“He’s wearing socksanda coat.” Mom waved her arm toward model guy. “Totally decent.”
You know what? Irina didn’t have the time to deal with this at the moment, because she needed to chat with Knox.
Waiting until Mom and her model were safely behind her closed apartment door, Irina knocked on Knox’s door and waited. Adjusted her sleeves and stepped back and forth in her sandals.
Aside from outfit selection, mornings were not Irina’s favorite part of the day. Not by a long shot. The adhesive they’d used in her morning makeup sessions sucked lemon-scented golf balls, but she was certain she’d prefer it to a breakfast with her future mother-in-law.
Lucky for her—
Knox opened the door.
“I got the best news,” she said quickly. Not the model or her mom, but real news they could use to their advantage.
“Does it involve coffee?” he asked, moving aside so she could enter. “’Cause the stuff here isn’t drinkable.”
“It’s drinkable,” Mach grumbled from the couch. “I’m drinking it.”
He was, in fact, drinking a steaming cup as she moved into the room.
While Knox was up and dressed with hair still damp from an apparent shower, Mach was still in his jogger sweatpants—no shirt—and he flipped through his cell while drinking from a coffee mug.
“You’re drinking it, but one plus one does not equal two.” Knox had on a black, worn-in, kick-ass Pantera tee and a lived-in pair of blue jeans, with bare feet. “I actually don’t know how a person can screw up coffee so consistently.”
Mach kept right on flipping through whatever was on the screen of his cell. “I triple filter it.”
Knox slipped his gaze to Irina.
Funny, she’d never noticed how she enjoyed the way a Knox look slid against her skin like small touches against each fine hair.
“He means he’s too lazy to separate the filters, so he just tosses them in the coffee maker,” Knox said, the small touches thing not seeming to register with him at all.
“I think the words you’re searching for are ‘thank you.’” Mach didn’t even glance up.
Knox shoved his hands on his hips. “The words I’m searching for are, ‘I need Starbucks.’”
“Down, boys,” Irina said, because they were acting like canines about to pee all over each other to prove who was in charge. In the end, all that would make was a mess.
Knox clearly needed an infusion of caffeine before he started his day. Good to know about one’s future husband.
“Tanner takes his time,” Mach said, voice gruffer than usual since he was also not a morning person. “It’ll be a while.”
“You made Tanner go get you coffee?” Irina squinted at Knox, because that wasn’t very nice. Not at all.
“He was going to go get his own, I asked him to snag one for me.” Knox squinted right back at her, mimicking her expression. Poorly, she might add.
Still, her tummy flipped a little because the expression was super adorable on him. She wasn’t sure how she felt about getting a little bit of a crush on her fiancé. Getting turned on by his kiss was one thing, but an actual puppy love crush? Was that even allowed in this situation? She’d need to ask Courtney.
“If the barista is a pretty girl, it’ll be next month when you get coffee since Tanner won’t be able to form a vowel sound. Much less place an order.” Mach lifted his mug to his mouth, took a long pull, and made anahhhhhsound before smacking his lips.
The pretty girl thing was Tanner’s deal.
Not what one would expect from someone as good looking, young, and mostly confident as Tanner. He didn’t get caught up talking to women or bringing them back to his bed.
Nope. He had a hard time forming words around single women under the age of seventy, until he got to know them well. Once he trusted a woman, he stopped looking like a tomato whenever he tried to conjugate a verb around her.
It’d taken him a solid four months with Irina and sometimes he still got a little pink in the cheeks when they chatted.
“If he’s not here in ten, I’ll go rescue him.” Knox sighed, overdramatically.
