Page 40 of Landlord Wars
Instinctively, I clung to his suit jacket and pulled him closer.
One of his hands gripped my hip, sending flutters south to vital pressure points…
I leaned back, breaking contact. “Uhhh,” I said, a flash of panic taking over. As good as it felt to kiss Max, my brain wasn’t prepared.
“Yes?” His gaze slid back to my mouth, and for a moment there, I wondered why I’d pulled away.
Until I gave myself a swift mental knock upside the head. “What’s going on? You don’t want to date me.”
Did I really need to point out the obvious?
He tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “I don’t?”
If only my body would sync with my mind, because right now my body was all,Yes, yes, he’s the one I’ve wanted,while my brain was like,Max Burrows is a cocky asshole!
“Wait, you do?” I said. “I mean, you don’t. You can’t.”
“Can’t I?” I swear he leaned in to kiss me again.
But the old brainbox finally kicked in, and I darted out from under his arm. “See you later,” I said and ran inside the apartment like a coward.
As I pressed my back to the door, my chest rose and fell as though I’d done a dozen laps up the stairs. I muttered, “Oh, no.”
“Why ‘Oh, no’?” When I looked up, Jack was surfing his phone from the living room couch, and Elise was nowhere in sight. She must have gone to bed.
“Nothing!” I said a little too loudly.
In some strange turn of events, I’d made out with Jack’s best friend—the man I’d spent the last few weeks hating.
And I’d liked it far too much.
* * *
The next morning,I woke with an exhaustion headache and my heart racing from anxiety. I’d stayed up late last night, with Elise snoring softly beside me in bed, thinking of all my encounters with Landlord Devil: the pink panties, his annoyance at my admitting Jack was handsome to his mother, his stealing my chocolate repeatedly to annoy me.
I covered my face with my pillow. Sometimes sexual attraction and hate looked an awful lot alike. Especially if you weren’t prepared for it.
What was I doing? Max was sophisticated, and I…wasn’t. He was rich and I was poor. He had classy friends and family, and I had Elise, my drunken sister/best friend. I wasn’t ashamed of any of it, but it didn’t change the fact that Max and I didn’t go together.
I rolled onto my stomach and pressed my face into the mattress. Why did the kiss have to be so good? Couldn’t he have had a lizard tongue? He could have committed any number of acts men did that turned women off, but every little touch from him had, unfortunately, had the opposite effect.
I threw my pillow across the room and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Blurry-eyed, I stumbled into the bathroom and showered. I couldn’t waste the day away thinking about Max. I had things to take care of for work, and my boss wanted to meet up, even though it was a Saturday.
I reached for a blush-hued blouse from the closet and did the best I could, pairing it with light wool slacks that were a size too big. Elise was right. I needed to suck it up and buy clothes that actually fit…
Elise?
I spun around and stared at the mattress. When did she leave? She’d definitely been in bed when I returned from talking to Max last night, because I’d made her drink a giant glass of water, and she nearly choked on it while bitching me out for mothering her. We’d bickered for a few minutes—the usual—and then she’d starfished out on the mattress and was snoring within seconds.
But she hadn’t been in bed when I woke, I realized. Had I slept longer than I thought and missed her leaving?
After throwing on my clothes, I grabbed my workbag and left my bedroom for food and to find Elise. And froze just outside my bedroom door.
I observed several things all at once: Elise sneaking out of Jack’s room, a glimpse of Jack’s naked back as he sat on the edge of the bed facing away, and my sister’s eyes flashing wide as though she’d been caught.
I pointed at the door she was slowly closing. “Why were you in his room?”
She slapped a hand over my mouth and shoved me into my bedroom, nearly mowing me down in the process. “Be quiet!” She shut the door and tiptoed to the window, where she glanced out, worrying her lip with her teeth.
