Page 68 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

“No,” she objected. “It’s hot.”

Tally’s car was in the driveway, so Mateo must have been at home waiting for me to fill him in on all the dirty details. Which I wasn’t going to do, because the last ten minutes of my life were reserved for me and only me—and the girl I shared them with.

“Are you hungry?” I asked, attempting to keep her with me longer.

“I have dinner plans with Nat.”

I wanted to know what was going through her head. She’d just gotten me off; she must have been at least a little bit turned on. I walked my fingers across the bench seat and tugged at the hem of her dress. “Give me a couple minutes with her?”

“Did you just refer to my vagina asher?

“Them?”

“Goodnight, Frankie.” Taking her bag, she pushed out of the passenger side door.

“What are you doing?” I shouted.

“I’m taking your advice.” She walked backward toward the door. “Not sleeping with a guy on the first date.”

That was suddenly the worst advice I’d ever given.

I sighed, watched her wave and disappear through the threshold, and then dropped my head to the steering wheel as I turned the ignition to drive back home.

21

“Arewespendingthenight?”

Steam billowed toward the light above the shower and an indie rock playlist filtered out of Natalia’s phone on the bathroom sink. I aggressively filed my nails from my perch on the lid of the toilet seat as the room turned into a sauna.

“It’s not like we both don’t have a bed to sleep in,” she answered.

She couldn’t see me roll my eyes, but I did. “Staying the night kind of crosses the friends-with-benefits line, don’t you think?”

“Your situation is crooked as fuck. The lines are already blurred.”

My situation was both the most convenient and inconvenient thing I’d ever experienced at the same time. Frankie scratched an itch I didn’t know I had when it came to men. Which was exactly what was so inconvenient about the whole thing. I already knew I would be struggling to find a guy back in Pine Ridge that fit his mold. He was somehow the perfect gentleman and the perfect scoundrel.

Attractive, smart, vulnerable, begrudgingly funny.

The convenience was that thing he was working with below the belt.Christ. I wasn’t a girl easily impressed after having had my fair share of hook-ups. A dick is a dick, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

So what I first categorized as a convenience was actually the number one glaring inconvenience, really. I thought it’d be hard to find a man to match his first date habits, but in reality, I was putting myself on the fast track to being completely unsatisfied sexually for the remainder of my life.

And he hadn’t even been inside me yet.

“Do you think I’m being stupid?” I groaned.

“I think you’re being a single twenty-six-year-old woman on vacation with a vetted, clean, unattached, attractive man.”

I tapped my cheek with the nail file. “You’re right. I’m just paranoid.”

There was the click of a bottle top opening and closing behind the curtain. “You’re both in the same situation, Phee. I’m sure Frankie has the same concerns as you do about it. Which isgood, because it’s been addressed already.”

I nodded to myself. A question I’d thought about briefly but hadn’t entertained crossed my mind. “Do you think he’ll take that job in Colorado?”

After a short pause the shower curtain whipped back and a soapy Natalia peeked her shampooed head out. “What an interesting question.”

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