“And luxury boat salesmen?” She was fingering the stitching on the back of the heel, not looking at me.
I wasn’t sure what she was asking. If I had lied in the past or something else. “Considering you’re the first woman to ever leave me without a word or a number, I’d say there are no obvious perks to being a luxury boat salesman.”
“I am?” She was fighting a smile.
That was probably too much ammunition to give her, but too late. She had me by the balls and had since the second she’d slammed into me. There was no fucking denying it. I was stupid when it came to Mia. A fucking idiot. “You are. And I was going to ask you to dinner, too. I was going to give my confession that I had lied, capped by me going down on you, and then ask for forgiveness and a date. I had a whole plan.”
Mia turned and looked at me from under her eyelashes. Her expression was sly, and it made me want to kiss her. Hard. “I didn’t leave without a word because I wasn’t interested. I was late for work and because you lived in Miami it seemed pointless to worry about it. How’s that for ironic?”
“It’s horribly ironic.”
“I had fun that night, James. I would have said yes to dinner.”
“Even though I lied?”
She tilted her head, like she was considering it. “Yes. If you had told me that morning, I probably would have laughed about it.”
“So you’re telling me that you didn’t steal my wallet?”
“Yes, I’m telling you I didn’t steal your wallet.”
There were only two options. Stick firm to the belief that she was lying to me and had purposefully set me up as a target and stolen from me, in which case, I needed to cut her out of my life entirely. No more dog walking, no communication. Or I could choose to believe that taking my wallet was an accident of the dark room and her jumbo bag, and see where this relationship with Mia could go.
I already knew what I was going to do.
There was a reason that shoe was still sitting there and it wasn’t because I wanted to use it as a future bargaining chip. It was because I had wanted to see my redheaded, stain-removing, very entertaining Cinderella again.
It had invaded my thoughts every single night since December.
“Mia?” I asked her, stepping forward so that I could run my thumb over her bottom lip and gaze into her eyes.
“Yes?” Her voice was soft.
“Go to dinner with me.”
“Okay.”
Just like that. Okay. I smiled at her, pleased with her quick response.
I bent and brushed my lips over hers, in a quick, teasing kiss.
When I pulled back she sucked in a breath.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Amelia’s getting restless.”
Chapter Eleven
Mia
Okay.
That was my answer?
I was so annoyed with myself. He hadn’t even said if he believed me or not about the wallet. Nope. Not a word about that. Like it was no big deal. Like he hadn’t kept me hostage in his hotel room in my underwear. Like he hadn’t just busted me crawling around on his floor trying to hide his wallet.
He’d just invited me to dinner and kissed me.
It was a good kiss. A quick kiss, but one that reminded me immediately of the chemistry James and I shared. Explosive, combustible, exciting chemistry.
Fine. If he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it, neither was I. It must mean he was at least inclined to believe me. That was good enough for now. Because I liked spending time with James, and I had to admit, it had made me all sorts of warm inside when he had said he’d been planning to ask me out after our delicious night together.
Now we were walking Amelia, and it felt very couple-ish.
Which I really, really liked.
Which made me feel like Chrissy.
I was indulging in the fantasy.
It was just a kiss and dinner. I needed to remember that.
I had made no effort to take my shoe back. It was oddly satisfying to know he’d kept it sitting there on his dresser all these months. He’d been forced to think about me. He wanted to think about me. Or he would have tossed the shoe, right?
The doorman greeted me by name again and it made me feel important, before I remembered that James had so much as admitted he’d had a parade of women through his apartment. Maybe the doorman called them all by name.
Which reminded me of something that had always bugged me. “How did your doorman know my name the night we met?” I asked him as we walked very, very slowly behind Amelia. I had tried to get James to move her along and teach her a walk was a forward motion, not sniffing every inch along the route, but he was an indulgent dog daddy.
“What?” He was watching Amelia. “Look at how cute she is,” he said. “I need another video.”
He must have had seventeen hours of footage of the puppy by then. Which made him almost as cute as the dog. “Your doorman. When I left in the morning back in December, he called me by name.”
James didn’t look up from his phone. “I texted him and told him I was bringing a guest named Mia.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to make sure he didn’t say anything about football and have you realize I had told a stupid-ass lie.”
Ah. So there was the truth. I was special in that I was the only one being lied to. The doorman clearly thought I was an idiot. Whatever. There had been no reason that night for me to believe anything other than what James had told me.
“I was telling the truth when I said I don’t know much about football. I don’t even know what position you play.”
“I’m a wide receiver.”
Yeah. That meant nothing to me. “Offense or defense?”
“Offense.” He gave me an amused look. “I saw a picture of you in team gear. Are you conning me?”
“No, not at all. I won a raffle at work. I played a dollar because it was a children’s cancer charity and I won the jersey and tickets to the game. I took my co-worker from the coffee shop because he’s a huge fan.”
“That wasn’t an ex-boyfriend?”
Was James jealous? The thought made me gleeful in a way I should be ashamed of, but wasn’t. “No. We did go on one date like two years ago but we both realized we were meant to be friends.”
“Did he suck in bed?”
His mind went right there? “I didn’t sleep with him. I didn’t even kiss him. We went to a taco truck and talked and it was awkward as hell and we ended up laughing and agreeing to never speak of it ever again.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “Not.”
That made me laugh. “That didn’t sound very nice.”
“I’m not nice. I’m competitive.”
I was reminded of my comment about the sex being efficient. He was competitive all right. That one word had launched him into an assault on my vagina that had easily claimed the number one spot in my sexual history of oral sex performed on me.
My alarm on my phone went off. The sound brought me back to reality, and away from memories of what James could do to me. “I have to go. The bus will be by in a couple of minutes and I need to be somewhere.” I had promised my mother I would visit her and the director of the facility had emailed me about a meeting. Which was concerning. I hoped there wasn’t some financial issue.