Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,88
explain it to himself, if he was being honest, but how did he explain it to her?
Thankfully, Carter came over saying they didn’t have enough change in the till, so he said to Maya, “Sorry, I have to deal with some closing stuff. Maybe we can talk about this later?”
“Sure.” She smiled. Her easy agreement was disconcerting. “We can talk later.”
And then she got up and left.
Did that mean no soccer?
Well, whatever. He was beat, his body battling the opposing forces of exhaustion and agitation. It was time to call it a night. To end this day in which he’d lived an entire lifetime. He sent Carter home, cashed out, and yawned through the cleaning.
When he left through the back door, he jumped about a mile when he found Maya sitting on the bottom step in the vestibule looking at her phone. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought we were going to talk later. It’s later.”
“How’d you get in?” He’d locked the exterior rear door a while ago. People had to come and go from the front in the last hour the bar was open—a safety measure he’d instituted so he could keep an eye on everyone, make sure the drunks got taxis or rides.
She raised her eyebrows like he was a simpleton. “I never left.”
Oh. “Right.” So she’d been hanging around back here while he thought he was alone in the bar. The idea made him…uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time.
“I’ve been sitting here using your secret Wi-Fi to read about the match.” She’d been sitting a little way up the staircase, so when she stood, she was taller than he was—which meant that damn corset was right at his eye level. The top edge of it was an upside-down V. He supposed the point of it was to shove her breasts up and out—that was what corsets did, right? But of course you couldn’t see anything because of the puffy blouse.
He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. They were going to talk now. Fine. That was fine.
He locked the door to the bar, double-checked the exterior door, and gestured up the stairs. “After you.” She started up, which gave him a close-up view of the back of the corset. It laced up and was tied in a bow, but a lopsided one. One end was dangling down quite a bit farther than the other, like it wanted him to grab it and pull. His fingers felt like they were vibrating. He thought suddenly of her swimsuit, the sailor-themed one with the buttons. He had wanted to grab one of those buttons, too.
He ordered his brain to concentrate on more pressing questions. Namely, what the hell was he going to say about the wine situation?
Actually, maybe that wasn’t the topic. Maybe she’d want to talk about what had happened in the kitchen. She’d surprised him the other day by not insisting they talk about that kiss, but he could sort of see how if making out was going to be a regular thing—Please let it be a regular thing—they might have to establish some guidelines.
“Ben?” She paused outside the door to his apartment.
“Hmm?” And since when did she call him Ben?
And since when did he like it?
“What would happen if we just…didn’t talk?”
“What do you mean?” he said to her butt, because she was at the top of the staircase and he was a few steps behind her. Or said to where he imagined her butt might be under her voluminous skirt. He had to revise his earlier thought about her costume being too modest to be risqué. There was something intensely erotic about a garment that concealed so much.
But then he thought again about that swimsuit, which had not concealed anything but had given him the same feeling.
“I mean, what if we go in there, and we make a rule that we don’t talk?” she said.
“We’ve spent months in there not talking.”
He wasn’t sure why he was arguing. He’d just been fretting over what to say to her. But suddenly the idea of sitting silently side by side on the sofa while they watched soccer felt like a big step backward. He didn’t want to regress. He liked talking to her, even when talking took the form of fighting.
Maybe especially when it took the form of fighting?
Aww, shit, he was getting confused. Skirts, swimsuits, corsets. Talking, not talking. Everything was all jumbled up in his mind.