Page 16 of One Touch

“Jesus,” I grunted. “Sorry.”

“I’m not trying to get you to look at me naked, I promise.”

There was a beat, and then I cleared my throat, averting my eyes. “Don’t worry about it. These things happen. No harm done.” To my shame, I felt arousal, my cock stirring in my pants like a guilty snake. “I . . . I’ll go make that call.”

“You do that.”

But as I left Lily to change into my clothes, I couldn’t get her out of my head. Her body. Her breasts. The softness of her skin.

When she finally came out of the bathroom, dressed in my favorite navy blue overalls, I took in the sight of her with a surprised smile. The overalls completely hid all of those delicious curves etched into my brain—and yet, somehow, shelooked even more gorgeous in it than she had in that wedding dress.

Clearly, there was something wrong with me. I was horny as a teenager, probably in shock from the crash as well. I made her a cup of coffee and tried to busy myself with other things while we waited for Elara and Cole to arrive. And when she left half an hour later—heading straight to the ER to get checked out—I breathed a sigh of relief. Lily was safe, and with her friends, and not marrying Vlad.

Sure, she had left a giant wreckage in my garage, and I was going to have to deal with that. But at least I wasn’t dealing with a giant wreckage in my heart like she was. And I was going to make damn sure I never had to deal with one of those ever again.

Chapter 5

Lily

Wedding admin is onething. Jilting admin, it turns out, is just as tough.

I looked at the pile of wedding presents, sighing as I started to write out returns labels. I was struggling to strike the right tone. Thankful but apologetic. Sad but defiant.

Dear Connie,

Thank you so much for the generous $100 homewares voucher. As you know, the marriage didn’t go according to plan, so I’m returning it.

With love,

Lily

P.S Vlad has a smaller than average peni—

I stopped and scribbled out what I’d written. Clearly, I was still too emotionally raw to be doing this.

I was standing behind the counter in Happy Ever Affogato for the first time since the jilting. The last few days had been spent in a blur of teary phone calls to friends and family, and devouring a metric ton of cookie-dough Ben and Jerry’s. On the bright side, I hadn’t sustained any major injuries in the crash at Ethan’s garage, and this morning I’d woken up with a burning ambition to get my life back on track.

So, I’d got dressed. I’d put on the kind of outfit I enjoyed wearing before Vlad and I got together. A flowy bohemian blouse with pink love hearts all over it. And I’d walked to the store, listening to a podcast of positive affirmations, and made myself an extra frothy cappuccino.

And all the while, I’d tried not to fall apart.

The store was in a sorry state. Lately, I’d been laser-focused on sorting everything for the wedding. Not to mention all my spare cash had been siphoned off to satisfy Vlad’s whims and fantasies. I’d sacked my assistant, Yolande, and the store had gone to seed. Displays looked sparse. My mystery romance reads table was almost empty. A thick layer of dust was building up on the “sweet romance” section (books without any smut always struggled to sell in my store) and even my beloved porcelain spaniels looked as though they could use a good polish.

I picked up some of the wedding presents and carefully walked them back into the storage room and dumped them on a packing table. “Job for another day,” I sighed.

My lack of sleep was making everything harder. But how was I meant to sleep after Ethan McCoy had walked in on me naked, ripping my itty-bitty wedding dress into even itty-bittier pieces? Each time I got into bed, my brain went straight back to the look on his face.

Those ice-blue eyes, so hard and full of intensity. The way he’d inadvertently run his tongue across his lips. It hadn’t helped that I’d almost gone weak at the knees when he’d looked my body upand down, even if he’d done it for just the tiniest fraction of a second.

And then . . . the killer. The moment his hand had touched my bare skin, it was like . . . I don’t know. Magic or something. Just one tiny touch and I’d felt more aroused than I’d felt after half an hour of foreplay with some guys. Seriously. It was like . . . skin chemistry. I don’t know. Maybe it was the fact he was a mechanic. That rough, oily skin, able to be so strong and so precise at the same time. Whatever it was, the moment his hand shot out and brushed against my clavicle, it was like my whole world exploded and then reformed, bigger and more open and more delightful than ever.

Yeah. I was a sucker, wasn’t I? Too romantic for my own good. Always turning nothing into something.

And yet I couldn’t stop myself. I’d replayed that moment in my mind over and over again. I’d made it into some kind of twisted fantasy. I’d imagined Ethan stripping naked beside me, grabbing the dress out of my hands and ripping it to shreds with his bare teeth. . . .

Was that weird?

Of course it was weird. Not just because I was literally engaged to someone else five minutes ago. But also because it was Ethan Fricking McCoy.

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