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“No, it’s not your fault. What time is it exactly?”
Lucas looked at his watch again. “Seven-oh-eight.”
Shit. I was going to be late. “Ugh.”
“Can you go right from here?”
That would get me there in time, but I looked down. Jeans weren’t unheard of since we all went fairly casual at these meetings, but. . . “I do have a blazer in my office that I suppose could dress this up.”
Lucas nodded to his bathroom. “There are toothbrushes under the sink. Not much else that’ll help you but. . .”
It would have to do. “You could give me a ride? I know you have two clients today.”
Lucas would begin taking clients this week, without advertising much, and sort of soft opening the studio.
“Not until this afternoon. Go ahead, I got you. But sorry to say, not much for breakfast here.”
“It’s fine, thanks, Lucas,” I called, heading to the main room to grab my purse and then head into the bathroom. When I’d said the apartment was sparsely furnished, I wasn’t kidding. But it was neat. Orderly. Not unexpected for a military guy.
I had my backup purse, so not a ton of makeup, but after brushing my teeth, fixing my hair and doing what I could with what I had for my face, I didn’t look completely like I’d spent the night partially clothed in Lucas’s bed and was about to have every manager for all of my father’s properties at a meeting in less than an hour.
I was about to put on lipstick when Lucas stopped me.
Reaching around to the front of me, he took the lipstick tube from my hand. Then, pushing my hair to one side, he proceeded to kiss everywhere. My neck, behind my ear. A jolt of sensation coursed through my body as he spun me around and finally kissed my lips.
Slow. Sensual. Lucas’s tongue demanded my own, and I gave it freely. My arms looped around his waist to steady myself as we stood there, intertwined, and kissed for far too long. Until it occurred to me why I was getting dressed for work in Lucas’s bathroom in the first place.
“I really have to get going,” I said, pulling away finally.
“Let’s go.”
Just like that, he backed away, highlighting the most confusing part about this “new” Lucas. He was so hot and cold. One minute, he embraced me in a way that made me think I was the only woman in the world. A few seconds later, he was just the opposite. I pictured him in his shop, surrounded by beautiful women, tattooing one while another gazed longingly at him. The man in the center, for his part, somewhere in between completely oblivious to it all and deciding which of them he wanted to take home that night.
Quite a visual, and one Lucas wouldn’t likely appreciate.
The enigma that was Lucas Warner alternately attracted and confused me, and last night hadn’t helped.
If anything, I was more confused than ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
lucas
Looked like I was about to get my wish.
As we pulled in front of the resort Charlee managed, a lakeside property well-known on the lake, I nearly laughed aloud. Since we’d had an exceptional morning—our bathroom make out session enough to convince me I was the biggest fucking idiot on the planet if I thought simply not having sex with Charlee would safeguard me from my growing feelings for her—I used every ounce of discipline I possessed not to react.
Charlee, seeing her father stroll up to the door at the very moment we pulled up? Slightly different reaction. When she looked at me with a death glare that clearly said, “This is your fault,” which obviously it was anything but, she expelled a breath and waited.
Didn’t take long.
He’d seen her the second we pulled up. Abandoning his door-holding efforts, her father made a beeline to us. Charlee simultaneously jumped out of the truck but held the door open for him to speak to us both.
“Morning, Dad,” she said too cheerfully.
“Good morning,” he said more formally.
If I had met the father first, Charlee and I would probably not have dated. The nicest word I could think of to describe him would be “snob.” He'd inherited Lakeside Properties. Never knew anything but wealth and influence. For some people, that didn’t seem to affect them. Charlee, for instance. She was as down-to-earth as anyone I knew.
