been here, and I don’t know how to handle it, so I’ve just been pretending not to see. “Ugh. Delores isn’t going to be happy with me. I think I’ve put on five pounds in the last three days.”
Colt grunts, but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge my statement as he drains the last of his coffee.
“I’ve missed my guitar, though,” I say as I move to put my things back in my suitcase. I carefully fold my wedding dress and tuck it in on top of everything else. It won’t be in there for long, and I’ll hang it up and send it out for cleaning as soon as we get home.
Home.
The word strikes me a little funny. Because now my apartment isn’t just my home. It’s our home. Colt will be moving in with me.
“Are you coming straight to my place? Or will you be going to your parents’ to pick up a few things before heading over?”
“Do you have a preference?” His smooth voice sounds so close behind me that it startles me, and I jump.
He gives me that boyish grin of his when I turn to face him. “Uh …” I might go a little cross-eyed, but I snap my mouth shut, managing not to drool over the broad expanse of tanned skin in front of my face.
He’s been going shirtless most of the time we’ve been here. Which has been … distracting. And awesome. And terrible. All at once.
Because he’s so so tempting. And I think he knows the effect he has on me. And I think he’s doing it on purpose.
Which is confirmed by the way he casually scratches his left pec and then trails his hand down his torso and over his belly. I can’t help following the motion with my eyes, mesmerized by the way his abs ripple and bunch under his skin.
“Alexis?” he prompts, the smile in his voice as clear as the one on his face.
“Huh?”
He lets out a low chuckle that combines with the sight of him in dangerous ways. “Would you rather I just come straight to your house or swing by my parents’ first?”
“Oh, uh …” I blink, forcing my eyes back to his face, back to that shit-eating grin. Yeah, he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. And he’s not remotely sorry about it. Narrowing my eyes, I force myself to analyze the situation. “You should come with me,” I state assertively. “It would look bad if we left our wedding resort in separate cars.”
His smile dims. “Good point. I’ll figure out how to get the rest of my clothes and other important things later.” He reaches past me and tugs a shirt off a hanger, slipping it over his head.
I manage to stifle the sigh of disappointment before it escapes, but just barely.
We finish packing our things, and Colt schedules a car for us before calling down to the desk to check out.
The honeymoon is officially over.
Chapter Nineteen
Colt
Alexis has more fortitude than I gave her credit for. When I took my shirt off before getting into bed that first night together and noticed the way she practically drooled over me, I took every opportunity to be shirtless around her after that.
But by the end of our few days at the resort, she caught on to my scheme.
And now she’s torturing me right back, prancing around her apartment—our apartment—in nothing more than skimpy tank tops and barely-there booty shorts. She puts on more clothes when she leaves the house, but since she has no scheduled performances or meetings or appearances anywhere, that’s really only to go to the grocery store and the gym.
I will admit that drooling over my scantily-clad wife is a nice distraction from the phone calls and texted demands to call them from my brothers that I’ve been ignoring for the last few days. They already know what’s going on. If Mom didn’t call them immediately after I got off the phone with her, I’d be shocked, but even if she didn’t, they follow the entertainment news, so they’d have seen the pics that Delores put out. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with their judgment. As though either of them have any right to tell me how to handle my life and my career. I’ve asked for their help a million times, and they’ve barely lifted a finger. They’ve made it clear I’m on my own, so I’m doing what I think is best.