Page 7 of Always Be My Baby

I cringed. “What’d you do?”

“What any self-respecting woman would do. I pulled out my trusty Mr. Big to finish myself off, then once I had his attention and got him all hot and bothered again, I kicked his swamp ass out.”

Oh my god. I laughed so hard, I almost peed myself. I could always count on Lena to get me out of my head. “One day your exploits are going in a book, you know that?”

She sipped more coffee, flipping her wrist as if it were all the same to her. “Maybe one day I’ll find myself a Girard,” she said, sounding quite wistful. “I could use a whole lot of amazing sex.”

“And he feeds me.”

“Sex and food? God, Lee, rub it in my single, hungry face, why don’t you?” We both laughed. How many times had I secretly lived vicariously through her stories of sexploits past? Lena then rolled the extra chair I kept in my office for training over to the desk, plopping down into it, and took another sip of coffee.

“In all seriousness—” I brought the spreadsheet we needed to go over up on the computer screen. “You’re gorgeous, smart, kind, funny. There’s a wonderful guy out there just waiting to worship the ground you walk on.”

“The problem being, I’m always attracted to the super-sexy alpha types who turn out to be assholes who love their muscles, their own reflections, and the adoration of the masses more than they love me. How do I get past that?”

“I don’t know about the alpha types, but you can’t deny Girard is super sexy.”

“Ain’t that the truth? But he’s also super taken.”

“What do you say to shopping tomorrow? Girard has bro night with Sawyer and some of their other friends. He’s begged off too many times before and they’ve threatened a riot to cover up their kidnapping and whisking him off to some out-of-the-way local bar if he doesn’t show.”

“How many did he back out of?”

“Two since we’ve been together. I think it was Sawyer who said, ‘Great sex is no excuse to ignore your boys.’ And since he’s been giving me the stink eye for a couple of days now, I’m fairly certain it was him.”

“Yeah, well, I think great sex is plenty reason enough—amazing sex, even more. But I’d be glad to go shopping just you and me.”

“Silver linings,” I said before I got us down to work.

The next day, Girard and I went through our normal day off routine of cleaning the house and catching up on a few episodes of our favorite television program before the time came for us to start the prep for our evening plans. We whipped up some delicious snacks for him to take over to Sawyer’s place as my peace offering for keeping Girard occupied pretty much since bonus night back in December, before Christmas. Then I drove to Lena’s place to pick her up. My Jeep had four-wheel drive and the sky had dumped buckets of snow on us last night. We headed north to the Grand Traverse shopping district, hitting the mall first. But seeing as we’d shown up around dinner time, we stopped at the delicious Mexican restaurant before hitting the stores.

Our server brought us our giant margaritas and chips and guac, then left to put in our order. Lena folded her arms in front of her on the table, her posture erect, reminding me of a therapist’s pose. “Now you’re going to tell me what this little outing is really about.”

This was one of the reasons having her as my life-long friend came in handy. I didn’t have to feel my way into a topic. She knew me. She understood me. Most of all, she made it safe to say what I needed to say without fear of derision.

“Ever wake up to realize that you’re old and frumpy?” I asked, then popped a chip in my mouth because I still wanted to appear unaffected by the whole conversation, even though I was anything but.

Poor Lena began choking on the sip of margarita she’d taken while waiting for me to answer her. I lunged across the table to slap her back several times to help dislodge the caught liquid. “You’re not old,” she insisted through gasps of air.

“But you’re not denying I’m frumpy?”

“Girl, I don’t know where this is coming from. But the clothes you wear on your off time are really cute.”

“How often do people see me in my off-time clothing?”

“I mean, you definitely went for comfort over style with your choice of work uniform for yourself.”

My heart dropped. “I’d already picked the server’s uniforms and needed to differentiate myself.” Why was I even attempting to defend myself? I had been the one to bring this up.

“And you’ve done well with that,” she said. “No one will confuse you with any of your servers. Your grandmother, possibly...” Lena chuckled as I glared daggers at her.

“I don’t look like a grandmother.”

“Let’s just say we might want to reconsider your work shoe choice.”

I’d dressed cute today. Maybe not sexy or sultry, but cute. Though she was right. I needed to find comfortable work shoes with some pizzazz.

After dinner, we ended up in a lingerie store, which I didn’t remember saying I needed lingerie, but it probably couldn’t hurt to update my selection. Though Lena’s idea of updating and mine were a tad different.

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