“After telling me he’s not!” she interjected, the irritation propelling her into motion again.
“—and you haven’t called him to sort things out?”
“No! Why would I?”
“Because he’s incredibly attractive? And he bakes? And he’s tidy and polite and thoughtful and spells everything correctly in his texts?”
She scoffed. “Is that how low our standards are?”
Richard scoffed back. “Excuse me, Your Highness, but those are not low standards. Remember a few years ago when we both spent a month crushing on that coffee-cart guy with the bad posture and no eyebrows because he gave us free shots of espresso once?”
“Point taken,” she muttered, slapping the soles of her shoes against the pavement harder than was strictly necessary. “But you’re supposed to be on my side!”
“I am on your side, sugar bum. I want you to have good sex with the god of thunder and bear his large Nordic babies. Is that so much to ask?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that’s what she wanted too, but she shut that down. Nobody was bearing Erik’s big blond babies, least of all her. Instead, she replied, “Just… can you deal directly with him for the rest of the cake planning? And then you and I will never speak of this again.” She was too hurt and embarrassed to be anything remotely resembling professional around Erik’s carefully neutral face.
“Fine. If that’s what you want.” Richard’s voice conveyed an unspoken “you weirdo,” which she was grateful he didn’t actually vocalize.
“It is.” She swallowed. “I miss you.”
“Miss you too. I’ll call you once we’re back home.”
“You’d better,” she said, hanging up as she approached her building.
She climbed the three flights and let herself into her apartment, where she found no Finn but a huge cellophane-wrapped basket of fruit on the kitchen table. She crossed the room and scanned the attached card with a disbelieving laugh. Her mother thought she could make up for the previous weekend’s disappointment with glossy apples and some aggressively suggestive bananas? Hardly.
“‘Sorry we missed each other,’” she read aloud, mimicking her mother’s clipped tones. “‘Have you thought any more about the photography program at the Art Institute?’” With a strangled shriek, she ripped the card in half and tossed the pieces to the floor. “Guess what, Mom. I haven’t, and you’d know that if you’d call me once in a while.”
Great. She was ranting out loud in her kitchen. After a beat, she forced her hands to unclench, stretching her fingers out straight and closing her eyes to breathe out on a slow five count. Once she was centered again, she bent to pick up the mangled card halves and jammed them into the trash. Then she eyeballed the unwanted basket of nature’s candy.
What she really wanted was cake. Erik’s cake. The slightly bruised pears staring back at her from under the shiny plastic wrap were no substitute for a single bite of any of the delicacies she’d fondled in his apartment on Sunday.
She groaned and kicked off her heels. Erik. Fondled.Notwords she needed to be thinking about in her current self-pitying mood. After all, she’d been the one who’d attacked him with her mouth last week. Knowing Erik, he’d probably been politely waiting for her to let up so he could tell her he wasn’t interested. She was such an idiot.
An idiot who still had work to do. With a sigh, she trudged to her bedroom and shimmied out of her electric-blue club dress and into sleep shorts and a tank top. She piled her hair on top of her head and plodded back to the kitchen with her laptop, where she settled at the table for the sweet torture of choosing the best shots of Erik for his website. Once she’d finished the setup and gotten it launched alongside his social media accounts, she could wish him good luck and sail out of his life. More importantly, she could do it all over email without needing to actually spend time with him again.
But that Erik-avoidance plan didn’t allow her to escape one last, excruciating task: sorting through dozens of pictures of his annoyingly handsome face to choose the best shots for the website and, as a side effect, reliving the moment the heat of his gaze had driven her to touch him and lose her mind. With a grumble, she ripped a hole in the cellophane and grabbed the first cake substitute her fingers touched.
It was a banana. Of course. She barked a laugh over the on-the-nose absurdity of the situation, then peeled the damn thing and bit into it as she clicked on the first photo of a face that had become surprisingly dear to her.
Seventeen
“Sí, sí. Claro que sí.”
Lily shrugged helplessly at Erik and held the phone away from her ear as a stream of Spanish poured from the other end. “De veras, Mamá, pero tengo un cliente ahora.” She paused for another burst of words before ringing off with “Te amo, mi corazón.”
She disconnected with a sigh. “Family crisis. My sister’s stylist gave her lilac highlights, and my mother’s threatening to disown her.”
Erik paused with his coffee halfway to his mouth. “The sister or the stylist?”
“Whoever she bumps into first, I think. So what time do your clients get here?”
“Any minute,” he said, checking his phone. “And thanks again. Kitchen’s operational, but I’m still waiting on a few permits.”
Lily breezed by to collect a bundle of pink tulips from the cooler against the wall. “My pleasure. I’m so proud to be here for this moment.” She smiled at him fondly. “Baby’s first clients!”
Erik couldn’t muster more than a scowl even in the face of Lily’s cheerfulness. The last person who’d called him baby had ended up kissing him until his brain shut down, and the white-hot memories of his hands on her body hadn’t receded a week and a half later.
