Date Shark (22 page)

Leila shook her head. “And I wouldn’t want to be.”

Part of her meant the words. Leila knew she would never want to be in the spotlight, never want to be the gracious host to dozens of people she didn’t know or like just for the sake of showing off her beautiful home or designer clothes. Despite her shortcomings in the confidence department, Leila liked who she was, smart and pretty and a little bit odd. But that was only part of her. The rest wanted … not to be able to change into the girl she imagined Eli wanted, but just be the girl he wanted—the girl she was, no changing required.

Breaking out of her own thoughts, Leila folded her arms around her body and looked at Luke. She was glad to see that much of his anger had left, but there was still hesitation in his stance. “Why didn’t you tell me about Eli?”

“I didn’t want you to be jealous.” It was the honest truth, mostly. She also didn’t want to share Eli with anyone even in such a small way as having to admit her friendship with him. She wanted him to be hers alone. She didn’t want to answer questions about Eli or be quizzed about what she did with him.

Leila realized her answer didn’t do anything to turn away Luke’s hurt feelings. Trying again, she said, “Even though I know there’s no reason for you to be jealous, I get why me hanging out with him would bother you. If the table was turned, I’d feel the same way. I just didn’t want anything to ruin the fun we have together.”

“Will you stop seeing him then?” Luke asked.

“No,” she said without having to think about her answer. The very idea of not having Eli made her chest tighten to the point of pain. Tears pricked at her eyes as she imagined not being able to talk to him and drink tea as she curled up on his couch and watched Frank Sinatra in black and white.

The tension in Luke’s body returned at her answer. “Why not? If you understand why it would upset me, why wouldn’t you stop seeing him?”

“Because he’s my friend.” Leila shrugged, having no other answer, and refusing to budge.

“You’re not going to stop seeing him?” he asked in surprise.

“Luke,” she said, “I’m not like you. I don’t have dozens of friends. I have a few very close friends, and I would never abandon any of them. If it were Eli asking me to turn my back on you, I wouldn’t do that either.”

“But, Leila …”

She shook her head firmly. “No.”

She would not give Eli up. A week of only seeing him to run was painful enough. Never seeing him again, she couldn’t handle that. In fact, she made a promise to herself to end the awkwardness between them before it got any worse.

“Do you realize how bizarre this is? How many other guys would be okay with their girlfriend hanging out with another guy when they weren’t around?” Luke argued, unaware of her internal conversation.

Leila fully understood how odd her stance was. She wasn’t going to change her mind, though. “Eli is my friend, and nothing more. He’s important to me. I know I’m asking a lot, but if you can’t deal with me having a male friend, you need to tell me right now.”

“Have you slept with him?”

Her laugh caught him off guard. “Are you serious?” she asked between laughs. “No, I haven’t slept with him. I told you, we’re just friends.”

“Well,” Luke defended, “I needed to know if it was a
with benefits
kind of friendship.”

“I don’t do friends with benefits,” Leila said seriously. “With me it’s either all or nothing, no in between.”

The start of a smile made an appearance on Luke’s face as one corner of his mouth turned up. “Good to know.”

The two stood in the middle of the sidewalk. The early summer sun was not yet hot, but it was warm enough to make Leila not want to stay there much longer. She didn’t want to make the first move, though. She knew she had dumped a lot on Luke, and very unexpectedly. Forcing him to decide his reaction would likely only guarantee a bad one. So Leila made herself wait patiently as Luke mulled over meeting Eli and their entire conversation.

A bead of sweat rolled down her back before Luke finally made a move. He slid his arm around Leila’s waist. A gentle push started them back on the path toward Luke’s car. His hold on her was not as relaxed as is usually was, but Leila had no trouble understanding why. She was only grateful he hadn’t walked away without her.

“So, exactly how many other
friends
like Eli do you have?” Luke asked.

“Guy friends?” Leila wondered if Vance, Leo, and Guy counted.

“Secret friends,” he clarified.

Leila chuckled. “Oh. Well, you already know Ana, so … zero.”

“Ana and Eli, that’s a pretty short list.”

Knowing that he wasn’t poking fun at her, she said, “That’s why I hold onto my friends so tightly. I don’t have many of them.”

“You could.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

To be honest, she didn’t want loads of friends. Mindlessly texting or going out to clubs with other girls didn’t have much of an appeal to her. Leila would rather have a few close friends that understood her well enough to know who she really was.

“So,” Luke said, pulling her back to the conversation, “all the times you’ve told me you were doing something with a friend—like that highbrow club, or lunch, or whatever that play was last week—those were all with Eli …”

“Or Ana.” Leila rationalized that it was only a little white lie to spare Luke’s feelings. She did go to a movie with Ana a few weeks ago when her husband was out of town, but the rest of the instances he was talking about were pretty much all Eli.

Luke’s silence made her wonder if he had heard the lie. They walked several blocks without speaking. The noises of the city filled the silence with children playing on a front stoop, music from a window, motors purring down the street, and the slap of tennis shoes on pavement as a runner sped by them. The sight of apple blossoms on a lone tree in front of a brownstone made Leila smile and curl against Luke. He welcomed her, pulling her in more tightly.

A few blocks later, they made it back to Luke’s car. He reached for her door, but stopped before grabbing the handle and looked back at Leila. His brow furrowed. The change worried Leila, but she stayed silent. Eventually Luke looked at her and asked, “On your all or nothing scale, where are we?”

Not prepared for a question like that, Leila leaned against the car for support. Her mind raced to define their relationship in mere seconds. She should have expected Luke would want to know where he stood with her after meeting Eli—no doubt needing confirmation that he was the center of her thoughts—but she hadn’t considered it until that moment.

“Well,” she said slowly, “we’re definitely not at
nothing
, but I’m not quite ready for
all
yet either.”

Luke grinned at her and pressed his body against hers. “But I thought it was either one or the other, nothing in between. I think those were your exact words.”

Tall and athletic, Luke’s weight was hardly minimal, but he only leaned in enough to capture her attention. Which he did. It was hard to deny that the heat surrounding them had nothing to do with the sun. Luke’s hips were tight against hers with his hands wrapped around her waist. His chest was inches away from her, and she swore she could actually hear his heartbeat speed up in reaction to their contact. Leila’s mind was scattered beyond belief, but his words demanded some sort of reply.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she said.

One hand left her back and trailed its way up to her cheekbone where he stroked her skin slowly back to tangle in her hair. “Oh? Then, please, what did you mean?”

“I was talking about sex, not a relationship.”

The way Luke’s teasing smile deepened into something infinitely more seductive sent a rush through Leila’s veins. “You were talking about sex?” Luke asked.

“Not anymore,” Leila managed to say, though her intelligent thought was quickly abandoning her.

He shook his head. “You’re the one who brought up the word sex.”

“You were thinking about it,” Leila argued.

Luke leaned in close. His lips brushed against her ear. “So were you.”

In that moment, Leila knew she had never blushed as deeply as she did then. There was no way for Luke to know she had been wondering just how his toned abdomen and chest would look without his shirt covering it, how it would feel to run her hands across his skin. He couldn’t know the things her mind had been imagining, but he was right either way. Not that Leila was going to admit that to him, though.

“Am I just a friend, like Eli?” Luke asked.

Eli was a fantasy. Luke was reality, a very enticing bit of reality. “No, you’re not just a friend. You’re my boyfriend.”

“But what am I to you?” Luke sighed. “We’ve been dating for two months, but sometimes I still feel like you’re trying figure out whether or not it’s going to work out between us.”

“Well I don’t know for sure. Do you?”

“I know that I want it to work out. Isn’t that enough?” Luke asked.

Was it? Leila didn’t know.

Luke’s arm tightened around her body. They were chest to chest, and there was no way Luke could miss the sudden spike in her breathing. His eyes locked with hers in a soulful caress. “Leila, I know you’re careful, and I know you don’t trust easily, but sometimes you have to be willing to take a risk on someone.”

“That’s not easy for me,” Leila said honestly.

“I know.”

Luke’s lips touched the curve of her neck and began making their way upward. Every touch weakened Leila’s fears. The warm breath pulsing across her sensitized skin made her shiver against him. She was hopeless putty in his hands by the time his lips grazed her ear.

“All I’m asking,” he whispered, “is that you stop waiting to see if our relationship will work out, and find out for yourself.”

The trail of Luke’s heat slid along her jaw, his mouth pressing against her parted lips. Leila’s hands twisted around his shirt and pulled him closer. He didn’t resist. Luke kissed her once more, then asked, “Will you find out?”

“Yes,” Leila breathed.

Ready to convince her, Luke deepened their kiss. He crushed Leila against his body. The only thought in her mind at that point was how the sun had nothing on Luke’s passion. She reveled in his desire, more happy than she could express to be wanted so much.

As passion mellowed into an enveloping embrace, Leila knew the conversation was far from over, but for the moment she was happy. She would discover exactly what Luke meant to her, and how far she wanted their relationship to go later. The topic of all or nothing, and whether or not that included sex would come up again soon, and Leila could only hope she would be ready to face it when it did. After experiencing Luke’s desire, it seemed an easy choice.

But as often happened, as soon as the excitement died down, Eli returned to her mind. Leila hoped that with Eli no longer a secret, those kinds of thoughts would stop, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.

“You’re wrong about Eli,” Luke said quietly.

“What … do you mean?”

Luke kissed her nose. “You are his kind of girl. You’re any guy’s kind of girl. You are sophisticated and gorgeous. He’s not too good for you. No man is. You’re too good for me.” He smiled and kissed her again. “You, my beautiful girl, are the kind of woman every man dreams of.”

Her skeptical expression made him smile.

His responding grin was followed by another kiss, this one on her forehead. “I know I dream about you.”

Part of Leila’s mind begged to know just what he dreamt, but the other half had more traitorous thoughts. Thoughts like whether or not Eli dreamed of her, too.

Chapter 18

Lost

As Eli paced in front of the bench where he usually met Leila, his mind wandered. First, there was the recently acquired fear that Leila would not show up. After convincing himself she would meet him, he wondered what she would wear. For the longest time it had been the same running tights and sport top, but last week she had finally shown up in something new, a sign that she accepted exercise as a part of her life. She seemed to have purchased a new athletic wardrobe. He hoped the black and pink capris with the racerback tank top would make a reappearance.

Fantasizing about her clothing only lasted so long before his thoughts slipped back to the previous day. Eli was still battling mixed feelings about the run-in. On one side, finally setting eyes on the famed Luke had been crushing. He was man enough to admit that Luke was attractive, slightly taller than him, and very fit, although Eli felt they were fairly equal in physical fitness if not in exact build. Seeing his hands on Leila, and her acceptance of it had been cutting.

On the other hand, Eli had walked away with a deep sense of satisfaction on several levels. Luke’s obviously jealous response had been a boost. The desirable Luke saw him as a threat. Even though Eli knew Leila held no illusions about a relationship with Eli at the time, Luke seemed to have no problem imagining it. His jealousy could cause problems, but Eli felt confident Leila wouldn’t drop out of his life just for Luke’s sake.

Eli smiled as he remembered her shock at seeing him. It had not been only surprise at running into him unexpectedly. Luke’s bafflement when Eli approached him made one thing clear. Leila had never told Luke about him. Eli supposed he should have been disappointed by that, but in reality he was thrilled. Even if Leila wouldn’t admit it to herself, she harbored feelings for him and knew Luke would be jealous of their relationship. She had kept him as her secret, something she didn’t want to share. That made Eli very pleased.

A vision in pale blue leggings and a matching blue and white top, Leila crossed the street and pushed everything else out of Eli’s mind. He allowed himself a few brief seconds to appreciate how her body had responded to his insistence that she work out with him. She was slender before, a dancer’s physique, but the softness had been replaced by shapely muscle. She was stunning.

“Hey,” she said as she approached, “ready to run?”

Her brisk greeting was disappointing, but something that was hardly new. “Whenever you are.”