-whispered to Sybil.

“Is pizza allowed in the breakfast nook?” Peter asked, choosing to ignore the comment.

“Pizza is an any time of the day food, so yes,” Graham answered, took two steps down the hall, then stopped and looked at Sybil. “Do you know when Mallory is coming home? We could use her at the bar. The movie people drink. A lot.”

“No clue,” Sybil said. “She doesn’t give me an itinerary.”

“Can you call her?”

“I am not your secretary. If you want Mallory to come home, you call her and ask.”

“Fine,” Graham grumbled, and it was Peter’s turn to stifle a laugh as they walked to the back of the house.

The wine Graham had paired with their pepperoni and olive pizza was divine. Peter wanted to drink it straight from the bottle and not share.

“How was your first day of work?” Graham asked, grating fresh parmesan cheese over the slices he’d put on his plate.

“Not bad. Long, but not bad,” he replied, and took a bite of his pizza. The salt and fat kissed his taste buds, and he moaned. “I love pizza.”

“Long but not bad,” Graham repeated suspiciously. “I’ve never gotten less than a ten-minute answer when I risked asking you about your day, and when I’m genuinely interested I get ‘long but not bad’?”

“It was…” Peter searched for something non-incriminating to talk about, but the only part of his workday his brain recalled was kissing Sybil. It wasn’t just the highlight of his day, it was the highlight of his decade. That kiss was better than any award he’d won or role he’d landed. But if he talked about it, he’d gush, an d gushing was a slippery slope to telling Graham everything Sybil wanted kept secret. “A day.”

“What was it like working with Sybil?”

“She did a good job,” Peter answered diplomatically. “Very good at following directions.”

“Good kisser?”

“Very— How’d you find out about that?”

“Your gossips talked to my gossips, and my gossips talk to Kiki, who reports to me.” Graham grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “I heard it was so hot the film combusted.”

Peter’s face got so hot he worried his hair would catch on fire. “Reports have been greatly exaggerated. It was professional.”

Graham’s grin grew. “So your mom didn’t have to throw a water bottle at you two to get you to stop?”

“She was in the hallway. We didn’t hear her yell cut. Where did you get this pizza from?” Peter closed the lid to investigate the logo.

“Didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear?”

“Is there a point to this line of interrogation, or have you become exceedingly bored by your provincial life and need to dramatize mine?”

Graham laughed so hard he wheezed, then snorted, which made him laugh more. Peter rolled his eyes and sighed.

“I’m going to the bathroom, you anthropomorphic hyena.”

He pushed back from the table and headed for the first-floor powder room. The door was closed, and he stared at it for a moment, trying to remember if Graham and Eloise were a closed-door or open-door household. He reached for the handle to see if it was locked, and the door swung open.

Sybil jumped, her brown eyes wide in shock.

“Oh. Sorry.” Peter sidestepped out of her path to let her pass.

Except instead of shooting him a dirty look and leaving, Sybil grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the bathroom, locking the door behind them.

“We need to talk,” she whispered, crossing her arms.

He tried to figure out what she meant by her tone and body language, but came up with a few too many possible answers to safely guess. So, he went with an old improv standby. “Yes, we do.”

When in doubt, say yes.

“Look, this”—she gestured between them emphatically—“cannot happen. It won’t happen again. You’re you and I’m me, and we don’t work. But…maybe I didn’t hate kissing you today.”

Peter squeezed his eyes shut and opened them quickly. No, he wasn’t dreaming. If this had been one of his vivid fantasies, Sybil would be miraculously naked.

“And maybe”—her cheeks were a shade of red somewhere between her hair and his sweater—“I wouldn’t hate doing it again on a strictly casual basis.”

A strictly casual basis wasn’t what he wanted, but it was a starting point. It got his foot in the door, which was more than he’d had that morning.

“For the record, I’m not objecting, but why?”

Curse his mouth for opening before his brain could take control. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Don’t ask questions, just say yes please and thank you very much.

Sybil became very interested in her socks. “Because I think I’ve mythologized you in my mind. Made you into something you can’t possibly have ever been. I need proof you’re just a man so I can stop wondering what I’m missing out on. So, casual.”

“What does casual look like to you?” he asked, not adding that his version of casual included not so casually marrying her.

“We fool around while you’re here filming and then we cut it off. A clean break this time with no stupid plans or promises.” There was a distinct irascibility to the latter portion. “We never tell anyone because no one needs to know.”

“You want me to be your dirty little secret?”

Curse his fool mouth.

Sybil’s eyes flicked to his groin. “I wouldn’t say little, but yes. You’ll be my secret and I’ll be yours, and we’ll take this to our graves.”

There was something undeniably poetic about that. Not the reference to his penis, which became rapidly engorged as soon as fooling around had been suggested, but the secrecy and graves. Peter filed the thought away to text Sam later, in case he could use it for a song.

“How exactly are we supposed to sneak around if Connor is staying at your house?”

She frowned in confusion and then rolled her eyes. “He’s not. He just doesn’t trust you and wanted to scare you off. Thinks you’re up to no good.”

“If you get your way, I won’t be up to any good.” He put his hands on her waist and brought her close. “Do I have to climb in through the window, or am I allowed to use the front door?”

She touched his chest and goosebumps erupted all over his skin. “The tree is right by my window,” she mused, her hands sliding up to his shoulders.

“I would’ve scaled the drainpipe.”

She wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled his face down to hers. The first brush of her lips was electric and sent sparks down his spine. He’d missed her lips, so soft and warm, yet always insistent and eager, like kissing was a battle she could win. Her tongue gingerly caressed his bottom lip, and he opened to her sweet invasion.

Peter lost all sense of time while they kissed. What else mattered? Nothing. Just her. Always only her.

Sybil melted against him with a soft sigh, her hold on the back of his neck still iron, like she was afraid he might possibly pull away. There was zero chance of that ever happening, but he wasn’t going to tell her that because he liked her clutching at him, holding him, wanting him maybe half as much as he wanted her.

His cock was a hard, insistent rod against his thigh, fighting to break free of his jeans. The pressure was building, and he clenched, trying to hold back. He couldn’t come in his pants. It was the epitome of embarrassing in adolescence when it was more acceptable, but after thirty?

She sucked on his tongue gently and it was over. He’d have had better luck stopping a bullet train with his pinky finger. A shudder wracked his body, and he whimpered into her mouth. The relief of release was awkwardly coupled with panic at how he’d hide the evidence. Already the hot, viscous liquid was trailing down his leg.

“Peter?” Graham knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”

Sybil jumped back abruptly like Graham could see her through the door.

Peter took a breath and called back, “You know how I like cheese, but cheese doesn’t always like me? I’d back away while you still can.”

Sybil pursed her lips to keep from laughing, and he shrugged sheepishly.

“Use the air freshener.”

There was a breathless thirty seconds while they waited for him to go away, then she whispered, “You should probably get out of here.”

“Um…” Peter was scared to move. Nothing had soaked through his pants yet, or ended up any further down than his knee, but if he so much as sneezed it could be a different story. “I still need to go to the bathroom.”

“Sybil?” This time it was Eloise delicately knocking at the door. Peter looked up at the ceiling in dismay. “Are you okay? You’ve been in there a while.”

Her eyes grew wide with panic. “I, uh, had to poop. A lot.”

“Oh god.” Eloise sounded concerned and sympathetic. “Do you need anything?”

“Some privacy. I’m almost done.”

“I’ll grab you some Pepto from upstairs,” Eloise said and another thirty-second silence ensued while they waited to be sure she was gone.

Sybil let out the breath she’d been holding. “That was too close. We can’t do this where we’ll get caught.”

“Do you want me to come over when I’m done here?”

She shook her head. “No. I have to go to bed when I get home. I’ve got an early morning.”

“I could go to bed with you,” he offered.

“I need to sleep , Peter.”

“Fine,” he acquiesced. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Whether I like it or not.” She checked her appearance in the mirror before sliding around him to get to the door. “I’ll bring the invoice for the coffee cart tomorrow.”

“Hey.” He put his hand over hers on the doorknob, and she looked at him quizzically. “I still love you.”

Any warmth in her brown eyes disappeared. “I know,” she answered softly, then carefully exited the bathroom.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She didn’t tell him to go to hell or call off their arrangement. But it wasn’t “I still love you too.”

Peter looked down at his pants. How was he going to clean himself up without making a bigger mess?