Page 84 of I'm Your Guy
This is one of those times.
THIRTY
Carter
I’m doing it again. I’m having cozy fantasies about things that cannot be. Nights in front of the fire. Movies on the sofa. A strong arm around my shoulders.
It’s a natural reaction to sprawling out next to a hot hockey player, drinking wine on his sofa, stealing glances at his rugged face.
Tommaso told me he was jealous of the guy at the garden center. I should be annoyed that he’d notice who I talk to, but I can’t find it in me to hold it against him. He isn’t used to telling people how he feels, and I’m honored that he’ll tell me.
Honored, but dying inside. No glass of wine has ever been sipped more slowly than this one. Because I can’t get drunk with him. I have the self-control of a pickle, and I don’t trust myself.
But I don’t want the evening to end, either.
My attraction to Tommaso runs deep. Not because of his muscular shoulders, his glorious abs, or the way his thighs bulge in the sweatpants he changed into after we got the tree set up.
It’s not even because of the plate of chicken I ate the minute it arrived, or the way Tommaso offered me the last of the mashed potatoes.
The world is full of hot guys. But the hottest thing about Tommaso is the way he listens. When I’m speaking, he fixes those chocolate eyes on mine. He always makes me feel fascinating.
Like right now, when he’s asking about my work. “How’d you choose this job, anyway?”
“Don’t you remember? A hot, grumpy guy in a nice suit asked me a question outside the world’s worst furniture store.”
He rolls his dark eyes. “Not this particular gig. The whole thing.”
“I told you. It never occurred to me to do anything else,” I admit. “I’ve been redesigning things since I was a little kid. My mom liked to sew, so she was always dragging me along to JoAnn Fabrics. I used to wander around the store touching everything. But my favorite were the upholstery fabrics. They were garish velvets and weird brocades.”
He’s listening to every word. And that’s almost as sexy as the abs of glory.
“They also had these big pattern books you could look through. I’d flip the pages and find designs for interiors. They were probably tacky as hell—McMansions on a low budget. Still, it dawned on me that a room could feel completely different depending on what you did with it. The colors, the light. Change those, and you completely change the mood. I thought it was powerful. So I kept redesigning my room, once a year, on a very low budget.”
He smiles at me over the rim of his wine glass. “And how did that go?”
“Sometimes the results were tragic,” I have to admit. “I didn’t understand that paint colors reflect and magnify in small spaces. I was aiming for sunny when I tried yellow. My room ended up looking like the inside of a highlighter pen.”
He glances around this gorgeous living room. “So you’re saying I got lucky with these results?”
“I was eleven.”
He bumps his knee with mine, and his eyes are smiling at me. “It’s just a chirp, Montana. Shake it off.”
“Fine. You have your little joke. But I learned that color has power. But with power comes great responsibility.”
He snickers.
“Luckily, paint is cheap, and I got better taste.”
“Right.” I get a serious nod. “Your Harry Styles phase?”
“Hey!” I pick up a very stylish boucle throw pillow and bop him with it.
He laughs. But then his phone rings. “Sorry. One sec. It’s family.” He scoops it up off the coffee table. “Hey, Gia. What’s up?”
It’s quiet enough that I can hear a female voice through the speaker of his phone. “Tommy, I need you not to panic.”
He goes rigid. “What happened?”
