Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
MELISSA
I wake to the sound of my doorbell ringing. At first I try to ignore it, because I really don’t want to move. Luke’s still fast asleep, with one leg hitched over my hip, and I’m not sure I can get up without waking him. Really, the polite thing to do is to stay in bed.
But whoever’s at my door clearly doesn’t care about being polite, because the bell rings again. My phone rings next, and I scrabble for it on the nightstand but come up empty. I realize it’s still in my purse, on the floor, and I squirm out from under Luke.
But before I can swing my legs over the side of the bed, a strong arm pulls me back. Luke tucks me into his side, and his hand settles right under my breast. The warmth of his body feels delicious.
“Stay,” he mumbles.
“Can’t,” I say apologetically. “Troy could be calling about the kids.” Logic tells me it’s not Troy—it’s probably my mother, and she’s probably at my door, because no one else would come so early. But I still can’t ignore my phone.
Luke reluctantly lets me up, and I unearth my phone to find a missed call from my mother. She’s texted, too, to say she’s at my door. I consider texting back to say I’m still asleep, but knowing my mother, that won’t put her off.
“My mother’s here.”
“Ignore her,” Luke says, a little more awake now. “She’ll leave eventually.”
“She doesn’t work that way, unfortunately.” I shimmy into a shirt and sweatpants to go down to confront my mother.
“Morning, Melissa,” Mom says cheerfully, as soon as I pull the door open. She’s wearing a full face of makeup and looking fresh as a daisy. “I’ve been to the farmers’ market, and I picked up some apples for you. Paula Red. The farmer said they were just picked yesterday.”
“Great. Thanks.” I reach for the bag of apples, but she doesn’t hand it over.
“I’ll carry them into the kitchen for you,” she announces, walking past me into the house. “I thought you might like some company, since the kids are in Toronto.”
“It’s actually not a good time for me, Mom.” Clearly, my talk about needing some space failed to penetrate. And she must know I’ve got company, since Luke’s car is parked behind mine in the driveway.
“Oh, do you have plans?” she asks casually. “Should I put the apples in the fridge? The crisper drawer?”
We both turn at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
A moment later, Luke joins us in the kitchen, naked save for a pair of boxer briefs that showcase his very substantial assets.
He hasn’t shaved, and there’s a tuft of hair sticking up near the back of his head. It’s obvious he just rolled out of bed.
My mother gapes at him for a minute before looking away.
“Morning, Mrs. Lawrence,” Luke says politely. The gleam in his eyes tells me he’s enjoying this. “What brings you here so early?”
“I—I brought Melissa some apples,” she stammers.
“Great.” Luke strolls into the kitchen and gives me a wink. “We’ve both worked up quite an appetite.”
My mother’s staring resolutely at the floor, but I can see that her cheeks are flaming red.
“Are you joining us for breakfast?” Luke asks.
“No,” Mom says quickly. “No, I just—no. I have to get home.”
“Okay, then,” Luke says nonchalantly.
Mom grabs her purse from the counter and hightails it for the front door. “I’ll call you later, Melissa.”
“Melissa will probably be busy today,” Luke calls after her. “Maybe tomorrow too.”
“Okay,” my mother says weakly, jamming her feet into her shoes. “Well, goodbye then.”
I lock the door behind her and walk back to the kitchen, where Luke is leaning against the counter. “I can’t believe you came down here like that!”
He shrugs, unashamed. “It’s no worse than a Speedo.”
“Yeah, but she knew.”
“That was the point, Melissa. Anyone with half a brain would have taken a clue from my car in the driveway and my shoes by the door. She knew you’d slept with someone, and she wanted to know who it was.” He shrugs. “I decided to satisfy her curiosity.”
A laugh bubbles up inside me. “The look on her face when you came down the stairs!”
“Pretty good, wasn’t it?” Luke says with a smirk. “At least we know it’s possible to embarrass her.”
“What would you have done if she’d taken you up on the offer of breakfast?”
“Eaten breakfast,” he says with a shrug.
I have a mental image of Luke in nothing but boxers, sitting down to breakfast with my mother.
It’s too much. I bend over and laugh until my abs ache.
When I get over my giggles, we head back to bed, but there’s no way we’ll be able to fall back to sleep. Instead, I amuse myself by licking my way up the ridge that runs down the middle of Luke’s abdomen.
“Your abs are insane,” I whisper.
“Mmmm,” he replies. “Your tongue is insane. Don’t stop, Melissa.”
“Seriously, though. You could be an underwear model or something.”
I feel Luke’s abs shake as he huffs a laugh. “I doubt it. The abs kind of come and go. The six-pack does, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitates for a minute before grabbing his phone from the bedside table. After some tapping and scrolling, he hands it to me. “A few years ago, at Austin’s family cottage.”
It’s a picture of Luke standing on a dock in a bathing suit, looking good enough to eat. “So you look good in a bathing suit,” I tell him. “That was never in doubt.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have six-pack abs in that shot.
” He smiles and takes his phone back. “It was a really busy year in residency, so I stopped going to the gym and mostly ate takeout. I gained, like, twenty pounds. Had to buy new pants, which I wasn’t too thrilled about.
But since I’m not actually an underwear model, it wasn’t the end of the world. ”
I snatch his phone back and study the picture again. Now that I’m looking for it, I can see what he’s talking about; he’s got little love handles and a tiny gut. Not much of one, but it’s definitely there.
I’m silent for a minute, imagining how he’d feel if his body was a little heavier, a little softer. The thought of that extra weight pressing me into the mattress is a major turn-on.
“Okay, enough,” he says with a chuckle, reaching to take his phone back. “Don’t make me regret showing you this.”
And it hits me that he’s insecure, too. It must have taken courage to show me that photo.
“Actually, I was thinking how hot you look in that pic,” I admit. “How good you’d feel on top of me with a little extra weight.”
He lets out a crack of laughter. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” I admit. “You look really sexy like that.”
“You’re not just saying that because you want to sleep with me?” he asks with a smirk.
He’s turned my words back on me. I asked him almost that exact question when he told me he liked my curves.
“Well, I’m hoping you’ll sleep with me again,” I tell him. “But I also think you look incredibly hot in that picture.”
“That’s a relief,” he tells me. “Because like I said, the abs come and go. I try to stay in half-decent shape, because I feel better if I do, and I like to be able to keep up with the med students if we take the stairs. But my discipline fluctuates.” He gestures to his midsection.
“This is about as good as it gets. For the past few weeks, I’ve been at the gym almost every day, trying to work you out of my head. ”
“Really?” I still can’t believe I have that effect on him.
“Sure. But I’ll happily sacrifice the abs if you’d like to try me out a little heavier. Keep baking cookies, and it’ll happen pretty quickly.”
“You’re on,” I say with a laugh.
“Whatever you were doing with your tongue felt really good,” he hints, and I glance down and see that he’s hard.
I decide to tease him a little first, so I start up at his chest, licking and sucking his nipples until they’re stiff.
I move to his abdomen next, and slowly kiss my way down until I’m an inch from his erection .
. . and then change direction and work back up to his ribs.
By the time I finally put my hand on his cock, he’s panting, and when I swirl my tongue around the tip, he shudders.
“That’s so good, Milly,” he says roughly. “You’re so hot. That’s . . .”
He trails off as I take him deep in my mouth.
“Let’s go out for brunch,” Luke suggests half an hour later.
“Sure,” I reply. “Or I could make something here—”
“Nah, let me take you out. We can walk to The Funky Chicken from here.”
The Funky Chicken is a downtown diner known for their weekend brunches. “I haven’t been there in years.”
“We need to fix that,” Luke says. “I guess we should shower first, though.” His hot gaze sweeps over my body. “It’ll be faster if we shower together.”
Our joint shower is not actually all that fast, but it’s certainly fun. Luke complains that my bodywash smells girly, but when I explain that he’s the first man to use the shower since I bought the house, he decides he can live with it.
When we’re finally done in the shower, I sit on my bed and watch Luke get dressed in a well-worn knit shirt and jeans.
“I can’t believe you let me think you were leaving last night, when you had an overnight bag in your trunk,” I tell him.
Luke grins. “I was hardly going to spend the weekend in a button-down shirt.”
“The whole weekend, huh? You planning to stay tonight, too?”
“Of course.” As though it should have been obvious.
“Okay, then.” I’m probably grinning like a goof.
We walk to the Funky Chicken, which has undergone a glow-up since the last time I was here.
Their old sign had red script and a cartoon chicken wearing glasses, but now it’s crisp white on blue with no cartoon fowl in sight.
It’s still a busy spot, though, and the hostess leads us toward the only empty table in the place.
On our way, Luke nods to a couple in a booth but doesn’t stop to chat. Something about the man seems familiar, and after we sit down, I put it together.
“Is that Dr. Atwell?” I ask Luke.
“Yeah. And his girlfriend, Jessica.”