“Morning Janey! Actually I stopped by to see you Chief, it’s a personal matter,” she told him and pitched her voice low. Not so low as to not be heard, only low enough that I had to strain to hear. “I’ve found another woman for you and she is even more perfect than the last. A pediatrician so you know she likes children.”
Despite that little zing of something in my chest, I couldn’t help but smile at Eddy’s tenacity. She was determined to match Rafe before any of the others and made no secret of it.
Thank goodness I don’t want to keep him for good.
“Eddy I don’t want or need you to help me find a woman.” His gaze slid past her shoulder and connected to mine, as if he was speaking the words to me instead of her.
She folded her arms defensively. “You got a woman I don’t know about?”
Rafe crossed his arms and gave her his best I’m Chief look but she was undeterred. “Maybe I do. And maybe all this talk,” I tuned out the rest of their conversation and loaded my equipment up so I could carry it all in one trip.
There was nothing I needed to hear that would do me any good. Rafe and I were sex buddies and we’d formed some kind of friendship, that was all. He was free to date and fall for gorgeous and sophisticated pediatricians who wanted to have his ridiculously hot babies.
Completely and totally free.
Nope, not my business at all. That’s what I told myself when I floored it out of the parking lot without a thank you or a word of goodbye.Rafe“Are you gonna stand there sulking and ruining the good vibes I got going over here or are you planning on telling me what’s wrong?” Reese glared at me but the effect was ruined by the flour on the tip of her nose.
But she was my best friend and she wasn’t wrong. The problem was that I didn’t even know what was wrong, only that something was wrong. After the photo shoot with Janey and that hotter than hot kiss on top of the fire truck, she booked out of there like her ass was on fire. A sigh escaped that was as frustrated as I felt. “I don’t know what’s wrong and that’s the damn problem.”
Reese sighed but she never took her focus off the big square of biscuit dough on the table in front of her. She rolled and sighed, rolled and sighed, before lifting her gaze to me. “Janey?”
“What makes you say that?”
She huffed out a laugh and shook her head, freeing a few tendrils of hair from under her cap. “Besides the fact that I know you and have eyeballs? Well, how about the way you two were eyeballing each other before that smoking hot kiss at the lake?”
The lake? Holy shit. “The lake. Who took a photo?”
Reese barked out a laugh. “Right? I mean, I think we all assumed Janey was the ninja photographer behind all those photos on the Tulip Facebook page.” A small, amused smile crossed her face. “Crafty old birds.”
“Wait. Go back. What photos?” I remembered that kiss by the lake and what came after, but I damn sure would have remembered someone snooping that close by.
“Nope.” Reese shook her head and picked up the biscuit cutter. “You know the drill so look it up yourself and pretend to be shocked the same way we all have.”
She was right so that’s what I did and dammit, Reese was right again. The photo, no the photos of Janey and I played out like a comic strip. At first we were just talking, smiling and laughing, possibly flirting. Then we were closer and closer still. But the photo right before I held her face and kissed her was hot enough that my fingertips started to warm up against the screen. “Damn.”
“I know!” Reese tossed her head back and laughed, long and so hard that her petite frame shook. “I mean, damn! Now I see it’s not just your pretty face that makes the girls go crazy for you, Rafe. That look almost made me jealous.”
“Reese.”
“Sorry,” she said not looking the least bit sorry. “It is really hot thought. Maybe I’ll see if Jackson will let me recreate it.”
“Stop. Please.” I was happy for her but I didn’t need to hear the details of her and the Jackson’s sex life. “Okay yeah, it’s about me. And Janey.”
“You don’t say!” She feigned shock as she went about her business, sliding several trays into large ovens and pressing the cutesy timers that were so unlike her but staples in both of Reese’s kitchens. “Now tell me what you did to screw it up.”
“You assume it was me?”
She shrugged. “You’re a guy, a nice guy but still a guy, so it’s a pretty solid assumption. So?”