Chapter Twenty-Two
I stood on the edge of my bed, trying to reach the chain for the ceiling fan. When it came to my ideal sleeping conditions, I had always been a ceiling fan princess. The circulation was nice, but the sound was what really lulled me to sleep, and I’d had withdrawals while crashing with Ruby.
“Damn it,” I muttered. I was about three inches too short to reach the chain.
I stepped onto the edge of the footboard, testing my weight.
I leaned out and up in an effort to make up those three inches, but my socks foiled the plan, and I began to slip, letting out the scream of a woman who was falling to her death.
“Vera!” Eli rushed into the room as I landed on the floor in a heap.
“Ow,” I groaned, both body and ego bruised.
“Let me help you up,” he said.
I rolled over and sat up against the foot of the bed. “I think I’ll just stay down here for a minute.”
“I’ll join you,” he said, and sat down beside me.
I held up my palms to examine and saw that I’d broken the skin against the hardwood floor.
Eli gently took one of my hands and examined the heel of my palm. “Any other scrapes?”
“I can feel a bruise forming on my hip, but other than that, it’s just the sting of embarrassment.”
He stood up and went into our shared bathroom before coming back with a first aid kit. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I rolled my eyes. “There’s nothing to clean.”
“So says the woman with an open wound on her hand. What kind of doctor would I be if I left you unattended?”
With a sigh, I presented my hand to him.
He went in with an alcohol swab, swiping gently against the skin.
I sucked in a sharp breath at the slight sting and instinctively pulled my hand back. But he didn’t let me go, and instead brought my hand close to his mouth and blew on the scrape. His breath was cool as his bottom lip brushed my wrist, and a terrifying thrill raced up my spine.
I watched as he made no effort to pull away at the touch and, instead, concentrated on my hand for a while longer, before peering back to me. “Better?”
With a nod, I licked my lips. One of us needed to say something. To just talk. About anything.
“What were you up to today?” I asked.
He set my hand down on his thigh and searched through the extremely well-organized first aid kit. The faint orange mark from my bingo blotter still lingered on the top of his hand.
The first three buttons of his white collared shirt were undone and his black shorts showed the thick muscle of his thighs. I tried not to stare, but they were exceptional thighs.
“I had dinner and saw a movie. Something about a woman who goes on one date with every ex she’s ever had. I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying close enough attention. Did some shopping beforehand.”
“Oh. Nice.” That sounded like the kind of day you would spend with a significant other.
Maybe he didn’t pick up on the plot of the movie because he and his mystery lady were making out like horny teenagers.
Good for them. I forced the thought into my brain over and over again in the hopes that I would believe it.
Eli pulled out a butterfly bandage and carefully stuck it to my palm, his fingers smoothing over the edges.
His touches were so much lighter than they had been that night in Vegas.
Neither of us had handled the other with care, and I liked it that way.
It felt reckless and like we were saying things with our bodies that our mouths would never be capable of.
But now he was so soft and careful, and it turned out I liked that just as much.
He gave my hand back to me, and I let it fall between us, my pinkie finger brushing the side of his thigh as he shifted.
I expected him to get up and leave, but instead he leaned back and tilted his head up. “The fan has a remote.”
“Are you serious?”
He closed his eyes and smiled. “I forgot to show you where it was. Top drawer of your nightstand.”
“Well, that’s handy.”
“How were your first two nights?” he asked. “You and Marlon sleeping okay?”
“Yes. Marlon, especially.”
We both eyed the dog, sleeping on the floor with his limbs spread out like Superman.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I can’t remember if I said it or not, but thank you. I don’t know if I would have made the same offer had the roles been reversed.”
“I find that hard to believe. You were the one always dragging me along with you and Brody so I wouldn’t sit in that room by myself. Even when I was a moody asshole.”
“We really needed a moody asshole to even out the group dynamics.”
“I still can’t believe you’re here.” He set his hand on my thick thigh, his fingers managing to span the width of it.
I studied the vein that lined his forearm and then forked around his knuckles. Eli was touching me. For no reason at all. My ex-husband was touching me. And less than an hour ago, he was out with another woman.
I shook my head and reminded myself to breathe. “I didn’t exactly have this scenario on my midlife vision board.”
He shook his head. “Of all places? Starlight Palms. That day I saw you in Ruby’s apartment, I thought I was having a stroke. You know, I used to think of you and wonder if you still looked the same way you did in my memories. And then, there you were in the flesh. And you looked exactly the same.”
Eli thought of me. “Plus a few gray hairs and some forehead wrinkles,” I said to deflect, because I didn’t want these feelings. The last thing I needed was to want a person I couldn’t have. And not just any person. Eli—a person who had left me before.
He sat with one elbow perched on his knee as the other hand left my thigh to push a curl out of my face. “I would do a lot of things differently.”
“You look like you did pretty well for yourself in the end.”
“I should never have left you in Vegas like that.”
I nodded. “Yeah, me and Brody kept thinking you would come back and that you just needed space.”
“Not Brody,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
“It’s getting late.” I didn’t know where this conversation was heading and with the chaos of my first few weeks here, I hadn’t emotionally rehearsed how I wanted to talk about that night.
How I wanted to talk about us. I knew how I felt about it, but those feelings weren’t anything I could say out loud.
Those feelings weren’t anything I could trust Eli with.
With a sigh, he nodded and leaned toward me.
My heart stilled.
His lips pressed against my cheek, and I felt his words take shape against my skin. “Good night, Vera.”
After he left, I turned off my lights and lay there staring at my now spinning ceiling fan. The bathroom light turned on, the amber glow seeping under the door to my bedroom.
The shower door creaked, and the water began to rain down. I listened to the sounds of his feet on the tile and drawers opening. The scent of cucumber melon unfurled into my room. He must have lit his candle. The shower door creaked again and then shut.
It felt suddenly humid as I was enveloped in the smell of sandalwood mixed with the cool scent of the candle.
I knew that what he’d said yesterday about me deserving more than being Brody’s assistant had more to do with his beef with Brody than it did with me, but it had been enough to spur me on to tinkering with my Wunderkind notes for a bit today.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt excited about what I might create.
And now, another kind of excitement fluttered in my lower abdomen as I wondered what it might feel like to touch that doorknob and step inside that bathroom.
The two of us standing under the warm spray of the showerhead until my skin had absorbed the smell of him.
His fingers connecting the dots of my freckles. His lips following close behind.
My fingers dragged down the length of my stomach until they slipped under the waistband of my sleep shorts. Most of my memories of him were sour, but the few hours I spent as Eli Buckley’s wife would forever be seared into my memory so permanently that it might as well have happened yesterday.
My fingers slipped through my soft, wet center, and I thought of Eli. I thought of the shortest honeymoon of all time. I thought of him in the shower and how maybe he was stroking himself right now. Just on the other side of the door. So close and still impossibly far.
My chest heaved as the shower turned off. The light from under the door flickered as he seemed to pause there for a moment before walking away.
Come in, I nearly begged. Please come in.
A moment later, the light from the bathroom shut off and I closed my eyes. The moment was gone.
I slipped my hand out of my shorts. I’d almost gotten off to the thought of Elias Buckley and that terrified me.