Leaving Normal, Stef Holm [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

have gone to a hockey game on my own."

"So we're even."

"But I liked the hockey game. You didn't enjoy this."

"I didn't say I didn't like it." They walked through the barren rose garden to the parking lot. "I just didn't find the same appeal in it as you did. I thought some of the paintings were really good."

"They were."

"So there you go."

He unlocked the Ram and opened the door. She got up inside, and he still liked how she did that. She put a hand on the grip and pulled her body up to climb in. He got a nice view of her behind.

Closing the door, he went around to the driver's side. Once behind the wheel, he asked, "Where do you want to eat?"

"Anywhere. I'm starved."

"Cobby's?"

"Perfect."

He took the side streets from downtown to Chinden and they didn't have to drive far to the landmark sandwich shop. Once inside they ordered, then got a table. He ate, thinking it felt really comfortable to sit here with her.

She asked, "What will you do at work tomorrow?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—like, if there's no call to go on. Do you watch daytime TV?"

"I only do that when I'm at home doing laundry," he laughed. "I was a former Days of Our Lives watcher. Don't tell anyone."

A smile curved the corners of her mouth. "Okay."

He swallowed a bite of sandwich, wiped his hands on a paper napkin and said, "I get there a little early, talk to the guy I'm relieving. I ask how the day before went. I'll wash the engine, make more coffee if the pot's empty. I don't drink a lot of coffee, though."

"Why not?"

"Just don't need it."

"Do you have a hard time getting up?"

"Snooze button, babe."

She laughed, then her expression grew more serious. "You woke up just fine the other morning."

"Because I wasn't alone."

She gazed down at the sandwich paper, then at him, a hesitant smile touching her mouth. He would have liked to know what she was thinking in that head of hers. Probably too much. She worked too hard to analyze things. She didn't do herself any favors.

"I liked having you sleep next to me."

She said nothing, and he sensed there was more on her mind than she let on. He'd had that feeling for the last thirty minutes, even though she'd tried hard not to show her preoccupation.

"I liked it," he reiterated. "I like having you around. I like kissing you even more."

He leaned in and gave her a kiss on the mouth. Her lips were soft and sexy; they moved beneath his as he traced hers with the tip of his tongue, a light and easy stroke. He felt her shiver when he pulled back.

She licked her lips, said nothing.

"Natalie, you should just give up the idea that this is bad. We can have good times."

"Is that what you want?" she asked, a frown on her brows.

"Your meaning?"

"Good times…fun. Nothing else. Just a…you know. Just fun."

Folding his arms over his chest, he carefully chose his next words. "No. This will sound conceited and I don't mean it to but, on any given day, I run into women who would sleep with me. I don't go there. That's not who I am. I don't need to put a notch on my bedpost just to prove to myself I'm a man. I'm just me. Just Tony."

She quietly looked at him and he could see she was trying to figure out how to say something.

"Just say it," he prodded. "You've had something on your mind all morning. I know you enough now to be able to tell."

She came out with it. "Are we going to have an affair?"

"An affair?"

"Sex. No strings attached."

He pulled in a breath. "Is that what you want to call it?"

"I don't think there's anything else we can call it."

"How about a relationship? I thought we agreed to be friends."

"That won't work and you know it."

"Why not?"

A nervous reaction, she tapped the table with her fingertip. "All you have to do is look at me and I forget about being your friend. I want to be your lover. We're both mature adults with level heads. If we go into this with our eyes wide open, I think an affair would be better."

"You make it sound very cut-and-dried."

"Wouldn't it be?"

"I don't think so." Tony balled the leftover paper from his sandwich and finished his beer. "So you're saying you just want to have sex?"

She contemplated a response, her green eyes filled with something he couldn't quite define. Then it hit him—lust. She'd revealed her lust for him. It excited him.

Pulling in a breath, she said, "I want to be your friend, but I also want more than that so long as we're both clear that we don't get involved in other ways. Namely, doing something stupid like falling in love or anything that revolves around feelings that could get hurt."

"So you think you can be my friend, only sleep with me, and not fall in love with me?"

Once more, she licked her lips. "Yes. I do."

Everything in the Victoria's Secret store was pink. Pink walls, pink displays, pink panties, pink bras, pink hangers, pink sexy teddies and pink pajamas. It must have been Pink Day in Vicky's.

"I can't believe I said what I said to him." Natalie wanted to blot out the world, forget her discussion with Tony at Cobby's.

"Well, frankly," Sarah replied, "I can't believe it, either. You've come a long way."

Natalie frowned. "So you're encouraging me to just sleep with him?"

"I didn't say that." Sarah looked at a bra with sparkles sewn on the cups. "But I do think that if you are intimate with him, you'll let go of all these hangups you have about him being younger. You'll probably swear off men in their forties."

"If things don't work out in a cut-and-dried sex situation, I'm swearing off men. Period." Natalie bit her lip. "Sarah, do you think I'm ready for just sex?" That last word squeaked out between her lips. Even she