Page 130 of Smooth Sailing

She was at her cheeks with a bigger brush. “But we’re talking about that stuff on Sunday.”

“Right,” he repeated.

“Do you want me to take my makeup to the bedroom to finish this so you can shower?”

“I can shower in the guest room.”

She pushed closer to the mirror to get a better view of what she was doing, which tipped her fine ass up, and she did this while mumbling, “Okay, honey.”

He liked the sight of her ass tipped up like that in her short robe. He liked that she called him honey. He also liked that she seemed totally cool with putting on her makeup while he brushed his teeth beside her, in her nice bathroom with the handles on her sky-blue drawers and cupboards being glass with gold hardware. The blue, gold and white wallpaper on one wall being both a geometric design, but there were also flowers. More flowers, these fake but looking real, a small bouquet of them between his sink and hers.

This space, like all her space, was her. Sharp, smart and sophisticated, but full of personality. Attractive. Welcoming. And he felt good in it.

What he didn’t like was knowing he was a man without a lot to offer, and she was a woman who should have it all.

But they’d talk about that Sunday.

Now, he needed to get a shower.

In the small parking lot outside her work, as necessary, Diana popped off the bike before he swung his leg over.

He did this with his eyes on her, coming off liking what he was feeling, Di on the back of his bike with him, to liking what he was seeing.

She was wearing a pair of brown pants with wide legs and a wide black belt through the hoops, a tight black top that had no sleeves, and shiny black pumps that had a strap over the top of her foot.

Hugger never in his life found a woman dressed like that for work, entirely—no, almost excruciatingly—fuckable. And it wasn’t (only) about how hot it was that Di jumped on his bike in that getup like she’d been riding behind him on it for the last decade.

But since Maddy left, he was finding everything about Di fuckable. Though, deep down, he knew, before Maddy left, it was just that all the shit going down with Maddy could take his mind off it.

Right now, he had a job, though, and he wasn’t doing it watching Di’s tits move while she slung her big black bag more securely over her shoulder.

He’d scanned the area when they drove in and he scanned it again as he went to her, took her hand and walked to the front door.

He felt her hand twitch in his when he took it, so he looked down at her.

“All right?” he asked.

“For not being a guy who’s touchy”—she squeezed his hand and gave him a bright smile—“you’re kinda touchy.”

He wasn’t.

But he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

“That cool with you?” he asked.

“Yes, honey, it’s very cool,” she murmured, still smiling big as she pushed through the door and took them into the tidy and small reception area of Di’s work.

When he’d been in the space before, it felt unused.

Now, there was a woman behind the reception counter looking like she was rifling through the place in order to steal secret documents.

Hugger was a biker. This meant he was a live and let live kind of guy. Before that, he’d been a bouncer.

He’d seen it all.

But the woman behind the counter made him do a double take.

She was whip thin, short and wearing a black turtleneck. She had steel gray hair, and a part of it at her forehead was tucked under in one of those big, 40s-style curves. The rest was held back with a wide black headband to fall in soft curls at her shoulders. And either by nature, or by design, there was a long, black stripe of hair running through that gray above her left eye.

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