TWENTY-FOUR
“I LOOK FORWARD to the day I’ll be able to walk in here again without being assaulted by the sight of you two fornicating.”
Julius’s interruption put a stop to the kissing. He might be cool and unperturbed; she couldn’t remember her own name. Julius walked across to put a large food box down on the island just behind where Brogan perched her.
“And one day I’ll complete the transaction without your interference, old man,” Brogan said, smoothing a hand down her arm.
“I got four bottles of wine,” Julius said. “Given Gia’s the only one who drinks it without food, I’d say you’re guaranteed a happy ending tonight, son.”
Coiling her legs around Brogan’s for support, she leaned back to pull the box toward her. “Four bottles?”
“You told me to get a few,” Julius said. “I don’t know what damn wine you like.”
She slid one out and handed it to Brogan before pulling out another to read the label.
“You have to be careful with the red, she’s picky,” Brogan said. “White she’ll drink anything.”
He took the bottle from her hand and read that too, brow pulled down in concentration. It was sweet that he knew more about her tastes than she did; he’d been paying so much attention over the last five weeks.
Sliding her barefoot up the back of his thigh, she leaned in to kiss his jaw and undid another of his shirt buttons.
“Was that your quid or my quo, Mister?” she murmured. Though his lips quirked in response, he didn’t take his attention from the wine. “Because I have my list at the ready.”
“Don’t get randy with him because of that,” Julius said.
Gia kissed her guy’s jaw. Brogan’s lips curled and his eyes drifted from the wine to meet hers, reading her amorous thoughts.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to what he remembers.
I wouldn’t take his knowledge of your wine tastes as a compliment. ”
“I like it,” she said and began to take out his cufflinks. “You haven’t changed your clothes yet, Mister… Do you need me to help you upstairs?”
“You make a pretty picture together these days,” Julius said, going to the bar to pour himself a drink. “Will there come a point you both admit this isn’t a con anymore?”
Brogan had been about to kiss her mouth when Julius asked the question, but he paused. As he drew back, his smile fell in time with hers fading too. That was the fourth wall of their relationship, the line they weren’t supposed to break.
They hadn’t declared feelings or intentions, but there was no denying her life was better with him in it. She looked forward to every minute they spent together. Their physical intimacy shattered every uncrossable line.
They stared into each other, silent, frozen.
Julius came up beside them. “You’re not going to deny you have feelings for each other, are you?”
The knuckle of Brogan’s index finger rose to her cheek. Catching it, she pushed it down, easing him away at the same time so she could hop down from the counter.
“I’m going to go home… to my parents’ house,” she said, clearing her throat, unable to look either of them in the eye.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Gia,” Julius said.
“No, it’s okay. I’m not upset.”
“Irish—”
“I’m fine,” she said, flashing a brief smile and raising to her tiptoes to kiss Brogan’s jaw. “Can I take Elton?”
“You know you can,” Brogan said. “But you don’t have to leave.”
“I’ve intruded on your home too often recently.”
Shanna’s earlier question cast things in a new light.
For weeks, she and Brogan had been sleeping under the same roof, and in the same bed.
And that wasn’t the only place. Sleeping with him at her parents’ could turn out to have been a mistake.
She’d have to live with the memories of them together in her sheets for the rest of time.
Torment.
More like a punishment than a blessing.
Her shoes and purse were on the floor between the two stools at the head of the kitchen island, she bent to snag them.
“Call me before you go to sleep,” Brogan called as she went down the stairs toward the elevator.
Julius wasn’t wrong. Gia wasn’t fleeing out of fear, she was fleeing because facing the truth would change everything. Falling for Brogan had been the furthest thing from her mind when she’d made this deal. Now? She couldn’t imagine feeling any other way.