The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy) (12 page)

Lucy noticed she’d settled on khakis and a
sweater. With her hair back in a tight ponytail and the pinched
look around her mouth, Fawn looked like the librarian in a porno
who was about to take it in the ass. “Are you going to be all
right? Is he giving you any reason to worry about… anything?”

“No, no—” Fawn glanced behind her. “A little.
But we’re talking about it.”

“Okay. Good luck. If there’s anything—”

“No, of course not. And wasn’t he sweet to
ask about your laptop? In the middle of all this garbage with his
parents, he remembers stuff like that. Anyway, got to go. See you
at the tree. Wear something comfy. It’s on the map.”

And she was gone.

Lucy sank back into the water, uneasy about
her friend and her choice of husband but optimistic she could work
it out. Fawn wasn’t the type to give up.

Alex’s comments about the Sterling family ran
through her brain. All that money, all those connections—just like
Miles. She thought about the big, quiet man in his sweatshirt and
sneakers and just couldn’t picture him in some New England prep
school. In fact, she had trouble imagining how he became Huntley’s
friend, let alone his best man.

She sank deeper into the water and let the
bubbles touch her nose. The jets pounded the tension out of her
shoulder blades. Exhaling with delight, she reflected that the last
time she’d been in a hot tub she’d asked her friends to find her a
husband. Ergo the freezing hike with Alex.

What if they’d tried to set her up with Miles
instead?

She realized she was still sitting in her
bathing suit. After a moment, she peeled it off and slung it onto a
chair next to the spa.

Much better. She flipped over onto her
stomach and folded her arms over the edge, rested her cheek on her
hands. The jets kneaded water into her chest and down her stomach
while her legs floated up behind her. She felt the cold air on her
bare bottom and smiled, finally enjoying her day.

It was nice of Miles to bring the laptop back
to her cabin. She’d been startled when Alex came up right behind
her while she worked on her personal stuff. She hadn’t even had the
chance to quit the file.

She lifted her head and looked at the back
door of her cabin, alert and wondering, then rested back down. No,
he would never open somebody else’s computer—

But what if he was desperate to get online
for a few minutes? It might not seem like a big deal to pop up the
lid and check the news, like turning on the TV.

She crawled out of the spa, cursing herself,
but unable to rest until she closed out the file. It would be
embarrassing if Fawn were to see it too—hell, anybody. She knew she
was a little OCD sometimes but it was her own business and she
wasn’t hurting anybody.

Dripping wet, she slipped on the robe and
jogged across the floor of the cabin to the desk. Just one little
CTRL-Q and she could get back in the water.

She wiped her hand, lifted the lid, and felt
the blood drain down to the damp jute rug at her feet.

* * *

She wore her heaviest black boots to kick his
balls through his teeth.

BamBamBam
. Hands on her hips, Lucy
waited for him to answer his door, hot, mortified rage stiffening
her spine.

The door opened a crack, and a gray-blue eye
peered out. He didn’t seem surprised to see her.

“Open up, you coward,” Lucy said.

Laugh lines appeared. The door started to
close.

She flung herself against it. “Don’t you
dare—”

The door swung open and she lurched inside. A
strong hand found her elbow to steady her, then released her before
she could shake it off.

“I suppose I should apologize right now and
save us some time,” Miles said.

Chest still heaving with her anger and the
run over to his cabin, Lucy braced both her legs as though muscle
tension could make her taller and glared up at him. “You were
totally out of line.“

He looked at her for a minute, not smiling
anymore, and sat down on a white slipcovered sofa near the front
windows. “You’re right. Will you sit?”

Her anger banged around her chest like a bee
trapped in a car. The way he was looking at her, passive and mildly
apologetic—that wasn’t enough, damn it. A few hours ago he’d
invaded her privacy and—and—violated it. Her most vulnerable
thoughts, unwillingly exposed, but then he had to take it a step
further and—and—
mock
her. He must have spent an hour writing
up that spreadsheet.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she
said through her teeth.

“You’re right.” He got up and went over to
the cabinet above the mini-fridge. “Organic Oreos?” He saw the look
on her face, shook his head, and squatted down to the fridge.
“Something stronger.”

“How dare you?” Her voice had lost too much
of its anger. To her annoyance, she almost sounded hurt.

“It was a bad thing to do.” He held out a
bottle of Sam Adams. “There’s no excuse. I tried to go back and
undo it but Fawn was in your cabin and I didn’t want to ask Huntley
for help. I figured I would just make things worse if I confided in
anybody what I’d done.“

“Thank you so much.”

“You’re right to be angry. I was an
asshole.”

She glared at him, momentarily robbed of her
righteousness. Finally she grabbed the beer and flung herself down
on the sofa. The bottle was cold in her hand, and hard, and she had
a vision of hitting him over the head with it. Instead she drank
and let her pulse settle. She had to admit to herself she was
grateful he hadn’t shared his mockery with Huntley. She’d been
imagining the two of them laughing at her. Then Alex might hear
about it and that would ruin everything.

She finished the beer, aware that he was
standing there, watching her, looking like he had all the time in
the world. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, noting her
buzz, and he took the empty bottle from her.

“Who are you to give romantic advice,
anyway?” She slumped back into the couch and put her feet, boots
and all, on the coffee table.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘romantic.’” The
corner of his mouth twitched, but he suppressed it, got two more
beers and handed her one.

“You’re not allowed to call it anything at
all.” She took the second beer and nestled it on her stomach,
giving him the evil eye as he sat down on the sofa next to her. It
was only two cushions wide and he had to knock pillows onto the
floor and scrunch himself over to the opposite arm to make room for
his frame.

Sighing, he sipped his beer and regarded her
muddy boots on the table. “How was your hike?”

“Lovely,” she said. “Why did you do it?”

He flinched. “I’m not sure. Moment of
weakness. Cynical about the wedding. Bitter about my ex. Forgot we
weren’t on those kind of terms.”

“We barely know each other.”

“My point.”

She took a sip of her beer and moved her
boots to the floor, regretting the clump of mud she’d left on
Cottage Living
and the footprints on the bamboo floor. She
bent over to take off the boots, then settled back in the sofa with
her beer. “I wasn’t entirely serious, you know, about my numbering.
But you had no right—”

“Yes, yes, we’ve established that. But answer
me this, since when are aquariums more important than—” He looked
down at his beer. “No, forget it, I shouldn’t say anything. But for
the record, I never would have done anything if it hadn’t been for
the aquarium thing.”

“It was very lightly weighted in my
calculations,” she said.

Mid-sip, he choked on his beer, caught his
breath, and shook his head. “Not as lightly as tongue.”

Not a cheap drunk, Lucy chugged the rest of
the beer and stood up, triumphantly steady on her feet. “I’m going
to kick your ass now.” She glanced at her black socks. “After I put
my boots back on.”

His gray eyes went wide. He had great
cheekbones, a sensual mouth, and a hint of five-o-clock shadow, and
she realized for the first time how good-looking he was. When he
was standing up she’d been too far away to get a good look at him.
But now, displayed before her in arm’s reach, she got a very
thorough look.

Neither of them spoke for a long moment, and
she noticed absently that she could see the pulse in his throat,
the way his chest rose and fell with his breathing.

Slowly, he leaned forward, set his bottle on
the table, and held out his hand.

She stared at it. “You want to shake before I
beat you up?”

A grin flashed across his face before he
leaned forward and pulled her down into his lap.

Stunned, she sat frozen on the tops of his
knees and gaped at him. She held herself as upright as possible,
ignoring the heat pooling low in her belly, how her breath was
coming tight and fast.

His gaze dropped to her mouth. She felt the
skin of her palm tingle where it touched his, felt the warmth of
his thighs through his jeans.

After a long moment, she let herself slide
down his legs into the valley of his body. She could feel the fly
of his jeans under her bottom. His chest was hard and broad against
her arm, and her fingers twitched, wanting to stroke him.

“Lucy,” he said, his rough, low voice sending
electricity down her spine. “I’m going to kiss you, all right?”

She shook her head.

“Then you can kick my ass all you want.”

“You bet I will,” she said, slipping her hand
behind his strong neck and pulling him down to her mouth.

In the limited history of her life, Lucy had
never kissed anyone the way she kissed him. She did it because she
was angry and because she was hurt, because he had apologized and
because he had warm, hard thighs.

But the second he cupped her jaw with his big
hands and tilted her head to take the kiss deeper, she forgot
everything except the soft pleasure of his mouth. She felt one hand
slide behind her neck, fingers warm, then trail down over the bump
of her bra strap into the small of her back and pull her
closer.

She wriggled sideways until her chest was
twisted against his and she was lifting her leg over his lap to
straddle him. God, he was big. She knelt on either side of him,
pressed her pelvis into his stomach, kissed him some more. She
wanted him to lift the back of her shirt and touch her. She wanted
to feel skin on skin. Her own hands left his face and explored down
over his broad chest, amazed at the sheer scale of him.

He kept kissing her, nibbling, licking,
slowly and gently. It had been months since she’d been with a man.
The smell, the stubble-roughness, the hardness. He wore a thick
sweatshirt that bunched up around his waist between them,
preventing her from finding out if his chest was hairy or smooth.
She hungered for the feel of his warmth under her fingers, and all
the while she kissed him, she shoved everything else out of her
mind.

He trailed his mouth across her cheek to her
ear. “Beats… aquariums,” he rasped.

Her hands, which had been making their way
under the bottom ribbing of his sweatshirt, froze on his stomach.
The haze in her mind cleared and she opened her eyes. He was
nibbling lightly on her ear, which was almost enough to send her
back into mindlessness, but then she realized consciously how
relatively motionless he was under her onslaught. His hands hadn’t
moved from their firm grip on her hips, and his posture—leaned
backward against the sofa with his legs kicking forward—was that of
a man under attack.

She jerked her hands out from under his
sweatshirt and tried to stand up, but she was trapped between his
legs and his chest and he wasn’t letting go.

“I’m an idiot,” he said, bending forward to
nuzzle her collarbone. “Forget I said that.”

She broke his hold on her and flung herself
onto the floor, her breath coming fast. Desperate to get away, she
stumbled once before she got to her feet and hopped to the other
side of the small table. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

He gave her a sad smile. “Why not?”

“All right. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Because it wasn’t what you planned?”

All the anger flowed back into her like water
into a glass. “Exactly. You are not in my plans.”

“Maybe your plans suck.”

“Maybe it’s none of your damn business.”

His gaze dropped down and perused her body.
“You seemed interested in making it my business.”

That was too much. Dan’s words popped into
her head. Shoving her feet into her boots, she gave him a cold
look. “I was drunk and pissed off and trying to teach you a
lesson.”

“You’re a very good teacher,” he said. “Can I
have another class?”

She clomped over to the door without lacing
her boots and yanked it open. He was just playing around. Like he’d
said, he was feeling cynical and bitter.

She turned to him, calming herself enough to
study him with her brain and not her hormones. He was a
good-looking guy and she was lonely. It would be a fun week and
then it would be over and she’d regret it. “No,” she said. “No, you
can’t.”

“Too bad.” He sighed and got to his feet with
a loud exhale. “I would have liked to work through the rest of your
list.”

She leaned a hip on the doorframe and crossed
her arms over her chest, unpleasantly aware her pulse hadn’t yet
settled at a normal pace. “Really? You want to buy a house and save
up for retirement with me? Be the father of my children?”

“Admit it, Lucy. Your list is bullshit.
You’re freaked out about getting older and want to bag a husband
before you think it’s too late.”

She couldn’t speak for a moment. “Did you
have problems with your last girlfriend? Is that it? Because I
think you’re flinging a lot of snap judgments at somebody you just
met.”