His words made my heart dance in my chest. “I agree,” I told him. I turned to face him once I was stopped at a four-way stop. I hooked my finger in his jacket and pulled him to me for a quick kiss. “Besides, there’s no way my boys want to be trapped in skinny jeans after all these years wearing Levi’s.”
Josh laughed hard, but I wasn’t sure if it was due to my words or the idea of me crammed into skinny jeans. I loved how they looked on him, but there was no amount of money in the world that would entice me to wear them.
“I like the way you look in my t-shirts though,” I told him once I resumed driving back toward his house. If I was keeping score of the number of times I rendered Josh speechless it would probably be a total of two times after he heard my t-shirt comment.
I wouldn’t say he stiffened exactly, but there was a sudden stillness to him. Josh was never still. I worried that I went too far or pushed too fast until he placed his hand on my leg and patted it. “I like wearing your shirts because they smell like you.” I had to swallow hard twice to dislodge the lump of emotion stuck in my throat. I knew there was so much more to his words than him admitting that he liked my body wash.
I pulled into his driveway at the rear of his house and parked next to his teal green Mini Cooper convertible. I wanted so badly to expand on the emotional exchange that we both had, but I didn’t want to push my luck. Instead, I posed to him the question that just popped into my head. “What’s the name of your car?” I knew that there was no way in hell that Josh didn’t have a name for her. He loved that car as much as I loved Charlotte. His pink-tinged cheeks told me that he was embarrassed about the name he chose for his car. He mumbled something beneath his breath, but it was too soft for me to hear. “What was that?”
“Princess!”
“It’s cute,” I replied, “like the car and like…”
“Do not say like her owner.” Josh’s shrewd eyes locked on my twitching lips as I fought back the urge to laugh.
“I would never.”
Josh’s response was to get out of my car and walk around to the trunk so he could start unloading groceries. I was feeling a tad sassy myself and didn’t push the button to open it for him. Instead I sat in my car and watched him through my rearview mirror until he lowered his head and looked at me through the rear windshield and mouthed the words “two days.”
I popped the trunk almost as fast as I could spring an erection. The smug smile on his face told me that he had me right where he wanted me–by the balls. Yeah, well, I had my own little victory with him admitting he liked to smell like me. In my book, it made us both winners. If I had my way, we both would be celebrating our victories together after his friends went home.
IWASN’T ADDICTED TOGabe. I wasn’t addicted to Gabe.I wasn’t… oh, damn it. I was fucking addicted to Gabe. I had spent a few consecutive nights sleeping beside him and then found that I couldn’t sleep once we went back to separate beds. I was surprised I wasn’t shaking from withdrawal and scheming to find a way to get my next Gabe fix. My brain cautioned me to slow things down and that I was allowing him to get too close too fast, but my heart and body told my brain to take a damn vacation from overthinking for a damn change.
I reached for my phone on the bedside table to text him but stopped myself. It was well past midnight on a work night for him. He needed his sleep to concentrate on solving his drug case and Lord knows I didn’t let him rest much over the past weekend. I also knew he wouldn’t be sleeping much on Wednesday when I did my big studio reveal and routine for him.
Instead of pestering Gabe, I got out of bed and fixed a mug of chamomile tea to try and help soothe me to sleep. I curled up with Diva on the sofa and turned on a rerun of my favorite cooking show. “Who’s the best kitty in the world?” I cooed while I scratched her ears. Diva purred loudly and bumped her head against my cup of tea so that I had to put it down and use both hands to please her.
Diva curled up on my chest and tucked her head beneath my chin. The warmth of her fur and gentle vibration of her purring worked better than any tea and I found myself nodding off right when the judges were about to test the food that the reality show contestants prepared. The show invaded my dreams and the panel of celebrity chefs was replaced by Chaz, Meredith, and Gabe. The wide-eyed, hopeful culinary students morphed into different versions of me. There were three Joshes, all in different outfits and obviously, none that I would’ve picked. That flannel shirt lumberjack look didn’t work for me at all.
Sunday dinners morphed into a judging contest and instead of normal brilliant dishes, I served up octopus tentacle stew and ox tail carbonara. What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck!
“This tentacle stew is a tad bit under seasoned,” Chef Gabe said with a scowl on his face. “It’s not your best dish in this competition, Josh.”
Lumberjack Josh looked crestfallen but what the hell did he expect serving up nasty shit like that? Next up was Emo Josh dressed all in black and who clearly had a heavy hand when applying eye liner. I worried that the black skinny jeans he wore were so tight they would cut the circulation off to his cock.
Chef Chaz took a bite of ox tail carbonara and spit it back out. “I can’t even…” He waved his hand dramatically and a member of the crew came and took the offensive plate away.
Last up to be judged was Preppy Josh, who I admit was my favorite. That light blue Oxford button-up shirt and pink sweater tied around his neck was a little much for me, but of the three Joshes he appeared to be taking the competition most serious.
“This is an unusual spin on country fried crow,” Chef Meredith said after taking a bite. She tilted her head to the side as if she couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing. She took another small bite and then smiled broadly. “I like it, Josh. There’s this little burst of heat at the back of my throat that gives it an extra something. Well done.”
“Yasssss, bitch.” Preppy Josh twirled in celebration.
“Excuseme,” Chef Meredith said. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d be serving up some crow for Preppy Josh to eat. Dumb fool. Meredith opened her mouth to blast him, but I was ripped out of my sleep by the sound of a car alarm going off.
I had always heard that moms could always tell their crying baby apart from others in a room and I believed it because I could clearly tell my baby’s cry of distress from my neighbor’s Fiat 500. “Damn cat,” I muttered as I set Diva on the sofa and rose to my feet. Diva was insulted by my comment and snagged my pajama bottoms with her claw before I could walk away. “Aww, not you, baby girl. I was talking about that unfortunate cat who lives next door who sets off a different alarm almost nightly. Scruffy or some stupid shit name,” I told Diva.
She retracted her claw and permitted me to leave. I put on my robe and slid my feet in my slippers before I grabbed my car keys. My Princess sometimes played hard to get and required me to stick my key in the door rather than push a button on the fob before she would stop her crying.
I flipped on the outside light next to the back door and made my way carefully down the icy steps to the driveway. If I ever cleaned out all the crap in my garage, I could store Princess inside and not worry about her alarm being set off by a dumb cat. I slipped and slid my way over to the car and couldn’t believe what I saw when I got there. All four of my tires had been slashed. I unlocked Princess to turn off the alarm then stood there staring at my baby and wondering who would violate her in such a hateful way.
An eerie feeling came over me, as if I was being watched. I looked up and down the alley, but didn’t see anything out of the norm other than the street light closest to my driveway was out. It had been working when I walked Gabe to his car earlier that night because I remembered remarking about how pretty the snowflakes looked in the beam of light. The light could’ve gone out on its own, but I had a sneaky suspicion that wasn’t the case. I was too freaked out to investigate so I returned inside the house and called the police.
Somewhere in the back of my mind it should’ve occurred to me to call my hunky detective of a boyfriend first, but it didn’t. Unfortunately for me, one of the officers who arrived on the scene called him instead of me. In my opinion, four uniformed officers to answer a vandalism call seemed to be a tad bit excessive. Hell, I didn’t even know we had four cops on duty at one time. Regardless, one of the three extra cops had nothing better to do than call Gabe while the first officer took my statement and completed a report. The thunderous look on Gabe’s face when he arrived made me want to hide in my closet, but those days were long past.
I also noticed that the Three Stooges suddenly got busier once he arrived. One of them even found a clue, admittedly one that validated the uneasy feeling I had when I first discovered that my tires had been slashed. “Detective Wyatt, it appears that the street light in the alley was purposely busted. I found shards of glass below on the ground beneath the light,” he said, interrupting the stare down Gabe was giving me.
“Stay inside where it’s warm and don’t bother trying to lock me out. We are going to have a conversation when I return.” Gabe’s tone of voice and high-handed behavior should’ve pissed me off, but the shaking I felt in my body had nothing to do with fear or anger. Damn him.
