Page 44 of Back for More
I am able to breathe again for a moment. “Yes! No, I don’t need a drink, but thank you. Thanks.” I feel a big warm hand on my lower back, and now it is all that I’m aware of. I can vaguely sense that Nealecia is hugging nearby, and Leesh is asking her husband who’s looking after their fucking kids, but it’s like I’m hearing them from underwater. I can no longer recall just how much alcohol I’ve consumed this evening, but because of my sudden lightheaded wooziness, I’m trying to remember if Alecia made me drink one of her special shit mix slushies earlier.
It is not okay for me to feel this way.
I step away from the big warm hand and look up at Wes, swaying a little.
“You okay?” He reaches for my arm to steady me.
“Yes?” I move my arm away to run my hand through my hair—a signature move that was devised to keep guys who aren’t Wes Carver from touching me. So why am I doing it with Wes Carver? And why is he looking at me like that?
“Toby’s with the kids,” Neal says. “Hey, Lily.”
I realize that I’ve backed up into Neal and Alecia.
“Wait—your dad is babysitting their kids?” I ask Wes.
“He’s looked after them a couple of times before, when I wasn’t available.”
Why weren’t you available?I’m dying to ask him.Were you out on dates with women who aren’t me? Because good—you should totally do that—but also no, don’t do that, not ever, because you’re mine, you’re all mine!
“But why areyouhere?” is what I say out loud.
“I wanted to see you,” I think I hear him say.
“What?”
Wes leans in closer and says, “Neal wanted to surprise Leesh.”
God help me, he smells like a leather jacket that got soaked in a rain shower in a cedar forest and got left to dry in a spice factory.
“Crashing Girls’ Night,” I tease. “Classy.”
I inhale so deeply, instinctively reaching up to touch his beautiful unshaven face…forgetting that I was holding my drink with that hand. My glass falls to the floor. What is happening to me? I don’t drop things…except for that book I dropped this morning when a certain someone took his shirt off and I got my first look at his awe-inspiring grown-up bare back. So this is literally the second time I’ve accidentally dropped something in my entire life.
I don’t even move. The glass didn’t break on the carpet, and my leg is only slightly drenched, my foot only a little bit soaked through my stacked-heel Mary Janes. Maybe nobody noticed.
Wes reaches around behind me to grab a napkin from the counter, holds my gaze as he slowly lowers himself down, down the front of me, to pick up the glass with one hand and drag the napkin up the front of my foot with the other. He sweeps the napkin up my bare shin and up over my knee. He continues to look up at me as his fingers glide ever so lightly across the skin of my thigh, just below the hem of my skirt.
I would give all of the money in my trust fund to this night club if there were a rope dangling in front of me right now, attached to one of thoseFlashdancebuckets so I could just pull on it and douse my entire trembling body with water.
“What are you doing?”
“I should have asked you if you wanted to stay wet,” he smirks as he places the wet napkin and empty glass back on the counter top. “Where are my manners?” He wipes his hands on the front of his jeans.
I stare down at his big strong hands and the front of his jeans, where that big strong bulge was only a few nights ago.
Snap out of it, LB! Get your head out of your boss’s jeans and back in the game and keep your eye on the balls.
On the ball.
On the prize.
Whatever. Just stop staring at his crotch.
“Where is the Wes Carver who doesn’t give a shit about manners—when it comes to me, at least?”
“Left him at work,” he says with a wink.A wink!
“Did you just wink at me?” I laugh. “That’s what happens when you’ve been hanging out with your dad all day, huh?”
