One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)
Page 57
Cal Sherwood was not boring when he was having fun.
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They wandered about hand in hand for a while after lunch, and it was almost seven when he pulled up outside her place. If she invited him up would he come? Scungy would be starving and cranky and his litter would need cleaning and the place would stink. It wasn’t exactly tidy either, dishes in the sink and the bedroom in a state. But if he said no, it would spoil how great the day had been, how sure she now was he’d kissed her head and hadn’t wanted her to know, before making a thing of it while they’d snuggled.
“When do I see you again?” she asked.
“Next weekend, there’s a house party. I wasn’t going to go because it’s a two-night stay, but since we’ve proven we can navigate a single room without too much incident, how do you feel about a weekend party in the Hamptons?”
Another weekend with Cal. Another bedroom to navigate. The idea sent her adrenaline above the red line. “I only have one problem with that.”
“If you’re seeing someone else, you’ll have to cancel,” he grumbled. It did nothing to settle her state of mind.
“I’m not seeing anyone else.” Let him stew on it. “Yet.”
“I’m not either,” he said, and then looked like he wanted to snatch those words back. Too late, buddy.
“I have a cat.”
Obviously, the last thing he expected her to say. “You have a cat,” he repeated, one brow shooting up.
“I can’t leave him for a weekend, and I can’t ask Lenny.”
“Can you bring it—”
“Scungy.”
“A what?”
“His name is Scungy.”
“What kind of name is that? Wait.” He freaking-well pretended to be annoyed. “I don’t need to know. I’ll send a car Friday to bring you and the cat to the office. I’ll have it looked after.”
“Okay. It’s a da—an assignment.”
She put her hand to the car door to open it. Six days till she next saw him.
“You doing anything Wednesday night?”
“Wednesday night? As in Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. There’s a new burger bar on Lex. Thought you might like to try it out.”
“Because?” Was he asking her on a date?
“I like burgers. You like burgers. It’s new.”
“Oh.” That sounded deceptively simple. Too simple to be an actual date. It was a—yeah, no idea. “Do I need a briefing?”
“We’ll roll with it.”
What?
He was fudging the rules, and she should complain about that, but since she hadn’t spent the weekend curled up in her pjs with a hot water bottle and a tub of ice cream, Netflix, and Scungy to keep her misery company, and she did like burgers, she was willing this once to let it slide.
It was her excuse, and she was sticking to it.
Chapter Sixteen