Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,383

under the sheets like charging lions. Lex has always been a force to be reckoned with in and out of the bedroom. “She’s nice. You just need to crack the armor.”

Levi’s brows flex and he looks momentarily pained for me. “Low says she’s pretty steady across the board with that caustic personality, but she likes her and I’m hoping the vice versa is true. She’s in our wedding.” He leans over and socks me on the arm just enough to make it hurt. “And she’s paired up with you.”

“Perfect. By then I’m hoping she’ll be exactly that—paired up with me.”

Both Levi and Brody groan at the idea as if the thought wrenched their balls.

Brody shakes his head with that despondent look on his face. “You really like a challenge, don’t you?”

“If her name is Lex Maxfield, then I love her.” There. I said it.

A sobering silence crops up in our circle before we meander to the topic of the bar. We spend the next hour looking at numbers, talking strategies before the realtor calls Levi and hauls him away. Brody finds himself getting sucked back into that vortex of the trap I’ve laid out for him and he too staggers out of the place.

No sooner do I rise to leave than my favorite redhead struts on in, shoulders back, hair wild and flowing, that look on her face says I will slit the throat of every person in here without thinking twice, and something about that makes my lips twitch with a smile and I sit right back down. My heart starts in on a few quick stomps. It’s never in rhythm when Lex is around. It’s a long-standing tradition that she makes my heart beat faster, my entire body shakes as it begs to have her. And right about now, it’s downright pleading on a cellular level. My balls ache, my mouth salivates just wishing for one more night, but my heart knows better. I don’t want just a singular night with Lex—but hell, I would take it. What I really need is all of her. Her beautiful complicated mind, her energetic spirit that keeps me on my toes, and that heart of hers. I’d do anything if she’d let me dust it off for her one more time. Lex was never a fan of that particular beating member of her anatomy, nor was she a fan of the one I happen to harbor myself. Nope. Somewhere along the line she closed it off, buried it under a layer of ice—about the time her mother skipped out on her in what would pan out to be a long line of disappointments. That’s all people were to her, disappointments. And I happened to fall into that category. Here I sit, one of Lex’s disappointments, my own biggest disappointment.

She collects her coffee, grunting at the barista’s attempt to make small talk as she stalks her way past me as if I were invisible and sits near the back. Lex opens her laptop and ducks in close, pounding at the keyboard like a woman on a mission.

I don’t hesitate in getting up and heading over. I may have hesitated before the big reprisal in my life, but now that we’re working together, that she’s working for me, it feels like fair game.

“Okay, now I’m curious,” I say as I take the seat across from her, but Lex doesn’t bother to look up, her fingers never slow as they dance across the keyboard.

“Go away,” she says it so curt and quick I half-wonder if she even knows it’s me or if that were some stock answer she’s tossing at me. “I mean it, Ax, stat.”

Mystery solved.

“How’d you know it was me? My firm masculine voice? That familiar scent of my cologne? I believe you once bought a bottle just so you could wear it to remind yourself of me.” And when she told me that, it melted my heart on a level I never thought possible. Lex loved me so much she cherished my scent. The thought still makes me ache for what we once had—that I believe we can still have.

“I saw you through the window before I entered,” she says it so low and fast I had to struggle to grasp it. “But I didn’t care that you were here.” She looks up for less than a second before returning to her task. “You see, Axel, I don’t really care about you.”

There it is, the hot poker through the stomach that