Page 54 of Sweet Spot

Just as her hopeful expression faltered, I gave my answer.

“I’ll play hooky with you,” I grinned, laughing as she gave a little cheer and pulled me on top of her, wrapping her legs around my waist as she kissed me. Kissing her back, I cursed myself.

I was doing it again. Diving in headfirst. I didn’t know what we were or what we were doing, and I was sure it was a bad idea.

But I didn’t know when I was going to meet another Lia.

And everything felt too damned good to stop.

19

LIA

I spent the next morning in Lukas’s apartment while he got ready for work. On his couch, I sipped the cappuccino he made me, content to just watch him knot his tie. I liked the rare moments that his eyes weren’t on me. It gave me the freedom to just look at him, to study him in his suit. Naked, the man looked like a damned Viking but in a shirt and tie, he looked like a gentleman. I couldn’t understand how any straight woman or gay man at his office got anything done when he walked around looking like that. Everything about him screamed sex and authority, down to the frown in his brow. I kept catching them – faint pinches between his eyebrows every couple of minutes, as he thought about work or the day ahead.

Or something else, but I wouldn’t know.

Unless he was thinking about me, I never came close to knowing what was going on in Lukas’s mind. And while it drove me kind of crazy, I convinced myself to let it go. In the back of my head, beyond the fun we were having, I knew we had an expiration date. It wasn’t a fact that overjoyed me or made me in any way happy, actually, but I reminded myself it was for the best. With Lukas, the universe was giving me balance for once. I had both work and play now. With our little whirlwind romance, I was getting a taste of dating again, my bar was being set nice and high, but I wasn’t getting locked into another relationship. I still had time for me.

Fun and temporary.

That had been the goal for this from the start, so getting invested in whatever was troubling Lukas was probably not in my best interest. I wanted desperately to know more, but I imagined that he didn’t tell just anyone about himself. He reserved those details for people he trusted and cared about.

And as real as things felt between us sometimes, I clearly wasn’t one of those people.

“So what’s your day look like?” Lukas asked as he made himself an Americano.

“It’s a big one,” I smiled, repositioning myself on the couch. Thanks to Elaine, I had a meeting with my first potential distributor at noon. Just thinking about it got me excited.

“You gonna tell me or is it against the rules to even brief me on what’s going on with your business?”

I narrowed my eyes at the teasing grin Lukas shot over his shoulder. “It’s not against the rules to talk about it, I just get superstitious when nothing’s official yet. I have bad memories of promising Ritchie’s mom a whole lot of stuff and never following through.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“Well, failure doesn’t care about whose fault it was. It’s still going to happen.”

Lukas wore a deep frown as he brought his mug to his lips, shooting a playfully disturbed look in my direction. “You’re fucking intense sometimes.”

I grinned. “What? Everyone’s got their sore spots,” I said just as my phone buzzed beside me. “Huh. Speak of the devil,” I murmured without thinking as I read Ritchie’s name off my phone.

I’d sent one reply to his message, saying that I would think about visiting. And since, it had opened up a floodgate. He hadn’t stopped texting – random memories, thoughts, old pictures. Even an apology. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve dissected his every text with Sara but in the past week with Lukas, I didn’t care to.

Flicking my screen on, I glanced at the text before looking up to find Lukas cocking his head at me. “What?”

“Sorry. I caught the name on your phone.”

“Oh. Yeah. Ritchie?”

“Yeah.” Lukas adjusted his cufflinks as he frowned at me. “I thought you said you two hadn’t spoken since the breakup.”

“We hadn’t. But he texted me the day after I got my investment deal. To congratulate me.”

“Really? That’s a lot more restraint than I’d give him credit for,” Lukas snorted to himself.

I paused, wondering if I should tell him the truth – about Ritchie selling the house and wanting me to visit before it was gone. I was tempted to since I was curious as to what he’d even say. But I decided against it. “Yep, that’s all. Just a ‘congrats, proud of you’ type text.”

The crease remained in Lukas’s brow. “How did he even find out about it?”