Page 23 of Filthy Little Midlife Fling

I laugh. “I have to go.”

“Fine. Let’s have dinner this week.”

“Done.” I hang up the phone with a smile on my face, feeling lighter despite myself.

Laurel has been my best friend since college. We actually both grew up in Heart’s Cove and went to high school together, but it wasn’t until we lived on the same dorm floor in college that we befriended each other. And by that I mean she befriended me in order to use me for my excellent note-taking skills.

But the friendship is far from one-sided. She’s let me cry on her shoulder more times than I can count, and she’s dragged me out of my head whenever I get too obsessed about doing things exactly right.

If she says I need to loosen the reins a bit, I know from experience she’s probably correct.

Still, this office reorganization doesn’t exactly feel like work. It’s the first time I’ve been hands-on with a client in over a year, and I’m realizing I missed it. I’ve been so focused on social media, client acquisition, and management tasks that I’d almost forgotten why I started this business in the first place. It’s so satisfying to clean up a space. Making sure every single item has its own designated home is like catnip to me. It makes me feel like I’ve done something worthwhile.

So, with that feeling lending me extra energy, I use my dirty tee to wipe the sweat off my face and get back to work. The heat gets worse, so I open the door to the garage to try to get a cross-breeze going. I stand in the gentle air flow with my hands leaning on the desk, trying to sort invoices out by year. I found them all in various drawers and boxes, so I’m not even sure if they’re supposed to be filed in the same place. They’re faded and hard to read, so I lean down to try to decipher them.

That’s when I hear a scuff by the door. I glance up in time to see Remy at the threshold, a tray of drinks in his hands. He opens his mouth to say something, but his eyes drop to my chest.

And I remember I’m not wearing a shirt.

Then things happen really quickly. Remy makes a startled noise, and his foot catches on the threshold’s little metal lip. He stumbles slightly. I stand up straighter and move toward him, but I bang my hip against the desk, which makes me wince and bend forward.

Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, depending on who you’re asking—that gives Remy a prime view of my jiggling cleavage, and he lets out a grunt while his other foot catches on the threshold too.

He stumbles again and his tray of drinks flies up in the air. Being the helpful human I am, I make it around the corner of the desk with my hands outstretched, as if I can catch the drinks out of midair like Spiderman catching Mary Jane’s lunch tray in the school cafeteria.

The problem is that I don’t have super-sticky superhero hands, so all that happens is I put myself right in the blast zone. One of the cups hits me square in the boob, and ice-cold strawberry milkshake sloshes all over my chest and stomach, soaking into the thick waistband of my yoga pants. The other milkshake container bounces off the edge of the desk and hits Remy’s outstretched arm, causing the top to pop off. His arm gets covered with the pink stuff, while the rest of the milkshake splatters all over the ground.

Remy falls to his knees and slips in the milkshake puddle, face-planting on the office floor. I stare at the back of his head, my entire body covered in sticky pink milkshake, breathing heavily.

What—what just happened?

“Shit,” Remy says, standing. “I’m sorry. I got you a shake, and I didn’t—” He lunges for a stack of clean microfiber cloths I’d gathered from a half-dozen spots in the office and put in the corner of the room. He grabs two handfuls. Then he takes a couple of steps to close the distance between us, his boots squelching through the milkshake on the floor.

Then the fabric of reality rips, and I enter some kind of alternate universe, because Remy tosses the stack of microfiber cloths on the desk, grabs one, clamps a hand over my hip, and starts roughly mopping up the cold, sticky strawberry milkshake from my body. His hands are all over me, crude and businesslike, sending heat splashing into every corner of my being.

The man brought me a milkshake and now he’s touching me all over, and I think I’m going to pass out.

“I tripped. I never trip. I’m sorry, Audrey, I just saw you, and—”

He wipes my stomach, apologizing again, then grabs a fresh cloth and swipes at my side, then across my breasts, and over my shoulder. His hand tightens on my hip to keep me steady when I rock back on my heels from the force of his movements.

I just stand there, taking it.

A third cloth appears in his hands, and he brushes at the skin above my bra. But at the same time, my brain reboots and I decide I should try to help him, so I grab for the cloth while he moves it, and it gets pinned in place while his hand keeps going. Suddenly, the most attractive man I’ve ever met is standing inches from me, and his hand is sliding through strawberry milkshake across my cleavage, smearing it all over my skin. Then his hand slides a couple of inches lower—God knows why—and he just…cups my breast.

We both freeze. The cloth is now pinned between my bra and my cleavage, but I can’t move. Because an extremely attractive man has his hand on my boob, and all I want to do is lean into the touch.

Remy jumps back like he’s been burned, throwing his hands up in a don’t shoot motion. “Oh, God! I didn’t mean to—”

Wide-eyed, I stare at him. My heart thumps. Up until the very last moment, there was nothing remotely sexual in the way he was touching me, but he was touching me.

And I liked it.

Silence stretches as we stare at each other. The cloth works its way out from between my boobs and falls to my feet, slowly soaking up some of the excess milkshake puddled between us.

Remy clears his throat, then jerks his chin. “You’re not wearing a shirt.”

I look down at myself and see smears of half-cleaned milkshake over my skin, stains soaking into the black fabric of my bra and leggings. “No,” I confirm. “I’m not.”

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