Every Time I Fall (Orchid Valley 3)

He puts down his food. “Not at all. I told you last night that I want you, and I meant it. This isn’t charity. We both need this.”

“And if it blows up in our faces?”

“In what way?”

What if I fall for you? What if I become delusional and think I could really have you? It’s a reasonable fear, given my reaction to him after just one kiss, but I can’t admit that if I actually want to consider going forward with this. And I do. Lord help me, I do. “What if it ends badly?”

“Like you break my heart?” he asks, and I actually scoff, the idea is so ridiculous. He shrugs. “All relationships come with risks. Every single one. Friendships can go sour as easily as romances. And this . . .” He scans my face. I wonder what he sees there—wonder how he possibly sees anything that makes him want to follow through with this. “This can be exactly what we want it to be. We’re both adults, and we both care about each other enough not to be careless. Am I right about that?”

I bite my bottom lip. I care about Dean a lot. Maybe too much for this. But he’s right about Amy. She’s toxic for him, and I know he needs to move on if he’s ever going to be truly happy. If I can somehow help him with that, I want to. “Yeah.”

“I know it’s crazy. I do. And if you’d rather go to Vincent Brunetti for what you need, I’ll back the fuck off, but I’d feel much better about this if you put your sexual confidence in my hands. Never mind the fact that you’d be helping me too.”

“Right. Your Amy repellent.”

He shrugs, and I cringe, suddenly remembering what she said to him outside the bar and imagining the things she’d say if she found out.

“You can’t tell her,” I blurt. “You can’t tell Amy—or anyone—that we’re doing this. They wouldn’t understand, and it’d be really embarrassing to try to explain I’m so hopeless in bed that I had to talk my friend into fixing me.”

He shakes his head. “We’ve been over this. You’re not hopeless in bed.”

“You don’t know that,” I say, wagging a finger at him. “You’re so sure right now, but just wait until you experience disappointing sex for the first time and lie there thinking, Oh my God, she was right the whole time.”

“First of all, I’ve definitely had disappointing sex before. That is a thing. And second of all, it won’t happen, but if it does, I promise to shift all my efforts from growing your confidence to teaching you how to rock my world, okay?”

I laugh so suddenly that I snort, and the sound just makes me laugh harder. “Oh, God. This is so ridiculous. I can’t believe we’re contemplating this. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

He props his elbows on the table. “I think you’re forgetting something.”

“What’s that?”

He stands just enough to lean all the way across the small table and plant his mouth on mine. The kiss is brief, nothing like the exploration against the car last night, but it’s sizzling, and by the time his mouth disconnects from mine, I’m ready to follow him across the table.

Dean’s lips quirk into a cocky grin that shows off his dimple. “You’re forgetting we have chemistry,” he murmurs, shifting his attention back to his food. “Now eat something.”

* * *

Dean

Abbi picks at her food, looking at me every other second like she’s afraid I might jump her. It’s not doing great things for my ego, so I search for a topic that might help her relax.

“Tell me about how things are going at The Patio.”

She pushes her food around her plate and frowns. “They’re really good.”

I chuckle. “You don’t look happy about that.”

“I am.” She tugs her bottom lip between her teeth. “I mean, I’m happy for Brinley. Everything she touches is magic over there, and she’s worked hard for the kind of growth she’s seeing.”

“But . . .?”

Abbi sighs, pushing her food around on her plate. “But the longer I run The Patio, the more I’m sure that’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life, and the better it does, the harder it is to leave.”

“Wow.” I lean back in my chair and fold my arms. “I had no idea. I thought you loved to cook.”

“I do.” She puts down her fork and scoops up her wine. “But the better things go over there, the less cooking I actually do. And it’s not just that, either. While I love cooking, I really, really love baking. That’s my real passion, even though I realize I’m being a diva if I want to leave a great job with some baking in hopes of finding a career with a lot of baking.”