Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2) - Tessa Bailey Page 0,38
room.
“So let me get this straight,” one of the older members said, moseying forward. “You’re so active in the bedroom that you need a rule against sex . . . and you still need therapy?”
Rosie tucked a curl behind her ear. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ll say.”
Georgie handed Rosie her margarita, and Rosie drank half before handing it back. “He wrote me a letter,” she said, smiling as Bethany picked up the marker and wrote “love letter” on the board with a flourish. “He told me this old memory. About us. And I . . . I don’t know, it made me remember myself somehow. I feel like me today, even if things aren’t perfect.”
“And what does Rosie want?” Bethany encompassed the room with a sweep of her arm. “That’s what this club was founded on, right? Going after what we want?”
“I want to make an appointment with the realtor,” she breathed. “To tour that restaurant space on Cove Street.”
“The old diner?”
Rosie nodded.
A beat passed.
“Well, let’s make the call,” Georgie said, sitting forward, her face still flushed from Travis’s kiss. “There’s no better time to take the leap than when you’re surrounded by all this support. Someone grab Rosie’s phone. She keeps it charging by the coffeemaker.” Georgie bounced, bumping Rosie with her hip. “Restaurant! Restaurant!”
Everyone joined in the chant, but they quieted down when Rosie dialed the number she’d been keeping stored in her phone for a month. Her heart was going a million miles an hour . . . and somewhere around the third ring, she got the sinking feeling that something was missing. No, not something. Someone. She was in a room full of people she adored, but there was only one person whom she needed to hold her hand. And so, while she wanted to be ecstatic as she made the viewing appointment and everyone cheered, a sense of wrongness continued to eat at her.
Someone approached and laid a hand on her arm, jarring Rosie from her thoughts. “These cookies are amazing, Rosie!”
“They’re called alfajores—and thank you.” Desperate for a distraction from whatever foreboding gnawed at her gut, Rosie shot to her feet and escaped the living room. “I’ll just, um . . . whip up a fresh batch.”
Chapter Eleven
When Dominic arrived for their second therapy appointment, Rosie was already inside the office, her skin cast in a purple lava lamp glow. Today had been a particularly messy day on the job, so he’d chanced a quick stop at home to shower and change, but unfortunately that decision had made him three minutes late. He searched her face upon walking into Armie’s office, surprised when she seemed relieved that he’d shown up. Did she actually think he’d bail?
Every day that passed made him even more determined to fix what was broken, by whatever means necessary. The other night, when her name had popped up on his cell-phone screen, the world around him had come spinning back into motion. It did the same now. Being near his wife simultaneously settled the chaos in his blood and stirred it with lust. He knew damn well they were in therapy to talk, but tell that to his excess testosterone. He’d been on the verge of insanity since he made Rosie come over the phone, closing his eyes and trying to conjure her taste at the oddest times. Like during a foundation inspection that afternoon.
Focus.
“I was covered in grout,” he muttered, sitting down beside her on the floor in the pillow fort, unable to keep himself from absorbing the sight of her. God, she always looked fucking fantastic, but after a few days away from her? The way she curved and dipped in all the tastiest places made him dizzy. His gaze ran hungrily over the juncture of her thighs, climbed up her belly, and clung to her tits. “I didn’t want to show up dirty.”
“Could have fooled me,” she whispered, widening her eyes at him. “Dominic.”
With a low sound in the back of his throat, he faced Armie, who was watching them with unabashed amusement. “I see you’ve been taking the rules seriously.”
Jaw tight, Dominic crossed his arms and leaned back beside Rosie. He might have started to see the merit in these sessions, especially after hearing how much Rosie liked his letter, but that didn’t mean he’d stopped wanting to simply be alone with her. She needed words. He got that now and he was going to work on it. What else could they possibly iron out?