“Probably should keep that to myself.”
Instead of responding, she places her hands on my ears and presses in. It makes me chuckle. Then I say, “I’m falling for you too and I don’t know how to do it even in the best-case scenario. This is the worst-case scenario.”
She takes her hands off, and I look up to meet her eyes. “We’re sort of experts at worst-case scenarios, Hart.” The smile she offers is sad, but her gaze is molten. A promise. A commitment. “Let’s just…take it slow.”
My phone rings again. “I should get that,” I announce.
She nods and steps out of my embrace, retrieving her own phone. Her eyes widen as she reads her notifications. “Shit.”
It’s Dagger on the other end of my cell. No greeting, just three words, “Tinder date downstairs.” My gaze lights on Aara. “Ralph is here.” Dagger tells me he’s taken care of him.
She spins. “You didn’t let me reply to him! I would have stopped him from coming here.” Moving around me, she races to the window and out to the small balcony.
I crack my neck. Both sides. Then stand up and join her. Towering over Dempsey, I lean down to her ear. “He’s my problem now.”
She panics. “He’s a barkeep for God’s sake. You’ll kill him with a stern look. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Don’t you dare lay a hand on him, Hart. I’ll smite you.” Her anger is cute.
“I’ll explain your plans for the evening changed,” I counter. “No harm, no foul.”
She grabs my midsection, fingertips raised, but seems to realize she’s touching me in a place she hasn’t before, gaze lighting on her hands, then she pulls herself closer to me. “Let me talk to him.”
My skin is fire under her fingers. There’s this forbidden quality to her hands that drives me wild. “Dagger already sent him away, Aara. He was outside waiting for his date when the guy showed up. He recognized him and sent him away,” I explain. “I just wanted to see if you’d let me play.”
Dempsey clears her throat. I can tell she’s wavering between being offended and attacking me. “Play? How about we play in a different way?” she asks.
I knew it.
The smile I offer is dangerous. Dagger assumes we’re fucking, but it’s not right. There needs to be some ground rules for this to go on for longer than one night. Laws that protect her. I pull her away, back into the room and pull the sun blocking curtains closed. “There are rules forbidding anything happening between us.”
“Oh, my gosh, do you have a fever, Captain Obvious?” Aara bites. “Obviously.” If she were sober right now, I have a feeling she’d be a little less cavalier.
She never lets me finish my thoughts. “We need to have a code of our own. For safety.”
Her brow wrinkles. “You’re right. I’d think of that first if you hadn’t gotten me so drunk.”
“You went and got yourself drunk. Don’t blame me.”
Her shorts ride up when she sits on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. Big brain wants to lay out rules, small brain wants to eat everything inside the shorts.
Dempsey sighs. “Neither here nor there. Back to the rules. Are we exclusive? Exclusively hiding? What exactly?”
My face falls as I let my eyes roam her rock-hard body and lips. “No fucking around on work trips for starters. Too many red flags if we hang out too much. If exclusive means you can’t call up Tinder dates, then yeah. Exclusive.” The thought of her with another man sent me off the deep end. Jealousy is fine when it’s me trying to obtain something someone else has, but it feels…painful when it’s like this. Where I don’t have any control over the damn woman.
“Same for you? Chase isn’t bringing any club chicks over on your days off? Or do you get a hall pass and you’re the only one who gets to ride the jealousy train?”
More uncharted territory. Never having a relationship I gave a shit about means I’ve never had to think about what that means for the rest of my life…and my hobbies. As if on cue, my cell chimes in my hand with a text from Chantal. She knows I’ll be home this weekend and wants to talk. It’s code for fuck her way back in my life. She’s texted a few times this week. A complete one-eighty compared to where I thought we were…nowhere.
I swallow hard. “No. Exclusive for both of us.” It’s going to require creative lying. “Fair is fair.”
Aarabelle seems relieved, leaning back on the bed. I swallow hard. “We can’t spend too much time together at work. Weekends off are game.”
She speaks at the ceiling. “Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re making rules for something that we don’t even know is going to work? It’s preemptive. What if kissing you is like kissing my dad.”
I crinkle my nose. “You kiss Liam often?”
She groans. “You know what I mean. Sometimes there’s spark and sometimes there’s fizzle. I remember being enamored with…Henry at first sight.” She pops her head up to look at me towering over her. My gaze locked on every square inch of exposed skin. “Sorry for bringing him up.”
I sigh. “Where are you going with this?”
