big green eyes wide in question. He merely dropped his gaze to her ass sticking up out of the window. “Oh, um, I’m fine. Just hungry.” She extracted herself from the window, sans the éclair, and straightened, pulling her too-long tee down.
Sad to lose his view but desperate to get out of such close proximity, Marc told her about the key under the gnome and turned. He was about to leave when her hands settled on his arm and—goddamned son of a bitch—her touch sent a hot sexual zing shooting through his entire body.
Marc liked women. All kinds of women. He liked the way they smelled, the way they felt, the way they sounded calling out his name. He especially liked the last part.
He just couldn’t like this woman, not in that way. Not in any way other than as a friend.
Ever.
Yeah, good luck with that, he told himself, remembering how he’d said those same exact words on graduation night, when he’d found her crying under the bleachers because Jeff, wanting to start college a free agent with open possibilities, had broken up with her. A week and some lame advice later, Lexi had left, following Jeff to New York with hopes of saving their relationship.
Lexi must have felt something too, because she jerked her hand back and eyed him cautiously. “You promised me earlier that we’d never talk about this again. Did you mean to anyone?”
Marc looked down the alley at Mrs. Lambert of Grapevine Prune and Clip and her partner in crime, Mrs. Kincaid—who, from the looks on their faces, had been watching the entire event unfold—and wondered how Lexi intended to keep her window fiasco a secret. St. Helena was a small town located in the heart of the Napa Valley, with two blocks of downtown, two gas stations, and only two commodities: wine and gossip. Now that two pairs of the loosest lips in the county were firsthand witnesses, those who hadn’t been there were bound to get a stellar reenactment by lunch.
Lexi ignored the women and stared up at him, pleading—and with one look at the anxious way she worried her lower lip, he understood. She wasn’t talking about the town; she was afraid this would get back to Jeff. Which made no sense at all.
Last he’d heard Lexi hadn’t given a rat’s ass about Jeff’s opinion, which was one of the reasons their restaurant had been foundering in the year or so leading up to the divorce. But if she wanted her morning kept a secret, who was he to ruin her day?
“Deal.”
“Thanks,” Lexi whispered.
Marc’s phone chirped. He didn’t move to answer it.
“I’ll let you get that and”—she paused and offered up a pathetic smile—“thanks.”
Marc should have taken the opportunity to get the hell out of there. Instead, he found himself sending the call to voice mail without even looking at the screen. “Look, when the rest of your stuff gets here, let me know and I can help you unload.”
He should be putting space between them, not offering to get all hot and sweaty in her room. Even if it was just from moving her boxes.
“Except for my dress, I already unloaded everything.” Marc looked at her gnat-sized car and frowned. As if reading his mind, she continued, “I got a really fair offer for the house as is, with the furniture, which worked for me. I bought everything to fit that house, and it meant less for me to move.”
“You sold your place in New York?” That surprised him. Every time he went back east to visit, Lexi was remodeling or decorating or refinishing some part of that house. It was a cozy little brownstone with a tiny backyard in one of the more family-centric boroughs. And Lexi had loved it. Jeff, on the other hand, had been pulling for a plush loft uptown near their restaurant.
“Hard to start over when you’re dragging the past with you. Plus—”
Marc’s phone rang. Again.
“You should probably get that,” she said, already backing away.
Marc looked down at the screen and groaned. Wingman growled. It read “Natasha Duval.” It also said that he’d missed three calls from the very same.
Shit.
He’d been playing phone tag with Natasha all week. Okay, maybe he was avoiding her calls. He hadn’t spoken to her since, well, the week before Valentine’s Day, when they’d run into each other at a party she was catering. Natasha had been wearing a tight red dress held together by a single scrap of ribbon that she