Chapter 15
DEX
“How’s the whole get-Lindy-to-marry-me-thing going?” Mallory asked, coming in through the wide-open front door. She was one of many who’d been in and out.
I set down the chair I carried in the corner of the living room. I’d flipped the coffee table onto the couch to make room for the relocated furniture which already included the kitchen table and the other three chairs that went with it. This was the last one and then the kitchen would be done.
After a debate, everything in the cabinets stayed in place, but things on the counters were moved out and anything breakable was wrapped in towels and sheets from the linen closet and stored in laundry baskets. I had no idea how two women could have so many linens, but they fucking did.
Mallory plopped down on the arm of the couch and waited for me to respond.
Glancing at the ceiling as if I could see Lindy through it, I put my finger to my lips to shush her.
“Jesus, she’s upstairs and could hear you,” I whispered.
The last thing I wanted to do was have Lindy learn how obsessed I was from Mallory’s loud mouth.
I told her I wanted her. I put it out there more than once.
Followed it up with a kiss. I made myself clear, although I didn’t mention marriage.
Mallory rolled her eyes. “Please, you should thank me for moving things along.” Her dark eyes raked over me as if inspecting a Christmas tree in a lot. “From the looks of you, you haven’t gotten very far. Definitely didn’t get lucky.”
I wanted to put my hand over her mouth to shut her up, but instead gently took hold of her wrist and tugged her outside.
Since Lindy had worked the night we were in Denver, Mallory and I had gone out to dinner and for drinks.
I considered her a friend. Especially since she was the only one who helped pick out the wedding ring that was ready and waiting for Lindy.
She was on Team Dex, but perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
“Hey, don’t worry, she can’t hear you,” she said. “She’s in her room boxing up all her sex toys.”
That stopped me in my tracks, and I tugged her around to face me.
“Say what?”
My dick was instantly hard discovering Lindy had sex toys, and enough to fill a box.
“Sex toys. You know, the things that look like huge, purple magical dicks?” She glanced down at my crotch and I immediately shifted to hide my own. “I’m sure yours is huge, but I doubt it’s purple or vibrates.”
Purple, no. But I’d been sporting some blue balls for over a week and a half.
“She won’t need those toys any longer,” I practically growled. “You just got here. How the hell do you know what she’s up to?”
She shrugged. “Every woman’s got a drawer of toys. Knowing Lindy, she’s not going to leave them anywhere a bunch of tree guys or contractors can find. Besides, she might want them if you’re not going to satisfy her.”
“I’m definitely going to satisfy her,” I confirmed. Just not yet. “She won’t need toys with me.”
She held up a hand. “Okay, caveman. I might be a first-grade teacher, but I know future tense when I hear it. I’m guessing then that you’ve never had a little three-way fun with a woman and her toys before.”
“Do you really want to talk about my sex life?”
“Yes,” she replied immediately. “I definitely want to know about a gorgeous professional hockey player’s sex life.”
Jesus. She was just like every other woman in America–the world–who read those trashy magazines.
“Fine. My sex life? It’s me and my hand until Lindy decides otherwise.”
She frowned and I could have sworn I saw a tear in her eye. “That’s so sad.”
She didn’t have to tell me that.
“Okay, so how can I help?” she asked.
Mallory was pretty in an overly perky, extroverted way.
I wouldn’t consider her… subtle. She had long dark hair pulled up in a ponytail, cutoff jean shorts and a Steaming Hotties t-shirt like Mav’s, only hers was pale blue.
After the fiasco where Bridget accidentally sent Mav her answers to a sex quiz Mallory made up for a girls’ night, I knew to be cautious with her.
She took things far. Maybe too far. And when it came to sex–
“Not interested, but thanks for the offer.”
“I’m not offering to help you get off.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean with Lindy.”
Mav also wanted to help with Lindy, but in a more hands off sort of way. Guys didn’t actually help each other when it came to being a wingman, we more or less sat around and watched it all play out. To be there with a bottle of tequila if shit went south.
“She’s in my bed which is a start.”
Mallory’s eyes widened and she clapped her hands with an odd sort of glee. “I knew you were a stud.”
“There’s only one bed in the house,” I clarified. “She made it clear where we stand. Or lay. There’s a pillow berm down the middle.”
Her glee disappeared as if I told her there was no such thing as the Easter Bunny.
“Oh.”
“She says I’m too young.”
“I can’t help with that.”
“She doesn’t know what I do for a living,” I said, pushing on.
“That’s easy. Tell her.”
I shook my head. “I like her seeing me as just a guy. Nothing more. Besides, if I do tell her, she’ll look me up online and see all the bad press from the bar fight that went viral.”
She knew all about it. “She’s no dummy. She’ll see how you protected that woman.”
I shrugged. “I don’t want to risk it.”
“If she sees you the way the tabloids picture you, then she’s not the Lindy I know.”
With her hands tucked on her hips, Mallory looked a little fierce, as if she wanted to storm over to Lindy and set her straight for something she didn’t even know about.
“That’s not all.”
She stared up at me all blinky-eyed and waited.
“She has a date tonight. With another guy. I kissed her on the street and she’s in my bed and yet she’s–”
“You kissed?” she practically screeched.
“Once. It was… fuck. Yeah, but even with that and us living together and sharing a bed, she’s going out with someone else. A dentist.” It was my turn to frown.
Mallory perked back up and waved her hand through the air. “Forget about him.”
“The woman I’m going to marry is going out with another man.”
“He’s a dentist. No offense to dentists, but they’re too stable for her. If there’s a picture of stable and consistent in the dictionary, Lindy’s photo would be next to it. There are never couples photos in the dictionary because that relationship would be boring as hell.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“She doesn’t want a stable guy, no matter how much she thinks so. She needs someone who’s exciting. Who’ll take her out for fun. Go crazy. Hell, get her to move away from home for the first time in her life. Meaning you.”
“That’s all fine and good, but she’s still going out with the guy.”
“Let her.”
My mind was boggled. “Let her?”
She nodded, her ponytail swaying. “Let her go. Let her learn for herself the guy’s a dud. If I tell her, or Bridget, or you, she’ll push back and probably sleep with the loser just to prove a point.”
I practically growled at the idea of Lindy fucking some other man.
“So let her,” she forged on. “Tell her she’s pretty and send her on her way to the date. She’s coming home to you and your pillow berm. Trust me. A Hunter Valley dentist versus you? There’s no competition.”
I scratched the back of my neck and glanced down at the grass. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then you can kidnap Lindy and her sex toys and show her who’s boss.”
My dick and I both liked that idea. I looked to Mallory and asked with words full of hope, “Can’t I just do that and skip the rest?”
She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Make that Plan B.”
Plan B. Fuck. I liked Plan B a hell of a lot better than Plan A.
But I wanted Lindy to want me, to beg me to fuck her.
To tell me about why she never moved out of the house she grew up in, or why she let her boss give her ridiculous amounts of work or why she was so hell bent on finding a man when I was right in front of her.
I didn’t want her orgasms because I kidnapped her and her battery-operated boyfriends. I wanted her heart, freely given, and nothing less.
“Fine,” I grumbled like a grouchy teenager. “A date with a dentist it is.”
Fuck.