“Yeah.”
They both watched out the window for a few more moments. “He doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty, I’ll give him that.”
“No.” She’d always loved that about him, the architect who was only too happy to get down and dirty with the construction aspects of his projects. She was never sure whether he appealed to her more when he was designing and envisioning a finished project, or when he was covered in sweat and sawdust, muscles bulging.
Chelsea pulled herself away from the window first. “Okay, I’ve got my own eye candy at home. I’d better get back, David’s waiting for me.”
“Sure. Have a great Sunday.” They hugged quickly.
She was, as usual, the last one to leave. Only this time, she wasn’t alone. Dexter followed her to her car. The temperature had dropped suddenly and there was a sharp chill in the air.
Once they were settled into her car, the heater humming, she turned to him and said, “So, where can I drop you?”
He gazed at her mouth. “I was hoping we could pick up where we left off the other night.”
“WHAT?” The word bounced around the inside of her car, even though her shock was only pretense. She’d known the moment Dexter asked her for a ride home that he had more than transportation in mind. You didn’t love a man for six years, live with him for five, without knowing a thing or two about how his mind worked.
Or have him know about how yours worked, she realized, as he gazed at her separated by nothing but a couple of feet of cold air, with an expression that suggested he knew she was as aware of him as he was of her. “Come on,” he said. “You’ve been thinking about having sex with me, too. I know you’re too honest to pretend you haven’t.”
Which was exactly what she’d planned to do. Deny, deny, deny. She sighed out a breath of mingled frustration and—no, it was all frustration, both the irritation of a woman dealing with a man she thought was out of her life, and the huge dollop of sexual frustration that being around Dex again was causing. Because she couldn’t be near him and not remember how they’d burned up the sheets together. No matter their problems, their sex life had always been superb.
“I can’t—”
“Whatever else was wrong between us, you can’t deny that when we got naked, everything worked,” he said, oddly echoing her own thoughts on the matter. Then he reached over, and ran a fingertip under the hem of her skirt. “Or not even naked,” he mused, his eyes crinkling as memories rose around them. “Remember that time when we took my first brand-new car out for a spin?”
“No,” she lied.
Which was a huge mistake because then, of course, he had to remind her of an incident they both knew she remembered perfectly well.
“I’d only ever driven used beaters, and now suddenly I had a company car, and it was brand-new. We went to the dealership to pick it up. A silver GM sedan.” It had been a green Ford, but she refused to rise to the bait no matter how provocatively he behaved. She shifted an inch closer to her door, but he shifted, too, so his finger continued to trace the hem of her skirt which had, naturally, ridden up when she sat down. She could smack him away, but that would make an issue of something she preferred to ignore. Besides, what he was doing felt so good, and it had been so long.
“It was summer and you wore a red sundress.” He was right about the season, but she’d worn a blue cotton dress. She never wore red with her hair color. His wandering finger had reached the crease of her closed legs and he paused for a second. “Is any of this familiar?”
“Not ringing any bells yet.” Ha.
His voice grew husky. “We took a drive, didn’t know where we were going, didn’t care. We found ourselves down by the river. It was quiet, nobody around.”
Because he’d obviously carefully done a reconnaissance mission beforehand. When he’d pulled out a bottle of wine from his briefcase along with two glasses, she’d known it.
“Do you remember what happened then?” he asked, his voice so close, so deep and low, that she knew he’d moved closer.
“No,” she lied.
“That’s too bad. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.”
The touch of his finger doing no more than trace her hem, running along her upper thigh, was so erotic it was an act of will not to squirm, not to push his hand higher, where she needed release so desperately, or at least depress the handy button that would recline their seats. Or even better, act as they had that night he was describing, and simply crawl into the backseat where there was more room.
“I’m sure you’ve made lots of new memories since then,” she snapped.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he asked her, as though she’d never spoken.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Not that long.”
Maybe she could force her body to remain still while that one finger played at her hem, never going higher or doing anything that would make it necessary for her to slap him down, but she couldn’t seem to control her breathing. Even as she tried to pretend she felt nothing, remembered nothing, a combination of his finger stroking her skin, his nearness, and the sweet, painful pull of memory was causing her breathing to speed up along with her pulse.
“We talked about my new job, and a new event you were organizing, and it seemed like we could do anything. We were young, smart, ambitious and we had each other. What an unbeatable team.” The finger stalled for a moment and she felt the tension in his hand as though a spasm of emotion had hit him. It felt like anger, but she had to assume it was guilt for throwing everything they’d had away.
Then the moment passed and the back-and-forth exploration of her thigh continued. He tugged her skirt up a full half inch, torturing her again with a slow track back, his finger pad tracing a line of heat across her skin.
“All the while we talked, I did this. Played at your hem, and you pretended you didn’t notice, like now.”
“I think your memory’s playing tricks.”
“And then, suddenly, you parted your legs and turned toward me.” He swallowed. So did she. Heat flooded her body as she remembered what came next.
“I thought I was so in control, touching you, turning us both on, but you were the one in control, weren’t you? You were the one with the secret.”
“No,” she whispered, but she wasn’t telling him she hadn’t had a secret, she was trying to stop the flood of memory that was as warm and thick as desire.
“When I got up to touch your panties, you weren’t wearing any.”
Oh, how she remembered. The feel of the air wafting up her skirt, the wanton knowledge that she’d stood by while he’d finalized paperwork at a car dealership, while they’d driven public highways, and all the time, underneath her cotton sundress, she’d been bare-assed.
“We were in the backseat so fast I ended up with bruised elbows and knees. We never did take off our clothes, did we? I ended up flipping that skirt up, pulling down the top of your dress to reach your breasts. You were always so sensitive there.” He laughed softly. “We were like a pair of kids going at it.” He sighed, obviously realizing that this little trip down memory lane wasn’t working. Her thighs didn’t ease open, though he couldn’t possibly know what torture it was to hold them closed against