Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1) - Jill Shalvis Page 0,70
up? How’s your mom? How’s Tim? I talked to him about a week or so ago.”
“Mom’s fine,” Nick said. “And Tim got that apartment.” He smiled. “Thanks to you. Does Jake know he has a saint working for him?”
“Believe me,” she said on an uncomfortable laugh. “I’m no saint. And Jake doesn’t need to be told otherwise.”
“Why? Maybe he’d give you a raise.”
“For being a saint? No. Now if I figured out how to clone myself,” she said. “He might be so inclined.”
Nick gave her a quick, hard hug.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Everything.”
When he’d left, she got a text from Elle that had her staring at her phone, mouth open.
I don’t know how or why, but thanks for sending last night’s comic relief to poker night.
She stared at the text, horrified. She still couldn’t believe she’d done that to Finn.
And that’s not the only thing you’ve done to him . . .
She’d let her emotions get the better of her. That was a mistake, but oh God, what a delicious, sexy, heart-stopping wonderful mistake.
She responded back to Elle with a? on the off chance she was jumping to conclusions, and Elle was all too happy to explain in her next text:
Biweekly poker night in the basement turned into a peep show when Finn showed up in the dumbwaiter half nekkid. Lucy, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.
Her stomach hurt. Her plan to bring Finn a little fun, a little adventure while waiting on the fountain to bring him love, had seemed so simple. Fun and adventure, and maybe even a little walk on the wild side. She honestly hadn’t meant to do that in bed.
Or on her kitchen table.
Or in her shower . . .
Oh, God. This whole thing was bad. Very, very bad. And yet it’d all been so heart-stopping good at the same time that she found herself just standing in place at odd moments, her brain glazed over as it ran through erotic, sensual memories like a slide show behind her eyelids. Finn bending her over the end of the bed, his mouth at her ear whispering hot little sexy nothings as he’d teased and cajoled her right out of her inhibitions, his body hard against her.
In her . . .
She blew out a shaky breath. Dangerous thoughts. Because it was her being selfish, and she wasn’t going to do that again.
Absolutely not.
Or, you know, as much as she could.
Ugh. She slapped herself in the forehead. Go back to your plan, she ordered herself, not giving her inner smart-ass a chance to chime in. No more sexy times, no matter how deliciously demanding he was in bed. And this time, she meant it. One hundred percent. Or at the very least, seventy-five percent.
Certainly no less than fifty percent . . .
Luckily, work was crazy busy and helped keep her mind off all things Finn-related. The weather was warm, which meant that everyone and their mama wanted to get outside. They wanted to be on the water, see Alcatraz, Treasure Island, the Pier 39 sea lions . . .
She was on her second tour of the day when a guy tried to propose to his girlfriend. Unfortunately for him, he apparently hadn’t checked out her Pinterest page where she’d pinned pictures of acceptable rings. The proposal went fine until she opened the little black box. It didn’t end well, especially since he’d done it in the first five minutes of the two-hour tour, and then had to endure the rest of the ride in frosty silence.
On her last tour, Pru had a bunch of frat boys who kept making jokes, wanting to know if she’d be their captain below deck as well, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, if she’d ever played pirates with her passengers, because they wouldn’t mind pillaging and plundering. At that she’d pulled out the baseball bat she kept beneath her captain’s chair and asked if anyone needed their balls rearranged or if they wanted to sit down and shut up for the rest of the tour.
They’d gone with sitting down and shutting up.
She’d gotten a call from Jake the second the last of her passengers debarked.
“You have problems with passengers, you let me kick their ass, you don’t need to do it,” he said. “You’re not alone out there, I’m always in your ear.”
Literally. They were in constant communication when she was on the water via comms. “Maybe sometimes I want to do my own ass kicking,” she said.