Chapter 21
Harper
Costa Rica is paradise, but it’s good to be home.
Even if it is snowing and traffic is horrendous.
Denver traffic is awful even without black ice.
When I came home to my apartment, I found a leak directly over my bed, so I guess I’m getting new bedding.
At least I get to go shopping with Darlene now.
I think the surprise dinner with Jaylen went pretty well. It was amazing sleeping in the next day before meeting up with Darlene for coffee and Target browsing.
“So I know we’ve kept in touch,” she says as she grabs a cart.
Darlene has a motto when it comes to Target: You don’t go to Target knowing what you need.
You go to Target and let Target tell you what you need.
Even though she is there to help me find new bedding, she is pushing her own cart with one hand and holding an iced latte in the other. “But I sense you have more to tell.”
I take a sip of my iced vanilla latte with oat milk and shake my head casually. “Not really. I mean, I’ve just been working a lot.”
“Working with Asher. For Asher. At the beck and call of Asher,” she says while sifting through the bargain section, tossing a few things she probably doesn’t need into the cart. “I know that can’t be nothing.”
“It’s been a lot of learning the ropes and trying to understand the business side of the industry. I haven’t had time for much else,” I say as I tap my fingernail on a set of orange-tinted martini glasses. I want to make sure they’re glass, not plastic.
“So you’re telling me that you haven’t done anything with that man since you got home? After being all over each other for nearly a week? Being in America changes your chemistry that much?” she asks. I set the glasses in the cart and shrug, refusing eye contact. “I don’t buy it,” she adds.
I sigh with a smile and take another sip of my coffee. Then Darlene smiles too, pushing her cart towards the home section.
“There it is,” she says. “You’re hiding something. You have third base written all over your face.”
The only thing written all over my face right now is a rosy blush because Darlene doesn’t have an inside voice, and even if she did, she still wouldn’t know what is appropriate in public talk and what isn’t.
“Did we ever actually establish what third base is?” I ask as we reach the bedding section, which, other than a couple of old ladies, is a ghost town. I run my hand over a lavender sheet set, and my mind drifts back to the villa, to the impossibly soft white bedding.
To him.
“I think the real question is, have you gone further since we last talked?”
I open my mouth. Close it again. Bite my lips. Fuck.
“That’s a yes,” she says. “Spill it! What did you do?”
“We just kissed,” I whisper.
“Okay…?” she prods. “And what’s so R-rated about that?”
“It was…” I stop, lowering my voice again as one of the old ladies pass by to check out the same lavender sheet set I was eyeing a moment ago.
I move on to some green ones, pretending to be more interested in them than I am.
Honestly, I don’t really care what color the sheets are as long as they’re on sale.
I still haven’t gone grocery shopping since I got home; I can’t be spending seventy dollars on a set of sheets. “At the office.”
“Oh? And why does that make it–OH!” Darlene finally gets what I’m saying. “Now that is exciting. Fucking around with your boss at the office while your brother, who is your boss’s best friend and co-worker, is in the building. Girl!”
“He didn’t see anything,” I say quickly as I realize just how bad all of this sounds.
“Fair enough. Do you think he knows anything?” she presses.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so? I mean, I hope not.
” I toss the green sheets in the cart, and we go around the corner to the blanket section.
My eye is drawn to a queen-sized fluffy blanket that is sort of a wine color, and I grab it, tossing it in the cart too.
What I really want to do is unfold it and hide inside.
Just thinking about the possibility of Jaylen seeing anything, knowing anything has me wanting to bury myself alive.
“I really don’t think he knows anything,” I say, just as much to myself as to Darlene. “I mean, we’ve been acting very buddy-buddy about everything. We went to dinner with him last night, and it was really good. Very chill. I don’t think he suspected anything.”
“Hold up,” she says, playing with the tassels on a throw pillow, “You had dinner with Jaylen? You and Ash and Jaylen?”
“Yes,” I sort of laugh. “Why is that so weird?”
“Do you normally have dinner together? The three of you?” she asks.
“No. But he’s my brother, and Ash is our boss. It’s not that weird.”
And it isn’t. Right?
I shake away the doubt. Darlene is great, but she also has an affinity for drama and making something out of nothing for the sake of interesting conversation.
“It was Jaylen’s idea,” I say, as if that matters. But the way Darlene is looking at me makes me realize that it does matter.
“It was Jaylen’s idea.” It comes out as a statement instead of a question. “And what made Jaylen want to randomly have dinner with his best friend and his little sister?”
“Well, for one, he had no idea I was eloping with Daniel, so he wanted to hear about that. And then we just talked about the villa and the storm and that was about it.”
Darlene is nodding as her lips twist into a smirk. It’s something she does when she has something to say but doesn’t want to say it.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says.
“What?” I ask again.
“It’s just…you don’t think he suspected at all?” she presses. “I mean your brother might be a little dense, but he’s not dumb.”
“I like to think he didn’t see anything because there is nothing to see. There’s nothing going on between us, Dar,” I insist, shifting my attention to a colorful quilt that has a clearance tag on it.
“Except all that chemistry and pent-up attraction,” she mumbles.
“He is my brother’s friend,” I say.
“Your brother’s friend who happens to be hot as fuck,” she adds.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I lie, tossing the quilt in the cart.
“Oh, bullshit,” she laughs at full volume, and the old ladies who have been trailing behind us on every aisle look over and walk away. “Are you trying to tell me you’re not attracted to him at all? After everything that happened in Costa Rica.”
“What happened in Costa Rica ended in Costa Rica because it’s off limits here.” I grab the cart and head for the front of the store. This conversation is over. I met up with Darlene so I could stop thinking about Ash, not so I could re-evaluate how I feel about him.
“You keep telling yourself that,” she says. “If you thought keeping your eyes and hands off him at the villa was hard, just wait until you see him every day at work.”
I don’t say anything because last week was anything but easy.
In a real-life setting, it’s been a struggle not to think of him without his shirt on, tousled hair, and a drink in hand.
I’m not complaining, though. He looks good in his fitted Ralph Lauren suits, silver-flecked hair gelled, and brooding brow that darkens his eyes as he deals with all things work-related.
That night, after making my bed with the new, freshly washed and warmly dried sheets, I crawl into bed with a much-needed glass of wine and a book.
I devoured the last one in the airport terminal while waiting for our flight.
To be honest, that probably wasn’t the best setting for a book like that.
This one is new, although used. Most of my books are.
I find them at yard sales and thrift stores, the outdated kind of erotica that don’t exactly make New York Times Best Sellers, but are enough to drift me into a world far away from the one I live in.
Within an hour or so, I am already about six chapters deep and getting to the good stuff.
Jameson is looking at me from across the room, refusing to leave despite the fact that he doesn’t belong here.
Despite the fact that at any moment, my sister–his ex-girlfriend–could come home and we would be caught red-handed.
But I know when Jameson’s blue eyes darken to that oceanic color and his jaw ticks in the corners, he’s not thinking about anything or anyone except me.
Slowly, one calculated step at a time, he makes his way towards the bed, and I find myself lying back, almost as if he willed it and I have no choice but to listen. His very presence in the room is dominating enough to make me do exactly as he wishes.
My legs part as he drops to his knees in front of me.
His hot breath on my pussy, and I wait in anticipation for this contact.
For his mouth to cover me. For his tongue to tantalize me.
It’s all I’ve thought about for days, and now, as he kisses my thighs and trails towards the part of me that is aching for his attention, it is finally becoming a reality.
I close the book and set it down, breathing heavily. I even have to throw the quilt off because the room is suddenly too hot. You can do a lot of things that aren’t sex.
The voice in my head creeps back in, and I bite my lip. That voice isn’t wrong. Ash eating me out isn’t sex.
Which means even if he does it, I am still a virgin.
And as long as I am still a virgin, I haven’t broken any of my rules, right?
Right.