Breaking the kiss and breathing heavily, I keep ahold of his face. “I vacuumed the crumbs from Gemma’s dog treats out of the backseat.”
His eyebrows pull together.
“And she doesn’t shed, so we wouldn’t get dog hair all over us.”
“Are …” His gaze shifts over my shoulder for a few seconds. “Are you suggesting we get in your backseat?”
“I got the Q5 because it’s roomier than the Q3. Not for having sex, for Gemma. But since the room is there … well.” I shrug.
Please say yes. I’m dying a little here, buddy.
“Sex? In the backseat of your car? Now? In this parking lot?”
“The windows are tinted.”
“Dorothy …” He chuckles, shaking his head. “I’m a doctor at the children’s hospital. My son goes to the daycare there. We are within miles of it. Patients … their parents, other doctors or administrators could happen to stop here to eat. We could get arrested for lewd acts … public indecency.”
“Okay.” I release his face, but he doesn’t move. So we’re just two people not planning on having backseat car sex, hovering really close to each other. “Welp …” I pull my mouth into a tight-lipped grin. “Thanks for dinner. Say hi to Roman for me.”
He gives me a look … a real emoji, but I can’t decipher its meaning. Confusion?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mild Insanity
Elijah
“Goodnight, Dorothy.” What can I say? My Dorothy Mayhem high hits a level so high I’m not sure my feet feel the ground beneath them.
The lesson for the night?
Expect the unexpected—whiplash with a deadpan delivery.
Did passing up the opportunity to go down on her, followed by hardcore adult reasoning for not having sex with her in the back of her car, make me the most responsible man in Portland or just a run-of-the-mill dumbass?
I ease my upper body out of her car and give her one last smile and easy nod. “Drive safely.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Hawkins.”
“Eli. Dorothy …” I shake my head. “You can’t suggest what you just suggested and then call me Dr. Hawkins.”
“Well, as you just reminded me, we could see people from the hospital, and I should keep things professional.”
“Touché. Goodnight.” I shut her door. As she fastens her seat belt and plugs her phone into the charging outlet, I just stand here, like a stalker.
I love my job, in spite of watching so many young people suffer and sometimes lose their battles with cancer. The fight to find a solution keeps me motivated. I love being a dad to Roman, even if I have to give him up every other week. I love lunch on Fridays with my mom. Family dinners. Morning runs and evening hikes along the dense forest trails.
But … something’s missing. For a year I thought it was Julie.
It wasn’t.
It’s Dorothy Mayhem and the backseat of her Audi Q5.
Sliding my fingers along the side of her clean car, I stop at her back door, take a deep breath—the kind you take before doing something mildly insane yet totally exhilarating—and open it. As I ease into the backseat and shut the door, Dorothy and her big blue eyes watch me with uncertainty.
“I don’t have a condom, but I can fulfill your pre-dinner request.”
Her lips part, and her eyes widen a fraction more for several blinks. “Okay.”
Brilliant.
Had she said anything but “okay,” I would be disappointed. But Dorothy Mayhem doesn’t disappoint … ever.
And because opening and closing two doors would be too easy, she unfastens her seatbelt and crawls over the middle console, landing like someone dumped a bag of arms and legs onto my lap.
She straightens herself onto the other seat and reaches under her arm for the zipper to her strapless dress. “I have a condom. I always pack a condom when I wear this dress. So, we can do both. And I don’t have a bra on, so this will not be a striptease. I’ll quickly go from clothed to naked. You good with that?”
Um … yeah. This is Heaven. She is Heaven. At thirty-eight, it’s hard to imagine something old ever truly feeling new again.
Wrong.
Dorothy makes breathing feel new again. And something tells me she’s about to make sex feel new again. And I don’t give a single fuck that we’re only on our fourth date (first official one).
We’re consenting adults.
Julie got fake boobs and tattoos.
I haven’t had sex in a long time.
And if the world ends without me getting into the back of Dorothy Mayhem’s car, I will regret it in the afterlife.