Or,You've seen yourself, right? You're a walking wetdream.
"I just want to be—" I paused, scratching the back of my neck while I searched for the right sentiment. What did I want to be right now? Part of me was convinced that the only choice was another hotel room, and the other part needed to know what Alex wore to bed.What if she doesn't wear anything?"I want to be respectful of your-your-yourprivacy."
"I sleep in on-call rooms all the time. This will be fine," she said. To her credit, she didn't even blink at my stutter. She never did. "There's no sense splitting up and making it more difficult." She held up her phone as she backed away. "I have a patient with some post-op complications. Give me a few minutes to handlethis.Okay?"
Alex wandered into the adjoining dining room, her head bent and her fingers flying over the screen. If she was uncomfortable about this, it didn't show. And maybe she wasn't uncomfortable because she had no problem sleeping naked—a guy could dream—in the same room with me because she was a cool, self-possessed chick who didn't let strange situations ruffle herfeathers.
But it wasn't that this attraction was one-sided. It wasn't part of the plan and it wasn't what either of us needed considering the baggage we dragged along with us. But it was there. And two nights in a bedroom—one named for the founding father of this state—wasn't going to do anything tominimizeit.
It was a hardscrabble time back then, with people crossing the Atlantic just to get the fuck away from England and the second King Charles. Roger Williams was too liberal for Massachusetts and fled to the south in search of freedom of conscience—the right to believe whatever the fuck he wanted to believe without any state-run religious body breathing down his neck—and settled the Providence Plantations about four hundred years ago. This was before the colonies declared independence, before the Brown brothers founded a college, before Rochambeau docked in Narragansett Harbor to aid the revolution, before this place was even called Rhode Island. Williams went hard at the notion of a separated church and state, and to many, he was a heretic. The crazy old cooter trusted men and women to get on their knees and pray the way that suited them. To colonial sensibilities, that meant this region was a hotbed of unchecked, unprincipledliving.
I glanced back at Alex, swallowing roughly as my eyes mapped her thick thighs. I didn't want to make this complicated, and I didn't want towanther.
But right now, my state was real interested in getting into herchurch.
I turned back to the owner. "The Roger Williams room it is,"Isaid.
ChapterFourteen
Riley
After settlinginto the coziest room in the entire universe and learning the close quarters waltz, we hit up the Providence Art Club to kick off the weekend's festivities. The Club wasn't a single location but rather a string of four homes on Thomas Street, deeded over time to the cause of showing off art and sustainingartists.
I couldn't help looking over my shoulder during the toast from the college president. Dorrance was in town, and she was drawn to open bars and art critique like a moth to a flame. But I didn't see her, and wasn't interested in looking too hard. Alex and I wandered through the student exhibitions in each of the four homes, lukewarm wine served in plastic stemwareinhand.
The work was impressive, and without putting forth much effort, I'd met several talented architecture students. It was the best blend of stoic academic types wearing bowties and green-haired fringe types with neck tattoos. There was reminiscing about the professor who was still bonkers and that other one who was determined to die at the lectern, and I handed out several businesscards.
With that task completed, I had a mind to pack up this party, cancel the sleepover, and drive back to Boston tonight. But Alex asked for the walking tour of the area, and I couldn't say no. Not when I could stroll along South Main Street with my arm around her shoulders and drop every random bit of historical and architectural knowledge in myarsenal.
We'd stopped to take photos with the city as our backdrop, though I wasn't sure whether we were still sticking it to her douche waffle intern or now preserving memories of our time together. It didn't matter that much. I was taking whichever sliver of her life she wasoffering.
Instead of staying on College Hill for dinner—the place was mobbed with students and alumni and most likely Dorrance, and Alex couldn't survive an hours-long wait to be seated—we settled into a tiny bistro on Hope Street. The server was quick to deliver a charcuterie board, and I sipped an Ithaca Flower Power IPA while Alex sampled the assortment of meats andcheeses.
"Tell me something terrible," I said. "I've had a terrible week, and I'll feel better knowing that someone else experienced some of thesameshit."
"Let me think about that," she said, tapping her fingertips against her bottom lip. She didn't do it to draw my attention to her mouth, but my cock didn't know that. "Well, my mother did send me a set of bracelets. Those thin silver bangle-y bracelets with thecharms?"
"Oh, the horror," I said, reaching for a slice of salami. "Notbracelets."
Alex laughed and leaned closer. We were slotted into a narrow table, and though the bistro was small, it was loud enough that we had to bow our heads toward each other to hear. I was inches away from her mouth, and intently focused there because I couldn't look away. That forced proximity hadn't been part of my plan when selecting this location, but just like the Roger Williams room, it was whatIgot.
"My mother loves all kinds of jewelry.Lovesit. And she's generous about it, too. She can't just buy a bracelet for herself. She has to get one for me and my sister-in-law. But I can't wear bracelets," she explained, holding up her hands as if it was self-explanatory. "Not when I'm in surgery all day. Rings, bracelets, none of it." She pointed at the blueberry-sized pearl studs in each earlobe. "This is all I can manage, actually. And I never take them out. Some doctors can pull off theput it on, take it offroutine, but I'm not one of them. I take it off and never it put itbackon."
She was talking about jewelry, but again, my cock didn't know that. He wasn't the sort of fellow who understoodnuance.
I cleared my throat and took a pull from my beer. "So, these bracelets," I said. "You think they qualify asterrible?"
"Probably not, but it's difficult when she sends me something like that because she ignores me when I tell her that I prefer earrings or necklaces. But then I feel guilty because it's a freaking gift. But then I remember I won't wear it, which means the gift is going to waste. And then I feel guilty about that," she said. "That's a lot of guilt, but I don't know what rises to the level of terribleforyou."
With a groan that had more to do with my needy dick than this week, I said, "Terrible is having every step of a project lined up, all of my tradespeople and materials scheduled, and getting slapped with a stop-work because an inspector doesn't understand how solar energy feeds into a home's powersupply."
Alex winced as she reached for her wine. "That does soundterrible."
"On certain occasions," I continued, "terrible is working with your family. There's none of the professional boundaries or distance that comes with a typical office, and there are days when I wish my coworkers didn't have stories about the ridiculous shit I did when I was fourteen." I grabbed my beer but paused before it reached my lips. "Or twenty-four. There's never a time when everything isn'tpersonal."
"I can't imagine working with my brother," Alex said. "I don't even know what that would look like. A one-stop shop for all your oil change and gastric bypassneeds?"
"I'm sure there's a market for that," I said, laughing. "Your brother, he workswithcars?"
