Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
And do you have any stuff to make a disguise? Like a fake moustache? I asked him.
After deliberating about maybe cueing up a movie, or diving into a juicy documentary, doing a not-fussed scroll through what was streaming and finding nothing that struck my fancy (I wasn’t going to watch more Shetland without Gabe, even if he’d already seen it), I lugged myself out of the couch.
I was standing in my open refrigerator trying to decide on snack or actual meal, at the same time thinking I might want to take a hot bath, at the same time wondering if Alexis was over the emotional ambush of yesterday and wanted to chat cakes, at the same time trying not to panic that some time had passed and Gabe didn’t text back, when there were two sharp raps on my door.
No “It’s me.”
But the locks went, and Gabe was there.
I stood unmoving as he prowled to me, grabbing my bag from the kitchen bar while he did.
He shut the refrigerator door and shoved my purse at me. After I took it, he claimed my hand and hauled me out of the kitchen to the couch, where I’d left my phone.
He picked up my phone, handed it to me, then tugged me out the door.
He stopped us and locked up.
Then he dragged me down the walk, out the security gate to his Wrangler.
I was sitting in it, and he was switching on the ignition, when I found my voice.
“Well, hello to you too.”
“We’re going to dunch,” he stated, pulling out.
“Dunch?”
“Dinner and lunch. Then we’re chilling at mine.”
Yippee!
I got to see his place!
That said…
“I’m not sure I’m prepared for our first, out-in-public, official date,” I declared. “I’d want to put on a different outfit.”
Though, what I would wear, I had no clue.
However, it would be something other than the mid-rise baggy jeans I had on with a simple, slim-fit white tee with a small pink and yellow gerbera daisy on the chest and white with pink stripe Adidas Samba sneaks.
However, I could not deny what I had on went well with his super-casual black tee that shared in white letters that Monument, Colorado was established in 1879, uber-faded jeans (particularly at the crotch, mmm) and beat-up, black-swoop Nike Killshots.
“We’re not dating. We’re together.”
At this declaration, in slow motion, I turned my head to Gabe.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“This isn’t a date. This is a man taking his woman to dunch.”
Wait.
What?
“When did I become your woman?”
“Did you sleep beside me last night?”
“Well…”
“And the night before?”
“I was—”
“And the night before that?”
Jeez.
“That isn’t—”
He changed subjects. “Whose house are you breaking into?”
Uh-oh.
It was half joke, half not when I asked, “Can I plead the fifth?”
“Cupcake, you asked me if I knew how to pick a lock.”
“Okay, do you?”
“Of course. Though, I’ll point out, no matter how good your intentions are, there is no way to break and enter where it isn’t a felony.”
And he’d know, with a master’s in criminal justice and all the rest.
Eek!
He kept going.
“But in your situation, you got a man on your hands who’s so fuckin’ jumpy, he hauls ass the minute he sees some headlights and doesn’t even finish sharing what he apparently risked his friend’s safety to share because he’s shit-scared someone is watching him. To end, you do not need to be seen breaking into his place.”
I wished I was assigned Amy’s place so I could say I wasn’t breaking into Duane’s.
Though, I didn’t think Gabe would react better to that news.
“That’s where the disguise comes in,” I told him haughtily. “Now, can we go back to the discussion about me being your woman?”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
Had he lost his mind?
“Gabe, last night, I stood in front of you telling you all the reasons we couldn’t do this.”
“And then you took my hand, and we walked together to your bedroom. We slept together in that bedroom. We woke up together in that bedroom. We went to brunch together with your best bud. And all of that was after you made me a cupcake and bought me more beer.”
It was so gross when he made sense, even twisted sense.
And even grosser when he called me on my shit.
Boy, it seemed I was always going to rue the day I made that cupcake and bought him more beer.
“All right, all right,” I snapped. “I hear you. But we’re missing one crucial element that makes a man and a woman a woman’s man and a man’s woman.”
“That is?”
I pointed out the obvious. “Dude, we haven’t had sex.”
“And?”
And?
“And what if we suck at it?”
He was silent for a very long, tense moment, then he grinned wide and white at his windshield.
Ulk.
That was super-hot and uber-annoying at the same time.
As per protocol, I focused on the annoying.
“So you’re that good,” I snapped.
“Yeah, cupcake, I’m that good,” he said without hesitation, and with such lethal confidence, I one hundred percent had a mini orgasm.