For a long beat, his deep green eyes stayed on mine but he didn’t say anything. When he’d looked at me for long enough that it was becoming awkward, I was about to break the silence when he finally talked.
“Fair enough. I can respect that. How about I stop being so overtly against it and you don’t rub it in my face too often that you want it?”
“Deal,” I said and stuck my hand across the table. He shook it, and the tingles from before instantly reappeared. Instead of dwelling on it, I released him and dropped both hands to my lap. I’d have to remember to keep them firmly off him from now on. “So, do you want to tell me what you learned from the bride?”
He pulled a face, but before I could remind him of the deal we had just made, he held up his hands and turned his palms out. “That wasn’t about the wedding thing. It was about the color scheme. She wants teal. Cream and teal.”
I nodded slowly, trying to hold back laughter when Cyrus grimaced as he said the words. “I can work with that.”
Another hour passed as we sipped our drinks and talked about the bride’s wishes. Before we left the cafe, Cyrus leaned over the table and smiled. “How do you feel about going out to dinner tonight? My treat. I would have gone crazy trying to get all this done myself. The least I can do is buy you a steak.”
“A steak? Well, I can’t say no to that, can I?”
“Great.” He stood up then, paid the bill, and gestured for me to walk ahead of him on our way to the car. He groaned when we got there and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck, I never thought I’d say this again, but let’s go talk to a man about a ceremony.”
Chapter 10
Cyrus
Luna and I spent the day lining up some appointments for wedding shit—at least in my own head, I could still refer to it as that—and scrolling through links and pictures Jenny sent over. After dropping her back off at her shop a couple of hours ago, I’d gone home to shower and get dressed for dinner.
A critical glance at my appearance later, I grabbed my keys, wallet, and phone and stuffed them in my pockets. I’d reserved a table at a nice restaurant on the rooftop of a five-star hotel and had dressed the part.
Black button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows because it was way too fucking hot already to keep them down, charcoal-gray slacks, matte-black Oxfords with a slightly rounded toe.
I knew I looked good.
What I didn’t know was why I’d made the effort. All I knew was that I’d pre-gamed like this was a date, even though it wasn’t.
On the other hand, I supposed people acted the way they did on dates because it was the polite, decent way to act. As for my clothes, well, they weren’t really that much different from what I wore normally anyway.
I shrugged off the weird feeling that I was about to go on a date and headed out to pick up Luna. She’d offered to meet me at the restaurant, but I’d insisted on picking her up, and eventually, she conceded.
Once I was settled in my car, I pulled out my phone and plugged in the address she’d texted me into the navigation app. Picking her up from her house and not the shop still didn’t mean it was a date, though.
Traffic wasn’t as bad as it could have been and I made it to her place with five minutes to spare, but Luna was already waiting for me. A simple emerald-green dress wrapped around her curves, the neckline dipping low enough to cut a V into her cleavage.
The skirt hit just above her knees, but despite the length, it didn’t look too conservative. She looked gorgeous, classic.
A smile lit her eyes as she saw me pulling up. Then just like she had done earlier in the day, she darted toward the street. I was ready for her this time, getting out and rounding the hood to open the door for her.
“Hey,” she said as she came to a standstill next to the open door. “Thanks again for picking me up. If you would have told me where we were going, I really could have met you there.”
“But then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.” Wait a second, am I flirting with her?
“It didn’t have to be one, but I do like surprises,” she said before sliding into the seat.
I shut the door, shaking my head at myself.
Sure, she was attractive, and if she had been anyone else, I might have taken a shot at getting in her pants. Unfortunately for me, she wasn’t anyone else. She was the woman who was helping me with Peter’s wedding and, more importantly, one who believed in marriage and relationships.
Despite my own preference for casual, I would never lead any woman on and I didn’t intend on starting now. I knew where she stood as well as she knew where I did. Which meant my dick had to stay in my pants and the flirting needed to stop.
“How was the rest of your afternoon?” she asked as I started the engine and flicked on the blinker to move back into the traffic.
I glanced at her as I checked the road, shifting the car into gear when I spotted an opening in the traffic and pressing down on the gas. “It’s only been a few hours, so it wasn’t anything special. Yours?”
“Same.” She reached up to adjust the sleek ponytail holding her long locks out of her face. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going yet?”
“Nope. You’ve come this far. I’m sure you can wait a few more minutes.”
With the way she had shifted to be half facing me while I drove us, her thigh was enticingly close to the hand I had on the gear shift. Her pale skin looked soft and smooth, the milky white in stark contrast to the deep green hem of her dress.
For a second, my mind conjured up images of sliding my hands over that soft skin, of hitching up her dress and bundling it around her waist. I wondered what kind of panties she wore and immediately put her in something lacy and French cut.
My dick twitched and I caught my groan in my throat just before I was yanked out of the fantasy by the tinkling, melodic sound of her laugh.
“Yeah, I guess I can wait a few more minutes. Have you spoken to the bride yet about what we managed to get done today? I’m dying to know what she thinks of it all.”
I’m thinking about fucking Luna until she can’t walk while she’s thinking about a wedding. Fuck my life.
“No, she’s probably only getting off shift sometime around now. I’ll speak to her about it in the morning.”
“Will you let me know what she thinks once you’ve spoken to her? We should probably run all the details by her as we go along. She is the bride, after all.”
“Yeah, sure.” I shrugged, but I was still distracted by the lingering images I’d conjured up that were now torturing me. At least talking wedding stuff was keeping those images from running rampant and taking over my brain. “Everything we’ve done has been according to the information I got from her, though. We should be fine.”
Luna nodded and made small talk all the way to the restaurant while I banished the remainder of my dirty thoughts. By the time we pulled into the hotel parking lot, I had them well under control.
As I parked, she craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the name of the hotel displayed above the bank of elevators. Her brows rose. “The Maslow? Really?”
The tone of her voice made me frown. “What? You don’t like it here?”