“May I come in?” he asked.
She immediately stepped aside and allowed him to enter, the smell of beef and cheese wafting to her nostrils. She shifted her laptop to the small desk beside the bed to make room for the takeout. Tyler sat down on the foot side of the bed while she made herself comfortable against the headboard. She stretched out on the bed and pulled a pillow over her bare legs so that she wouldn’t feel so exposed.
It was a quiet dinner. Both of them were too hungry to talk much. The burgers and fries were polished off in a matter of minutes.
“Thanks, Tyler,” she said, swallowing her last bite. “That was the best dinner ever.”
“The calories were completely counter-productive to my run, but yes, that was awesome.”
Her phone beeped beside her a few times. She read the messages and groaned.
“Bad news?” he asked.
“No, it’s just Gemma. She says she saw my ex…Brian and his girlfriend, and she wants my blessing before she keys his car. She’s such a good friend. She’ll do it whether I give my blessing or not.”
“I don’t mean to pry, but whatever happened to him? He used to come to the office all the time and then he just fell off the face of the earth.”
Jordan shrugged as she reached for her McFlurry. “It was destined for failure from the beginning. We were never compatible. I don’t even know why I let it carry on for as long as it did…because he was a prick!” She knew she shouldn’t be telling her boss these things, but for some reason, after last night, she felt comfortable to talk to him openly. She also wanted to vent, let out all her aggression for Brian, the douche-face. And, really, if he didn’t want to know, he shouldn’t have asked. “So firstly, he was shorter than me. I know I’m an…inconvenient height, so I’ve made peace with the fact that about eighty percent of the guys I datewillbe shorter than me, but he made it such as issue. All of sudden, I’m not allowed to wear heels anymore and we can’t walk side by side in public.”
“That’s a little over-the-top.”
He took the McFlurry from her hand, ate a spoonful, and handed it back to her. She tried not to get too distracted bythe intimacy of what he’d just done and continued with her story. “I know! Then he tells me he’s not ready for a committed relationship and yet he was so damn clingy!” She leaned forward, keeping the pillow on her legs as she crossed them, and devoured more ice-cream. “He was at the office every day, coming to my house every day and all he ever spoke about was himself. It was always about how he came top of his class at law school and how he was the youngest junior partner at the firm. He never bothered to get to know me. He was just all up in my Kool-Ade without even knowing the flavor.”
“Is that a real saying? I-I don’t think that’s a real saying.”
“It is. Then he tells me that I’m a workaholic, which I suppose is partially true, but he had a great career, so why couldn’t I? He said I needed to get my priorities straight, the same guy who told me he wasn’t ready for commitment. And a week later, he breaks up with me over TEXT, saying that he found himself a woman who knows how to put her man first. I mean…what the ever-loving fuck?! Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?”
He was stunned into silence for a short while and once again she didn’t know if it was because of the unintentional slip of a curse word. She was about to apologize for it but then he laughed, that cute little laugh where his nose crinkled a bit. Something must have gotten lost in translation, because she had never found that story funny. Maybe it was the way she told it, but she still couldn’t find it the least bit amusing.
“So glad you enjoyed that,” she muttered sarcastically.
His laughter died down, but his smile didn’t disappear. “Jordan, did you ever stop to think that maybe this guy was intimidated by you?”
She shook her head. “No. I can safely say the thought never crossed my mind. Tyler, I was voted most awkward teenager at my high school. I am a nerd to my very core. Nobody finds that intimidating.”
“You’re not a teenager anymore,” he said softly. “Now you run the finance department of a billion-dollar company. You’re smart, you’re independent, you earn much more than the market average– at some point you should thank your boss for that. A lot of men would find all of that extremely intimidating. Some guys feel threatened by a successful woman…And I guess it doesn’t help that you’re also…” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “…kinda pretty.” He leaned forward and slowly took her glasses off her face. “Maybe even bordering on…incredibly beautiful.”
Those words were so sincere, so completely inappropriate considering the circumstances and the deal they’d made just two days ago. She wanted to scream, punch him in the face and scream some more. She was so tired of all these mixed messages.
The close proximity of his body was unnerving. She wanted to kiss him, just throw herself at him and play out every one of the erotic fantasies she’d had about him over the last week. He wanted to kiss her, too. She could see it. She could feel it. The air was tense and electric and she wanted him out of her room before she did something stupid. Their first kiss had ended up being a colossal slap of rejection and she wasn’t prepared to risk making herself a fool again. She hated the fact that this man had the ability to get her so twisted and up-tight.
“Why did you have dinner with me last night?” she asked, an edge of anger in her tone. “Why are you in my room right now?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.” There was a staring contest going on between them, stretching on for so long it became uncomfortable. “I should go,” he whispered, setting down her glasses on the table beside the bed.
His words were a complete contradiction to his actions, because instead of moving away, he was actually leaning closer. Before she could utter another word, his hand was in her hair and his lips were on hers. Her mouth was cold from the ice-cream, contrasting with the heat of his, and the sweet taste of vanilla flowed between them.
His tongue ventured into her mouth. Tyler had the type of kiss that literally pulled the breath out of her in soft moans and throaty whimpers. His hand fisted in her hair, angling her head as he deepened the kiss. It seemed like the last week of trying to keep their distance had made them both a little crazy and now their mouths were trying to get as much as they could of each other, desperate to make up for lost time. Just when she was about to lose all sensibility, he stopped and pulled away.
“Well, that was…that was great…Wasn’t that great?”
Her eyes shut involuntarily. Fuck, not this again.
He shifted on the bed to create more of a distance between them. “That was just one of those moments that was…so great…so great. But it’s…it’s also one of those things we said we wouldn’t do again.”
She sat there uneasily, staring at him in bewilderment. “You kissed me this time.”
He nodded. “Yeah. You kissed me, now I kissed you. One for you, one for me. We’re even.”
