Worse,
if she hadn’t been so busy, she’d be sitting around the condo by herself as Jonas worked his own fingers to the bone. This was really, really not the marriage she’d signed up for.
Or rather it was absolutely the one she’d agreed to but not the one she wanted.
The day before she was supposed to fly to Los Angeles for the taping, Viv came home early to pack. Shockingly, Jonas was sitting on the couch still decked out in his gorgeous suit but on the phone, as he nearly always was anytime she’d been in the same room with him lately.
For half a second, she watched him, soaking in his pretty mouth as it formed words. Shuddered as she recalled what that mouth could do to her when he put his mind to it. God, she missed him. In the short amount of time they’d been married, they’d gone from zero to sixty to zero again. She’d prefer a hundred and twenty.
She waved, loath to interrupt him, but before she could skirt past him to her bedroom, where her clothes still were since she’d never really “moved in” to Jonas’s room, he snagged her by the hips and settled her on the couch near him as he wrapped up his phone call.
Tossing his phone on the glass-and-steel conglomeration that he called a coffee table, he contemplated her with the sort of attention she hadn’t experienced in a long while. It was delicious.
“You’re going to LA in the morning?” he said by way of greeting, and picked up her hand to hold it in his, brushing his thumb across her knuckles.
“Yeah. I don’t know for how long. Franca left the plane ticket open-ended.” The little strokes of his thumb stirred something inside that had been dormant for a million years. He’d been so distant lately. Dare she hope that they might be coming back together?
No reason she had to let him be the instigator. She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it, but he pulled away and sat back on the couch. “That sounds like fun. I hope you have a good time.”
Cautiously, she eyed him. Why had he caught her before she left the room if he hadn’t been after spending time with her? “Is everything okay? I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”
“I...came home on purpose. To see you,” he admitted. “Before you left.”
Her heart did a funny a little dance. But then why all the weird hot and cold? He obviously cared about her—but how much? Enough? She had no idea because they never talked about what was really going on here.
It was high time they had it out. She was leaving for LA in the morning and they rarely saw each other. She had to make this small opportunity work.
“I’m glad. I missed you.” There. It was out in the open.
But he just smiled without a hint of anything. “I miss hanging out with you, too. We haven’t had coffee in ages.”
Or sex. The distinction between the two was legion and she didn’t think for a minute that he’d misspoken or forgotten that they’d been intimate. It was a deliberate choice of words. “We haven’t had a coffee relationship in ages.”
His expression didn’t change. “I know. It’s been crazy. We’re both so busy.”
“By design, feels like.”
That got a reaction, but why, she couldn’t fathom. She watched as unease filtered through his gaze and he shifted positions on the couch, casually folding one leg over the other but also moving away from her. “We’re both workaholics, that’s for sure.”
“I’m not,” she corrected. “Not normally. But I’ve been dropped into an alternate reality where Franca drives me fourteen hours a day to reach these lofty goals that don’t represent what I really want out of life.”
Jonas frowned, his gaze sweeping over her in assessment. “You’re finally getting your career off the ground. She’s been keeping me apprised and I’ve been pleased with the direction she’s taking you. But if you’re not, we should discuss it. I can hire a different marketing expert, one that’s more in line—”
“It’s not the direction of the marketing,” she broke in before he called in yet another career savant who would be brilliant at taking her away from her husband. “It’s that I was happier when Cupcaked was a little bakery on Jones Street and we had sex in the foyer.”
Something flitted through his gaze that she wished felt more like an invitation. Because she would have stripped down right here, right now if that had gotten the reaction she’d hoped for. Instead, his expression had a huge heaping dose of caution. “We agreed that we’d take that part as it came. No pressure. You’re focusing on your career, just like I am. If Franca’s not guiding you toward the right next level, then what do you want her to do?”
“I want her to go away!” Viv burst out. “She’s exhausting and so chipper and can do more from 10:00 p.m. to midnight than a general, two single moms and the president combined. I want to have dinner with you, and lie in bed on a Saturday morning and watch cartoons with my head on your shoulder. I want you to rip my dress at the seams because you’re so eager to get me naked. Most of all, I don’t want to think about cupcakes.”
But he was shaking his head. “That’s not me. I’m not the kind of guy who rips a woman’s dress off.”
“But you are. You did,” she argued inanely because what a stupid thing to say. He was totally that man and she loved it when he was like that. “I don’t understand why we were so hot and heavy and then you backed off.”
There came another shadow through his gaze that darkened his whole demeanor. “Because we’re friends and I’m nothing if not interested in preserving that relationship.”
“I am, too,” she shot back a little desperately. This conversation was sliding away from her at an alarming pace, turning into something it shouldn’t be, and she wasn’t sure how that had happened. Or how to fix it. “But I’m also not happy just being friends. I love the text messages and I’m thrilled with what you’ve done for my business. But it’s not enough.”
“What are you saying?” he asked cautiously, his expression blank.