Page 3 of So Close

He raised an eyebrow. “Rumor has it the French toast is world class.”

She shrugged. That French toast recipe was hers, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of saying so.

“I bet it would taste even better with you sitting across the table from me.” He gave a small nod. “You know where to find me.” He turned and strode away.

Asshole!And yet, her body reacted contrarily to her brain, because he looked every bit as good going as coming. Those suit pants. Thatass.

But holy shit, thenerve!Who had that kind of nerve? Could you buythatin a bottle for a thousand dollars?

“Um, wow?” Chiara said, reclaiming her seat. “He was—kind of like a work of art?”

“If by that you mean look but don’t touch, thenyes.”

Chiara frowned.

“He just invited me to his hotel room. An invitation that apparently includedbreakfast.”

“He—what? And you said no? Do you get propositioned by hot guys so often you can just turn them down?”

“I’m on hiatus.”

“Not every guy in a suit is Patrick.”

Auburn winced. Chiara knew better than anyone how thoroughly her experience with her controlling ex had messed with her head. “Pretty sure this one is cut from the same cloth. I just don’t want to go there. I let Patrick take so much away from me, and I—I almost let him take more.” She reached for her sister’s hand, and Chiara’s expression said she knew Auburn was talking about their own relationship.

“Yes, but now you’re back. You have me, you have Levi and Mason and Hannah”—their other siblings—“you have Carl and Beachcrest.”

It was a neat little litany of the things Auburn loved, the things she’d almost left behind when she’d gone to New York with Patrick.

“Well, that’s exactly it,” Auburn said mournfully. “I don’thaveBeachcrest. When Carl retires, assuming I can get the money to buy it from him, yeah, I will. But in the meantime, I don’t even have a plan for how I’m going to get that money.” That hadn’t been part of Chiara’s list: lost time. The two years she’d wasted with Patrick in New York, which she could never get back. “So, yeah,” she finished. “Until I get some of those pieces in place and feel a little more sure of myself and established here, I don’t want to let another man into the picture.”

“Okay, I totally get that,” Chiara said. “But I’m not so much talking aboutthe pictureasthe bedroom for a little stress release. I’m just saying that sometimes having sex with someone else, even if it’s meaningless, is a good way to get an ex out of your head.”

Patrick wasn’t still in her head, was he? “Says the woman who has done that several times with no success.”

Chiara’s cheeks pinked.

Well, shit. She hadn’t meant to be a bitch about it. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

Chiara sighed. “No. But it was completely true.”

“Jax and Patrick are two totally different guys.”

“Who both turned out to be assholes in the end.”

The sisters both exhaled at the same time, then laughed, then hugged.

“Let’s just say for a moment that you’re right,” Auburn said, “and I need to get back on the horse, sex-wise, which is an expression that only women who had their first orgasms riding at twelve should really ever use.Ifthat were true, it still wouldn’t be that guy.” She inclined her head to indicate him. “He’s a Patrick clone. You don’t get over one rich asshole by fucking another.”

Chiara’s eyebrow rose. “Patrick’s problem isn’t that he’s rich. It’s that he’s controlling.”

“You mean, the kind of guy who would buy you a drink without asking whether you wanted one and then assume you wanted to know where he was staying?”

“Touché,” Chiara said. “But my point holds. Some get-over-Patrick sex wouldn’t kill you.”

Auburn went to take a drink and discovered that she’d already emptied her glass. She was feeling it, too, a light buzz all over her body. Which was the only reason she peeked down the bar one more time.

Slate gray eyes met hers, and one eyebrow went up. She looked away quickly, but not before her body had time to weigh in.Yes.

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