Page 106 of Off the Mark
She suddenly stared past my shoulder, then huffed out a laugh. “Speaking of flowers.”
I spun to find Rowan, dressed head to toe in a dark navy suit, his dress shirt open at the collar. He prowled through the crowd like a big cat in the jungle—confident, dangerous—and I wasn’t the only person watching him with their jaw hanging open.
I’d had this man every filthy way imaginable, and my mouthstillwent bone-dry at the sight of him.
Our eyes locked, and I blushedeverywhere. Then I noticed what Dempsey had been pointing out. The slender bouquet of sunflowers in his hand.
My heart spun like my bike when I whipped it through the air.
Dempsey leaned in to whisper rapidly, “Okay, I’m gonna go. Have fun with your hot baseball player and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, but actually, that’s a whole lot.”
She left. And there was Rowan O’Callaghan, standing in front of me in a damn suit, presenting me with a bouquet of cheerful sunflowers.
The audacity I had to assume I could pretend with this man waslaughable.
He pulled me close and rumbled a greeting at my ear. Pressed a kiss to the side of my neck that had my knees weakening. “I wanted to bring you flowers for our date. But don’t worry, I also nervously bought out the rest of the bouquets and now my kitchen looks like a garden.”
I managed to squeak out, “For me?”
“It’s always been for you, Charlie.”
And there I was, sunflowers in hand.
Glowing.
25
ROWAN
The fact that I could walk after spotting Charlie at the bar was a fucking miracle. I’d had better luck moving my lower body after baseball practices that were nothin’ but wind sprints.
It’d been twenty hours since she’d left my bed. And the second my gaze connected with hers through the crowd, I was a goner.
The need to touch her was what finally propelled me forward in the end. She sat balanced on a barstool in a purple jumpsuit that had my eyes roving over her exposed collarbones and the delicate slope of her neck. My fingers twitched at my sides.
All I could think about was what she tasted like there, what that column of golden hair felt like wrapped around my hand.
She was no more beautiful than the first night I saw her at Jolene’s. But everything between us was different now. Charlie had cried out my name and fallen apart beneath my tongue. Had snored softly on my chest and laughed with her head under my sheets.
Around her, I wasinsatiable.
“It’s always been for you, Charlie,” I said, presenting the bouquet of sunflowers. “And you look absolutely, incredibly gorgeous.”
She stepped back to examine me with her hands on my lapels. She arched a single eyebrow and said, “Holy shit, you look hot in a suit.”
I chuckled and raised a finger at the bartender for a beer. Settled onto a stool, facing Charlie almost exactly the way I had two and a half weeks ago, at a bar in the suburbs where we learned how to touch each other for our fake relationship.
“See, at a certain point, it’s like I don’t even have to flirt. You’re doing it for me.”
She settled back with a sly grin, eyes sweeping me from head to toe. It made me seriously consider wearing one of these every day if it made Charlie this happy.
I crooked a finger with a wink. She tipped her upper body forward and hovered her mouth over mine. “I missed you.”
“Same,” I said. “My sheets smell like you now.”
“That sounds like a delightful problem to have.”
“Oh, it definitely is,” I drawled. “Luckily, Dean came by and shook me by the shoulders a few times until I snapped out of it.”
