8. Tease

EIGHT

TEASE

O kay, I couldn’t do this.

I’d just pulled into the driveway of Eric’s sprawling ranch-style house in one of Phoenix’s toniest neighborhoods, and even if my outfit kicked ass, I was back to wondering if I was wrong about the signals, because friends could make pizza together and watch a movie.

But my outfit did not say friend.

With my newfound openness with my chicks, I wanted to text one of them for a quick pep talk.

But I was sitting in his double driveway, staring at his long-ass house, and it would’ve seemed weird if I sat there for ten minutes getting my shit sharp.

“Now or never, Wylde,” I muttered to myself, threw my door open, my leg out, and I grabbed the bottle, my black crossbody and exited the car.

I pulled the thin strap of the crossbody over my head and walked to the door, liking the color green it was painted when the rest of the house was a soft yellow with white trim, though the shutters on the windows were black.

I hit the doorbell, and I could understand why it took Eric a few beats to get to it, considering if he was in the back, it’d take a while to make it to the door.

I didn’t think the FBI paid for a pad this killer, so NI&S must remunerate really well.

The door opened, and I jolted because I was in my thoughts about his house, but also, he stood there wearing an untucked, white linen shirt that made the tan of his skin all the tanner, supremely faded jeans that hung on him just right, his feet were bare, and his black hair was messy, like he’d just gotten up from a nap.

A hot nap where he had hot dreams about doing nasty things to a hot chick, one like me.

“Hey,” I forced out, doing it while realizing his eyes were not on my face.

They were taking their sweet time traveling down my body.

They got to my shoes, the tip of his tongue came out to wet his lower lip, my vagina shuddered, and I kept forcing myself to speak.

“I brought wine. I hope you like red.”

His eyes sped up to mine, the look in them not one you’d ever give a little sister. My vagina pulsed a whole lot stronger, then I let out a squeak because his arm was around my waist, pulling me inside.

He had to do some lifting since there was a step up.

This he did.

It was amazing .

All of it .

Then the door slammed, I was pressed against it, Eric was pressed against me, and that was so much more amazing, I forgot how to breathe.

“Those shorts and shoes,” he said in a thick voice that, yes, caused further reactions in my nether regions. “This mean I’m finally out of your friend zone?”

“I thought I was in your friend zone,” I whispered.

“I’m a good guy, honey, but I don’t pull out my mom’s recipe for mushroom sage stuffing for a woman I consider a friend.”

Oh man.

He made me his mom’s recipe.

That didn’t have a nether region reaction.

That reaction I felt in my heart.

“Good to know,” I breathed.

His face was so close, our foreheads were almost touching.

Which meant his mouth was so close, we were almost kissing.

And I was surrounded by the smell of cedarwood (back to the nether region reaction).

But he didn’t kiss me.

“Are you…gonna…kiss me?” I pushed out.

“Oh no,” he murmured. “You put me through two months of not clueing in, now you wait for the good stuff.”

What?

It had been two days.

“Two months?”

“Jess, I’ve been waiting for an in from you since you made me your dragon fruit refresher. Which, I’ll confirm, is better than Starbucks.”

I was pleased with the compliment.

But…

Was he serious?

I slapped his arm. “Why didn’t you make it more clear?”

“You’re my friend’s girlfriend’s girlfriend. Staring at your ass and showing up at your place of business for lunch nearly every fuckin’ day made my point. I couldn’t come on stronger than that. You had to clue in and make your move.”

“The other guys do too, though, not the staring at my ass part. I didn’t even notice you staring at my ass.”

“That’s good, because I didn’t want you to see that part. And they don’t.”

“They do.”

“Cap does. I do. The other guys don’t.”

I thought about that.

And…

Shit!

They didn’t.

Sure, they’d come.

But Eric and Cap came the most.

Because Cap wanted to see Raye.

And…

I was such a dufus.

Eric came to SC because he wanted to see me.

“Then I showed up at two in the morning at a homeless camp to ream your sweet ass,” Eric reminded me.

Yeah, that was above the call of duty.

A friend would do that, for certain.

But a guy acquaintance you only kinda, sorta knew?

Not unless he was into you.

Total dufus.

“And I hauled most of the makings of a Thanksgiving dinner to your house, and cooked for you,” Eric kept on.

Okay.

Maybe I was beyond a dufus.

“I could continue,” he stated.

He could.

“I’m a dufus,” I mumbled.

His tone went from teasing to gentle. “You had other shit on your mind.”

“I thought you liked Lucia’s cooking.”

“I do. I like your ass better.”

Not the most flowery of compliments, but I was pretty proud of my ass. It was awesome. I was thrilled he noticed.

“Okay, if you’re not going to kiss me, can you stop pressing me against the door so I can have wine? Suddenly I need it. Bad .”

He grinned.

It was a sexy wicked grin.

He didn’t end it kissing me.

So I frowned.

That made his grin broader, and his head came in, I braced for the goodness, but he dipped at the last minute and ran his nose along the side of my neck.

I shivered.

“You smell good,” he murmured there.

“So do you,” I murmured to his thick, curling hair.

Abruptly, he lifted up, pulled away, grabbed my hand, and tugged me into his house.

Okay, so I knew where we stood.

The man was still a tease.

The problem with that was, it was fantastic.

Which totally blew.

Once I recovered from the pressed-to-the-door antics, and he had me in his kitchen and took the paper bag of wine out of my hand, I looked around.

Massive, open great room that included the most humongous, attractive, three-sided sectional I’d ever seen. The seats were deep. The couch was facing a built-in unit, in which was an enormous eighty-inch flat screen, as well as shelves with a lot of books, some photo frames, and a few mementos I made a mental note to peruse later.

Behind that was a seating area that held more attractive furniture, including a big double-wide chair and ottoman with a sloping lamp over it where, if one were to read, it would be the perfect reading spot.

All of this was surrounded by windows that gave a view to his backyard, which looked like a straight-up resort. Amazing landscaping. An interesting shaped pool. A pergola on one side that looked covered in something like wisteria. A built-in grill. Great patio furniture. And a fabulous high-top outside table with six stools around it.

Rounding out the inside was a dark wood oval dining room table just inside the front door with a striking gold and globe chandelier.

And the huge-ass kitchen where we were.

Eric was pulling down wide-bowled, gleaming wineglasses from a glass-fronted cabinet.

“I take it the PI business is lucrative,” I remarked, and his black eyes came to me. “Not being rude, but it’s hard not to notice your place is the absolute shit.”

His lips curved and he murmured, “Thanks, Jess. Glad you like it.”

He set the glasses down, pulled the wine out of the bag, looked at the label and whistled.

This meant he knew good wine.

Probably not a surprise, considering his tenure in California.

“Honey, you didn’t have to do this,” he said softly, holding the wine my way.

“Turner, I did. You’ve been super cool with me through some pretty tough shit,” I replied.

He leaned in.

I held my breath.

He kissed my nose.

I frowned.

He pulled back, caught my frown, and started laughing.

“You’re a tease,” I accused.

“Takes one to know one,” he muttered, opening a drawer to nab a wine key.

“I’m not a tease,” I retorted.

He aimed his eyes to the vicinity of my shorts, legs and shoes.

Okay.

Point taken.

I smirked.

He started laughing again, but it abruptly stopped when his phone on the kitchen island clattered.

I saw the screen light up and caught the name Savannah , before he reached out and swiped the text notification to clear it.

“I can’t pretend I didn’t see her name,” I said quietly. “Is everything cool?”

“No, since you’re finally here, in those shorts, bringing good wine, and she’s pulling her usual shit.”

Oh man.

“Ummmm…” I drew that out, because he was normally open, and we’d cleared a big hurdle, but we were in no place for me to expect things that weren’t yet mine to have.

He popped the cork and went right to pouring, not bothering with the aerator I saw in the drawer where he got the wine key (because that vintage didn’t need it, so he really did know wine), and he did this being the Eric I was coming to know.

He shared.

“Our divorce was final two years ago. She’s in regular contact.”

“Okay.”

He put the bottle down, picked up a glass and handed it to me. He then picked up his own but neither of us drank.

Instead, he lowered the boom.

“Found out this morning, she’s in town. Phoenix. She’s scouting a location to open another restaurant.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “Is she…moving here?”

“According to the conversation I had with her this morning, that’s the threat,” he murmured.

“Threat?”

“Jessie.” He sighed.

And one could say it was a wallop of a sigh.

He carried on and explained why it was such a wallop of a sigh.

“I don’t want to sound like a dick. I also don’t want to be talking about this. But we are, because Savannah is Savannah, and no fuckin’ way I want you to see her name on my phone and wonder.”

“You really don’t have to tell me,” I promised.

“I really do because I think you finally get I’m interested in you. I want to get to know you better. And to do that, I want to spend time with you, and that time shouldn’t have you wondering why my ex is texting me.”

Oh man.

That felt great .

“So you need to know, she and I are over,” he continued. “I don’t want her here. She’s no longer in my life. I don’t want an antagonistic relationship with her. In the beginning, I was good with adapting to friends. She wasn’t. She wanted me back. She is where she is in her profession because she doesn’t give up. But I’m not a recipe to perfect or a critic to win over, and she isn’t getting that. So now, I’d prefer no relationship at all.” He grinned. “And I finally got this woman at my house I’ve been hoping would get her head out of her ass about me. So I really don’t want her a part of tonight.”

There was no denying my head had been firmly up my ass, so I let that slide.

“I can assume with the honesty you share with me, which is awesome by the way…”

His lips quirked, and he inclined his head to accept the compliment.

I kept speaking.

“…that you’re as honest with her.”

Eric nodded. “I am. And her response is to open a restaurant where I moved. And just to say, we have a branch of NI&S in LA. I had a nice house there too. A life. Friends. My closest being Darius, who now manages that branch since Mace moved here. And his wife, Malia, is my second closest. But I moved here to get away from Savannah.”

Whoa.

That put this in a whole new category.

Like, stalker category.

Because I didn’t feel I could share that (yet), I let my, “Cripes,” offer my thoughts.

He lifted his glass. “That about says it.”

I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his wrist.

“We’re not toasting to that. We’re toasting to heads being out of asses.”

He chuckled. “That’s something I’ll be down to toast to.”

I let his wrist go, we clinked glasses and sipped.

The wine was yum.

Yeah.

I done good.

“Excellent.” He was purring again, and physically being with him when he did it was oh so much better.

“My poutine wore off about an hour ago, so we need to make pizza,” I informed him.

“Where did you get poutine?”

“Brunch Snob.”

“You’ll have to take me there,” he murmured, putting his glass down and turning to a bowl with a towel over it.

I so was taking him to Brunch Snob.

He flipped the towel, and there was a perfect ball of pizza dough rising in it.

I bit my lip, because I doubted his mom taught him how to make pizza dough.

Maybe.

But doubtful.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked.

He came to me, rested the sides of his hands on my neck and tipped my head back with his thumbs at my jaw.

Nice move.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “She taught me how to cook. That was part of the good times we had. But once she gave me that, it became mine, Jess. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Can we be done with her?” he requested.

I nodded more fervently.

He smiled. “Great.”

It was the perfect time for a kiss.

He didn’t kiss me.

He took his hands from me, moved to some canisters, and ordered, “Grab the red sauce from the stove.”

I let my disappointment at no kiss go, put my glass down and headed toward his massive six-burner Wolf stove.

They said delayed gratification was a thing.

Though I hoped it wasn’t too delayed before I could be the judge of that.

* * *

For your edification, getting my head out of my ass might not earn me a kiss from Eric Turner.

But it did significantly alter how we watched a movie together.

That being, after we ate his delicious homemade prosciutto and fig pizza topped with mounds of arugula, I’d seated myself on one side of the couch. He’d come up to me, bent, caught my leg behind my knee, lifted it so my wedge was in his stomach, and then with a few tugs and a flick, the strap was released, and the shoe was gone.

He repeated that with my other shoe.

And then he put his hands under my arms, lifted me up, and stretched us out across the long back side of the couch, me tucked to his front.

Once he had us situated, he leaned into me to grab the remote from the coffee table but left his arm draped around my waist after he fired up his TV.

I wasn’t given the option of a different seating arrangement.

But no way in hell was I complaining.

He murmured, “Need anything before we start?”

He’d emptied the last of the wine in our glasses before we headed to the couch, but mine was on the other end of the coffee table now.

“Just a sec,” I said as I started to push up to reach for it.

But he growled, “Hold.”

I was so stunned by his growling, and his word, I held as he pushed up and nabbed my glass.

He put it in reach and settled back behind me.

I didn’t know how to respond to this.

“I can reach for my glass, Turner,” I told him.

“I know,” he replied. “Though, now that reach is easier.”

It definitely was.

Though, I still didn’t know what to do with a man who was so attentive, he wouldn’t allow me to execute about a second’s worth of effort to grab a wineglass.

As noted, I’d never had anyone look after for me, certainly not someone who would growl at me so he could retrieve my glass.

He was the kind of man who, in a different time, would throw his mantle over a puddle so a woman wouldn’t get her shoes wet.

Or knock the shit out of his opponent with his lance in a joust to earn the ribbon from her hair.

I felt this settle, surprisingly easily, into the space around my heart, as he asked, “All good now?”

“Yeah,” I answered in an understatement.

He started up the movie and rested his head on some toss pillows he bunched there.

I rested my head on his biceps.

They weren’t fluffy.

But they felt nice .

Halfway through the movie, he shifted to his back, sliding me on top of him. His head was still on the pillows, and mine was on his chest, the rest of my body covering the length of him, and his hand at the small of my back. This was so much better .

Not only because he felt good and smelled good, but also because, when he laughed, which he did, a lot (the movie was funny, and I was glad he thought so), I heard it and felt it.

When the credits were rolling, I lifted my head and looked down at his profile since his head was turned on the pillows to see the TV.

It wasn’t as good as full face, but it was still gorgeous.

He turned to look at me.

Yeah. The profile was fantastic.

But this was better.

“Did you by chance make dessert?” I asked.

“No, but I scored a quart of Lotus cookie ice cream from Frost.”

I was a kickass bee-yotch. Not the kind of woman to let my eyes go happy round with excitement over yummy ice cream.

But I knew with the satisfied smile he had on his face, I’d let my eyes go happy round with excitement.

What was not exciting was, when he angled up, taking me with him, he was no longer my couch. Instead, I was on my feet, my hand held, being pulled to the kitchen.

Why did I ask about dessert?

Why?

He grabbed the gelato and put it in the microwave for twenty seconds to soften it (full approval) as I asked, “Bowls?”

“Cabinet above the dishwasher.”

I headed there, grabbed the bowls and came back.

I put the bowls down where he was standing with the gelato quart, and he’d managed to unearth an ice cream scoop during my long (and it was long) trek across his huge-ass kitchen.

He looked at the bowls.

He looked at me. “Those are pasta bowls.”

“Your point?”

He busted out laughing, dropping the scoop and taking hold of me.

I was plastered to his front, one of his arms around my waist, the other hand entwined in my hair. So, obviously, I had to wind my arms around his shoulders.

“It’s only a quart,” he murmured.

“File it away for future reference, big man, I’m a my-own-quart kind of woman.”

“You really want a kiss, don’t you?” he whispered, eyes aimed at my lips.

“Yes,” I whispered back, eyes aimed to his.

His head was descending.

I was rolling up on my toes.

And his doorbell chimed.

“Fucking shit ,” he bit out. He kissed my nose again and said, “Hold that thought.”

He let me go and walked to the door.

There was a line of windows at the top, I couldn’t see outside from my angle, but I saw his entire body language change before he opened it.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

“I could see you through the door,” a woman replied.

“Then why’d you ring the damned bell?” he asked. Before she answered, he said, “Strike that. I don’t give a shit. I’m not doing this, Savannah.”

Oh fuck.

“Who is she?” his ex-wife asked.

“Go,” Eric said as answer.

“You’re not answering my texts.”

“Take a hint.”

“I leave town tomorrow night, and we need to talk.”

“Did you hear me say I’m not doing this?”

Eric made a move to shut the door, and she snapped, “Don’t you shut that door on me, Eric!”

He shut the door on her.

She knocked on it.

Loudly.

He came back to me and started scooping ice cream.

I waited for another knock. There wasn’t one, but now I could see the top of a brunette’s head in the window because she got close. And not only that, her eyes were aimed at us in the kitchen.

Yikes.

“Uh…” I didn’t quite start.

“Don’t,” Eric grunted.

He finished doling out the entire quart, put a spoon in each bowl, handed one to me, took the other, and grabbed my hand.

He then walked me down to the very end of the longest hall I’d ever traversed, where there was a massive bedroom that had a seating area at the front, opened doors to a dreamy walk-in closet, and a double wide opening to an even dreamier bathroom with a soaking tub being the star of the show, this set in front of a glass block wall.

He didn’t take me to the bathroom or the handsome couch by the fireplace at the front of the massive room.

He took me to the king-size bed at the back wall, pulled me into it, uncovered a remote from a bedside table and flicked on another huge TV mounted to the side wall but swung out to face the bed.

He queued up The Nice Guys .

Seriously primo taste in film.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” I offered quietly.

He looked me dead in the eye. “That my ex is borderline stalking me?”

I gave him Harlow’s stretched-and-turned-down-lips face.

He looked at it, it seemed to lighten his mood, then his mood took a hit when he leaned forward, pulled his phone out of his back pocket and scowled at it.

He did some things to the screen with his thumb and put it to his ear.

I didn’t know if she said anything, I just knew he spoke pretty quickly upon putting the phone to his ear, and what he said was, “My next step is a protective order. Not sure your rep will take that hit when it gets out. And I promise you, it’ll get out. Your choice. And you know that’s not an empty threat.” He then tossed his phone on the bedside table and said to me, “Your gelato is melting.”

I spooned some up and told him, “Your bedroom is da bomb.”

“Da bomb?”

“Da bomb,” I confirmed.

His lips twitched, and he spooned up his own ice cream.

“Though I now get why you’re so fit, because I think your living room is in Phoenix, but your bedroom is in Hawaii,” I quipped.

He started laughing.

Good.

I made him laugh.

“That’s the longest hall in history,” I kept going for it. “If he was alive, Louis the Fourteenth would be jealous as all hell.”

He shoved pillows behind him, rested against his headboard, yanked my back against his chest, stretched his legs out, and said, “Shut up, Jess.”

He then started the movie.

I shut up, and somehow we both managed to eat ice cream in his bed with me using him as my cushion (I saw how he did it, he held his bowl in the hand with the arm around me, and used his free one to dip into the creamy deliciousness, performing a minor miracle by not dripping any on him…or me).

When we were finished, he put the bowls aside, and I was pleased beyond measure when he relaxed against me and started laughing at the movie.

It was such a good choice, my selection of 21 Jump Street after didn’t compare, but Eric didn’t complain.

Though I fell asleep, curled into his side, my head on his chest, my arm around his abs, in his bed, about halfway through it.

And Eric didn’t wake me to send me home.