Page 16 of The Trouble with Flings

“Jen, you’re a New Yorker, right? How did you guys meet?” Lily asks.

Fitz turns to me with a raised brow and an expression that says This one’s yours, wild one as clearly as if he’d spoken it out loud.

Looking around the table at our new friends, I say, “We met in a bar on Silver Island last summer.”

“She was the most exquisite woman I’d ever seen,” he says, shocking me. “Standing at the bar in a blue sundress, giving the bartender a hard time about something.”

I can’t believe he remembers what I was wearing and doing.

“So it was love at first sight, and you’ve been together ever since?” Lily asks excitedly.

“No,” I say. “It was lust at first sight. We hooked up, had a great time, and I left the next day. It was sheer coincidence that we ran into each other again at the hotel yesterday and reconnected.”

“Wait,” Dave says with confusion. “You haven’t been dating for a while?”

“No,” I answer.

“Thank God,” Dave says. “That explains why Fitz is pulling out your chair and saying sweet shit.”

They laugh.

“Actually, it wouldn’t matter if we just met or we were married for twenty years,” Fitz says, then looks at me with a calm certainty that makes my heart race. “If you aren’t going to treat a woman like she matters, you don’t deserve her time.”

His words wind through me, trying to burrow deep, to make me believe in them, but I know better and shimmy that wall into place.

Marco lifts his second shot glass and says, “To repeat hookups and serious sweet talk.”

Grateful for the distraction, I tap glasses with them and drink another shot. This time, when Fitz offers a lime, I take it from him and hold it myself. A small act of self-preservation against the kind of fairy tale I stopped believing in a long time ago.

As the night wears on, we all talk about getting together again later in the week, and Marco and Katelyn keep us in stitches sharing stories about their terrible travel mishaps.

When the waitress stops by the table, we order a round of drinks, and when she looks at Fitz, he says, “I’m good, thanks.”

I lean into him. “Why are you sitting this one out?”

“Something tells me you don’t get to cut loose like this very often,” he says quietly. “I want to keep an eye on things. Make sure nothing gets in your way of enjoying it.”

He says it casually, but his protectiveness catches me off guard.

“Hey, Fitz, weigh in on this, will ya?” Dave says, pulling him into a conversation with Marco about their blackjack strategies.

Katelyn leans toward me, playing with the charm on her necklace, and whispers conspiratorially, “Fitz is amazing.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty great.” I watch him talking with the guys like he’s known them forever. “So is Marco,” I say to Katelyn as Lily thumbs out a text on her phone.

“He’s the best,” Katelyn says. “Are you two really having a fling? Or are you hoping for something more serious?”

“I don’t do more serious,” I tell her.

“In that case, would you mind if I ask him if he’d be interested in coming back to my room tonight?”

Jealousy streaks through me, and I turn to look at her, to see if she’s serious. There’s no mistaking the interest glittering in her eyes. “What about your husband?” I whisper.

“He’s always open to a third,” she says, letting go of her necklace to reach for her drink. A tiny upside-down pineapple charm settles against her chest.

How did I miss that? I have no issue with swingers, even if it’s not my thing, but my thoughts start reeling with images of Katelyn and Marco with Fitz that I don’t want to see. I don’t even want to think about them touching him.

I don’t want to think about anyone else’s hands on him.