I slide my empty glass to Dayton and she fills it without speaking. First sign of addiction: rationalization of your actions. It’s not okay for his grin to affect me just because of his dimple.
I drink the wine and set the glass down.
Aaron catches my eye. “I think I’m missing something.”
“You and me both, brother,” I mutter under my breath. Like, normality.
Dayton purses her lips to hold in her laughter, and I know she caught it.
“Aaron, honey, don’t you and Ty have business to deal with?”
“Nope,” Tyler answers. “All done at the office.”
Dayton sets her jaw. “Are you sure you don’t?” She gives them a look that would melt the Arctic.
“You know,” Aaron replies, “I think I do have a contract for you to look over in the office.”
He grabs Tyler’s arm and steers him in the direction of his home office, and I watch as they disappear. Damn, Tyler has a nice butt.
I mean, what? No. Jesus, Liv.
Tyler glances back at me and smirks when he sees me watching him. I take a deep breath and look into my best friend’s eyes. I shake my head, and worry reflects in her eyes.
“Twice? And now this?”
“Yep.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” She grabs my hand.
The problem with best friends is that they know everything about you. Dayton knows everything about me, about every last one of my rotting skeletons I keep locked away in a foolproof safe.
But as she and Aaron discovered, skeletons don’t stay buried for long.
She’s seen me in my deepest, darkest moments, and I’m seeing the fear of that in her eyes now.
“I’m fine, okay? I’ll be okay.” I take a deep breath. “It’s normal to think about someone and be attracted to them, especially when they look like that.” My eyes cut to the door and her lips twitch. “But being attracted to someone doesn’t mean it’s anything more. It doesn’t mean I’m addicted. It’s just the…desire to be. It’s the temptation to give in to it. But I’m stronger now and I won’t.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. I don’t want you to hurt.” Her eyes are clear and honest. “He’s not the kind of person you need, Liv. Trust me. You need someone soft and stable and calm. Tyler isn’t that guy.”
I know. I know that just from sex, and that’s why he’s dangerous. The problem is, I don’t think someone soft and stable is what I need either.
What I need is wine, chocolate, and my vibrator.
But that isn’t going to happen right now because the “contract” Aaron and Tyler went to look over was apparently a very short one. Now, Tyler’s leaning against the counter in the corner of the kitchen, his arms folded across his chest. I don’t want to look, but I do. I look at the way his T-shirt stretches over his shoulders and biceps and the way the material rises slightly where it should meet his jeans.
More than that, though… More than the way he looks and his alluring presence, it’s the way he looks at me. Steadily. Certainly. Yet his gaze holds a spark of wanting I feel echoed in my own body.
I pull my eyes away from him at Aaron’s cough. But Tyler doesn’t do the same. He keeps staring at me.
“Dayton, we should leave for dinner now.” Aaron’s voice cuts through the silence. Unfortunately, he leaves the tension intact.
“Room for two more?” Tyler questions.
I snap my eyes to him. “I have plans.”
“So cancel them.”
“No.” I tuck my hair behind my ear and watch for his reaction.
“I’m going to get ready,” Dayton mutters, dragging Aaron behind her.
Tyler curves his lips and pushes off from the counter. “No? That’s the first time I’ve heard that word from your mouth.”
Asshole. “Now the answer is definitely no, you pig.”
He rounds the bar and sits on the stool next to me, facing me. He leans in, pushing the boundaries of my personal space. “Come on, Liv. So we f**ked. We’ll be seeing each other a lot over the next few months, so we may as well get over it now.”
“Get over it? That would imply that it bothers me.”
He takes a lock of my hair between his finger and thumb and lowers his voice. “So would the flush on your cheeks.”
I bite the inside of my lip. “It’s warm in here.”
Tyler twirls my hair around his finger and half-grins, showing his dimple. “We have to get on for Dayton’s sake. You wouldn’t want to add to the pressure she’s under by having her wonder if the maid of honor and best man are going to spend her day under a cloud of awkwardness, would you?”
“I can’t believe you’re using my best friend against me. You’re a complete and utter jackass.”
“Are you coming to dinner?”
“Against my better judgment.” I slap his hand away from my hair. “But don’t imagine that this is anything more than you wrongly manipulating me into it. So don’t even think about trying to get inside my pants again, because it won’t happen.”
“We’ll see.” He twists around as I stand, and it takes everything I have not to slap his smug smirk off his face.
I put a hand on my hip and stare him down. “I mean it. Don’t even touch me.”
He stands and ignores me, grabbing my arm. With one swift movement, he spins me into him and holds me there. “Really? Because I think you’d like me to touch you very, very much.”
I would. My arm is tingling where his hand is wrapped around it and my body is reacting to the hardness of his. But I won’t let him know it. I won’t push it.
I step back and yank my arm out of his grip. “And I think you’re completely full of yourself.”
Heels clicks against the floor. “Is everything okay?” Dayton asks softly.
I turn and look at her. Aaron is standing behind her, his hand on her back, staring at Tyler. Dayton’s eyes are flicking between us.
“It’s fine,” I answer, grabbing my keys from the bar. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”
He watches me the whole time. Like he’s a predator stalking his prey, his eyes are fixated on me. They follow my every move, studying me, evaluating me…memorizing me.
It’s unnerving. But it’s not uncomfortable. It’s not a sinister look or even remotely bad. It’s casual. Intense, but casual. No different than the way you watch the characters move across the stage at the theater.