Lip Service (Private Relations 2)

Hearing him laugh again, she clicked over.

“Hello?”

“Hey babe. Still coming over?” Chris asked.

Pulling the two remaining bags out of the trunk, she said, “I can barely walk. It was awful.”

Chris said, “Deacon said it would be bad. You want me to come to you?”

Knowing she was whiny now, she asked, “Would you mind?”

“Nah. I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

Going upstairs to her apartment, she dropped her bags on the bed, then hopped in the shower. Changing into flannel pajama pants and a tank top, she lay on the couch and watched television while she waited for Chris to get there.

Blinking as she heard a key in the front door, Chloe sat up as Chris came through the front door, a couple bags in hand.

He looked at her and set the bags down saying, “Figured I’d save you the trouble of getting up. Deacon said she walked for miles the last time they went to the outlet stores.”

Shuddering, Chloe said, “It was horrible. I feel like my feet are actually bruised on the bottom. She’s insane. Never again.”

Sniffing the air now, Chloe said, “What’s in the bags?”

“Wine,” he said, pulling a bottle of Pinot Grigio out of one bag. “And dinner from that one Italian place we went to.”

“You’re amazing,” Chloe said.

Moving the bag of food to the counter and placing the wine in her refrigerator, he said, “First things first though.”

He lifted her feet up off the end of the couch and sat down, then massaged her arches. Digging his thumb in, he said, “Too hard?”

Shaking her head, she said, “No. That’s perfect. Thank you.”

He continued to rub her foot for a few more minutes before switching over to the other. She sighed and said, “If you ever decide the whole PR thing isn’t for you, I would totally hire you to be my personal masseuse.”

Smiling, he said, “It’s always good to have a backup plan. I’ll keep that under advisement if PR doesn’t pan out.”

He proceeded to spend the remainder of the evening snuggled up with her on the couch, plying her with wine and excellent Italian food, and periodically rubbing the arches of her feet. They turned on a movie, but neither of them paid much attention to it. Chloe felt herself drifting in and out of sleep.

Sometime in the night, Chloe woke up. They were now in her bed. Chris was tucked up against her side, asleep. She stared at him for a moment, feeling that all too familiar flutter in her heart region. He must have picked her up and moved her to the bedroom. She had absolutely no recollection of getting up and going to bed.

Sighing now, she realized she’d been able to be willfully ignorant up until this point, but she couldn’t avoid it any longer. She was utterly, hopelessly in love with him.

Chapter 22

When Chris woke up, Chloe was pressed against his side, sleeping peacefully. He smiled, thinking about how she’d been trying to stay awake on the couch next to him last night. When he came over with dinner last night, she’d clearly already been asleep. He’d rubbed her feet, gotten her to eat, then carried her to bed when she passed out.

Not quite tired himself, he’d stayed up to watch a little bit more television. Mostly, he’d been lost in his own thoughts. During the fishing trip with Deacon, he’d spent most of the morning thinking about Chloe.

The weekend before they’d gone out on the boat and had sex in several places. Every time he’d tried to focus on what Deacon was talking about, he’d get an image of Chloe in his mind as she bent over the driver’s seat or riding him on the bow of the boat. They had crossed that item of his bucket list off with indelible permanent marker.

Deacon had finally just asked him, “So, things are pretty serious with you and my sister?”

Chris hadn’t really considered it much. He’d been avoiding the subject in his mind specifically because he didn’t want to consider it. When posed with the direct question, he said, “Kind of, yeah.”

He should have known that Deacon wouldn’t let it die there. He’d spent the remaining part of the morning trying to clarify what “Kind of, yeah” had meant.

Chris shrugged as he thought back now. He supposed that Deacon probably had the right to ask at least some questions. He’d practically raised her, at least during the years that counted.