Page 27 of Matched By Mistake
She tipped her head to the side. “You sure about that?”
“Very sure,” he said. “I’m not a man to say things I don’t mean.”
“I’m the same kind of woman. Let me grab my bag and make sure everything’s turned off and locked up in the back.”
She left him alone and he stood there waiting, looking around her storefront and studio area. Unlike her home, which had shown the very intimate side of Maggie, this place was her business side. It was arty and edgy—more so than Maggie was—and it had the feeling of first-class professionalism.
She came back a few minutes later. “Ready. Also Misha texted back and said they are getting a flood of applications after that photo of us was posted. Apparently #k!smetmatch is trending everywhere. So kudos to us.”
“Huzzah.”
He held the door for her and then watched as she locked it and walked her to her car. A late-model Mustang. She leaned against the driver’s door. “So are we going to both continue to pretend that we weren’t about to kiss?”
“I was planning to. Unless you want to admit you can’t resist touching me,” he said. His seductress was back. The brief vulnerability she’d displayed when talking about Sheen was gone.
“I’m not. Sors.”
Maggie knew she should keep her mouth shut but she couldn’t. That one brief moment when she’d let the past in had rattled her, but the August night air was warm and the Texas sky was living up to its reputation for being big and bright tonight. And her confidence and competitive spirit were creeping back in.
“You don’t sound it,” he said, setting his canvas on the hood of her car and then leaning right next to her against the hood of the Mustang.
He’d left barely any space between them and her body reacted to his closeness as predicted. The breeze was strong, whipping her hair around her head, and she saw one of the strands brush against Jericho’s cheek. She reached up to capture her hair and twist it a few times before pulling it over her left shoulder. “That doesn’t count.”
“Doesn’t mean I enjoyed it any less,” he said.
He wasn’t pretending not to be affected by their closeness and his bluntness turned her on as nothing else could. Maybe it was that he was so very different from Randall. Maybe it was just his earthy sexuality that was calling at the sacred feminine inside her and making her want to claim him. To tempt him as she’d been doing all evening but up the stakes even more.
Except she wasn’t confident he’d be the first one to break. There was no telling how much control he had but having seen that meticulously detailed pencil sketch he’d made this evening, she felt confident that it was going to take more than a brush of her hair against him to get him to crack.
And she admitted to herself she still wasn’t sure she wanted him in her bed. Oh, she wanted... She just wasn’t sure how wise it would be. So that meant she had to retreat. “Jericho, what am I going to do with you?”
The soft words were torn from her mouth without thought. As soon as she uttered them, she regretted it, but she couldn’t call them back.
“I’ve got a few ideas,” he said. “But you’re going to have to touch me first.”
Her palms tingled and she was so tempted to touch him that she wrapped her arms around her waist. “Not tonight.”
He held his hands up near his shoulders. “I’m not in a rush.”
“Me, either,” she admitted. “But I do have to get home.”
“Yeah. What’s waiting for you?” he asked. “I thought you lived alone.”
“I do,” she said, wishing she’d made any other excuse than needing to get home. She had nothing waiting for her. But... “I have to text my mom I’m home or she’ll worry, and if I’m too late she’ll want to know why. And I know I’m thirty but she still tracks us, so it’s a thing.”
He laughed, but sort of a commiserating one. “My mom does it, too, so I get it. I won’t keep you, then. But maybe one day you won’t mind explaining to her that you were with me.”
“Jericho...” If he was any other man, she wouldn’t be tempted, but with Jericho she wanted to say to hell with it and give in. But he wasn’t any other man.
She’d told him about her fear of returning to Sheen. She’d never in her life enjoyed teasing a man and knowing that sexual ache was going to be with her for until their match was up. And she’d almost let herself forget that he was a Winters.
Honestly, when they were alone together she just thought of him as Jericho, but the fact that a photo of them was going viral had reminded her they were both very much bastions of their families. They were never going to be just Maggie and Jericho. Never.
The sooner she made her peace with that, the better.
“Good night, sweet Mags,” he said, turning toward her and leaning slightly in as he scooped his canvas off the hood of the car.
He hesitated and she held herself back but her lips felt dry.Don’t lick them. Don’t do it.
