7. Eric
ERIC
The first two times Alex moves her smooth knee against mine, I think it’s a come-on. In fact, I can’t resist sliding a hand beneath the table and smoothing her skirt over her leg.
She promptly kicks me.
And that’s when I finally realize that the knee maneuver was meant to be a nudge, telling me her ex is in view.
Whoops. My bad.
I sit up straighter and scan the room. And there he is, only two tables away. As adversaries go, he’s not that interesting. Khaki pants. Blue polo shirt. Closely cropped brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He’s perusing the menu, his feet crossed at the ankles.
Eh. I could crush him in the palm of my hand. And it would be very satisfying.
“You’re making a face,” Alex whispers beside me.
“So?”
“That’s not good acting. No Academy Award for you.”
“I call bullshit. My job description is simply to be your very convincing jealous boyfriend.” I put an arm around her again and pull Alex close.
Oh, the hardship. She smells like flowers and sunshine.
And just to show her what a good actor I am, I turn and press a soft kiss to her temple.
And then another. Acting is good work if you can get it. Her skin is so soft against my lips…
She clears her throat.
I release her. “Now who isn’t playing her role?”
“Not true.” She lifts her chin and turns to sear me with a look. “I don’t do PDA. Ever.”
“Not even for your big, grumpy, jealous boyfriend?”
“Not at a business conference.” She gives her head a shake. “There are other ways to act like a couple without pawing each other.”
I laugh out loud. “Pawing? I kissed you on your stubborn, bossy head. If there were pawing, you’d know. I could demonstrate later, if you want. No pressure.”
Her cheeks pink up. “You’re teasing me.”
“Just a little,” I admit. “Not that it doesn’t sound like fun. But I would never embarrass you, Engels. I know you’re surrounded by colleagues.”
“And competitors,” she adds. “Half the people at this conference would like nothing better than to take me down. The other half want to kiss my ass.”
“Mmm.” I waggle my eyebrows at her. “Your boyfriend would be in that latter category, then. I love a shapely ass.”
“God, tone it down a notch.”
“You can take the guy out of the locker room, but you can’t take the locker room out of the guy. And why would you even want to?” I glance over and find that her ex has spotted us. “Lean against me a second. I need to make a point.”
Her eyes widen just slightly. But then she moves in, resting her head on my shoulder.
I run a hand down her bare arm, then give her a peck on the forehead. “Good girl,” I say, and it comes out sounding rough. “He’s getting the message, I think.” In my peripheral vision, I can tell he’s watching us.
“Why can’t he just crawl back into his hole and die?” Alex whispers.
“Such strong words from my love bunny.” Turning her face into my shoulder, she giggles. And just for a second she sounds like her eleven-year-old self. And the familiarity gives me goose bumps.
We laughed a lot, I realize. A long-dormant memory of chasing her down the beach washes over me.
That was another lifetime ago. I give myself a mental shake. “Should I get the check? As soon as you’re finished, we can leave. Oh, wait. You’re already done.” The way this woman can put away food is truly astonishing.
“But…” She straightens up. “No dessert? It’s a long time until dinner.”
I laugh, because a pregnant Alex is a hilarious Alex. “I think I saw an ice cream shop on the resort map. We could walk there on the beach.”
“Really?” Her expression brightens, and I feel my reality slip a little.
In real life, I’ll never be the married guy with the pregnant wife craving ice cream and pickles.
But right this second I understand that guy.
He’s in over his head. But the trusting eyes of a hungry woman are blinking up at him, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her happy.
I’m deep into my role, I guess. That must be why I lean down and give Alex a single kiss—the kind that even CEOs permit. Just a lip touch, really. But it’s enough to make my body flash with unexpected heat.
And with something else, too. Possessiveness. I don’t understand it at all. But right this second I would sink my claws into anyone who tried to harm her, and my adversary would not even be able to crawl away from the fight.
“We should get the check,” Alex whispers, holding my gaze. We’re having a staring contest. I don’t know how it started, and I don’t know how to stop.
Jesus. I must be better at this acting thing than I thought. Or maybe it’s the jet lag messing with me. That must be it.
I finally look away and take a slow breath. Only to find Jared Tatum—her asshole ex—staring back at me with murder in his close-set eyes.
So I glare right back. Not today, Satan. You can fuck right off.
He scowls and looks away. Now he’s got the message. Alex is here with me, whether he likes it or not.
Our walk on the sand is a nice diversion. I don’t know what I’m doing in Hawaii, but it sure is a beautiful spot in the world. The beach sand is white. And there’s a view of Diamond Head in the distance.
Also, there’s a nice view of Alex in a pink bikini so small that I wonder how it was manufactured. Child labor? Robot bees? The rounded swells of her breasts are right there, torturing me.
I have to keep reminding myself that she’s off-limits. But it’s not easy. I’m supposed to pretend to be the guy who puts his hands all over her. But I’m not supposed to think about putting my hands all over her?
Straight up, this was my brother’s worst idea ever. I’m sure of it because parts of me want to be, well, straight up.
At least this isn’t a long walk. The high-end resort and spa where we’re staying is connected to the conference hotel by two routes: you can either walk down the trellised path that connects the properties, or walk down the beach.
We’ve taken the beach route. It’s shorter and more beautiful.
“All the meetings are down here at this bigger hotel,” Alex says. “I wanted to stay in the quieter resort, and I don’t mind the walk.”
“Uh huh. How many meetings are we talking about?”
“Twelve? Fifteen, tops.”
Holy crap. “I’m gonna get rigor mortis.”
“We’ll get the hotel to send a treadmill,” Alex teases me. “You can sweat it up in the corner of the room while I’m making deals at the conference table.”
She’s kidding, but if that weren’t wildly impractical I’d probably take her up on it. “I’ll find a book to read.”
“Actually, I don’t see why you need to sit through these meetings,” she says. “You can just step out.”
“It’s tempting. But I promised my brother I wouldn’t leave you alone. What would your usual bodyguard do?”
“He’d wait in the hall.”
“But I can’t do that. It would look ridiculous for your boyfriend to lurk in the hallway. Max has made this weird, right?”
“A little,” she admits.
Yup. I’m totally calling him later to complain.
Meanwhile, when we reach the ice cream stand, Alex orders a sundae the size of a lifeboat. “Aren’t you having anything?” she yelps when I sit down at a table instead of placing a second order.
“Maybe later,” I say, because it’s more diplomatic than pointing out that I’m full from lunch, and probably will be for three more hours. “I don’t need more food. What I need is a nap.” Or, in a perfect world, sex and then a nap. I need to burn off some tension.
My surroundings aren’t helping, either. The beach is decorated with miles of scantily clad women. None of them hold a candle to the bombshell eating ice cream across from me, though.
Whenever Alex licks that spoon, it makes me crazy. I wish she’d stop.
“Bite?” she offers, which means I’m staring. She digs the spoon into the vanilla ice cream, sweeping it through a bit of caramel sauce, and catching a chunk of fresh mango. Then she offers it to me.
I open my mouth like a bird, just to see what she’ll do.
Alex rises from her chair and leans over the table to feed me. As I sweep a cold spoonful of wonder into my mouth, her cleavage is right at eye level. That’s where I’d rather put my tongue, damn it. Forget the ice cream.
This is going to be the longest week of my life.
“Tennis courts!” Alex says on the walk back. “I’ll call the concierge and see if we can get a slot. You still play, right? And tennis works with your fitness goals.”
“Sure,” I say, because why not? A couple of hours watching Alex’s sleek legs maneuver, just out of reach, a few yards in front of me? What’s a little more torture between friends? “Here’s what we should do—hire a tennis pro, and then hide from him in the shrubberies.”
“Why would—” She breaks off as she remembers how we used to pull this very trick on Martha’s Vineyard. “Oh my God. I was such a brat.” She puts a hand in front of her mouth and laughs. “My poor father. I don’t think I did one thing he asked for that entire year.”
“Not like he was around to notice.” That just slips out. I was such a bitter kid that summer. Our fathers basically abandoned us to the help so they could fly around the world and do whatever it was they did.
“That was the summer of the telecom merger,” she says as we pace across the sand. “We didn’t see much of them, did we?”
“Nope.” Alex’s father was still running the cable empire that Alex now commands. And mine was trying to get his fledgling security business off the ground.
“Guess they didn’t have much choice,” Alex points out.
I only make a grunt of acknowledgment. This period of my life isn’t something I talk about. Alex’s mother had passed away when she was seven. By the time I met her in Massachusetts, she was used to being the only child of a single dad. It was familiar.
But I was still raw.
My mother had left the previous September, just after Max and I headed back to school. I don’t know why, but I’d spent the year convinced she’d turn up again by summer. To my mind, surviving the school year without her was a personal test. If I passed, the reward would be her reappearance.
I have no idea where I got that idea. But I was crushed when it didn’t happen.