Page 77 of No Rings Attached
I barely had time to register Drew’s arrival as he slid into the seat next to me and set his hand on my knee. The light squeeze was grounding and oddly erotic. He leaned in to drop a kiss on my cheek. “Hi, Buttercup. I missed you.”
“What are you doing here?” I checked my watch. “You’re supposed to be at that meeting with the construction team for the new location in New York right now.”
He squeezed my knee again. “No meeting is more important than you.”
Gah, I both wanted him to keep saying sweet stuff like that and to stop doing it. It was messing with my head.
And how in the world had he known I needed him?
Movement by the counter drew my attention.Matt.He must have realized my deer-caught-in-headlights look earlier and called in reinforcements.
Celia fanned herself. “How adorably sweet.”
I didn’t like the way my sister’s eyes roved over Drew’s body or the way her gaze heated as she bit her lower lip. If I didn’t think it would be weird, I’d sit on Drew’s lap or find a tablecloth to drape over his body to shield him from her theatrics.
It took everything in me not to snap,He’s mine!
Because he wasn’t. Not really anyway.
“Drew, this is excellent timing.” My mother grinned. She pointed at Celia’s phone and the picture of the enormous house. “We need a place for Celia’s pre-wedding events and your grandmother’s home is perfect.”
He glanced at me.
I braced myself for him to be upset. To shoot me a disappointed glare for trying to use what must be his family’s ancestral home for my sister’s wedding celebration.
He slid his arm around the back of my chair, captured my mouth in a quick kiss, and whispered in my ear, “Relax.”
That one word had my breath whooshing out of me.
He smiled at Celia, all teeth. “I’ll text Glamma. She adores Ellie.”
That wiped the smirk off my sister’s face.
This man had set the bar and continued to push it higher for any future relationships I had.
Crap.
It hit me that he wasn’t setting the bar too high.
It was the fact that I was likely never going to want to be with anyone else ever again after experiencing what a relationship should be like.
Chapter Eighteen
DREW
The second I entered the diner, I knew something was wrong.
Ellie had that bright, fake fucking smile pasted on—the one she seemed to wear like armor when her family was around. The innate glow that I loved in her—the quiet, steady joy that made her whole face light up—was dimmed to the point it was almost completely snuffed out.
Her laugh sounded brittle, and her shoulders were so tight I wanted to rub the knots out of them right there in front of her mother. She radiated misery, and both Constance and Celia sat across from her like nothing was amiss, nibbling at their food as if they hadn’t just smothered Ellie’s spark to ash.
Thank God for Matt’s text. I’d been in the middle of the meeting Ellie mentioned and didn’t think twice when I told them I had a family emergency and left. The startled gazes of my employees as I let them know I wouldn’t be back was almost comical.
It was also ten am and I rarely left before seven pm most nights.
Ellie started taking notes on a typed-up sheet of paper in between bites of her pumpkin pancakes. I stole a piece off her plate and chuckled when she playfully smacked my hand. I watched as her neat script appeared next to the typed words on the paper as she added her thoughts. My gaze snagged on one line and every muscle in my body went rigid.
Work on favors and create a slideshow of the happy couple.
