I licked my lips. “Fun?”
He nodded, his eyes fixed on my lips with an expression I couldn’t place.
I thought about the night again, the music, laughter, glimpses into the other women’s lives, into sisterhoods carved and maintained. Families. Things that were sacred.
I thought about how easily Lori and I got along, how we’d already exchanged numbers and made plans to hang out.
“Yes,” I answered quietly. “I had a lot of fun.”
“Good.” As he gave me a once-over as if he was checking my body for something, I didn’t miss the heat in his gaze. You couldn’t miss it, even while wearing champagne goggles that made everything else so blurry. I could see Beau clearer than ever.
“How did you get home?”
Yet again, I was stunned at the question. That he was willingly staying in my presence—right up close to me—and making conversation.
“I, uh, I ordered a rideshare.” I rubbed the back of my neck. My head was starting to throb, and there was a little voice whispering to me about breaching the small distance between Beau and me just to see what he’d do if I kissed him.
Beau.
The man I hated. I’d never wanted to kiss him before. Never even thought about it. Maybe once. Or twice. I was only human. Objectively, Beau Shaw was hot. If you overlooked how much of an asshole he was.
He went still. “Rideshare?”
I bit my lip. I knew he was older than me and not very social or technically minded, but surely even he knew about the revolution in ridesharing and the apps that perpetuated it. Then again, Jupiter was small. They still had an available taxi service. Granted, it only had one driver who was eighty years old and couldn’t drive in the dark.
Maybe Beau truly didn’t know what a rideshare was.
“Um, it’s this app that you?—”
“I know what the fuck it is.” He interrupted me with a familiar fury in his tone.
His anger crawled along my skin, making my hair stand on end. I was more used to negative emotions from Beau, but this was confusing. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he demanded.
We were still standing uncomfortably close. Before, it was unnerving, torturous, intoxicating with him speaking in a low rumble with heat in his eyes.
Now it was suffocating, infuriating, yet somehow still arousing as all hell.
I stared at him. “WhywouldI call you?”
“So I could get you home,” he bit out.
Him? Get me home? This was becoming more confusing by the second.
“Clara’s sleeping. You couldn’t come get me and leave her,” I pointed out pragmatically.
Beau looked toward the hallway, as if he just remembered his daughter even though it was impossible for him to forget her. She was his whole world.
“I would’ve arranged something,” he gritted out. “Taken her with me.”
I raised a brow. “You would’ve woken your sleeping five-year-old to come pick up yournannyafter she had one too many champagnes?” I countered, disbelief threading through my only slightly slurred words.
“Clara wouldn’t have woken,” Beau said flatly. “And stop talking about yourself like that.”
I screwed up my nose in confusion. “Like what?”
“Thenanny,” he repeated, spitting out the words. “As if that’s all you are.”
