Fuck yes. His cock throbbed in his jeans.
“Upstairs,” he managed to say.
She paused, then nodded.
But that pause… He pulled back. “You still okay?”
“Yes.” But there was another pause as she searched his face. “This doesn’t change anything, right?”
His pulse jacked up, slamming at the base of his neck.Be. Careful.“It doesn’t have to.”
She exhaled in relief. “Good.”
He braced his arm on the wall above her head and lifted her chin. In this bright light, he could see a faint bruise on the bridge of her nose he hadn’t seen yesterday in the gloom of his apartment. He traced the edge of it with his finger, featherlight. “Does this hurt?”
“What?”
“You have a bruise. Just a little one.”
“Oh.” She raised her fingers to touch the spot, too. “I think the airbag smashed my sunglasses there. They must have flown off in the collision.”
He leaned in and kissed that spot, his lips impossibly soft. Then he stepped back and hooked her hand with his. “I have something for you upstairs.”
“What?”
“Let’s go upstairs and you’ll find out.”
She sprinted ahead of him, racing up the stairs as if to prove that she was recovering just fine, although he’d still be careful with her.
He’d offered without thinking that in order to get the surprise for her, he’d have to dig out the box he’d brought home from California—and hadn’t looked at since. It was the top of his closet, so while she unzipped her boots, he stalked ahead to yank it down.
She joined him in the bedroom just as he was replacing the lid on the box, so she didn’t see anything else in the box—which was for the best.
“Here,” he said, holding out a pair of sunglasses.
She frowned. “Are these…?”
“Yours. Yes.” He dragged in a breath. “I think you lost them under the seat of my car.”
He found them when he sold the Gran Torino. Had shoved them in the box.
He shrugged. “It’s going to be sunny tomorrow. Can’t let my socialite wife get on a private plane without designer glasses protecting her eyes.”
She lifted her head, a determined expression on her face. He recognized it as hercall me princess all you want, buddy, but we’re going to be friendslook. The first time she’d pinned him with it, years ago, he’d ended up with his pants around his ankles and his hands in her impossibly shiny hair.
Because they were never really friends. Always something so much more complicated than that.
“You called me your wife,” she whispered.
“Not the first time.”
“But maybe the last.”
“I’m sure I’ll squeeze it in one or two more times before you go.”
She twirled the glasses around her finger, then set them carefully on top of his dresser. “You got rid of the car, but you didn’t get rid of these.”
It would have been extraordinarily petty to throw out glasses that cost more than his first car. “Thought I might pawn them some day.”
