“Not all women.”
I glanced up at him. “Speaking from experience there, are you?”
He sighed. “I’ve been known to intimidate some women.”
“You? Intimidating?” I teased. “No.”
Caine laughed and reached for me, sliding one arm across my belly so he could pull me into him. “And some women need to learn to be more intimidated by me.”
I giggled, wrapping my arms around him as he rolled so he was braced over me. “It’s not going to happen.”
He nodded, contemplating me. “I’m getting that.”
“I think you like it.”
Instead of answering in the affirmative, Caine brushed his thumbs across my cheekbones. “Favorite band?”
I smiled, glad he was so cool with sharing, even if it was just trivial stuff. “The Killers.”
“Nice choice.”
I warmed under his approval. “You?”
“Led Zeppelin.”
I trailed my fingertips over his muscular back in a lazy, familiar way that felt altogether much too good. “Favorite city outside of Boston?”
“Sydney. You?”
“Prague.”
Caine stilled under my touch. “A very nice choice.”
“I really want to visit Budapest, though. All the places I visited were with Benito, and none of them were the one place I wanted to see.”
“I’ve been to Budapest.” He bent his head to sweetly brush his lips against mine. “You’d love it.”
I loved this. I loved that he was no longer fighting to keep who he was from me. Right now we were two friends getting to know each other. While we were naked.
“Why do you like my apartment?” I suddenly blurted out.
Caine studied me a moment, seeming to drink in every aspect of my face. “Because it’s got charm. There’s no flash—it’s got a timeless, simple beauty about it. A lot like its owner.”
His compliment seeped into me, warming through to the very tips of my fingers. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” I whispered.
Caine smiled. “You think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to you?”
“Yeah.”
“See. No flash. Just beauty.”
I narrowed my eyes in thought. “You secretly like my tank tops and short shorts, don’t you?”
He grinned in answer before swallowing my laughter in a deep, drugging kiss.
My greatest issue with our relationship was coming to terms with the fact that even if Caine allowed me those small moments of intimacy, he had no intention of changing his mind about what we were doing together. I’d developed a bad habit of building my hopes up only for Caine to remind me that this was still a friends-with-benefits situation.
Only a day after we’d spent the morning laughing and talking and playing, I was brought back down to earth with a bump. I’d felt close to him in those moments, but the next day everything was back to the way it had been before. I didn’t blame Caine. He didn’t know I kept changing the rules in my head. I was frustrated, however, by my lack of progress and I needed to regroup, to find another way to get through to him, and so far I’d come up with nothing.
We made no plans to meet that weekend and I considered dropping in on Effie for her unique perspective until a phone call with Rachel that Friday afternoon.
Caine was out to lunch and I was at my desk, nibbling at a salad. I hadn’t exactly had the best appetite these last few days.
“Lexie, come on,” Rachel huffed in her annoyance. I’d just told her about my failed attempt at getting closer to Caine. “Maybe it’s time to call it quits on this guy before you get hurt.”
I ignored that. “I’ve been trying to come up with a new tactic, but I realized something this morning. No more tactics. Maybe honesty would work best.”
“No way.” I could sense her rolling her eyes. “Unless you want things to definitely end between you … and I’m not exactly averse to that anymore.”
“You need to make up your mind. Do you find me screwing my boss sexy or stupid? Choose one.” She kept flitting between the two, which was not good when it came to needing advice.
“Right now it’s stupid. I think it’s ti—Maisy, Ted is not a toy!” She cursed, and I heard the phone drop. A minute later she was back with a breathless “Sorry about that.”
“Who is Ted and do I want to know what the devil child was doing to him?”
“You know I’m going to start taking your comments about my kid seriously one of these days.”
“I wish you would.”
Rachel snorted. “Ted is our puppy.”
My eyes widened in horror. “You gave the kid a puppy?”
“He loves her. It’s so adorable.”
I was one hundred percent sure that poor puppy did not love Maisy. I was certain that poor puppy was terrified of Maisy. “What was she doing to him? And be careful what you say, because I am not afraid to call Animal Protection on your ass.”
“Oh, stop it. She was just cuddling him a little too hard. I was there. I’m keeping an eye on her. Don’t you trust me?”
Um … “I’ve seen what you’ve let that kid do to your husband.”
“But that’s just Jeff. I would never let Maisy hurt an animal. Not that she would mean to … She’s just overly exuberant. I’ve got my eye on Ted, though. Don’t you worr—hey, you changed the subject,” Rachel snapped. “Ditch the loser boss.”
My silence made her sigh heavily.
“Rach—”
“Okay, whatever, but at least promise me you’ll keep Saturday night free, because I have an extra ticket to the Red Sox game and these tickets are fucking awesome. Jeff got them from work. Get this, field box forty-three, row four, behind home freaking plate.”
I chewed my bottom lip in thought. Those were great seats, but there was every chance Caine would be at that game. He couldn’t make it to every one, but he did try and with Saturday’s game set against the Yankees, there was a more than huge chance he would be there.
“I didn’t hear the ‘hell yeah’ I was expecting. Come on,” Rachel pleaded. “We haven’t hung out in ages and yeah, Jeff will be there, but we’ve got a babysitter, so Maisy won’t be.”
That did sweeten the idea a little more.
And even if Caine was there he would be up on EMC level and no way would he spot me in a crowd of thousands.
Wait.
If he did, so what? I was allowed to go to a game. He didn’t have a say in what I did in my free time. “Do not go down that path,” I warned myself.
“What path? What path am I going down?”
“Not you, Rach. And yes, I will go to the game.”
“Yay! Okay, Jeff and I will meet you at the entrance at six thirty. Do not eat before the game. I intend to buy copious amounts of junk food and beer and you will join me so I don’t feel so bad about it.”
I grinned, suddenly feeling a whole lot better now that I had concrete plans for the weekend that didn’t involve Caine. “Hot dogs are on me.”
There was a mixture of guilt and mischievousness in Rachel’s eyes as I walked toward her and Jeff. They stood outside the busy entrance to Fenway Park and they were not alone.