“I’ll say,” she said, then set the carton down on the table. He reached for her legs and began rubbing her calves, gently massaging them with his strong hands.
She stretched and wiggled closer, delighting in the relaxing feel of his firm hands sending a new kind of pleasure through her. One that made her muscles sing, and her veins flood with warmth. “You are too good to me,” she murmured.
“Only way I want to be,” he said as sighed happily, a contented sound as he rubbed her legs, then moved down to her feet, cupping her ankle in one hand as he massaged the arch of her foot with his thumbs. “I figure your feet can use this with those crazy heels you wear.”
“I like my crazy heels.”
“I love your crazy heels, and I want to make sure you can keep wearing them.”
“How do you like them best?” she said, playfully.
“With your legs wrapped around my neck.”
She smiled at him, a woozy sort of contentment bathing the night. “What time is it? I feel like I lost all sense of the world around me tonight.”
He bent down to kiss her shin. “Good. That’s how it should be. And to answer your question, it’s nearly midnight.”
A brief hit of tension touched down in her body, like an alarm. Tomorrow night at this time, she’d be headed home. This weekend – perfect as it was – would be over. It would be a delicious memory, but only that. A slice of her life that was in the past. There was a part of her that wanted to stop time, and live in this escape to New York for a while, forget her debts, forget her obligations, forget Kim and her hubby and the rest of the employees at Cubic Z. Ignore the whole wide world and live in this bubble of sex and chemistry and the delicious sort of getting-to-know you that fools a person into falling. Boy, was she falling for him, headfirst into a crazy kind of like, the kind that made her want to send him sweet texts and naughty texts, that made her want to talk to him about everything and nothing, that made her want to hear all about his day. Every day.
To be the first person he saw in the morning, and the last one he saw at night.
What a crazy notion. She must he high. Intoxicated on epic sex, and she’d need to clear her orgasm-clouded head.
“So Miss Julia. How’s this going to work out?”
She raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “What do you mean?”
He pointed from her to him, speaking in a clear, firm voice. “You and me. I don’t want this to just be a one-time thing. I want to see you again.”
She fixed him with a quizzical look. Surely, he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted a long-distance relationship. But then, he said he’d been with Sabrina for a while, and she had no reason to believe he was a player, or a ladies man either. And while she wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, she did know one thing for certain – she wanted to see him again. He’d rocked her world in more ways than one. With pleasure, and with laughs, and with the tender ways he had. That was the problem – he was so good for her, and she simply had no real estate in her life for this kind of potential. One of them or both of them would wind up hurt.
But she had enough problems, so she made a split-second choice – to be abundantly honest in this instant about how she felt. “I would like that,” she said, without agenda, without teasing. “I live on the other side of the country though.”
“I am aware of that and I want to see you again and again. You’re not seeing anyone else, are you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t do that.”
“And you like being with me presumably?”
“Obviously.”
“So let’s do this,” he said in the most matter-of-fact tone. As if a relationship spanning 3000 miles were truly that easy.
“How? How are we supposed to pull this off?” As much as she liked him, long-distance love affairs had a gigantic built in roadblock.
“There’s this thing called an airplane,” he said dryly. “It flies. You get on it. I get on it. We both get off on the other side.”
“Oh ha ha, funny guy.”
“Why thank you very much. I like to make sure all departments are fully functional including the humor one.”
“Well, it is. But I do work a ton, you know,” she said, her natural instinct to erect walls rearing its head.
“As do I.”
“So it might not be that often that we can see each other.”
“If you are not interested in this continuing, you should just say so rather than point out the obstacles,” he said, his dark eyes fixed on hers, his gaze serious and intense.
She opened her mouth to speak, but it was as if she’d been injected with an overdose of nerves. One she needed to ignore. “I am interested in this continuing,” she said, and it felt like an admission, as if she were confessing something hard but true. Because this was only supposed to be one weekend. This wasn’t supposed to be more. But the idea of this - them - ending after one weekend felt like a stone in her chest.
“Good,” he said, running his fingers across her calf, and his touch was something she was already used to, and already going to miss desperately. “We will manage what we can then.”
“Okay, but it might get expensive.”
“I don’t know how to break this to you gently, so I’m just going to be blunt. I do well for myself. I have frequent flyer miles and a credit card that works.”
She heaved out a playful sigh, even though inside that was part of what worried her, and a big part of why she needed to keep him not just at an arm’s length, but a football field length from Charlie. He’d find a way to blackmail him, tie him up into all sorts of trouble. A prominent lawyer boasting a client list teeming with money, he’d have a field day with Clay.
“I want to see you and I will buy you tickets and buy my own,” he continued. “I also have clients in San Francisco, and Los Angeles and I get to the west coast a lot.”
“I am sure, but I don’t want you paying for me. I don’t like owing people,” she said with a firmness to her tone. She didn’t want to be in anyone’s debt ever again.
“I don’t want to be paid back. I want to see you. I’m not buying you. I’m saying I want to date you and some dates require a cab, and some require a town car, and some require an airline ticket. And if that’s the cost of transportation – an airline ticket – if that’s my fare from New York to San Fran, I don’t see how that’s any different than if you lived in Brooklyn and came to see me here in Manhattan over the weekend,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on her the whole time as he spoke with such confidence.