Page 8 of Wicked Flirt
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” That had not been his experience with women. Flirting usually went a long way.
She fidgeted a bit in her seat and gave him a small smile before turning her head away, looking out the window.
She didn’t seem like such a man-hater now. She was a little insensitive, but also straightforward. No BS with her. No games. Just straight-up truth. Damn, she was starting to grow on him.
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Chapter Three
Lexi wasn’t eye-fucking a sweaty, insanely muscular Marcus in a loose white tank top and black athletic pants any more than her friends Sabrina and Ally were, so it was just normal woman behavior.
They were at Sabrina’s apartment on Sunday, helping her with the move to her fiancé, Logan’s house. The women were packing Sabrina’s dishes and related crap in the kitchen while the men—Marcus, Logan, and Ethan—hauled her furniture out. Logan had a muscular athletic build, and Ethan, Ally’s fiancé, was in tiptop shape as a cop. Still, Marcus’s muscles were so massive she’d bet he could carry the sofa he was currently helping move all by himself.
“Turn it sideways,” Marcus told Logan.
Logan had just reached the propped-open front door with his end of the sofa. He angled it, and the sofa fit, the two of them heading through the doorway. Ethan followed behind carrying the coffee table.
Sabrina headed for the living room, bending to pick up something from the carpet where the sofa had just been. Her long dirty blond hair was up in a ponytail. She looked up at them, her brown eyes bright, her round cheeks glowing, probably from a morning fuck with Logan. She’d been pretty open that Logan couldn’t keep his hands off her and vice versa. “You guys! Look what I found! Remember?”
Lexi squinted at something little and brown.Err…
Sabrina joined Lexi and Ally in the kitchen. “It’s from last year’s Super Bowl party.” It was a little plastic football on a stick. Sabrina had stuck a bunch of them in a chocolate cake that she’d decorated to look like a football field. She was too much of a foodie to actually dye the chocolate icing green, so she’d used small amounts of green piping around the edges. Sabrina was truly a domestic goddess, and Lexi had been totally spoiled, popping into Sabrina’s apartment down the hall and snarfing down homemade meals and desserts. Lexi was really going to miss her. Her throat closed. This sucked.
“That was a fun night,” Lexi said, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat. “I can’t believe you guys are leaving me here all by my lonesome.” It had been so nice for a while there with Ally, Sabrina, and Missy all living down the hall from her. Almost like a college dorm, popping into each other’s apartments whenever. Now Ally lived with Ethan, Missy lived with her fiancé, Ben—the two of them currently on a romantic getaway in Aruba—and Sabrina was moving in with Logan.
Sabrina hugged her. “Aww, Lexi, we’ll visit.”
“I miss you guys too,” Ally said, shoving her blond bangs out of her eyes. “It’s not the same now that we don’t live down the hall from each other.” She gave Lexi’s arm a squeeze. “It does kinda suck to be the last one here.”
Ethan returned and gave Ally a wink. He had short dirty blond hair and blue eyes, the same coloring as Ally, except their personalities were complete opposites. Ethan was a tough guy who rarely smiled, and Ally was bubbly and easily excitable. Ally beamed at him like he was a sex god wrapped in chocolate.
Lexi blew out a breath. Ya know, fucking couples and their sappy happiness allin your face. Not that she begrudged her friends’ happiness. It was just that it wasn’t the same between them anymore. It was all “let me check in with Ethan” or “I’ll see if Logan can come too.”
Lexi went back to packing Sabrina’s coffee mugs.
Sabrina leaned against the counter next to Lexi. “What’s the deal with you and Marcus? He keeps looking over at you, and you’ve definitely been checking him out.”
Lexi sucked in air. He was checking her out too? She hadn’t realized. A warm tingling spread over her skin.
Ally closed a cabinet and turned to Lexi. “Yeah, how long’s this been going on? I saw you two at the Valentine’s dance flirting up a storm.”
Ethan rushed out of the apartment with an end table, probably not comfortable with girl talk.
“We weren’t flirting,” Lexi said. “He helped me avoid a drunk guy.” She didn’t mention it was Sabrina’s uncle, not wanting her to feel bad.
“I saw you leave the dance with him,” Ally said. “Spill.” Her friends didn’t miss much.
She couldn’t share about her deal with Marcus from two days ago both because it was now off and he might want his mom’s issue to be kept private. She’d felt so bad about messing up with his mom that she’d told Marcus not to worry about the event he’d offered in exchange. He still wanted to help her out, but she just didn’t feel right about it.
Lexi lifted one shoulder. “We just happened to be leaving the dance at the same time. Now you’re all caught up.” She hadn’t talked to Marcus since that night, which wasn’t unusual. They didn’t know each other very well. She didn’t even have his number. He had hers from her business card, though. Not that she’d really expected anything. It was just that he was so sweet with his mom, she felt like she’d caught a glimpse of a different Marcus.
Sabrina nodded. “That’s good. He can’t seem to stay with just one woman. Logan says Marcus was seeing three women at the same time. Definitely not someone you could expect to have a committed monogamous relationship with. Major red flags on that guy. Not that he’s not nice. Logan is close with him, so he must be a good guy, he’s just not relationship material.”
There you have it, folks! The relationship counselor has made her diagnosis and it’s not good!
“Yup,” Lexi said. Sabrina wasn’t wrong. Marcuswasa good guy to have as a friend, but not more than that. She’d seen his good side shining through—the way he took care of his mom and the fact that he still wanted to honor his part of the deal even after she’d screwed up her part of the deal as his fake girlfriend. She’d heard the rumor about the three-women-at-the-same-time thing, also had heard he didn’t believe in monogamy, and that he left women devastated in his wake, all of them apparently believing they were special when they were just one of many. Obviously he lied to them, cheating on them and letting them think they had something real. Unfortunately, she was intimately familiar with that type of man—her ex, Noah, and his flavor of the week, her dad’s affairs and her long-suffering mom crying over it and then forgiving him over and over. Lexi had tried so hard to comfort her mom as a young girl and then, when she was older, begged her mom to move on or at least stand up for herself. And Lexi’s older brother was exactly like their father, already cheating on his newly pregnant bride, a sweet woman whom Lexi both liked and felt sorry for.
