Page 41 of A Fool's Game

He doesn’t miss a beat, stepping back to spin me once more, pulling me back to his chest, zero sign that my rejection had any effect on him at all.

“But you can come home with me.”

I earn a small smile and another spin for my answer.

“I don’t want to rush you into anything. If you’re not ready, I’m happy to wait,” he tells me.

I stop dancing, and after one awkward beat, Ainsley stops as well. We stand in the center of the dance floor, couples swaying around us,and lock eyes.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” I whisper. “I’m ready. I’ve been ready.”

Ainsley leans down to whisper in my ear, and nothing could prepare me for what he says next.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, love. I got here as soon as I could.”

Chapter 16

Ainsley

The cool evening air does nothing to dampen the fire this woman lit inside me on that dance floor.It’s only a few blocks to her house, but I consider calling a car just to get us there sooner.

She pulls me through the front door and up the stairs to the last door on the long second floor hallway, the room she told me on the tour was hers.

I barely stepped into the space that night, but now I’m dragged straight into her little universe and pushed back onto the bed while she stands over me. I lean up on my elbows and watch as she switches on a floor lamp draped with a dark purple flowered scarf, giving the room an eerie, magical glow.

She moves in the shadows, clicking on a string of fairy lights that starts on a bookcase and extends over the bed. With the extra light, I can see that the room is quite full. Between the nearly wall-sized bookcase, the bed, a desk, and two soft chairs, there’s barely enough room for the dark blue oval rug in the center of the woodfloor.

“I’m going to freshen up just a little,” she says, standing too far from where I lay for me to grab her, although I try.

Gem laughs, taking a step back. “Give me just a second, okay?”

“Of course. I’ll be right here.”

She puts her hands on hips as she backs toward a closed sliding pocket door that must lead to an ensuite bathroom. “You could stand to lose a few of those clothes, you know.”

I pull my shirt over my head and toss it at her. She ducks and escapes into the bathroom, sliding the door shut behind her.

I don’t know how long I have, and I want to be ready, so I stand and slip out of my jeans, folding them neatly over the back of her desk chair. I decide to keep my boxers on, not wanting to be too presumptuous, and wander over to the bookcase, eager to read a few spines and get a deeper sense of this woman’s private world.

The first shelf is almost all tarot books. I guess I should have expected it, but the titles still take me by surprise. She has decks of cards as well, lined up on the wood shelf in front of the books. I’m dying to flip over some of the decks to see how the cards differ from the unreasonably large collection I now have in my own apartment, but I hear the door open behind me just as I’m reaching for them.

“Caught red handed,” a voice says from behind me.

A voice that’s definitely not Gemma’s.

I spin and let out an unflatteringly high-pitched noise when I find Taylor standing on the rug in the center of the room, arms crossed, glaring at me.

Glaring at my underwear, to be specific.

“What are you doing here?” I grab for my jeans and start to struggle back into them, feeling incredibly foolish all of a sudden.

I know he and I are supposed to be making friends, but in my mind, I’d start on that next week. Not right now, in my underwear, preparing for a hot night with my hot new girlfriend.

“I live here.”

That information is surprising enough that I pause with my belt buckle still hanging open. “Really?”

“Kind of,” he replies.

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