Chapter 11 — My Boyfriend
My Boyfriend
The house had stopped pretending it belonged to me alone.
That was the first thing I noticed when I came downstairs in a navy button-down and dark jeans, trying to look like a man who wasn't one beautiful woman away from losing his mind.
Kiki's mug sat beside the coffee maker, the chipped one she loved because it had character.
Shay's phone charger was plugged into the outlet by the toaster, its cord tangled around a grocery list with three different handwriting styles on it.
Tatum's ridiculous fair unicorn watched the lake from the kitchen windowsill like it had been assigned security duty.
My fridge had yogurt, sparkling water, grapes, two kinds of cheese, and a shelf labeled Shay's stuff, touch and die.
Somewhere upstairs, Penny Rourke was putting on the dress she had bought with my credit card.
That should have been a normal sentence. It wasn't.
It was one thing to hand her the card in my kitchen and tell her to get whatever dress she wanted.
It was another to stand in the same kitchen two days later and understand that she had brought the dress back here, hung it in one of my guest rooms, and decided she was going to walk down my stairs wearing it before she introduced me at a party as her boyfriend.
Mine was a simple life once.
It had not survived contact with the lake girls.
"You're doing the face," Tatum said from the couch.
She was sprawled sideways in cutoffs and one of my shirts, copper hair damp from the shower, bare legs thrown over the armrest like furniture was a suggestion she had personally rejected.
Ever since the Ferris wheel, since my bed, since the window-seat room she had claimed with the confidence of a woman who had already named half my pillows, Tatum had carried a loose, bright glow that made her look both calmer and more dangerous.
"What face?" I asked.
"The face where you're trying to be normal about Penny's dress and failing in advance."
Shay looked up from the island, where she was applying mascara with the focus of someone defusing a bomb. "He's not failing. He's warming up. You can't expect a man to go from zero to publicly dating Penny Rourke in the murder dress without stretching first."
"Murder dress?" I said.
Kiki, who was standing barefoot by the pantry in a soft white sundress, gave me a smile over her shoulder. Sweet. Warm. Not remotely innocent. "We voted on the name."
"You voted?"
"Unanimously," Shay said. "The dress kills. The dress should be tried in front of a jury of its peers. The dress is a public safety incident with straps."
Kiki shut the pantry and crossed to me. Her hair was twisted up, leaving her neck bare, and the ease of her in my kitchen still did something to me.
Not the first-time shock anymore. Something deeper.
More dangerous, maybe. The knowledge that she belonged here because I wanted her here and she wanted to stay.
She straightened my collar with gentle fingers. "You look good, baby."
"I own three shirts that aren't work shirts."
"This is the right one."
"That's comforting."
"It should be." Her thumb brushed the open collar. "Penny is nervous."
That got me.
Penny Rourke didn't do nervous the way other people did nervous. She didn't wring her hands or pace or ask whether her lipstick looked right. She weaponized preparation until the whole room forgot she had ever been uncertain.
But Kiki knew her. Shay knew her. Tatum knew her.
And apparently, so did I.
"About the party?" I asked.
Kiki's mouth curved. "About you seeing her."
Upstairs, a door opened.
All three girls went still.
Tatum sat up so fast the unicorn wobbled on the windowsill. Shay abandoned the mascara with one eye finished and one eye dangerous. Kiki's hand stayed on my chest.
Footsteps moved along the upstairs hall, slow and measured.
Then Penny appeared at the top of the stairs, and my entire body forgot the next instruction.
The dress was red.
Not bright red. Not cheap red. A deep, expensive scarlet that looked black where the shadows caught it and wine-dark where the light touched.
It fit her like someone had designed it with the private goal of ruining me.
Thin straps. A neckline low enough to show the full, soft swell of her breasts without making the dress look trashy for even a second.
A narrow waist. A skirt that clung to her hips and then cut high along one thigh, showing enough leg to make my mouth go dry.
Then she turned slightly on the stairs, one hand sliding along the rail, and the open back of the dress appeared.
Bare skin. Smooth shoulders. The elegant line of her spine. The fabric hugging the small, tight curve of her ass like the dress had been built around the single idea that I'd spend the rest of the night wanting both hands on her.
I didn't speak.
No one did.
Penny came down the stairs with her platinum hair loose around her shoulders, lips a shade deeper than the dress, green eyes fixed on mine.
She didn't smile at first. That was the worst part.
She watched me watch her, and with each step, something in her face softened because she could see exactly what was happening to me.
It wasn't just lust.
God help me, it wasn't even close to just lust.
Lust was there. It was immediate and brutal and pressing hard against my zipper before she reached the bottom step.
But beneath it was something heavier. Pride, maybe.
Awe. The strange, throat-tight impact of realizing this woman had chosen me, had worn that dress for me, had taken my card and turned it into proof that she wanted to stand beside me in front of people who would understand exactly what they were seeing.
Penny Rourke was going to walk into a party as my girlfriend.
And I loved her.
The thought hit so cleanly it nearly took my knees with it.
She stopped in front of me. Close enough that I could smell her perfume, warm and floral over clean skin. Close enough that the slit in the dress opened around her thigh when she shifted her weight.
"Well?" she asked softly.
Shay made a strangled noise behind me. "If he says anything normal, I'm moving out."
"You have drawer space, not veto power," I said without looking away from Penny.
"Emotionally, I do."
Kiki shushed her, but she was smiling.
Penny lifted one brow. "Luke?"
I tried to answer. Truly. I opened my mouth, found nothing useful inside my head, and had to start over like a man rebooting.
"You look..." My voice came out rough. Wrong. Too full of everything. "Penny, Jesus."
Her expression changed. Barely. A tiny breath. A flicker around her mouth. She had expected desire. She had probably planned for desire. But this, my inability to hide the force of it, reached her somewhere softer.
"I got it for you," she said, quiet enough that the room seemed to lean in. "Not for Avery. Not for pictures. For you."
My hand found her waist.
The fabric was smooth under my palm, but the body beneath it was warm and real and right there. Her breath caught when my fingers pressed in. Not hard. Just enough for both of us to feel the claim.
"It worked," I said.
Tatum clutched her chest on the couch. "I need popcorn."
"You need supervision," Shay said, but she sounded emotional too.
Kiki stepped in first, because Kiki always knew when a moment needed softness instead of noise. She kissed Penny's cheek and adjusted one platinum strand over her shoulder.
"You look beautiful," Kiki said. "Go make everyone jealous."
Shay appeared at Penny's other side. "You look like the reason a man walks into traffic while making eye contact."
"Thank you?" Penny said.
"Deep compliment."
Tatum bounced in last, wrapped Penny in a hug careful enough not to disturb the dress, and whispered something that made Penny laugh and blink too fast at the same time.
Then the girls scattered with sudden, obvious purpose.
Kiki went to the pantry. Shay announced she needed to fix the eye she had abandoned. Tatum said she was going upstairs to find shoes she didn't need. Within ten seconds, the kitchen belonged to Penny and me.
Subtle, they weren't.
Penny looked toward the stairs, then back at me. "They planned that."
"They plan a lot of things."
"I noticed."
I slid my hand from her waist to her hip. The dress moved under my palm, and the curve of her ass was close enough to make my judgment unreliable.
"I love you," I said.
No preface. No explanation. No trying to make it smaller because the timing was inconvenient and her dress was killing me and half my house had her best friends hiding badly in it.
Just the truth.
Penny went still.
"I wanted to say it before the party," I said. "Before people looked at you. Before you introduced me. Before anyone else got even one second of seeing you like this. I wanted you to know I already knew."
Her eyes turned glossy, but she didn't look away.
"Know what?"
"That I'm in love with you."
Her hand rose to my face. The pads of her fingers traced my jaw, and I saw the polished woman, the careful woman, the woman who could read a room before anyone else knew the room had said anything. Then I saw that woman let herself be touched by something she didn't need to manage.
"I love you too," she said. "I love you so much it makes me feel stupid."
"You handle stupid beautifully."
She laughed once, unsteady, and then her mouth was on mine.
The kiss should have been soft. It wasn't. It started tender and caught fire in less than a breath.
Penny's tongue slid against mine, slow and confident, and her hands locked behind my neck while my palms settled on her hips and pulled her in.
Her breasts pressed against my chest. The slit of the dress opened around her thigh.
I could feel the heat of her through the thin fabric and the hard line of my cock trapped between us.
She made a small sound into my mouth.
The kind of sound a man remembered when he was trying to sleep.
I broke the kiss because I was still clinging to a few useful brain cells and would need at least one to drive.