Page 74 of The C Agreement

I giggled at the thought of using everything Cade had taught me on Hugh, and the humor promptly switched to sadness. It was then I realized I might not be as sober as I’d thought I was to drive.Whoops. It was too late because I was already here for the night.

A hot body moved closer to me, and a heavy arm went around my waist.

“What’s so funny?” His voice was thick with sleep.

I turned in his arms. “Nothing really.”

I certainly wasn’t going to tell him what I had been thinking. Even though he didn’t want to be tied down, he’d made it pretty clear that, for this month, I was his and his alone.

Running my hand up and down his bare back, I asked, “How was your mom’s?”

“Fine.”

That didn’t sound good.

“Fine?”

“I was there all of ten minutes. She and Bernie had plans.”

“So, what did you do the rest of the night? You should have texted me. I would have invited you to the party.”

There was just enough light for me to make out the frown on his face.

“And then what? Everyone would have thought we were together or something.”

Normally, I would be hurt by this, but this was Cade, and he felt that way about every woman. And something was obviously bugging him, but I doubted he was in the mood to talk about it.

“You’re right. Men and women can never be friends. Everyone would have known right away that we were fucking, and the next thing you know, they would have thought we were in love and going to get married.”

“When you put it like that—”

“It shows how ridiculous you sound?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. I think your brother showing up unexpectedly freaked me out, considering how close we were to getting caught.”

Since he hadn’t mentioned this earlier today, I called bullshit. Since Cade wasn’t my boyfriend, I wasn’t going to push to get to the bottom of what was really bothering him. If he wanted to talk, I was here. If he didn’t, that was on him.

“None of my friends know Beau, but I get it. It was probably a good thing you didn’t come. I didn’t really want you there anyway.”

A fake gasp came from his side of the bed, and I laughed.

Rolling us over, he draped himself on top of me. “Just for that, I’m going to keep you up a little longer.”

“If that’s a threat, you need to work on your intimidation skills.”

“Nah.” He gave me a slow, long kiss. “It’s a promise.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

CADE

The next weekwent too fast. I’d thought, being the third week into sleeping with only one woman, I would be bored and itching to move on to someone else.

But I wasn’t.

Then again, it probably helped that she never pushed me for a commitment and that she was up for anything I wanted to do in bed. Except for being on top.

“I really wish it were my birthday.”

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