Page 51 of First Touch

Reeve set down the tongs. “As much as you like it when we’re not really alone?”

I swear my blush extended to my toes. How did he know those things about me? How did he just understand what dirty things turned me on?

“That shade of red looks good on you,” he teased. “Come here.”

I couldn’t look at him as I circled around the island. When I was within arm’s reach, he pulled me into him and I licked my lips, expecting a kiss. Wanting a kiss.

But it didn’t come. Instead, he fingered the jewel at my neck. “I knew this color would bring out your eyes. But it looked better when it was all you were wearing.”

“Such mixed messages you give, Sallis. You like me wearing your things, you like me not wearing your things. You’re awfully confusing.”

“And you’re awfully distracting. I changed my mind – go back where you were.” He swatted my behind and turned his focus on his meal. Or maybe he was as thrown by the tender undertones in the air as I was.

Come to think of it, “awfully confusing” was an understatement. I had a feeling that no matter how much time I spent with the man, he’d always be completely perplexing. I wondered if Amber had felt the same about him or if she’d managed to crack his code. I wondered if he’d given her jewels that brought out the color of her eyes and called her distracting. I wondered if he’d given his employees the day off and made her breakfast, kissed her in the kitchen while she wore nothing but his things. While she wore nothing.

They weren’t the kinds of Amber questions that usually pushed for my attention, and it shamed me. It also reminded me that I needed to be asking other questions. Ones that would gain useful information and as many as Reeve would allow.

“So, is this something you do often?” Okay, I was weak. It was the only door I saw open, though, so I slipped in. Maybe it was just the only door I saw.

“Breakfast? I do it every day.” He walked to a cupboard and brought back a stack of plates.

“Cook, I mean. Send away staff so you can be alone with a girl.”

He seemed to think about his answer. “I can’t say that I do.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let it get to my head. I remember; I’m not special.” I added a wink so he’d think I was only regurgitating his words and not digging for the reassurance that I was somehow suddenly desperate for.

“I’ll say this, Emily – I’ve dated my share of actresses and you’re the only one who hasn’t bent over backwards to try to keep me entertained. Outside the bedroom, I mean.” As he spoke, he placed a paper towel on one of the plates and started moving strips of cooked bacon to it from the pan.

“I’m pretending that’s a compliment.” I wasn’t sure what it was, to tell the truth.

“It actually might be.”

He’d said it easily, with no complaint in his tone, but the more I thought about it the more the comment unsettled me, made me question if he wanted me to be something different than I was with him.

I thought of Amber. She was practically the definition of entertaining. She was the one who could never sit still, who wanted to go out to the bars and sing karaoke at the top of her lungs. She was loud and boisterous and colorful, and while I’d always felt like I was too when I was with her, they were not attributes that had remained in my years without her.

Did Reeve wish I was more like her? I’d been focused on the sex, but did I need to be that for him to get him to open up to me?

It wasn’t something I knew how to blatantly ask.

I crossed my arms and leaned my torso on the counter. “Did you not want your other girlfriends to be entertaining?”

His brow knitted slightly in the middle of his broad forehead. “Usually I’m quite drawn to entertaining. But sometimes it can be exhausting.”

“What about your last girlfriend? Was she entertaining?”

“She was both entertaining and exhausting.”

“Is that why you’re not with her anymore?” I hadn’t even realized I was going to ask it before I did. And after I had, while I recognized that it had come purely from a place of insecurity, I hoped his answer would tell me things I needed to know.

He glanced up at me before turning to plate the toast. “It’s complicated.” When he turned back, he said, “And yes.”

I could relate to the exhausting as well. Amber had been so much of both and, in the end, it was a lot of the reason it had become impossible for us to stay friends. Though she’d been the one to suggest it, I was the one who had actually walked away. I was the one who’d abandoned her. I was the one who was always looking back.

For all the reasons I’d always told myself I’d left, maybe that was why I’d actually been able to do it. Because by that point, I’d been tired.

It was entirely possible that Reeve had a similar story. “Then did you break up with her? Or was it the other way around?”