Not Preston Fucking Sinclair
EASTON
She shows me the text after dinner.
We are on the couch with two half-eaten cartons of Thai takeout on the coffee table between us, chicken basil and pad thai from a place down the hill I've been ordering from since I moved in.
She ate more than I expected, which isn't saying much, but it's something. She’s changed into one of the new t-shirts she got at Valentina’s, soft cream cotton that already looks like it belongs on her.
She has been quieter than she was this morning. I can tell the day has taken a toll on her.
I watch her silently for a moment, and then she lifts her eyes to meet mine.
“They’ve been calling. Also sent texts and they think we should discuss it as a family,” she finally admits.
I don’t need to ask. I know who she’s talking about.
She slides her phone across the cushion to me.
“Read this.”
I read it. It’s from her father. It reads like care but I can tell the man has no idea of the hell his daughter has been living with this man.
Even the phrasing of the text gives more away. He thinks she has just had an episode that needs managing. They’re all buying Preston’s lies without the benefit of the doubt.
My throat tightens. My eyes return to hers, and all I see there is the pain she’s trying to hide. The reality of being misjudged, while her oppressor is tagged the victim.
I hand the phone back.
“What do you think?” she asks calmly in a quiet voice.
It isn't really a question. It's closer to a request for evidence that someone else on this earth sees what she's seeing. I keep my voice even.
“What I think doesn’t matter, Riley. But if you really want to know, I’ll say you give it a few days to die down, and when you’re sure of a direction, you can have a calm call with him.”
She exhales. “If only it was that easy. He’s convinced Preston is right.”
“But you know he’s not. I know he’s not.” Her eyes flash to mine as though it has just mentally dawned on her that I believe her. “It may be small, but it’s enough for you to make the right decision and stick to it.”
She's quiet for a long time, and when she glances at the phone again, I think she’s reconsidering her decision of running away, but when she speaks, her voice is solid, and I know her decision is final.
“I won’t go back and I won't respond. At least, not now.”
She swallows. “I want him to sit with not knowing my location. I want him to think, for once, about what it feels like to be on the side of a conversation he doesn't get to control.”
“Okay, we can start from there.”
“It’s petty.” She finally smiles, and just like that, I’m smiling too.
Lord.
It’s like this woman’s emotions are somehow wired directly into mine.
When she’s scared, every instinct in me screams to protect her. To wrap my arms around her and put myself between her and whatever’s coming, just like I did in the boutique parking lot.
Fucking Preston Sinclair. If I ever see him, I’m putting my fist through his face.
But when she smiles?
Fuck.
She lights up from the inside, so bright and beautiful that all I can think about is keeping that smile right where it is. Making sure no one ever gets to take it from her again.
And then there are the other thoughts.
The ones that have absolutely nothing to do with protecting her and everything to do with how fucking gorgeous she is.
Those I shove aside. Again.
Just like I did in that fitting room earlier, when it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep my hands exactly where they belonged.
“On second thought, I’m delaying all of the chaos,” she says.
“And it’s for a good cause,” I tell her.
“I hope so,” She heaves, and I watch her tired shoulders slump.
“You’re doing it right, sweetheart.” I wink and she rewards me with an even bigger smile. “You don't respond to a managed message until you have managed your own. He's putting you on the back foot. You stay on your own foot.”
She looks at me.
I don't look back, because I don't trust my face right now.
I'm looking at the muted television, which is showing a basketball game I have no investment in. My peripheral vision is doing all the work it isn't supposed to be doing.
“You are full of surprises, Easton Mysterious.”
“I have hidden depths.” I glance at her. “And I do know a thing or two about handling complicated situations.”
She raises a brow. “Should I be concerned about why?”
“Absolutely.” I grin at her.
Riley tucks her feet under her and reaches for the book she has commandeered from the small stack on my coffee table, the one I bought because the realtor’s designer suggested I might want something with weight on the surface to break up the visual planes, and then never opened.
She’s been working her way through since we returned, while I've been pretending to watch television.
What I've actually been doing is watching her.
I don't want to be doing it. I've made several deliberate attempts to stop doing it. I'm doing it anyway.
It's the small things.
The way she folds her feet up under her. The way she gets a strand of hair caught on the corner of her mouth and pushes it away with her knuckle without looking up from the page. The way she has settled into my couch like a cat that has decided this is its couch now.
She doesn't know she's doing it. That is what is killing me. She's the most observed woman in Los Angeles right now and she has, in my living room, completely forgotten to be watched.
I stand up, and she does too. I clear out the table and she stretches, letting out a groan, one that sounds more like a throaty moan, and has my fingers squeezing the carton in my hand.
“I'm going to take a shower,” she announces.
“Another one?” The words are out of my lips before I stop them.
“Yeah? Are there rules against taking multiple showers a day in this house?”
“Not at all, do as you wish, milady,” The faux-formal voice slips through and she doubles over, laughing.
“Please, never do that again.” She taps my shoulder and walks off.
I stand there grinning like an idiot.
Warmth settles somewhere in the center of my chest as I watch her disappear down the hallway. I made her laugh.
After the day she’s had, that feels like a victory.
Get over it, Easton!
The thought hits like a slap.
She’s a runaway bride. A temporary guest. A woman still reeling from the wreckage of her own wedding day.
And I’m standing here acting like I just scored a game-winning goal because she laughed at one of my dumb jokes.
Shaking my head, I gather the paper plates and takeout containers and head for the kitchen before my brain can get any more carried away.
I should clean up too. Been one hell of a day, but one I don’t regret.
My legs carry me up the stairs, two at a time. I stop at the top, staring past my door to hers. I continue to mine and step into the room, shutting the door behind me.
The bedroom is quiet.
So is the bathroom, but I hear it anyway. The faint sound of water rushing through the pipes.
Fuck. My mistake.
I should never have come up here. Not now.
But it’s already too late.
Because the images hit immediately, uninvited and way too fucking vivid.
I close the door behind me, brace both hands on the counter, and stare at my reflection.
The man looking back at me isn't someone I’m especially fond of right now.
She trusts you. I tell him and he knows it.
She trusts you because you have not done one single thing to make her not trust you, and you are about to walk into that shower and undo it, in your head, where it counts.
He knows that too.
I get the water going. Hot, because the cold shower I took last night did absolutely nothing for me except make me angry and wet, and I'm not interested in repeating the result.
I step in.
The water hits my shoulders, and I close my eyes, and immediately the part of my brain I've been negotiating with all day shows me what it has been holding hostage.
The mirror. The fitting room. The line of her back in that green dress. The way her breath caught when my knuckles dragged up the inside of her spine. The way her eyes met mine in the glass and held there, and the way I almost forgot, for one second, that she’s off-limits.
I brace one hand against the tile.
Don’t.
She's under your roof.
But then I think about her in the dressing room again. The bare line of her shoulder. The slip of skin between the dress and her hairline. The way she said my name into the curtain, soft, embarrassed, I need help with a zipper.
The image rearranges itself, and now she's not asking for help with the zipper, now she's turning around in the green dress with the front of it loose and unfastened and asking me to help her with that instead, and my hand has moved before I can think.
I'm not the man my reputation says I am.
I'm not Preston fucking Sinclair, who decided what she was allowed to feel.
I'm also, apparently, exactly the man who is going to do this in his own shower at eight thirty on a Tuesday night with the woman he's trying not to think about, just down the hall, having a shower.
And Lord, if that thought doesn’t make it worse.
My clothes are long gone, and standing under the warm water, my palm wraps around my aching member. And just like that, I lose all sanity.
The first stroke is involuntary, but the second, it’s measured, with just the right intensity and pressure. Pleasure skittles down my spine, a shudder working its way through.
My lips fall open, and I taste the water on my tongue. But it’s different. It’s laced with something sweet and tangy.
Like she’s on my tongue. The taste of her skin, my tongue tracing the dip of her back, my lips on the strap of the dress, an inch away from her breast.
I let myself have the image. The green dress falling.
Her bare shoulders. The hot, surprised gasp she made when my knuckles grazed her spine, and what that sound would have been if I had not stopped, if I had pressed my mouth to the back of her neck instead, if she had leaned back into me, if her hand had come up over mine to keep it where it was.