on its front. “Change in the pool bath and bring me your shirt,” I instructed, hoping he would follow the order and not strip down right here.
“Yes ma’am.” He grinned and took the items. “Thanks.”
“Whose feelings are we fucking?”
“Becca’s,” Easton answered, peeking under the lid of the grill. “I’m trying to convince him to start dating.”
“Already?” I perched on the edge of the patio table. “That’s too quick.”
“He hasn’t had sex in three months.” Easton raised his eyebrows at me.
“What?” I paused, my own beer just before my lips. “You and Becca haven’t had sex in three months?”
He ignored the question and shot Easton a sharp look. “I’m going to go change.” He finished off his original beer and tossed it into the trashcan. “Feel free to discuss the patheticness of my life while I’m gone.” He ambled in the direction of the outdated half-bath by the pool equipment. It would be cramped quarters, hot as fuck, and crawling with spiders, but I didn’t want to risk triggering another fantasy with the sight of his six-pack abs.
“Three months?” I whispered. “Ouch.” No wonder Becca cheated. As soon as I thought the words, I hated them. Becca had probably been bouncing on her coworker’s dick for the past six months, and ignoring Aaron’s needs in the process. Another guy might have strayed from the relationship before now, but I knew Aaron’s loyalty. He was like Wayland with a toy. Once he made a commitment, he’d ignore everything else, no matter how worn out or dirty or—in Aaron’s case—bitchy and sexless—it became.
“You wouldn’t last three months,” Easton said with a cocky smile, as if he was the sole source of my sex drive’s overanxious heartbeat.
“Neither would you,” I shot back.
“He’s staying at his mom’s house.” Easton glanced toward the bath. “She’s in New York this week, so it’s worked out okay, but next week—” He paused as Aaron came around the edge of the house, his dress shirt in hand, hair mused, Easton’s T-shirt a little too tight.
“Are you finished ridiculing me or should I take longer?”
“All done.” I took his dress shirt and moved toward the house.
“Let’s find you a woman,” E said, as if we were replacement parts on a conveyer belt. “I got the perfect girl. Super athletic. Loaded. Single.”
I paused just before the back door, curious to see who he was referring to.
“She’s that client I’m working on. Nicole Fagnani. The tennis star.”
Aaron mumbled something I couldn’t catch.
“I’m just starting with her. She’s tall, man. You guys would have Amazons as kids.”
Nicole Fagnani? I glanced at Aaron, trying to look at him through unbiased eyes, but confirmed what I already knew. He was hot. Really hot. Take a Southern gentleman and put him through ten hours of manual labor each day and you had Aaron—just refined enough to hold open your door but rough and strong enough to fuck you against it.
I’d Googled the tennis star out of pure insecurity, wanting to know who my husband was going to be working with, and let out a relieved breath when the thousands of search results had produced an ordinary looking woman. Mildly pretty, but nothing I needed to lose sleep over.
Aaron pulled out his phone, assumedly to do his own search of the woman. I lingered in the shade of the patio, busying myself with picking dead blooms off my daisy plant.
“She’s okay.” His words were muffled behind a beer and I took a subtle step closer. “Not Becca.”
“It’s not her looks,” my husband said. “She’s just one of those women who have something about them, you know?”
My right shin collided with the edge of the pressure washer and I bit back a yelp of pain, one hidden by the clatter of the spray wand as it hit the floor. They both turned to look at me.
“You okay?” Easton squinted at me.
“Oh yeah,” I said breezily, attempting to step forward without hobbling. “I was just cleaning up out here. Thought we could eat outside.”
“In this heat?” He waved his beer toward the house. “We can eat in the kitchen.”
“Oh.” I lifted my shoulder as if I didn’t care either way, as if my shirt wasn’t sticking to my back from the ridiculous temperatures outside. “Whatever.” I moved to the cooler and lifted the lid, grabbing out a bottle of beer and twisting off the lid. “So, she has something about her?”
My husband looked at me as if he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
“The tennis player,”