Braden’s teeth flashed in the dark, his wicked smile jump-starting my heart. His hand drifted south, down my back, over my pert ass he liked so much and under my nightdress.
“Am I hot now?” he asked, his voice low and rumbling with arousal as his fingers slipped beneath my panties.
I arched into his touch, bracing my hands on his chest. “Baby, you don’t know how to be anything else.”
My words jacked Braden up, his torso lifting from the bed, so I found myself sitting in his lap, our chests pressed close, his arms holding me tight. His lips brushed gently over mine as he shifted me so his erection throbbed between my legs. “You’re killing me with compliments.”
I shrugged, my reply whispered against his mouth, “I just wanted you to know that just because I don’t say it all the time, doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
This time he kissed me, tongue and all, deep and wet. When he pulled back for air, he promised me, “I know.” His hands pushed at my nightgown until he caught the hem and tugged it up over my head. Braden’s heated gaze moved over my naked body and I abruptly found myself on my back as he pushed down his pajama bottoms. “Believe me, I know.”
***
The wind was beating against my back and the sad, gray clouds above me were giving me this apologetic little pout. When I’d left the flat this morning the sun had been out and I’d dressed weather-appropriate. I had on a thin T-shirt and my best pair of black skinny jeans. Now it was threatening rain and I was shivering in my shirt, wondering how I’d managed to let myself be talked into the trek I was on and trying not to be as pissed as I was feeling.
After the emotionally fueled sex Braden and I had had early that morning, I was a little surprised to find him so distracted when we’d gotten up. Sure, he was tired from lack of sleep, but that had never stopped him from paying attention to what I had to say. However, he’d hurried into a shower, shooed me (yes, shooed!) me out of our bedroom while he got dressed, given me a quick kiss, told me Ellie wanted to spend the day with me and I should call her, and then hurried out of the flat.
It left me feeling confused. I felt like I was missing something.
Instead of sitting at home on a Saturday, stewing over it, I’d let Ellie talk me into accompanying her. Sometimes she’d get something in her head that she just had to have or had to do and she’d drag me all over the city to these obscure little shops. This time I’d let her talk me into the thirty-minute walk to Bruntsfield. Way back in my pre-Carmichael years I used to live in Bruntsfield. It was this kitschy little area of the city with kitschy little shops. It was popular with students. I’d say I missed it but it hadn’t come with an adorably annoying best friend like Ellie or her brother Braden, the man who was currently driving me to distraction.
The journey to Bruntsfield had a purpose. Or at least that’s what Ellie told me. Apparently she’d passed this little clothing boutique that had on sale “the most gorgeous vintage shoes ever” and Ellie was kicking herself for not buying them. We were back, trying to find the shop and hopefully the shoes.
“Are you even listening to me?” Ellie asked, a teasing smile in her voice as she studied me, her short blond hair blowing into her face.
“Of course.” I really was listening. Mostly. I knew the discussion pertained to our friend Jo and her new boyfriend, Cameron. “You were telling me you think Cam is moving pretty fast with Jo?” I asked it with a slight hint of a question in my tone, since I wasn’t too sure if that was the point she’d been trying to make.
“A little. Don’t you?”
Absolutely. “Uh-huh.” And I did. However, my gut told me Cam was a good guy. “But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact, I pretty much think he’s the best thing that could have ever happened to her.”
Ellie shrugged. “I like him. I do. I just don’t want Jo to get hurt.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Since when did you get so … normal?”
“Normal?” she glared at me. “You mean unromantic? I do realize there are times when romance needs to take a back burner to reality. Jo’s had it tough. As much as I think Cam’s great and as much as I’m rooting for them, I hope he really is going to be there for her. Taking her home to meet his parents this weekend? He’s telling her he’s serious. I hope he means it.”
Although Ellie’s caution surprised me, I understood where she was coming from. Our friend Jo had been messed around by too many guys because she’d chosen them for the wrong reason.
Struggling to look after her little brother and her alcoholic mother, Jo always chose men who had financial security. Cam wasn’t one of those guys. He was a struggling graphic designer who’d gotten a job as a bartender alongside me and Jo at Club 39, this swanky little basement bar on George Street. The sparks had started flying as soon as they met, though, and Jo had finally set aside all her silly little dating rules to take a chance on a man who seemed to want her for her.
Despite understanding Ellie’s reservations, I didn’t share them and finally I found myself being distracted from my own boyfriend as I tried to convince Ellie. “I think he’s serious. I think they have a connection. There’s no way to slow that down when you just fit with someone like that. If I hadn’t been so stubborn with Braden, we probably would have been a done deal within a few weeks of meeting each other.”
A mysterious, secretive smile flirted with Ellie’s lips.
What the … ?
“What? Am I missing something? Did I say something funny?”
“No,” she answered hurriedly, eyes drifting up over the old Evangelical church. Abruptly she stopped. “We’re here.”
“Where is here?” I looked around. There were no vintage shoes in sight.
Ellie glanced at her watch and then out at the traffic on the cross junction, then back at her watch, then back at the road …
“Ellie?” My heart started to thump as the day’s events began to fall into place, like pieces of a puzzle. “What is going on?”
Her eyes were wide when they hit mine.
“Jesus C, Ellie, what is it? You’re freaking me out.”
For once, however, her lips were tightly sealed. Literally. They were pinched closed so tightly the color was bleeding from them. Her eyes swung back out to the road and as I watched her shoulders deflate with relief, I followed her gaze.
She was smiling at an approaching black cab.
That excited, eyes-twinkling-bright-with-utter-joy smile swung my way. “I’m going to go now.”
Uh …
I whirled around as she strode past me, heading back the way we’d just come.
Baffled, I threw my hands up. “Ellie?”
She was still grinning as she looked back at me over her shoulder. She pointed behind me and I turned back to see the black cab had pulled up to the curb beside me.
The door swung open and I was greeted by a surprising but always very welcome sight.
My boyfriend.
“Braden?” I gave him a quizzical smile as he leaned toward me. He was wearing one of his fitted, expensive three-piece suits I loved. This one was a dark gray and was molded perfectly to his broad shoulders and fit physique. The sight of him sitting in the cab in that suit on this spot where we first met—
My heartbeat skittered to a stop as I finally processed the intensity in his gaze and the fact that the floor of the cab he was sitting in was strewn with dark red rose petals. Fuckity, fuckity, shit, fuck.
His distraction this morning, his shooing me out of our room … it all added up and the breath just whooshed right out of me at the realization of what this meant.
“Get in,” he said, his voice low, brokering no argument.
Limbs trembling, I took his offered hand, ducked my head, and let him settle me close to him on the cab bench. “Braden, what is …” My words trailed off as he held up a gray suede ring box.