I head to the front where I said I’d meet Rhys. He’s already at self-check, running his items through the scanner, and he says, “Bring that over here.”
“I can pay for my own stuff.”
“I owe you,” he says.
“Not anymore.”
We stare at each other for a moment. Then he says, “Thank you. But I’m still buying. It’s Teller’s money. I’ve been saving it for this moment. Wealth redistribution. I’m the Robin Hood of divorce attorneys.”
That makes me laugh. Still, I hold my basket closer to me, because it’s one thing to have bought Bad Decision Panties and to idly contemplate whether Rhys has an opinion about my underwear—and another to let him buy them for me.
“Come on. Let me at least pretend to make it up to you.” He grabs for the basket. I yank it out of his reach, and the robe falls, dragging with it five pairs of Bad Decision Panties, all clinging lacily to the robe’s terry surface. The whole collection is spread out on the floor like a cheap window display in a downtown adult-toy shop.
I crouch to retrieve my stuff, reaching for the red lace thong first—it’s so bright and garish andobvious, my bad decisions visible to Rhys and God and all the other shoppers—but my hand collides with something warm and strong. His hand.
He’s crouched, too, and both our fingers wrap around the red lace thong. Where they touch, there’s a fizz of heat energy so strong I can’t help looking at his face to see if he feels it, too.
Rhys slowly raises his gaze to mine. His eyes are blazing, and I can’t move for a second, because there’s no mistaking the way he’s looking at me. My whole body flares with need.
We’re both still holding the thong. I let it go like a hot potato, which is definitely the wrong move, because then there we are, squatting across from each other on the floor, my underwear in Rhys’s hand, that heat still in his eyes, and oh, God, whatever he’s thinking, I want it, too, I want it now.
My mouth is so dry, I desperately want to lick my lips.Don’t do it, don’t do it,I chant to myself, but of course instinct wins and I do it anyway. His gaze drops from my eyes to my mouth, and his pupils darken even more.
Abruptly he gets to his feet, grabbing the robe as he goes and depositing both it and my panties back into the basket.
“You should probably scan these yourself,” he says and thrusts the basket into my grasp.
19
Rhys
I’m so distracted by the red thong that it takes me a while to realize Eden’s limping.
As we walk back toward town—we still have an hour or so to kill till Joe picks us up, and I figured she’ll be happiest at the quilt show—I pull a few paces in front of her. We’re walking on a narrow stretch, so it makes sense, and I want to make sure I see any hazard that might hurt her—even in her new, more enclosed shoes.
But also, it’s self-preservation, because if I look at her, I’m going to do something we’ll both regret.
I came pretty damn close at the checkout.
It has nothing to do with me,I told myself when her lace underwear spilled onto the floor.For all I know she wears lace thongs all the time—it’s none of my damn business.
But I hoped she’d bought them because she wanted me to see them. On her.
The electricity and the hope stirred up a potent chemical cocktail, making me buzz with dangerous need, so when I looked up and she was looking, too, when I let her see what I wanted, and she let me see right back?—
Then I recovered my senses.
Becauseeven if there were a way to save Hanna’s business without saving the wedding—which I don’t know that there is—shegot dumped.Yesterday.
Yesterday.
Not okay. Not okay to take advantage of her vulnerability.
Because Eden deserves better than swiping right. She deserves better thanone and done. She deserves better than Teller and Paul, and shedefinitelydeserves better than me.
There is nothing—nothing—in my story that would make me a good bet for Eden. My story is full of bad role models and my own failure to do better than they did.
Those are the thoughts that distract me from the moment, which is why it takes me way too long to realize Eden’s limping.
