“What?” He spits the word out like he choked on it, and he looks like he was slapped again.
“In love with the condo?” she repeats. “Are you going to make an offer? No pressure, but I am bringing another client through in about twenty minutes. That’s why I’m here. Of course I would love to sell it to you. Make your friend Zoey her first big commission.”
Jude gives her his grin, and I can see her basking in the full charming, sexy glow of it, and I don’t like it. I’m jealous now. Great. Because that’s an incredibly attractive quality.
“It’s an amazing place,” Jude tells her. “Incredible. But I definitely want to see a few more places, since this is only our first tour of the day. If I lose out, then it wasn’t meant to be.”
“That’s understandable.” Marti nods; the smile stays firmly on her face. She really wants to help me sell him one of her places, though. She sends me three of her listings a day trying to get me to show them to him.
“I’m taking him to a new-build townhouse now,” I say, even though I’m going to have to dig the info up in my email because I’d actually knocked it off this list because it didn’t have a doorman. Jude smiles. “It’s in Pacific Heights.”
“No doorman?”
“No doorman.” I can’t help but smile.
Marti’s eyes zip back and forth between the two of us. Jude leans in and gives Marti a hug, which she revels in, but I feel that green-eyed monster start to grow inside me again. What the hell? I used to watch Adam hug women all the time and never thought twice about it. Of course now he’s impregnated his assistant…but still. Jude wouldn’t do that. He just has to move to avoid women hunting him down for his magical orgasm powers. Ugh.
Jude starts to the door. I hug Marti too. She gives me a perplexed smile and whispers, “What’s the thing about a doorman, is it good or bad?”
“I don’t know yet,” I reply honestly, which of course leaves her looking even more baffled.
I find the listing in my email and give him the address. Jude punches it into his navigation while I quickly call the agent and ask if we can squeeze in a tour. He says it’s not a problem and urges us to tour all four available units. There’s a passcode lock on each door and he texts me the passes. Jude doesn’t talk much on the way there, and he certainly doesn’t bring up the doorman conversation, which wasn’t about doormen at all. But he does keep his hand on my knee when it’s not needed for driving, so I have no complaints right now.
There’s a war being waged between my heart and my head, between what I should feel and what I do feel. My brain says I’m freshly divorced with a barren house that I can barely afford to keep or refurnish, a potentially barren uterus and a career that needs to be kick-started. My heart keeps reliving memories of last night, and it feels his hand on my knee and my gently bruised butt and the sensations fill my stomach with butterflies and they’re carrying hope on their wings. Light, effervescent hope that this—me and Jude—is something big and beautiful and right.
I need to know exactly why he doesn’t want the doorman. Is it because he doesn’t want to bring randoms home anymore, because he intends on only bruising my ass and only giving me top-tier orgasms? Or is it because he’s smartened up and will be having his one-night stands somewhere other than his house? I need to know to crush the butterflies and the hope they’re carrying, which is exactly why I don’t bring it up again right now. Because I’m scared to know the answer.
22
Jude
“This place is more my style,” I tell her as we climb the staircase with the reclaimed oak stairs and the vintage banister to the second floor.
“Then I’m glad I changed my mind and showed it to you,” Zoey replies. I’m walking up the stairs behind her, which was a planned move. I wanted to admire her ass. She turns to smile at me and catches me, but she doesn’t call me out.
“The views are incredible too,” I say, and she laughs.
The second floor has two bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom and a den. She motions for me to go ahead of her. “Go on and check them out.”
I walk by her, letting my fingers graze her waist as I pass, and as I turn into the first bedroom, she adds, “You’re right, it’s a great view.”
I grin. I love when she’s sassy. The bedrooms are fine, but I know having my sisters share a bathroom when they visit is a problem now. I was hoping for three full baths so they will stay out of mine. Zoey’s phone starts to ring, and I watch her dig it out of her purse. “It’s a work call. Sorry. Go up to the third floor. The whole thing is a master suite, and the views are incredible. The real views.”
She smiles and says her name into the phone. I walk to the end of the hall and up the staircase there. She’s right, the master suite is amazing. I walk into the master bath. It’s unreal. The shower is huge but has a floor-to-ceiling window in it, which is weird to me. It showers the bathroom in light, but everyone on the street below can watch you shower. I step into the stall.
“Yes!” I hear her cheer loudly.
“What?” I call back.
“This couple I was wooing into hiring me that I thought was going with someone else changed their mind,” she explains, her voice getting closer with every word. She appears in the bathroom doorway; her eyes sweep the room until she finds me through the glass of the shower. “They’re going to sign with me!”
“That’s awesome!” I feel a huge wave of genuine joy. I feel her happiness like it’s my own.
She seems to finally absorb the fact that I’m standing in the shower. “What are you doing in there?”
“Trying to figure out why they’d put a window in it.”
“It’s one-way glass. So you can see out but no one can see in,” she explains, and glances down at her phone. She’s doing something, maybe emailing her new client. “The theme of this development is bringing the outdoors in. That’s why there’s so many windows and skylights.”
