Page 55 of The Player in New Zealand
He grinned. “Nope.”
I frowned. “I’m running out of positions I know. I hate giving up.” I stuck out my bottom lip for effect, but he wasn’t swayed.
He looked up at the hostel. “So this is it, huh? Our one-night stand is over and done.”
Right. That. I took a step back. “I didn’t want to know what your favorite position was anyway.”
He took a step forward, ignoring the space I had put between us. “Probably for the best. If you’d guessed right, we might have actually had to do it. Compare notes, you know,” he teased me.
“How horrible,” I deadpanned.
His smile was easy and affectionate, and I marveled at how we had grown on each other. It had nothing to do with the sex, of course.
“Claire,” he said. “Thank you for coming with me this weekend. You made it more fun.” He bit his lip. “Seeing my family and a little bit more of my country—even if it was incredibly dorky—through your eyes was a breath of fresh air.”
I flushed, pleased. “Well, I enjoyed your family. And your tour guide services.”
We both smiled, shuffling a little and, argh, I didn’t really want him to say goodbye. But it was for the best.
Right?
Right.
“Bye, Tane. See you tomorrow.”
He nodded, hands in his pockets, before leaning forward to dust a kiss across my cheek. “Night, Claire.”
EIGHTEEN
Tane was everywhere.Or at least it felt like it. If I was working, he would hang around the bar. He came in with the youth coaches after practices when I was working the lunch shift, he was there giving Nina the afternoon off, and when the bar was quiet, like when I was cleaning up at the end of the night, he was always there.
Sometimes we would order takeout and eat a hot meal at the end of my shift, or he’d be cooking breakfast in the morning when I came in. I started eating most of my meals at the bar.
He was being a sneaky fucker.
We’d both agreed to a one-night thing. And here he was trying to charm my pants off.
I couldn’t put my finger on it. He still had a glower around him a lot, but he definitely smiled more often. He wasn’t touching me like he had when we were faking a relationship, but the ghost of his hands was on me, the memory of a flirty smile in my mind.
I was imagining all these things that weren’t there. If anything, he was avoiding touching me. He still backslapped the guys, hugged Nina, put steadying or supportive hands on the staff. Perfectly acceptable touches, the normal affection I’d grown to expect.
Except for me.
And I found myself wanting to touch him. All. The. Time.
Had our one-night stand fried my brain?
It must have, because I didn’t last very long. On Tuesday night the week after the wedding, I leaned across the bar where Tane was sitting and quietly asked him, “Butter churner?”
His gaze snapped up to mine and a spark of recognition flickered in his eyes. “No.”
Damn it.
I’d been searching the Web for crazy sex positions, and, let’s be honest, fantasizing about them a little bit.
I moved down the bar to close a tab, and a moment later Tane snort-laughed.
“What?” I called down the bar.
