Page 22 of Mr. Infuriating

“Is it your mom’s birthday?” Laura asked when I sat down.

I blinked at her. “What?”

“The card, for your mom that you needed to sign. Is it her birthday?”

“Yeah, it’s coming up.”

In two months.

Didn’t everyone get a card for their mom’s June birthday in April?

“Where’d your friend go?” Derrick asked from the other side of the bar.

“Gretchen, right?” I asked.

If I was going to play dumb about who she was, I was going to try and sell it.

Laura smirked, like she wasn’t buying my sales job.

“Yeah, Gretchen.”

“Derrick said she just went through a divorce?”

“It was finalized a few weeks ago.” Before I even asked, she offered, “And she’s not seeing anyone.”

“I’m surprised. It seems like men would be lining up to date a beautiful woman like her.”

“Are you angling to cut to the front of the line?”

I chuckled at her bluntness.

“I don’t think I’d have much to offer.”

“Maybe she’s not looking for anything more than a good time.”

That got my attention, but I quickly gave myself an internal shake. It was one thing to flirt with her at a bar while withholding who I was. It’d be another to take her home and do the things I’d been thinking about without coming clean.

Her feisty texts earlier today had made my dick move. Probably not the reaction she’d been shooting for.

I noticed Gretchen walking toward us and tried not to stare. It looked like she’d fluffed her hair and reapplied her lipstick, and I had a sudden urge to kiss it off her.

Laura should not have told me Gretchen was only looking for a good time. Now that’s all I was going to think about as the beautiful woman sat next to me.

I greeted her with a smile. “There you are.”

She returned my smile. It reminded me of the time in the showroom when she’d smiled at her husband, and I had let myself imagine it was me she was looking at like that.

“Here I am.”

“I got you another drink,” Laura said as Gretchen perched on the barstool, giving me the perfect view of her peak-a-boo cleavage teasing me.

Fuck, she had perfect tits.

I glanced up and found Derrick grinning at me like he knew exactly what I was thinking. He nodded toward my beer.

“You ready for another?”

“Nah, not yet.”

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