Page 28 of Play to Win
He stood, lifting the empty boxes in his hand. He could take them into the house. Camy kept a recycling bin right outside the pantry. There was also one on the side of the house near the trash cans. But he was not going inside just to see Portia.
“An adult that you’re definitely looking at with interest,” Lance continued. “Camy told me how your eyes almost bugged out of your head when she brought Portia upstairs last night. And we noticed the two of you stayed behind to “clean up” a little more after we all left.” Lance used his fingers to make air quotes, annoying the hell out of Ethan.
“Cut it out,” Ethan told him. “There’s nothing there.” At least that’s what he’d been desperately trying to convince himself.
“I can’t tell,” Lance insisted, and Ethan wanted to punch him.
Del just shook his head. “Don’t let him get to you, E. You know how big of an ass he can be.”
“Yeah.” They all knew that about Lance, unfortunately, this time, the guy had managed to latch onto something that Ethan just didn’t want to address. He was about to turn and head toward the house, but Lance stopped him with his next comment.
“It’s cool if you’ve got a thing for Portia.” Lance stared at Ethan seriously. “I told you that when we were in school, but you ignored me. You know I don’t hold with the rules other people make. If you liked her and she liked you, there should’ve never been a problem. And if you want to go for it with her now, that makes perfect sense.”
There wasn’t a problem, Ethan thought. He hadn’t pursued Portia back then because he hadn’t known what he felt for her. It had always been different with her. He knew what he wanted from the other girls, and he knew how to get it. With Portia, not so much. She wasn’t like other girls and not just by outside appearances. There was something inside her, a kindness and purity that he hadn’t sensed in anybody else. What was a guy like him going to do with someone like that?
“Look, let’s be clear,” Ethan said. “I don’t have a thing for Portia. I don’t plan on having a thing for anyone, anytime soon. Now, can you move your talkative ass out to the truck and get some of those boxes?”
He didn’t wait for Lance’s response, but turned around, ready to walk out of the yard and back to his truck. Instead, he walked straight into Portia, who had apparently been standing right behind him.
Her hair was pulled up so that her curls hung in a cheerful tail down to her shoulders. Portia’s denim shorts weren’t short. The light washed out denim came to her knees but had rips strategically placed so that the shorts looked both distressed and sexy as hell. A simple gray tank top hugged her perfect palm-sized breasts and she was smiling at him. It was a stilted smile, but still one that made him feel like a colossal ass for what he’d just said regarding her.
She looked great but that didn’t explain the clenching in his chest when he saw her. “Hey,” was all Ethan could manage to say because hell if he knew what was going on between them.
Portia lifted a hand and waved her fingers. “Hey.”
“Ah, we’ve got boxes to get from the truck,” Del said and reached over to yank his twin by the arm. “Let’s go get ‘em.”
Lance nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
The two of them leaving did nothing to make Ethan feel better, although it probably should have. Hadn’t he been thinking of being alone with Portia again all day? Isn’t that the real reason he’d been so irritated with her not answering his text messages?
“I sent you a text,” he said because he couldn’t think of anything else that wouldn’t make him sound more like an idiot.
The slight furrow of her forehead wasn’t exactly the reaction he’d expected.
“You did?” she asked and then reached into her back pocket to pull out her phone.
“Yeah, just once,” he started and resisted the urge to smack himself on the forehead for sounding like a bumbling teenager. “Or maybe twice. I just wanted to see how you were doing today.”
“Three times,” she said still staring down at her phone screen.
“Huh?”
She looked up at him. “You sent three text messages.”
Now would be a good time for a hole to open in the earth and swallow him as a reprieve from the embarrassment he was feeling right now.
Portia shook her head as she looked down again and her fingers moved over the phone. “I put my phone on silent this morning after speaking to my agent. The publishing house isn’t happy that I’m not back in New York yet, but I reassured them that I’d be there next Tuesday for the scheduled signings. My agent said the book was doing great, but they want me on the road to keep the momentum going. I didn’t feel like explaining myself over and over again, so I just silenced the phone for a while. Sorry about that.” She looked at him again with another smile.
This one was more genuine. It lifted her cheekbones and showcased the golden flecks in her eyes. Ethan swallowed hard before speaking because a little bit of that worry he’d seen in her previously was gone.
“No problem,” he said and shifted from one foot to the other. “And ah, about what I said…I mean, what you may have heard. I was just, ah…it wasn’t—”
She shook her head again. “No worries, Ethan. I don’t have a thing for you either. And last night, well, that was great. I’m totally fine with great sex, especially since I’d never had it until you.”
Fuck!
Now he felt even lower than the dirt beneath his feet. Sure, she’d just given him a huge compliment, but the hitch in her voice as she’d said those last words told more than anything he’d actually heard her say. Did she still have a thing for him? And if so, how did that effect the thing he’d had for her but had been too stupid to explore?
