Page 62 of Passion and Promises
“Please tell me that’s full,” I croak. She turns slowly with two mugs in her hands and passes one to me. “Thank you. You’re the best.”
“Mm-hmm,” Kelly replies.
I sink down into a chair and sip at my coffee slowly. It’s perfect; somehow Kelly always remembers how I drink it. Probably because it’s the opposite of hers. She likes it with nothing more than a splash of cream, whereas I want all the sugar, but no cream.
“Damn, my neck is not happy with me sleeping on the couch,” I say now that my brain is slowly switching on from the caffeine. “I don’t even remember falling asleep.”
“Yeah.”
Kelly’s non-answer has me looking up at her. Her eyes are shifting all around the room, anywhere but on me.
“Kell? Everything okay?”
“Yup, fine. Why?”
“Okay, now I know something’s up. Your voice is doing that weird squeaky thing. You only do that when you’ve done something you probably shouldn’t have, like that time you thought playing field hockey in your mom’s living room was a good idea and broke that vase.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get the point, thanks for the trip down memory lane,” Kelly grumbles as she sits down in the chair across the table from me and finally drags her gaze up to meet mine. Her tongue darts out to lick her lips and for some reason, my eyes zero in on the motion.
“Do you remember anything from last night?” she asks cautiously.
“Not much, aside from too much fucking rum.”
Kelly winces. “Has your…phone been doing anything?”
My eyes narrow. “Yes.” Like a wrecking ball smashing into the side of a house, it all hits me. The dating app. Kelly writing a profile and not letting me read it. Then…
“Did you fall asleep on the couch with me?”
Kelly stands up abruptly and goes to the sink to rinse her mug. “Umm, yeah, I did. I got up later and moved to my room, but you were so deeply asleep I couldn’t wake you. Sorry.”
Well, that’s one mystery solved. Although, now a part of me wonders what it would have been like to wake up at the same time as her, but I make myself dismiss that idea quickly. Besides, there are more important things to figure out. Standing up, I swallow down the last of my coffee before walking back to the couch and picking up my phone. Trepidation fills me as I stare at the notifications from Left for Love, the goddamn app she signed me up for last night. “Kelly. There’s thirty-seven notifications. What the fuck?”
I go to the settings to try and delete the profile, but it needs a password. Turning the phone to face her, I say, “You need to take it down. Now.”
“Oh, come on, Jensen, just go on a couple of dates. Meet some people. Where’s the harm in that?”
I glare at her for several seconds, watching her squirm. But before I can put her out of her misery, Oliver does it for me, jumping up on the couch and stretching across her lap. Her hands instantly start to stroke along his back and he lets out a sigh of pleasure.Lucky dog.I’d have to be crazy, a monk, or blind, not to be attracted to Kelly. But the way she’s pushing this dating app is making it pretty clear that any attraction I might have is one-sided.
“Fine. I’ll go on one date. Then you’re taking it down.”
“Five.”
“What? Fuck, no!” I look at her in horror. “Three. Final offer. Three dates, with three women that I choose from the app, and when you see what a bad idea it was, you agree to take the profile down.”
“Fine.”
Jesus. What the hell have I gotten myself into…
Chapter five
Kelly
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Yesterday, after we got dressed and took Oliver for a run, we drove around Westport looking at apartments. Jensen put his name on a couple of waiting lists, but nothing was that great. After we got back to my house, he sat down and started going through the profiles of the women — now up to forty-three — who had messaged him on that freaking dating site.
I’m not gonna lie, that was hard. Some of those women were downright crazy, but some of them were beautiful, with profiles that made them sound interesting and alluring even to me, a perfectly straight woman. Jensen settled on two that he reluctantly agreed to reach out to, and I thought that would be the end of it.
