Jada nodded. “Yep.”
Her face got a little twisted, as if she were preventing herself from crying before it disappeared. “I gotta use the restroom. You two can talk about it while I’m gone. But once I come back, I don’t want to hear another word about him and me or the wedding until I’m walking down the aisle.”
She sashayed out of the room on her four-inch heels. Glamorous and perfectly dressed as always.
I put the potato down and turned to Dawson, all frustration forgotten as concern for my friend filled me. “Why would her dad do this? Why would she agree?”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he sat, leaning his elbows on his knees and placing his hands on the back of his head, a posture that spoke volumes about his level of distress.
“Do you love her?” I asked before I could stop myself, and he jerked his head back up, eyes meeting mine, wide with shock.
“What? No!” The force of it relieved me. They’d both said there was nothing between them, but seeing them together, seeing his level of distress…it was hard to categorize it as anything but affection. Love.
“I mean,” I continued. “You’re together all the time, and you’re both bright and beautiful. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was more than friendship there.”
“Beautiful?” he asked with a small quirk to his lips.
“Shut up. You know you are.”
We stared at each other, that connection floating between us again. I wanted that to be mine and mine alone, even if the current could never be charged into a full-on electrical field.
“Jada and I are complicated,” he said quietly.
“It’s not because of me, right? Because once upon a time, I had a stupid crush on the bad boy who’d burst into my world?” I asked, both wanting and not wanting to be the reason they weren’t together. My heart pounded loudly while I waited for his response.
He shook his head. “It’s never been that way with Jada and me.”
“But you still don’t want me intruding on your trip to the city?” I asked.
He looked away and then sat up, arms going across a chest so much larger than when he’d first shown up at the Victorian at twenty-two, muscled and contoured even more than it had been then. Seeing it bare the night before had been like staring at a sculpture. A thing of beauty I longed to touch with a ferocity that had my fingers twitching and my pulse quickening. I could imagine my palms splayed across it, my lips caressing and tasting the toned indentations, finding the spot right above his heart and feeling the beat of it against my lips.
His eyes flicked to my mouth as if he had read my thoughts.
I took a steadying breath and turned back to the potatoes and the peeler.
“It’s not you coming, Vi. It’s just…like I said, it’s complicated,” he breathed out, his voice deeper than it had been a moment before. I could feel his gaze all over my skin, and a shiver went through me that had nothing to do with the temperature.
I forced a smile and a hint of laughter into my voice as I used his last name against him just as he’d used mine against me. “Regardless of your last name being Langley, you don’t live at the CIA. Don’t pretend to be on some secret James Bond mission.”
When I glanced up, there was a look of surprise on his face that was quickly replaced with his classic smirk.
“He works for MI-6, but I do have the right car for it,” he teased.
Silas’s words,Is he a drug dealer?echoed through my brain, and I pushed them aside. Whatever was going on with Jada and Dawson, it wasn’t that.
“Well, as much as she says going with her to New York is for me, I kind of think she needs someone to keep her from going off the rails too,” I said as I flicked my hand over the potato.
He groaned before coming over and taking the potato and the peeler from my hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I can’t watch you do that any longer. You might slice off some skin.”
“I’ve peeled plenty of potatoes in my life,” I said with indignation.
“Then, you’re lucky to have any fingers left.”
I didn’t fight it. If he wanted to peel, he was welcome to it. It was my least favorite thing to do. I moved on to cutting fruit.
