Page 13 of Winning Bid

“Apologies, love. Give me two minutes?—"

“See? That’s not fair. Guys have it so easy.”

I shrug on my suitcoat. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you. I promise. Oh, one more thing?—"

“Another surprise?”

I smirk and nod. “Pack an overnight bag unless you want to come home in the torn version of those clothes.”

She laughs again. “What?”

I close in on her, breathing her in before I pin her to the counter, my hands on either side of her hips there. “If I get you in the Ritz for the night, I’m not going easy on you, Devlin. Pack accordingly.”

8

JUNE

His words send a shiver through me, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt. After so much tension for a day and a half, I am ready to cut loose. I need it. Funny how a run-in with the law shifts perspective. Saturday night, I fell asleep as a newly engaged woman in the arms of her fiancée, and Sunday morning, I woke up as a criminal. It’s been a rough couple of days.

But then, I knew this would happen.

Ever since my father’s conviction, I have done everything I can to keep myself on the straight and narrow. I pay my taxes early, I drive below the speed limit and when I do, if someone is behind me, I get out of their way so I don’t bother them, and I certainly never text and drive. Breaking the law has never appealed to me. There’s no thrill in that kind of thing for me. I know the cost it entails, so the night my world came crashing down around me, I knew something like this would happen because Devlins never get away with anything for long.

Seems to me I should enjoy everything I can before I’m behind bars.

I snag a few things and throw them into Anderson’s overnight bag, and as I do, I tell him, “You know, it was really shitty of you to tell me I can’t find a movie actor attractive. I mean, of all the petty things you could have started a fight over, you picked that?”

“What?” It’s his turn to be confused.

I smile so he knows I’m playing at his game. Hopefully. “Remember? That’s how the fight started. We were watching the commercial for that new action flick, and you asked what I thought of that guy. It was the whole reason we had a blow-up, and you don’t even remember it?”

Recognition brightens his crystalline blue eyes from within. He grins and rakes his fingers through his shining black hair. It’s become a little shaggy since his surgery, and I like it. He chuckles, shaking his head. “Oh, right. I forgot all about it. But I remember now. The way you looked at him … I’m sorry, baby, but it gutted me.”

“An ‘I’m sorry’ followed by a ‘but’ is worthless.” Playing or not, that much is true.

“You’re right, you’re right.” He holds his hands up to calm me down as if that is not the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull. If this were a real fight, he’d be so very dead right now. But he grins at me, and it has a rakish quality that makes me want to do nasty things to him. He sheepishly says, “I will try not to get upset when I see you blatantly lusting after another man.”

I press myself against him, and he holds me there. “Good.”

“Just so long as you don’t get upset if you see me lusting after another woman.”

I smack his chest. “Oh my god, you don’t learn, do you?”

“That there are separate rules for guys and girls? I think they call that a double something,” he says facetiously.

“It is not the same thing!”

“I beg to differ.”

I roll my eyes. “If a girl lusts after a guy, it’s harmless. If a guy lusts after a girl, he might actually do something about it.”

“Oh, because women don’t have affairs?”

“With actors? Are you kidding me?”

“I see it all the time at work?—"

“Because you’re in entertainment law, Anderson! I mean, for fuck’s sake, between the two of us, who has access to the attractive Hollywood elite? Me or you?”

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