“How long were you engaged for?”
“Six months.” Leanne tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, remembering what she’d thought was the happiest day of her life.
“Want to tell me about it?” asked Smoke.
She nodded. She did. “We saw each other while he was being a student at Berkeley. Then we kept it going after he left. He went back to DC and …” She shrugged. “We saw each other as often as we could. It was tough; there were some misunderstandings. But we kept it going okay until I graduated. We talked about me looking for jobs in DC to be with him, but he wasn’t there all the time anyway. His job had him traveling all over, and most of the time he couldn’t even tell me where.
“I was lucky to be hired by one of my top choice firms in San Francisco, so the decision to stay was easy. It worked out well, too, because Ryan and his boss, Cal … Callahan, came back to the Bay area not long after that. It would have sucked if I’d moved to DC for him and then he’d been posted over here.”
Laura smiled at her. “I remember how happy you were when you told me he was coming.”
Leanne nodded. “Yeah, that was right around the time that you first started seeing Dale.” She glanced at Smoke, who didn’t look too happy to hear her mention Laura’s ex-fiancé.
Laura laughed. “Don’t mind him; he’s just a jealous, possessive jerk.”
Leanne had to smile at the way he snaked his arm around Laura’s waist and pulled her into his side. “And don’t you forget it,” he said before landing a kiss on her lips.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring him up.”
“No problem,” said Smoke. “But get to the part where Ryan became your fiancé—and why he became your ex-fiancé instead of your husband.”
Leanne nodded even as a shiver ran down her spine. It was weird now to even think that Ryan might have been her husband. That the two of them might have shared what Laura and Smoke now had. “The part where he became my fiancé.” It still made her smile. She couldn’t help it. “Okay. Are you sitting comfortably? This might take a while.”
“Take your time,” said Smoke.
“I want to give you the short version. I don’t want to take up your whole morning.”
Laura smiled. “You can take the whole weekend if you want. We’re not going anywhere.”
Smoke smirked at her. “It’s true and you may as well get it all out.”
“Okay. Here goes.”
~ ~ ~
“What are you going to do with a whole weekend off?” Ari asked as she and Leanne stepped into the elevator.
Leanne grinned. “It couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Ryan’s here for the whole weekend!”
Ari laughed. “And that answers what you’ll be doing the whole time. I don’t blame you either. I’d spend the whole weekend in bed too if I were you. That’s one hot man you’ve got yourself there.”
Leanne’s smile faded. She knew Ryan was hot and she was fully aware that other women thought so, too.
“Hey!” Ari touched her arm. “Take the compliment I intended. I’m not after your man.”
“I know, sorry. It’s just …”
“What?”
Leanne shook her head. “Nothing.” She liked Ari, but she didn’t know her well enough to start explaining everything. How was she supposed to tell her colleague—even if she was becoming a friend—about the women who kept crawling out of the woodwork claiming that they had spent the night or a weekend in bed with him? “What about you? What does your weekend hold?”
“Well, since I’m sadly single and don’t have the same kind of mental superpowers that you do, I’ll no doubt spend it reading up on the Conley files.”
“Aww, you should at least get out and do something.”
“Yeah. I probably will.”
They stepped out of the elevator and said their goodbyes in the lobby. Leanne had been working at Stein & Harrison for almost six months now and she loved it. She hurried across the parking lot to her car, eager to get home in the hope that Ryan wouldn’t be too far behind her and that he’d have the whole weekend free, too.
When she opened the door to her apartment, she stopped in the hallway. It smelled strange. It smelled like … food. She went to the kitchen and stopped dead when she saw Ryan in there—wearing an apron.
“Err … what the …?”
He laughed at the look on her face. “Don’t look so shocked. I am capable of cooking. I just don’t usually have the time. What are you doing here so early anyway? I thought I’d have dinner ready for you by the time you got back.”
She shrugged out of her coat and hung it on the back of one of the stools. “Is that any way to greet me? I thought you might be pleased that I got off early … and I have the whole weekend off.”
He came to her and put his hands on her hips. She loved the way he did that. “Sorry, babes. I’m just surprised. And I wanted to have this ready for you. You know I’m pleased.” He dropped a sweet little kiss on her lips. “Very pleased that you’re here early. In fact,” he glanced at the oven, “if you give me five minutes while I put that in, then we’ll have an hour to kill before we can eat.” He closed his hands around her ass and pulled her against him. “Do you think we can find a way to fill that time?”
She melted against him. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
After he put the casserole in the oven, he came back to her and cupped her face between his hands to kiss her deeply. Her hands came up around his shoulders and she kissed him back. “Bedroom?” she breathed when he let her come for air.
He nodded and took her hand but instead of leading her to the bedroom, he took her to the living room where he put some music on.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Are we going to listen to music or are you taking me to bed?”
His eyes were a deep, deep blue when he looked at her. His jaw was tight, that little muscle working. “How about we listen to music? We don’t need a bed.”
“Sounds good to me.” She relaxed back against him when he came to stand behind her and slid his arms around her waist. His cock was hot and hard, pressing against her ass. She rocked against him. She didn’t mind listening to music, but she wanted it to be while they had sex, not before.
It seemed he felt the same way. His hands closed around her breasts, making her sigh. And he ground his hips against her backside. She knew he liked it that way. She did, too, and a smile spread across her face as she stepped away from him.
“Where are you going?” He followed her and pulled her back to him.
“I thought the sofa.”
His hands were unfastening her blouse and then they closed around her breasts again. “I thought right here,” he murmured next to her ear.
She nodded and took two more steps so that she could put her hands on the back of the sofa. She leaned forward and pressed her ass back against him. “Right here?”