Page 31 of The Best Men
And I sure as hell can’t spend time wondering what it would be like to peel that polo shirt off him and put my tongue all over that lean chest.
When I leave my bedroom a couple minutes later, Mark’s waiting in the tiny living room, cracking his knuckles, all fidgety.
Hell. He’s struggling. But I don’t know if it’s a big deal?something he can barely even acknowledge?or just an ordinary case of inconvenient attraction to someone you don’t actually like.
I’m not going to say anything. If he wants to avoid the subject, then so will I.
“What’s the matter?” I tease. “Is the bed not soft enough for you, Goldilocks? You want mine?”
Mark mumbles something that sounds a lot likefuck off. But then he exhales heavily, gestures around the bright little room, and says, “This is fine. It’s no problem. I just didn’t realize we’d be staying here instead of in the house.”
“Good, good,” I say crisply, since I don’t want to dwell on our close quarters either. “So what do you say we grab some fish tacos and then head to the florist?”
“Right. Yes,” he says, rising to his feet. “Let’s do that.”
“Excellent. I’d like to pick up a bottle of wine for later too.”But not because I’m going to ply you with rosé and hit on you.Nope. No sir.“. . . And then we’ll hit the florist and check off item 2A on your spreadsheet.”
That red hue returns to his cheeks.
Weird. Do errands get him hot?
No. It’s still me somehow. I recognize that look from Angel’s showroom too. When he was undressing me with his eyes. It’s the same look he had in the car when I stretched across him. And the one he wore, too, when he covered my hand with his thirty minutes ago and told me he wanted to drive.
I take a deep breath and ignore it. “Come on, Banks. I’m not getting any younger.” I head for the door, where I step out and then turn around to make sure he’s following me. “P.S.—this time it’s my turn at the wheel.”
His pupils widen, and here we go again.
Fuck.
Ignoring this attraction won’t be easy.
* * *
It gets a little easier when we hit the road, with the wind in our hair. I turn on the radio, and EDM blasts from the speakers.
Mark immediately changes the channel, surfing until he finds NPR.
I snicker. But I let him get away with it. The MarketWatch guys are giving a financial rundown. “The S and P is up twelve points in blah, blah light trading. The US Ten-Year Note is blah, blah, blah, blah. A big company bought another big company, and for some reason that matters.”
I’m paraphrasing.
Mark pulls out his phone and makes a call. “Hey, Brett. How’d the yield curve react to the CPI? Eh, okay. I hope you hedged out those futures. Right. Sorry. Yeah, I’m sure you’re tied up. But before I go?rook to A4. Later.”
He hangs up, and I attempt some casual conversation.
“What’s a CPI?”
“Consumer price index. It’s a measure of inflation. The bond market hates inflation.”
“Don’t we all. And what’s A4?”
“Oh, a chess move. It was my turn.”
It takes me a beat to understand what he meant. And then I snort. “Who were you talking to? I thought it was a co-worker.”
“It was. Brett is my work husband. And we play chess too.”
There are so many things I need to unpack in that sentence. “Your work husband?”
