Page 46 of Buy Back My Love

Van glanced over his shoulder at me. “You want it done right or you want it done fast?”

“Both.”

“That’s not how this works.”

I left him alone after that and went back to unpacking my kitchen stuff. A few minutes later, I heard him set the drill down, and when I looked over again, he was taking off the dark button-down he’d been wearing over his white tank.

I tried not to stare, I really did, but the tank fit close enough for me to see exactly why he had no business taking that shirt off in my house. His arms were cut, his chest filled out the front of it, and when he reached up to finish working on the mount, his tank lifted enough for me to catch the V at the bottom of his stomach disappearing into his jeans.

I turned back toward my boxes before he caught me looking and grabbed two bottles of water from the refrigerator. “You want some water?”

“Yeah, appreciate it.”

I carried one over and handed it to him. “You hot?”

Van twisted the cap off and took a long drink before answering. “A little bit.”

“Well, you the one came over here volunteering for manual labor.”

He smiled. “I ain’t complaining.”

I went back to the kitchen before my eyes got me in trouble. About twenty minutes later, Van had the TV mounted and was standing in front of it checking his work. I came around the island to look, and for the first time since I’d finished furnishing the place, the living room actually looked complete.

“Oh, yeah. That looks way better.” I pulled out my phone and opened Cash App. “How much I owe you?”

Van looked over at me. “How about lunch and we call it even?”

I lowered my phone. “You know I have a man.”

“I remember.”

“Then why you asking me to lunch?”

“Because I’m hungry, and you asked what you owed me.” He smiled. “Lunch ain’t an affair, Leona.”

I stared at him for a second because technically, he wasn’t wrong. It was lunch. We weren’t going to a hotel or back to his house. We were going to eat some food, and I damn sure wasn’t planning on doing anything with him.

Still, I could already hear JB asking me why the hell I was out eating with another man, and right behind his voice came Anika’s. Girl, just lie. I pushed Anika’s voice out of my head and looked at Van. “Where you trying to go?”

“How about Little Tokyo?”

I tilted my head. “What kind of food is that?”

“Japanese.”

“I don’t know if I ever had Japanese food.”

Van looked at me for a second. “You like Chinese?”

“Yeah.”

“It ain’t the same, but I think you’ll like it.”

I looked down at my phone, still open to Cash App, before locking the screen. Going to lunch with him was one thing, but I needed to make sure we were on the same page about what it was. “Okay, but just so we clear, this ain’t a date.”

Van smiled as he bent down and started putting his tools back in the bag. “I ain’t call it one.”

“You was trying to take me to dinner the other day.”