“I have to get up early in the morning.” I pulled a face. “Meetings.”
“The life of a jet-setting businesswoman, eh? Then I guess I’ll be getting up early too.” His phone rang, and he slid it out of his pocket. “Hey, Antonella.” A pause. “What barrel racing contest?” … “Next Saturday? No, she didn’t mention it, but for sure Dionysus will sponsor a class.”
She? Marielle? Barrel racing was a cowboy thing, wasn’t it? She’d look great in chaps. Maybe one of those jackets with the fringe…
“I’m not coming with her, but I’ll swing by if I have the time,” Nolan said. “No, we didn’t break up because we were never together. I’m actually seeing someone else, but she’s out of town next week.” Nolan carried on walking as I stopped dead. “Yeah, for sure, we’ll come over for dinner when she’s back in town.”
Only after he’d hung up did he realise I wasn’t with him.
“Alexa?”
“Were you…?” I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “Were you talking about me?”
“Well, I’m not seeing anyone else.” He closed the distance between us. “Shit. You wanted to keep it quiet?”
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “We had one sort-of date?—”
“It was a date,” Nolan said firmly.
“And I don’t even live in California.”
“Phones, email, and airplanes exist. We’ll make it work.”
“Dinner with strangers is my worst nightmare.”
“Then I’ll come up with a reason not to go. I just didn’t want Marielle concocting some bullshit about me not being able to come on Saturday and have everyone keep thinking we’re an item. Now that Antonella knows the truth, she’ll make sure everyone else does too.”
“I…”
“Are you out of excuses yet?”
I bit my bottom lip so hard that I tasted the coppery tang of blood. “I don’t…I don’t know how to date.”
Of course, I’d studied others. In Blackstone House, Ruby had hooked up with a series of seemingly interchangeable men for the first few months I’d lived there, Justin had spent a lot of time assuring Eliza that she wasn’t being neurotic—she absolutely was—and Brax was Carissa’s walking wallet. Moving on, Dawson followed Violet around like a loyal puppy, Ari often had weird bruises that Jez said came from Zach but in a good way, Brax and Indi started out by using bickering as a bizarre form of foreplay, and Jez herself was on a mission to wear out Cole’s dick. Only Erin and Rusty’s relationship seemed tolerable, but Rusty was way more easygoing than Nolan.
“We can just work things out as we go along,” Nolan said, stopping at an outdoor spigot to wash his hands. “I need to punch down the wine before dinner.”
“No, I don’t like that idea.”
“You want me to submit a twelve-point plan?”
“You think twelve is enough? I have a fifteen-part list to pack my carry-on.”
Rather than answering, Nolan picked me up with wet hands, pressed his lips to mine, and set me down again, leaving me gasping.
“Consider that point one.”
My pulse pounded in my ears. “Hey!”
“Go on,” he said, his voice lower than usual. Silkier. “Give me a tongue-lashing.”
For the first time I could remember, I was speechless. This was another side of Nolan I hadn’t seen before, and it made me hella nervous.
Slightly sweaty.
Definitely buzzed.
In Astela’s second year, when we were expanding faster than I’d ever imagined, Jay convinced me to change our newly appointed, very married, very boring CFO’s email signature as an April Fool’s prank. It was only after the guy sent out a company-wide invoicing reminder as “George Milton, Gentleman in the Streets, Freak in the Sheets” that HR called, and I realised it wasn’t just an Excel-related joke.
