Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2), Katana Collins [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

The bleeding had already stopped with a little bit of pressure. “It looks okay, I think.” I finished cleaning her cut and put a large bandage on it.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome.” I blew out a breath and raked my hands through my hair. Fuck this fucking day. “You may want to have a doctor look at it tomorrow to be sure.”

“Mmm,” her voice purred in a way that made the hairs on my neck stand up. “Maybe you could come over to my place tonight after your shift and take another look?”

“Tanja, no—”

Before I could register what was happening, her other leg, the good leg, hooked around my hips and with a quick clamp of her calf muscles she pulled me flush against her. Her spread legs with no panties beneath the romper offered a view of almost everything, and I jerked my gaze up to her face, pressing my palms against her shoulders to keep her at arm’s length.

A hell of a lot of good that did. She clasped her hands around mine and tugged them down to her breasts, rolling my hands over her nipples.

“Oh, come on,” Tanja cried. “I know your relationship with Chloe is fake. With me, it could be real.”

My hands were still pressed against her breasts. It doesn’t feel real, I wanted to say in regard to her overinflated breasts. “My feelings for Chloe are real. I love her.”

“She doesn’t want you. Trust me, I know Chloe. And if she wanted you, she wouldn’t have waited two months to act on it.”

Fuck. That landed like a sock to the gut. She was right. Of course she was right. No one in their right mind would wait that long if they truly had feelings. I was an idiot.

“That may be, but I still can’t do this with you,” I whispered.

She licked her lips and removed her hands from where they held mine hostage against her breasts. “You sure about that?”

“Tanja?” A small voice echoed.

I jerked my gaze to where Chloe stood in the doorway and panic surged up my spine. “Chloe,” I whispered. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

With a single blink, a thick tear glided down her cheek. “It looks like my two best friends are hooking up.”

35 Chloe

I stood there stunned as Tanja’s legs released their viper grip on Liam’s waist. They scrambled off of each other like two teenagers caught in the limo on prom night.

Tanja seemed surprisingly unaffected by me walking in as she snapped her legs together and fixed her lipstick.

Only Liam seemed to notice the tear that fell down my cheek. I quickly brushed it away. He’s not mine to be possessive of. Hadn’t I made that perfectly clear? That we couldn’t be together? Just what did I expect to happen? Well, I didn’t expect him to jump on Tanja … she didn’t even seem like his type. If anything, he seemed constantly annoyed by her.

“We were not hooking up,” Liam said, taking a step closer to me.

“We weren’t?”

“No. We weren’t.” He glared at Tanja in response. “This is just a big misunderstanding. See, the coffee pot broke and she cut her ankle…”

I glanced down at my feet where my sneakers were standing in a pool of lukewarm coffee and glass. “It’s fine,” I snapped, hating the edge in my voice. “But there’s a line of customers waiting.” I gestured out the window where a literal line of people seemed to be staring at us like this was a show with their dessert.

Tanja and Liam were out of their sight line, but I sure wasn’t.

“Thanks for the help, Tanja. I can take it from here if you two want to … go somewhere. Together.” Those words burned like poison at the back of my throat.

“Oh, come on, Chloe. You have to know that I would never… not with Tanja. Not with anyone.”

“How could I know that? You’re single, she’s single.”

The customers next in line shared a quick glance at each other. Shit. To our customers, Liam wasn’t single and neither was I. We were together. A couple.

I cleared my throat and yanked the Back in Five Minutes sign down. Gritting my teeth against the fake smile as the next customer approached, I asked, “What can I get you?” I ignored the flaming jealousy that itched down my back.

“Uh, I’m going to go,” Tanja whispered as the click of her heels faded behind me. “I’ll call you in the morning, Chloe.”

I waved over my shoulder, not trusting myself yet to turn and look at her.

“Chloe, can we talk?” Liam was so close I could feel the hot breath of his whisper on the side of my face.

“I think we should just work.”

“Well, I want to talk. You were able to leave for an hour to go talk to your ex-fiancé, but you can’t spare five minutes for me?”

I whipped around to face him and, although the smile was still plastered on my face, my eyes were heated flames of anger. Anger that I had no right to feel—which only pissed me off more. “We kind of have an audience right now,” I whispered. “And this is our business. I’m not going to throw away a line of paying customers because your libido got the best of you. Trust me, when it comes to Tanja, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”

“The business? You’re concerned about the business?” Liam snorted and pinned his fists to his hips. “That’s funny. Because I’m concerned about you. About us.”

“There is no us,” I whispered. But even as I said it, my eyes filled with moisture.

His chest hitched with the breath he took. Yanking a tray of donuts from the storage bin, he passed them down to the customer in front of us.

“Could you set those on that table over there?” he asked, pointing to the picnic table in the park a few feet away. They seemed startled, but took the box and set it