14. Dane

14

DANE

I stare at the seething brunette. Morgan glares at me as if I just accused her of running over my pet dog.

I wait for her to say something else to explain what the hell she means. She doesn’t.

I take a deep breath and keep my voice even when I say, “Yes, Morgan, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.” She scowls. “ You ghosted me.”

It’s my turn to scowl. “Are you joking?”

“No!”

“Yes!” Miles cheers. He punches a victorious fist in the air. “First place, baby!”

“Shut up!” Morgan shouts.

Her brother lowers his arm and glowers at his sister, but his expression morphs into apprehension when he registers her expression.

His eyes bounce between me and her. From the corner of my eye, I see Matthew and Mason do the same.

“What’s going on?” Matthew ends the tense silence that followed his sister’s outburst.

Morgan ignores him. “I waited for you to text me after that night,” she tells me. “You didn’t.”

“I did text you. Or, at least, I tried.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No?” I reach into my pocket and take out my phone. I scroll through the messages, going back months, until I get the ones with the number I thought was Morgan’s.

I open the thread and hold out the phone. “Then explain this.”

She hesitates for a split second before snatching the phone from my hands and reading the messages.

Disbelief wars with shock in her beautiful brown eyes. Her fingers press over the text to reveal the timestamp. Her mouth falls open.

Morgan stares at my phone for an agonizingly long minute before finally looking up to meet my gaze. “You…” She licks her lips and shakes her head. “You actually tried to message me?”

“I did.” How could you ever believe I wouldn’t?

She looks back down at my phone, chewing on her bottom lip. “This isn’t my number.”

I crack a weak smile. “I’ve realized that.”

Her wide, confused eyes meet mine again. “Why didn’t you ask for my number when I started working as your nutritionist?”

I shrug. “Eli gave you my number. I figured you would text me if you wanted me to have your number. You never did.”

It irritated me every time Morgan messaged Eli when she arrived at the condo or contacted me from her office phone or through email. It forced me to wonder if she really thought I was such a shitty guy that she couldn’t even trust me with her number when we had to work together.

Watching the emotions flicker across her features, I realize I had it all wrong.

“Mason. Miles. Come help me with something in the kitchen.” Matthew stands from the armchair and motions for his younger brothers to follow.

Mason stands.

Miles doesn’t budge. “Nah, man. Thanks. I want to see how this goes.”

Mason chuckles as Matthew grabs his defiant brother by the arm and pulls him off his seat.

“All right. Damn,” Miles huffs. “No need to get physical.”

Matthew pushes his brother out of the living room. Before he follows, he levels a loaded look on me before turning to his sister. “Holler if you need us.”

“Okay,” she murmurs.

Seconds later, we’re alone. And for the one-hundredth time since I’ve met the woman in front of me, I don’t know what to think. Or say.

Morgan’s reaction to my accusation forces me to consider something I never have before. It’s something that would’ve saved me from months of unease. It would have motivated me to find another way to contact the beauty who stole the air from my lungs when she kissed me.

“Am I right to assume you didn’t mean to give me a bogus number?” I finally ask.

“Yes.” No doubt, her thoughts echo the turbulent ones crashing against my mind. “I—I can’t believe this was all a misunderstanding. I can’t believe you actually tried to text me.”

“Why not?” I set my controller down and turn to face her, my confidence slowly rebuilding, brick by brick, as I come to terms with the fact that the rejection I’ve been feeling stemmed from a simple error.

It was an error that, when I think about it, would have been easy to make when exchanging numbers in a dim club with flashing lights and friends pulling us in opposite directions.

Morgan didn’t give me the wrong number on purpose. She was into me. And based on the flush in her cheeks, I’m going to take a leap and say part of her still is.

“I told you that night that I’d wanted to speak to you ever since I saw you at Carter’s barbeque,” I remind her.

She looks down at the fingers curled in her lap. “I thought that was just a line.”

I shift closer and use my finger to tilt her chin up. I stare deep into her eyes when I say, “It wasn’t just a line, Morgan.”

She inhales a sharp breath.

Hope, that bastard that can just as easily enliven me as wreck me, threatens to burst out of my chest.

This isn’t how I expected the evening to go, but now that we’re here, I refuse to let this opportunity pass me by.

Forget what’s happened these past few weeks working together. I will forget how much her dismissive attitude and indifference pained me. Knowing the truth means none of that matters.

We can start over with a clean slate. I have an eraser at the ready. I just need to know if Morgan wants me to use it.

“What would you have said?”

“What?” She yanks her gaze from my lips.

I smirk. “What would you have said to my text.” I glance at my phone, which is still in her hands. “If you had read my text that night. Or the next morning. What would your answer have been?”

“I would’ve said yes,” she says, breathless.

“Yeah?” I inch closer. My eyes drop to her mouth. She licks her lips. My abs tighten.

“Yeah.” She leans forward, just as affected by the magnetism that’s always existed between us, but now has the force of a thousand pieces of iron after learning all we assumed about the other had been based on a misunderstanding.

The attraction we felt at the club resurfaces from the depths we’d shoved it down to, and I don’t try to fight the urge to mold my lips to hers and pick up things where we left off the night at the club.

I lower my head. My cock throbs at the thought of tasting her lips again after all this time.

“It’s too quiet out there,” Miles shouts from the kitchen. A thwack followed by an oomph follows his outburst .

Morgan winces and draws back. The spell is broken.

I huff out a strained laugh.

“Later,” I vow. The desire between us blazes hot, but the reminder that we’re not alone forces me to demonstrate self-control.

Morgan and I will have our moment. But we should save it for a time when there’s no threat of her older brothers interrupting us.

Morgan presses her lips together, her expression mirroring my want. “When?”

The muffled sounds of fists and bodies colliding trail out from the kitchen.

“As soon as possible.”

Her eyes flash. “How about tonight in my hotel room?”

Hell yes.

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”