Page 33 of Dream Lake

Alex spoke without looking at her. “Later I’ll bring some catalogs so you can look at finishes and fixtures. How long have you been divorced?”

Zoë blinked in confusion at the abrupt question. “A couple of years.”

He showed no reaction other than a deepening of the brackets on either side of his mouth.

“We’d been best friends since high school,” Zoë said. “As it turned out, we should have just stayed friends. I haven’t seen Chris for a long time. He just showed up this morning out of the blue.”

“What you do with your ex is your own business.”

Zoë didn’t like the way he’d worded that. “I’m not doing anything with him. We’re divorced.”

His shoulders hitched in a taut shrug. “A lot of people have sex with their exes.”

She blinked in consternation. “What’s the point of sleeping with someone after you divorce them?”

“Convenience.” At her uncomprehending stare, Alex elaborated, “No dinners, no pretenses, no manners. It’s the equivalent of a takeout meal.”

“I don’t like takeout meals,” Zoë said, affronted. “And that’s the worst reason I’ve ever heard to have sex with someone, just because they’re convenient. That’s… that’sswallop.”

He arched a brow, his stony belligerence seeming to fade. “What’s swallop?”

“Something reconstituted. Always terrible. Like dried potatoes, or processed canned meat, or powdered egg product.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “If you’re hungry enough, swallop isn’t so bad.”

“But it’s not the real thing.”

“Who cares? It’s a bodily function.”

“Eating?”

“I was referring to sex,” he said dryly. “But not every meal—or sex act—has to be a meaningful experience.”

“I don’t agree. To me, sex is about commitment, trust, honesty, respect—”

“Jesus.” He had begun to laugh quietly, not in a nice way. “With standards like that, do you ever get laid?”

Zoë stared at him indignantly.

As Alex looked back at her, his amusement dissolved. He braced his hands on the table on either side of her, their bodies close but not touching. Her breath shortened, and her heart began to beat in a wild staccato.

His face was right above hers, the touch of his breath cool and sweet, like cinnamon gum. “Haven’t you ever had sex just for the hell of it?”

Zoë blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she managed to say.

“I mean rock-your-world sex with someone you don’t give a damn about. Raw, hard-core, wrong on every level. But you don’t care, because it feels too good to stop. You do anything you want because you don’t have to talk about it afterward. No rules, no regrets. Just two people in the dark, roughing each other up in all the right ways.”

For a split second, Zoë’s unruly imagination seized on the idea, and a jolt of heat went to the pit of her stomach. She could feel her pulse beating at the front of her throat. Alex’s gaze tracked the visible throb before returning to her dilated eyes. In an abrupt motion, he pushed away from her. “You should try it sometime,” he advised coolly. “Looks like your ex is available.”

Zoë tucked her hair behind her ears and made a show of retying her apron. “Chris didn’t visit me for that,” she eventually said. “He just broke up with his partner. He needed to talk it over with someone.”

“With you.” Alex gave her a sardonic glance.

“Yes,” she said warily, sensing the approach of an insult. “Why not with me?”

“A woman who looks like you? If your ex shows up to talk over his problems, cupcake, it’s not for your keen psychological insight. It’s a booty call.”

Before she could reply, the oven timer went off.

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