She looked down. Yep, the girls were on high alert—all tight and tingly. Maybe she should have been embarrassed, but she wasn’t. The rest of her felt as perky as her nipples, and she really didn’t care who knew it. Giddy and excited were not bad ways to go through the day. Beat the heck out of lonely and hard up.
The trick tonight would be not screwing things up by mentioning Roger. Thanks to the way she’d run her mouth last night, Josh suspected she still carried a torch for her ex.
His words replayed in her mind. I’ve heard that name a lot tonight. You sure you’re ready to move on? Three little words from her would banish that doubt forever, but she’d promised Roger she’d keep his secret. If she didn’t want to break a promise, she needed to reach him today and get his permission to tell Josh the truth. Not necessarily a problem, except Roger and Doug were floating in the Caribbean somewhere between Miami and Sint Maarten about now.
Hopefully he’d sprung for shipboard cell service. She sent him a text and crossed her fingers.
Chapter Nine
“What? Say that again, Roger. I can’t hear you.” Melody turned down the mood music she’d programmed and pressed her phone tight against her ear.
“I said I’m sorry to call so late.” The thumping pulse of dance music and general cell static accompanied his voice. “I just got your text. You said call ASAP.”
“Yes. Yes. Thanks. I needed to speak with you right away. Is there”—jeez, she could barely hear herself think—“is there any way you could take this call somewhere besides the world’s largest floating disco?” This was not a conversation she wanted to scream over a dance party.
“Hold on.”
She waited. He must have been on the move, because the music slowly faded a few decibels.
“Can you hear me now?”
“So much better. Thanks for calling.”
“No problem. I hope I’m not too late.”
She glanced at the clock—a minute after midnight. “Just in time.” But no time for a gentle lead-in. “Roger, I need your permission to tell Josh you’re gay.”
“Why? It’s none of his business.”
The defensive tone and a hint of panic in his voice carried all too clearly. She stalked to the hall, went up on her toes, and peeked out one of the fan-shaped arrangement of glass triangles in her front door. “Honey, I’m trying to get some long-overdue action here. The ‘Melody doesn’t like sex’ rumor works against this goal, as does the fact that I’m fresh out of a long engagement. I need to tell him why we really broke up, so he understands I’m not nursing a broken heart, nor am I a prude. I promise you, he’s not going to tell anyone. Spreading gossip doesn’t interest him.” Josh’s black Yukon pulled up to the curb. She pulled back from the window so he wouldn’t catch her watching, and ran a restless hand over her carefully chosen ensemble—shoulder-baring pink T-shirt over cropped pink yoga pants.
“What if he says something to my parents?” The thud of a car door. The cadence of footsteps on her flagstone front walk.
“He doesn’t even know your parents.”
“Do you think he’d sign a confidentiality agreement? I could email you one tomorrow.”
She closed her eyes and counted to ten. He couldn’t help it. He was a lawyer, after all. “Roger…please.”
“Oh God. Okay. I owe you this much. I know. You trust him, obviously, and I trust you. If you think it’s important, tell him.”
She let out a breath, and then nearly choked on the inhale when Josh’s knock rattled her front door. “Thank you. Say hi to Doug for me. Bye.”
She disconnected, tossed her phone on the hall table, opened the door, and came face-to-face with six foot plus of hard-packed firefighter, encased in a soft black T-shirt and broken-in jeans. She managed a breathless, “Hey.”
He didn’t answer. Just walked in, grabbed her, and hauled her against him. Then his lips were on hers and she had proof the T-shirt and jeans were the only soft things about him. Her breasts plumped against his unyielding chest. Her stomach fluttered against his taut abs. His hand came around and palmed her backside, pushing a gloriously rigid part of him against one of her most sensitive regions. Maybe she jumped, or maybe he lifted her, but the next instant, she was on him—legs wrapped around his waist, arms twined around his neck, mouth fused to his as he kicked the door shut and carried her deeper into the entry hall.
He tried to draw back to speak—probably to seek directions to the nearest piece of usable furniture—but she couldn’t bear losing the heat of his mouth and the rough caress of his tongue, so she speared her fingers into his shower-damp hair and attempted to hold him in place. His five o’clock shadow scraped her lips, and she nearly dissolved into a puddle imagining the same sensation between her thighs. If she asked nicely, perhaps he’d even—
His mouth found her ear. “I hate to put carpet burns on your hands and knees, but you’ve got five seconds to direct me to a better place, or I take you right here on your entryway rug.”
The threat sent a tremble through her. Now. Right here. Right now. He’d never know what it did to her, hearing him say things like that. Roger had always made her feel pretty. Never failed to compliment her hair or outfit, but Josh…Josh wanted her, with unrelenting intensity. She didn’t have to initiate some highly choreographed seduction effort just to get a crumb of physical attention—and then cross her fingers and pray it would work. He made it so reassuringly…easy, and suddenly, she wanted to reward him for it.
Thanks to Google, she knew exactly how. She reached out, unsnapped his jeans, and slid the zipper down.
“What if I take you instead?”
…