Page 2 of Unmatched

Out the window, the sun is shining. Flowers are just starting to bloom. People are out mowing lawns. It’s the first really nice spring day we’ve had. Of course there’d be a bout of spring fever among my employees.

“Who’s supposed to be on today?”

“Josh, Ana, and Francie.”

“Have you called anyone else in yet?”

“Kenyon and Darcy, but Kenyon’s the only one who answered. His car won’t start.”

I grunt, checking the clock on the microwave. It’s only nine forty-five. “All right, give me twenty minutes.”

Relief is palpable in his voice. “Thanks, Lydia.”

Before I’ve even set my phone down, it rings again. This time it’s the number for my grooming shop, Ooh La Pooch. I grit my teeth as I answer. “This is Lydia.”

“Hi, it’s Scarlet,” my employee says over at least two dogs barking and a third howling in the background. Heartthrob’s head perks up from where he’s settled on the kitchen floor.

I stick my coffee in the microwave, trying to guess the emergency. Scarlet is a good manager, but she tends to freak over little things. “What’s going on, Scar?”

“We don’t have hot water.”

The microwave beeps somewhere behind me as my stomach sinks. “What? Are you sure?”

“I’m holding Chanel Bixby, the toy poodle, shivering in a towel. It was fine for our first few dogs. I have no idea what happened.”

I cover my face with my free hand. “Okay, look. Um...I’ll be there in fifteen.”

I shove my laptop and payroll sheets into my bag. Ooh La Pooch is ten minutes in the opposite direction from The Pooch Park, but at least I won’t be fighting weekday traffic. I dash off a quick text to Tomás instructing him to offer time and a half to any employee willing to come in on their day off. You can’t operate a busy dog daycare for long with only two people, but you can’t operate a grooming salon at all without hot water.

Heartthrob rises from his bed, tail curled in a semi-question mark, sensing my imminent departure. I scratch behind his left ear. “Don’t worry, you can come.”

My thoughts flit back to Anton as I gulp the last of my reheated coffee. Our awkward interaction seems like weeks ago, not minutes. I guess it’s just as well I didn’t make it into the shower. He knows I’m essential to my businesses, but I still feel bad about this morning. I head for my bedroom, vowing to make it up to him. As soon as I have time.

CHAPTER TWO

I shut the bathroom door and turn the shower on hot. So hot I can hardly bear the scalding spray when I get in. I want it to hurt, at least at first. Long enough for me to rage. At the heat, at myself. At her. How could I be so stupid?

When I’m good and numb, I slump against the wall and turn it down from a hundred-and-ten-degree punishment to something more like a warm, comforting embrace.

Or as close as I’m getting to that today.

I close my eyes and immediately I’m in the kitchen again, staring at the open folds of Lydia’s robe that exposed so much of her flawless skin she wouldn’t have been decent anywhere else.

And all I could think about were the indecent things I wanted to do to her.

Take her in my arms, breathe her scent. Pin her arms behind her back to see her nipples perk against the satin. Run the stubble on my chin over the flesh of her ass and thighs.

I hid her pajamas. In my latest attempt at being pathetic.

I’d emptied the hamper by the washing machine and shoved them all the way to the bottom. The shapeless, blue-striped ones she wears like armor between us in bed. What I wanted to do was burn them. In a bonfire. Along with that awful gray hooded sweatshirt she wears every other day. The one that conceals her elegant curves and repels all touch. I wanted to light them both with a match, watch them go up in electric orange flames, then make her sleep naked for the next six months.

Instead, I hid the PJs. Buried them in a dark corner of our basement like some kind of symbolic corpse.

But it worked.

She put on the nightgown. The one I gave her two years ago for our fifth anniversary. She’s tried it on exactly once before, right after I gave it to her, and the memory of her wearing it—and what we did afterward—still gets me hard. So I planted it in her top drawer last night. It was a sad, passive suggestion, and like an idiot I actually got my hopes up when I saw it this morning, draped over her thighs.

Until she looked right into my eyes and shut that shit down.

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