Chapter Three #4
I roll my eyes. “You just had to have the last word, didn’t you?”
Amber grins over her coffee cup and laughs.
We spend a few more minutes talking about Amber’s life and live-in boyfriend, her job as a guidance counselor for junior high school kids, and life in general before heading to hail a cab so I can take the train back to Austin’s house.
* * *
Austin
I pace my family room at midnight on Friday night.
I long since dropped Bailey off at my parents’ place farther upstate and, at my mother’s coaxing, stayed for dinner.
It wasn’t like I had other plans, and I didn’t want to be home in the quiet house by myself.
You’d think I’d enjoy the break from my usual routine with Bailey, and I did, but I knew if I was alone, my thoughts would turn to Mia. As they do now.
What is she doing at bars in Manhattan? How many guys tried to pick her up? Is she safe, wandering Grand Central Station at night, and alone on the train ride home? I don’t need to tell myself I am obsessed. I am.
Maybe I should have gone out with the guys and Ava, my friends from work, but then I’d have had to ask my parents to drive here to get Bailey, and I didn’t want to put them out.
Which leaves me home, nursing a cold beer and wondering what Mia meant when she said she wouldn’t be out late.
Because in my book, after midnight is late.
I shouldn’t have acted so overprotective when she told me she was taking the train, or worse, like an overbearing boyfriend, which I definitely am not.
But thanks to my job, I am someone who considers all angles of any situation, and I always look out for the people I care for.
And there is no doubt I care about Mia. I glance at the clock once more.
Finally, the alarm beep sounds at the side door, letting me know that Mia has returned. I close my fingers around the armrests on my chair and remain in my seat. She has to pass through this room—and me—to get to her bedroom.
Having picked Bailey up from school and driven her to my folks’, I wasn’t home when Mia left the house.
So I am unprepared when she strides into the room, looking like a sexy siren wearing a pair of high wedge shoes and skintight jeans.
A cropped black leather jacket completes the outfit with a sparkly low-cut shirt beneath.
Her hair, normally pulled up in a messy bun, hangs straight down her back, the long strands perfect for me to wrap around my hands and hold on to while I fuck her from behind.
I muffle a low groan, warning my dick not to stand at attention and give my reaction to her outfit away.
“Austin!” She raises a hand to her chest in surprise, obviously startled by my presence. She comes to a stop in front of my chair. “I thought maybe you’d be out but the alarm was off so… I knew you were here. But I didn’t think you’d be downstairs.”
That she thinks I went out tonight is interesting. I store the fact away for later. “I’m just having a drink before I turn in.”
I rise from my seat and pick up the now-empty bottle, walking across the room and tossing it in the recycling bin in the kitchen before returning to talk to her.
“How’d you get back from the train?” I ask, yet another thing that concerned me. I’d have picked her up if she asked, but she didn’t.
“I called an Uber. And I’m back home, safe and sound,” she says, clearly meaning to reassure me.
“Did you have a nice time?” I sit on the arm of the couch.
“I did. I don’t see my friends often, so it was fun.” Her eyes glitter as she answers.
Obviously she had a good time while I sat home and brooded. About her. Did she think about me at all? Would it have bothered her if I was on a date?
“Why would you think I went out?” I ask, my mind returning to her earlier statement.
“I don’t know.” But her cheeks flush pink, as if she knows something and doesn’t want to admit to it.
“Come on, Mia. You can do better than that. Where did you think I was tonight, without Bailey here to keep me busy?”
She purses her lips, the pucker a reminder of what I want to do to that mouth. Kissing her senseless is just the beginning of what I desire.
“I figured you were out on a date,” she finally blurts out, the frown on her face as she says the word a dead giveaway to her thoughts on the matter.
I shake my head and laugh, relieved at her admission and the fact that she doesn’t like the idea of me with another woman.
She braces her hands on her hips, clearly annoyed. “What’s so funny?”
Pushing myself to a standing position, I step closer.
Her scent, the citrusy aroma I’ve come to associate with her, the same one my body automatically reacts to, wafts around me.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you think I could be with another woman when I can’t get that hot fucking kiss out of my head? ”
Those same lips that are the object of my obsession part in a surprised oh.
“Have you forgotten? Can you get it out of your mind? Or do you lie in bed at night thinking about me the way I do about you?”