Page 25 of Ravished By Her

None of those things were going to happen because this wasn’t a fucking date. This was a job and right now, my job was painting.

“Yeah,” I said to Lacey. “Let’s get back to work.”

* * *

Lacey and I lingered even after we’d called it a day and had put away the paint again. Tomorrow we got to add the last coat of paint to the cabinets and then we could put them back on and finish the rest of the touches in the kitchen. That was perfect timing since some of the furniture I’d rented from the closest staging company was coming in. Lacey had pretty much given me free rein to get whatever I thought was best, so I’d had a good time looking through my options and selecting what would look best in the space, and what would complement some of the existing pieces I had. I still needed to get things like sheets and blankets and the small touches, but the big pieces were taken care of.

“We should hang out,” Lacey said, completely out of the blue.

“We should?!” I blurted out and then cringed. “Sorry.”

“Not if you don’t want to,” she said, and I caught the blush on her cheeks.

“I do. Want to,” I said, feeling like the ground was moving under my feet even though I was standing still.

Silence fell between us.

“Did you have anything in mind?” I asked. Since she was the one who suggested it, I assumed she might have some ideas.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Starving,” I said, putting my hand on my stomach. PMS was hitting me like a truck and all I wanted were salt and sweets. And chocolate. In any form.

“Nick’s? Or did you want to go somewhere fancier?” she asked and there was a bit of teasing tone in her voice.

“I don’t know where you got this idea that I’m high maintenance,” I said. “I’m not.”

“Have you seen you? I’ve never seen someone who wasn’t a celebrity or something dress as coordinated every day as you do,” she said, and I looked down at my paint-splattered pink jumpsuit and then back at her.

“I did have to special order the pink jumpsuits,” I said, and Lacey laughed. “But I am not high maintenance. I’m not a car.”

I said it in a joking tone, but Lacey’s expression grew serious.

“Shit, you’re right. That’s kind of an outdated term, isn’t it? And so what if you enjoy coordinating your clothes? You always look good,” she said, and I savored the compliment.

I had never dressed to please anyone but myself. Still, having Lacey compliment me made my skin warm and heart beat a little faster.

“How about this: we both go and clean up and meet at Nick’s?” I said and Lacey nodded.

“Sounds good to me. See you in a half hour?” I was definitely going to need more than a half hour, but I nodded.

“I’ll see you at Nick’s,” I said, and she pretended to tip her baseball cap at me as I got in my car and a silly grin pulled at my face. I did the same with the READ MORE SMUT hat that was apparently mine now.

* * *

“She is so into you,” Kai said when I rushed into the house and said I needed to shower because I was meeting Lacey for pizza.

“She is not,” I said before I closed the bathroom door and stripped out of my jumpsuit and took off the hat, setting it on the counter.

“She is!” Kai yelled through the door. No doubt she and Sterling had been dissecting the whole thing before I’d gotten here. Now that I was meeting Lacey for dinner, they were going to have a party bugging me for details when I got back.

I wish I was more annoyed at them for being so nosy, but having my sister and her girlfriend be all in my business was…nice. I liked the regular reminder that there were people in my life who gave a shit about me. Sure, my parents called a lot and we had the family group chat, but Sterling and I being in the same place was different.

I rushed as fast as I could through my shower and dried my hair using the tool that I’d spent way too much money on, but it was worth every penny. I only had moments to pick my outfit, which wasn’t ideal, but I went with my first instinct of floral-patterned shorts, a white top, and a soft pink blazer with baby pink sneakers. The look was cute, but casual.

“Spin!” Sterling said when I popped back into the house to tell them I was heading out.

I did a little twirl and posed as Sterling clapped.

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