Craft (The Gibson Boys 2)

The words don’t make it past my lips before Lance’s face pops back into my mind. It’s the image of him at my car, his arms stretched overhead, a soft look in his eyes that is such a contrast to the playful one I often see.

“Like Lance?” she asks carefully.

“The end of that story would be a happy one,” I laugh. “That excludes him.”

“But what if it doesn’t?”

“It does.” Getting up, I head to the oven and get it pre-heating. “He’s the most woman-hopping man I’ve ever known. Ever seen. In my office alone he talks to a different woman on the phone at least three times a week.”

“But he’s single, right?”

“Yes. He’s single. His goal in life is to be single.” The words cause a little ache to spread across my chest. “I don’t fault him for that. That’s not what this is about. It’s about me knowing I have no desire to compete with other women for a man’s attention and this guy plays that game as hard as it can be played.”

Sugar and butter go into my mixer. My hand shakes a little as the vanilla is added, but I choose to think it’s because I haven’t eaten today and not from anything else.

“Fine.” It’s a simple response with no indication she’s going to argue with me. This annoys me, but I try to hide it. “Guess you’re going to have to figure out how to balance this then.”

“That’s what I said from the beginning,” I grimace, busting an egg with a little more gusto than necessary.

“You said some, what, sexier things on line than you would’ve said in person?”

“Oh, a little.” I told him I wanted him to come on my chest. “I want to die.”

Whitney adds the lemon juice to the mixer and turns it on. “But you felt comfortable enough with him to say them.”

“Because he wasn’t standing in front of me, Whit. It’s so much easier to tell him I want him to slap my ass or make me get off on his face when his face isn’t there. When I think I’ll never have to see his face.”

“You said that? I’m impressed.”

The dam is broken so I just roll with it. “I typed worse.”

“He’s probably going insane right now,” she giggles. “And I doubt he’d qualify them as worse.”

Putting a face, his face, to those words makes me almost moan in the middle of my kitchen. Typing them out was one thing when the point was to feel powerful. Knowing it was him on the other side has the opposite effect.

“I have to quit my job,” I say gravely.

“You do not.” She turns off the mixer. Leaning against the counter, she crosses her arms over her chest. “How does it make you feel to think he knows it was you who typed those things and he still wants you?”

Biting my lip doesn’t help the smile from cracking across my lips.

“It feels good, right?” she asks.

“Yes. Fine. It feels good. But he’ll tease me about it endlessly.”

“Because he’s a boy and boys do that.”

There’s nothing boy about him.

The pre-heat alert dings and Whitney glances at the oven before speaking again. “You should’ve considered this before you met up with him. I could’ve pointed that out if you would’ve told me your super-secret plans.”

I should’ve considered a lot of things before I met History Hunk. Or before I used that stupid app.

“For some really, really dumb reason, it didn’t seem like a bad idea. Yes, most of our conversations were sexual in nature, but it was good-hearted. It was fun. Our banter was great …”

My finger presses into the butter as I turn away. Just thinking of Lance and the easiness of our chats fills me with a gooey sort of feeling.

“Like your banter at work?”

“Ugh. This is not helping.”

At all. At work, Lance treats me like an intelligent, respectable, attractive woman. History Hunk made me feel downright sexy. Alluring. Wanted. They are two very different sides of … the same coin? With the same guy? Processing this doesn’t get any easier as the minutes tick by.

Digging around the cabinet and then the dishwasher, I find my nine-by-nine pan for the lemon bars.

“Meeting this guy didn’t seem like I was meeting him for sex,” I say, searching for more butter. “It felt like meeting a friend for the first time. There weren’t expectations and I wasn’t afraid, like I thought I’d be. It was just easy. Nerve-wracking, but easy.”

The butter in hand, I spread it around the pan before I turn my attention back to Whitney. There’s a knowing look aimed my way.

“I think everything between you two is easy, Mariah.” She takes the pan and sets it next to the mixer. “Don’t you see that?”

Yes, I see it. How could I not? But therein lies the problem—it’s too easy.