She deadpanned, “Rigid purple fucking dildo.”
“Fine, coconut it is.”
Tally lifted a small, victorious fist. “What else?”
“If you’re dead set on this, we need to be extra carefulworking from home.”I raised an eyebrow.“I’m still trying to figure out how you talked us out of this first one, but we don’t have room for second or third offenses. My parents are old school, Tal. It’ll send them to an early grave.”
“Pick up a deadbolt for the bedroom door and hide the corkboards in the closet. Got it.” She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and looked up at me with wide eyes. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” I pulled her closer by her chin, talking against her lips. “We have to prioritize our relationship. You don’t get it yet, but this is about to be a full one-eighty from what we’re used to. There’s a reason I left New York and didn’t go back. I need my girl with me, on the same page, every step of the way. Understand?”
Tally pressed up on her tiptoes and took my mouth with hers. Her eyelashes fluttered against my cheek and I deepened the kiss, tangling my hand in the hair at the base of her neck.
“I vow to follow all your rules, Mr. Duran,” she said.
“Then it looks like we have ourselves a shitshow, Mrs. Duran.” I smiled. “Hope you brought your pooper-scooper.”
chapter three
Mateo
15 months ago
Four.That’s how many times I’d peeked around the cubicle wall at the girl sitting behind the front desk of the bank in as many minutes. Her head was still down, fingers working the keyboard in front of her, and a long strand of dark-brown hair caressed the side of her face outside of a slicked-back ponytail.
Natalia Russo.
I’d gone against my own rules to find out that name. It was easy enough to poke around in the system at the credit union where my company was installing security to pull her information. Usually a work photo wouldn't do a person justice, but hers? Damn near black hair, dark irises that could melt you, high cheekbones and faint blush, a few buttons open on her white blouse—she looked like magic from the moment my eyes caught a glimpse. Still did, while avoiding me. Or trying her hardest to.
The pen in my hand tapped anxiously against the desk.
"Why don't you just go and talk to her, Cap?" my best friend and business partner, Frankie, suggested from the rolling office chair beside me. He hadn't looked up from the desktop he wasfiddling with, writing code into an open text box and wearing that hat I’d told him a dozen times looked unprofessional.
The bank was slow this afternoon. Barely audible Jim Croce crooned in the background, fluorescent bulbs burned down onto the white tile floors, and a man darted back and forth across the puke green throw rugs with one of those silent vacuum cleaners. I jammed my tongue in my cheek and craned my neck to look around the makeshift wall again. Still there. Still pretending I wasn’t.
"I made a move, Pike," I said. "I put that sticky note right in the center of her screen. She's either seen it or she's writing emails with an obstructed view and pretending she didn't."
"Why are you waiting for her to text you when she's sitting ten feet away?" Pike ran a finger across his top lip and continued typing. "We’re going to have to pass her walking out the front door. Or are you going to ignore her like you're in high school again?"
I flicked the back of his ear, earning a frustrated grunt. "Type, monkey."
This wasn’t like chatting up a girl at the bar after a few drinks and sparring with the jukebox. I couldn’t just gotalk to her. I wasn’t an ugly guy, but some dim lighting and a beer blanket never hurt anybody. I could use that extra confidence at the moment.
"She's probably nervous, too," Pike added, as if reading my mind.
"I'm not nervous. I just don't want to come on too strong. She can't leave if she's not interested and I waltz over and back her into a corner." I scratched at the base of my neck, pulling at the tufts of overgrown hair. Then, just in case, sunk my nose into the crease of my armpit for a perfunctory sniff.
Frankie jammed a key finitely, then twisted in his chair to face me. "But you're aware of that, unlike most other guys. Souse that expertly honed intuition and retract yourself if you feel like she'd rather stick a fork in her eye than speak to you."
"I'm not that bad," I reasoned. "Do you see that girl? She's dealt with the worst of us. Trust me."
He slapped his hands down on his knees. "If it were me, I'd just go talk to her. Ask her if she liked her coffee this morning."
The coffee I left on her desk before she arrived, with a note and my number, leaving the ball in her court. Of course she liked it, because I'd fished her empty cup out of the break room garbage the day before to take a photo of the order sticker.
That wasn’t weird, I kept telling myself. What would have been weird was if I tasted the coffee before dropping it off at her work station. The garbage thing was smart.
"Oh, fuck off. If it were you, you'd run home with your tail between your legs and jerk off about it for three days."
