Page 85 of If This is Love

“Ummm…” Luke piped up again. “Okay… that’s fine,youcan go ahead and tell that story,Liza, just so long as Skye doesn’t tell her version of it.” He hitched both shoulders. “I don’t really remember exactly how you and me meeting went down other than that I was kind of a douchebag from allthoseshots, but everybody else was there, so…”

“I wasn’t there!” Frankie hollered. She was at a table with Connor and Brennan and saluted Liza and Skye with her crystal, low-ball glass of amber liquid. “I need to hear this story!”

Skye scoffed at Luke, sticking her neck out and dropping her free hand at her side. “Oh my god, Luke, you can’t say that likethat. You’re making it sound all weird and scandalous.”

Luke looked around the room for a second and shrugged. “I mean, it was kinda friggin’ scandalous.”

Gabe clutched the bridge of his nose with his free hand, dipping his face and grumbling in exasperation. I loved that I’d learned what each type of his grumbles meant. This was a more benign one, and I could tell he was secretly a little amused, so I turned to scrunch my nose at him playfully. He looked at me, and it was one of those looks that made me feel like he might have kissed me if he were the PDA type, but he didn’t.

Hedid, however, slip his hand out of mine just so he could rest it on the bare skin between my knee and the hem of my dress, andLord have mercy. It was only enough skin to fit the width of his four fingers, but those four fingers were on theinsideof mythigh—kind of at least—and I was gettingreallydistracted from the back and forth between Skye and Lukereallyquickly.

Frankie cackled. “Lawd, someone get me another round ‘cuz I needallthe stories.”

Gabe’s thumb was now slowly, firmly stroking the outside of my thigh, and everything between my legs started to ache and throb with more lust than I’d felt since the last time I’d made love with my husband… and that wasn’tlust.

Gabe rubbing my thigh wasnotfeeling too much likelusteither. It was feeling more and more like the sensual side of what I’d had with my husband, and that just made me even hotter for him.

The champagne bubbles feeling was swirling again, and I shifted closer to him, letting the side of my leg nestle flush against his, and his hand moved just a tad higher. It felt playfullynaughtyand like something the independent, modern,normalwoman I was trying to be would do, and my pulse quickened.

Mylord,I wanted himsomuch.

Skye scoffed again. “See, now Ihaveto tell my version of that story because if I don’t, all of our friends are going to be talking about you and me the way they’re always talking about Brennan and Liza.”

Then it was Liza’s turn to scoff. “Oh-kay, so, moving on. The first time I met Luke, it was my very first music show on my very first day on staff with Frenchmen Street Records, and—”

“Frenchmen Street represent!” Connor hollered, lifting his glass.

“Yeah you right!” Frankie chimed in, clinking her glass against his.

Liza sighed as her shoulders sank. “Con-nor…”

The friends continued to go back and forth, but I could barely hear them anymore. I’d somehow managed to ease all the way up against Gabe’s side, and he slipped his hand off my knee to drape his arm across the back of my chair in a manner that could’ve easily been a simple, friendly gesture, but where his other hand had moved to in place of the other one…

That wasnotfriend territory.

And I had suddenly never wanted anything so badly as I wanted his hand all the way up to that sacred place that only men Ilovedwere allowed to touch. And only one man had touched it before now.

I was completely tongue-tied, but something in me needed to do something. This was such a perfect evening, a perfect date, and I suddenly wanted all thatafter the datestuff Gabe had mentioned andthensome. But all I could do was look at him.

He met my gaze, and his magical silver eyes were as hot as molten steel. He didn’t say anything either, and my bottom lip caught between my teeth.

Whispered words spilled from my lips before they registered in my brain. “What’re we doing after this date?”

His eyes went nearly black as obsidian, and his fingers pressed into the flesh high up my inner thigh. “Anything you want.”

22

RUTH

ALGIERS POINT, NEW ORLEANS

“Yeah, I think everyone’s planning to be there pretty soon,” Chloe was saying over the Bluetooth in my car while I was pulling onto Gabe’s street after leaving the party. “Everyone’s just going home long enough to change and going straight to the Old Point. We might take a bit longer because I have to get Jackson in bed so the sitter doesn’t have to, but I was thinking it would be good to meet at Gabe’s and then walk since Luke is… you know, like… celebrating hard.”

“Yeah you right!” Luke’s tipsy, exuberant voice blared over the speakers. “Let’s get this party started!”

“We just came from the party,Luke,” Gabe clipped. “You’re somebody’s papa now. Have some friggin’ self-control.”

“Naaaah… I’m just gonna stay in the car so he can’t see me.”

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