“Oh, we’ll talk,” he promised and I had that Christmas Eve feeling again, except it was Christmas Eve with the devil.
He was watching me. “I can’t read your face.”
“Some thoughts are secret.”
He seemed happy with that, which was surprising.
In my experience, there were two types of guys. One type asked you every five minutes what was on your mind and then got pissy when you didn’t feel like sharing. The other type never asked and you got pissy when they didn’t seem to care.
Lee, apparently, was a third type, a mutant type, knowing something was on my mind but happy to leave me to it. I didn’t know what to make of that. I did know it made me feel less pressured but more confused because one of us was supposed to be feeling pissy and neither of us were.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said to him, “I don’t know what to make of you. I can’t get my head wrapped around any of this.”
His arms tightened and his face came closer then deviated from its course at the last minute. He whispered in my ear a couple of things I could make of him and another couple of things I could wrap around him. My nether regions quivered and I couldn’t help myself, I put my lips to his neck then touched my tongue there. It seemed I couldn’t wait to taste him either.
Then the door bell rang.
Lee stopped whispering in my ear and started cursing.
I pulled out of his arms, grabbed the sarong and knotted it at my hips. Lee tucked his shirt back in.
Maybe Grand Lake was the way to go.
By the time we made it downstairs, Tod and Matt were both staring at a huge, glossy white box with a red ribbon tied around it that was sitting on the ottoman. Matt was holding a can of diet pop. Tod was holding a pop in one hand with his other arm wrapped around the biggest display of long stemmed red roses I’d ever seen, at least two dozen of them.
I’d had flowers delivered before but never on this scale and never accompanied by glossy boxes. I looked to Lee but he was staring at the flowers, his face tight. Clearly, whatever this was, it was not from Lee.
“There’s a card on the box,” Tod said, he was staring at Lee too.
I grabbed the card and it read, Dinner Wednesday night. Wear the dress. Terry
I’d just finished reading it and experiencing the sick clutch in my stomach when Lee snagged the card out of my fingers.
I stared at the box as if it was ticking.
“Aren’t you gonna open it?” Tod asked.
“You open it,” I said.
Tod needed no further encouragement. He plopped the huge array of flowers in my arms, set aside his pop and dug into the box. He squealed in delight as he pulled out a fabulous little black dress.
“I saw this at Saks when I was looking for shoes. It cost one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars!”
That sick clutch in my stomach lurched and became full-blown nausea.
Tod was happily looking at Lee, thinking it was from him and that I’d hit the mother-lode of hunky boyfriends with platinum credit cards.
The muscle in Lee’s cheek was working and his eyes cut to Tod.
“Put the dress back in the box,” Lee ordered and Tod quickly did as he was told, his face turning confused.
Lee said to Matt, “Coxy.”
Matt’s jaw went rigid and his eyes turned to me.
“I didn’t do anything!” I shouted. “He kidnapped me! I didn’t encourage him at all! He’s creepy.”
“Who’s creepy?” Tod asked.