One Night, White Lies. Jessica Lemmon
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“Fitting.”
He offered his arm and she curled her fingers around his biceps. Whatever cool she had slipped from her like rainwater off a duck’s back. She’d easily navigated the room in her high-heeled shoes all evening, but now worried she might stumble and fall. She swiped her teeth with her tongue in case her lipstick had transferred. She suddenly worried there was something in her nose or—
“Champagne and scotch rocks, please,” Reid ordered from the bartender. Her palm was sweaty. So were her teeth, for that matter.
Do not freak out. Do not freak out!
She’d play a role. Like an actor. Deep inside she was the same Drew, but her outer appearance had changed enough that some days she felt like someone else. She was definitely a stronger version of herself. A happier version of herself. She’d sprouted and then bloomed, and now a tender new bud was around the corner. She could feel it.
Screw Chef Devin Briggs for never seeing the rose he’d had.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to let thoughts of her ex-boyfriend ruin a one-on-one with Reid.
“Golden and bubbly.” Reid handed her the champagne flute. “Should we sit or linger?” He leaned in when he asked, and she was so focused on the shape of his upper lip, the tempting fullness of his lower lip, that she didn’t answer.
“Huh?” Smooth, Drew.
He gestured to a cluster of boxy-looking chairs and a sofa in the corner. Currently unoccupied.
“Sit. Let’s sit.” Before she had a case of the vapors and fell flat on her face.
He took her free hand this time, his blunt fingers and wide palm dwarfing her smaller ones. She walked toward the sofa with one thought dominating all others. I’m holding Reid’s hand. I’m holding Reid’s hand!
She felt like a teenager again, smitten by this gorgeous god of a man who seemed too perfect to be real. Except she was closer to his equal now, wasn’t she? The playing field hadn’t been leveled, but close. She was a professional with a great job and a great life, and her shoes were adding four inches of much-needed height. She was confident and strong, and she wouldn’t trade this second chance for anything. His being attracted to her was doing wonders for her ego.
Shallow, but no less true.
Dipping his chin, he gestured for her to sit. She did, crossing one leg over the other and noticing when Reid noticed. She hid her smile at the rim of the champagne flute. As bubbles tickled her throat and popped on her tongue, he settled in next to her.
“Where do you hail from, Christina—” another glance at her name tag “—Kolch?”
“And you pronounced it right. Impressive.” Christina was always complaining that she’d heard everything from “Cock” to “Couch” whenever someone said her last name.
“Like the soda but with an L, I figured.”
“You figured right.” A weighty pause hovered in the air and she realized her faux pas. She recovered with a stilted, “What’s your name?” and felt silly for asking.
“Singleton. Reid Singleton.”
“Did you intentionally introduce yourself like James Bond, or did I hear it that way because of your accent?” His smile erased her mind like a powerful magnet, but thankfully she recovered quickly. “I assume you didn’t grow up in California?”
“I’m from London, but I live in Seattle and have for years. Never developed a knack for you Americans’ hard Rs.”
He overpronounced the R in hard and Rs, which made him sound a little like a pirate. Drew laughed again.
“Do you always giggle this much or only when you drink champagne?”
“Only when I drink champagne with handsome strangers,” she said, enjoying the game and the new rules for it. When Reid figured out who she was in the next two minutes, she would shove his arm in an ole-buddy-ole-pal way and chastise him for his weak powers of observation.
But she was in no hurry. She liked him this way—trying to win her attention, sitting taller when she’d paid him a compliment he had to know was true. It wasn’t like Reid didn’t own a mirror. He was obviously good-looking to the nth degree.
It was unfair to every other man on the planet.
“Well played.” His voice was a low murmur as he leaned in, his eyes touching her lips. He then sat back, taking her breath with him, and sipped his scotch while she drained half her champagne.
She suddenly didn’t want this to end. She didn’t want him to recognize her. She wanted to be seen as charming and playful and beautiful. She wanted to relax and have fun and flirt.
Her gaze locked on his full lower lip below his contoured top lip. She wanted to kiss him. Before it was too late. Before she lost her nerve, and her only chance with it. As soon as he figured out that she was Drew Fleming, the moment would be lost.
A wave of panic sailed through her chest. She’d regret not kissing him for the rest of her life if she didn’t do it now. She set aside her champagne glass and faced him.
“Tell me more about—” he started, but she cut him off. In the most delicious way possible.
She grabbed his dashing, perfect face, tugged his mouth to hers and kissed him hard.
Reid’s spicy cologne tickled her nose as she tasted his amazing mouth. She’d sort of slammed her lips into his to start—blame years of pent-up lust—but now she eased into a more tender kiss, sliding her lips over his in gentle exploration.
She didn’t know if he felt the same electric sizzle that flamed to life inside her the moment their mouths met, but she accepted that this couldn’t go on forever. When they pulled apart, she’d come clean. She’d tell him her name—her real one—and then she would do the awkward dance of apologizing for the subterfuge.
But when she would’ve ended the kiss, Reid’s fingers fed into her hair, holding her close. He opened his mouth wide and stroked his tongue against hers.
That ignited flame inside her burst into a five-alarm fire. He kissed like no man she’d ever known. The slide of his tongue was ten times more intoxicating than the champagne she’d been drinking—in and out, in and out. A needy sound resonated from her throat.
Reid Singleton was even more delicious than she’d imagined. And, oh, had she imagined. In the darkest corner of her bedroom with a flashlight and her journal. A shoebox in her closet held some truly horrible poetry. She’d imagined him saying her name in his proper accent—not in polite greeting, but with passion.
She might never know what it was like to hear him say her name in that way, but at least she knew how he tasted. Like smoky scotch and sexy male. Every part of her from her peaking nipples to her overheating thighs wanted to climb onto his lap and satisfy the insistent throbbing between her legs.
His kiss was both thorough but careful, his skill and his tongue almost too much to bear. Here was a man who knew how to please a woman, and Drew was a woman who needed pleasing. Badly. Not just sex for sex’s sake, but sex with Reid. Sex with the man who’d noticed her from across the room, who had always been polite and friendly to her and her family. The man who, if she told him who she was, would end this fantasy in an instant because he would never take advantage of his best friend’s little sister.
She wanted to hover in the in-between forever. Where they knew each other physically, where the past had no weight on the present.
She palmed his chest, and even over a shirt, he felt better than he had in her fantasies. Hard and firm, and real. So real. Greedily, she ran her fingers to the open placket of his