Page 65 of The Irresistible One
As I held my martini, I listened intently. Everything she said made perfect sense.
And in all the years I’d been single with a membership to Lush, I had never mentally obsessed over anyone like I did with Colson. Sure, there were others at Lush who had satisfied me. But the sensation that had pulsed through me when I saw Colson there the second time, that was an entirely new feeling.
The same sensation that had trickled through me when I came out of the restroom last night and saw him at the bar.
Oh God.
The vodka I was sipping wasn’t turning me gentle. It wasn’t easing the emotions I had for that man. I truly didn’t know if we could be in the same room for an extended period of time without wanting to verbally whip one another.
But this was the closest I’d ever gotten to wanting more.
“Hayden, what’s good here? I’ve never been.” Dottie opened her menu.
“Everything. Especially the seafood,” he said.
Despite needing to order for Abbi and me and having no idea what either of us wanted since I hadn’t even looked at my menu, I reached into my purse and grabbed my cell, pulling up Colson’s last text.
As my fingers hovered over the screen, I felt a set of eyes on me, and the feeling made me glance up. I scanned the room, looking for the stare and who it belonged to. I couldn’t locate it,but what I did find, directly across the right side of me, was a sight that made the air in my throat hitch.
No.
It couldn’t be.
I blinked several times to make sure what I was seeing was correct. Each time my eyes readjusted, the view became clearer, confirming what I suspected.
Colson was in the bar of the restaurant, sitting at a small high-top table. His hand was cupped around a tumbler, and he was smiling and laughing. Not because he was watching TV in the bar or having a conversation with a fellow solo diner who stood near his table. It was because there was a woman with dark hair and a stunning profile sitting across from him, his concentration unbreakable as he gazed at her, soaking in everything she was saying.
I knew that stare all too well. Because it was the same way he always looked at me.
I continued to focus on them, unable to stop, my resentment building with each change in his expression and the way his tongue swiped the inside of his lips before he spoke. At one point, he reached forward, gently grabbing a chunk of her hair and running his fingers through it. As soon as he reached the bottom of her strands, she clutched the back side of his palm, staring at it, grinning, and laughing soon after, like those same fingers had just spanked her.
They probably had. He loved doing that.
Asshole.
He’d had the actual nerve to ask me to come over on the same night he was on a date with a different woman. So he could taste her first … and then me.
Fuck him.
I dropped my phone into my purse and downed the rest of my martini, and when my hands were free, I threw open mymenu. The force sent the top of the leather into the plate in front of me, sliding it several inches forward so it banged into my water glass. The glass threatened to fall, and I stopped it just in time.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered under my breath. I read the entrées and descriptions, but nothing sounded even remotely appetizing, so I shut the menu and moved it off to the side.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I replied to Hayden.
“Do you want to tell me what made you just drink your martini like it was a shot and almost break a glass?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Sophie …” He continued to keep his voice down so only I could hear him.
I finally looked at him.
“It’s something.” His eyes were attempting to peel back my locked layers. “What is it?”
A date? Is he serious?
