Page 14 of Healing Hearts
“You didn’t book yourself a hot date for tonight? Amir’s gone for almost two weeks, and you’re not taking advantage of the empty house?”
“I’ve decided the dating game is not for me. Deleted my profile yesterday.”
“I’m going to have my Saturday nights back? No more drunken phone calls? That’s disappointing.”
“I’m sure you’ll survive.”
“Survive but not thrive,” I say. “The Flirty Englishman’s profits will be down. No more shandies. No more late-nightshared meals. They’re going to call begging you to resume dating.”
“The food and the shandies were the only positives of my weekly dating nightmares.”
“Ugh. You wound me,” I say, splaying a hand over my heart. “I don’t rank?”
“Over the shandy, but perhaps not the food,” she says, rubbing her fingers along her chin as though seriously contemplating it.
“I won’t tell Kai you’re downgrading his shandy.”
“Only to upgrade you. Really, you should approve of that rather than ratting me out.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve, Sullivan. I was supposed to be getting drunk off my face and making out with a hot woman. While I do have a hot woman still,” I say, gesturing to her, “I do not have the beer.”
“I don’t have beer,” Emily says, a slight flush to her cheeks. “But I do have a bottle of wine and another one of champagne.”
“You have champagne?” I follow her to the fridge. “What are we celebrating, My Emily?”
She has the door open, and I’m peering over the side. When she glances up, our faces are too close, reminding me of all those thoughts I try to keep at bay whenever we’re in close proximity. I love that sometimes she smells like lemon when she’s been cleaning, and sometimes, like now, she smells like peaches. I just want to take a bite. It’s especially hard when she returns my flirty banter, as though she enjoys it too.
“Seems like getting drunk on fancy shit and playing a few rounds of strip poker might be in order,” I say, my voice huskier than it should be.
“No one is stripping,” she says.
“I’ll happily strip for you. Wouldn’t be the first time.” I start to pull on the back of my shirt, and she grabs my wrist.
“Trent.” She gives me the same look she gives to Amir when he’s on the verge of getting himself in trouble. Even that’s a fucking turn on, and it really shouldn’t be. Why do I like being scolded by her?
Flirty banter fucks me. Her getting impatient with my flirty banter fucks me even more.
“You want me back in line,” I say, dropping my hand.
“Please,” she says, grabbing the bottle of wine from the fridge instead of the champagne. “If this is your starting place tonight, we may not survive the storm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“I know not to take you seriously, but sometimes you push it just a bit too far.” She cracks the top off the white wine bottle, and I realize it’s not that fancy. No need for a corkscrew.
Rather than digging into her comment, I ignore it. Partly because my flirting is semi-serious. She’s one of my favorite people to talk to, to hang out with. Being around her is one of the easiest, most natural relationships in my life. I might not be able to say exactly how or when that happened, but I know it’s true.
But I’m also very sure that I have no intention of ruining our friendship, jeopardizing the relationship I’ve built with Amir over the last year. The kid has lost two important men in his life, and I know I’ve made myself a third. Having lost my father at a young age, I would never want to cause him more heartache because I followed my dick when I really needed to follow my brain.
Anything that happened between me and Em would have to be short-term and mean nothing, and I don’t see how anything good comes from that.
Unlike Em, who’s been drunk around me several times with no serious slips or incidents, I’ve been very carefulnotto be drunk around her.
“Maybe just one glass,” I say. “We can watch the ball drop.”
“Sounds like a responsible plan,” she says, pouring us each a generous amount.
“Responsible, huh?”
