But when Noah approached, her body stiffened.
“Yes?” he asked, bending at the waist. He was asking to kiss her.
Well, here fucking goes. She nodded tightly. “Mmm-hmm.”
His hand came to cup her jaw. She should be excited. Noah was hot. And nice.
But then his mouth descended on hers. Perdie miscalculated his aim and their first contact landed his lips on her nose.
“Oh shit, sorry.” Perdie’s wineglass still dangled from her fingers, but she grabbed onto the nape of his neck with her free hand. “Let’s try that again.”
Finally, teeth clattering, hands groping, their bodies connected.
But when they knocked into the counter, Noah bumped Perdie and red wine spilled down her shirt. “Oops!” She set both their glasses on the counter.
Not ideal so far.
It didn’t help that when she closed her eyes she was seeing...hearing...smelling the chilled minty waves of Carter Leplan.
Noah must’ve sensed something because he pulled away. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Don’t worry about it...” she murmured, clutching Noah’s T-shirt, drawing him back in.
But Noah broke the kiss between them and placed both hands on her shoulders. “You know, maybe your friend’s right. Some people are destined to be together. I don’t think we are two such people.”
“Wow, you’re not going to even try to hook up with me.” Perdie was so used to using men only for this purpose that she grappled with what to do. And she hadn’t even really considered whether she truly wanted to hook up with Noah. Old habits.
“It’s not really my style. More importantly, I’m not sure you’re into it.”
Perdie walked towards the living room and collapsed onto his slate couch. “Maybe we could be friends?” That was something people said to each other, right?
Noah smiled, joining her and sitting across from her on a matching couch. “I think we’d make good friends. You and Lucille were the most fun I’ve had out in a long time.”
Perdie chuckled. “Not so sure what that says about you, buddy.”
A weird thing happened after that: they got to talking like friends might. And Perdie learned about Noah’s job and his part in developing a medication for seizures that was stolen by a large pharmaceutical company.
She gave him her card. “I think you have a patent case on your hands.” Perhaps a long shot but still potential millions on the line. She could make Noah a rich man, and her firm would take a nice hefty slice of that payout.
Knowing there was no one to come home to at her condo, Perdie crashed on Noah’s couch. He graciously brought her blankets and pillows and some water.
When she got up in the morning, she clutched the doorframe to steady herself, her other hand grasping the top of her head. She wasn’t the drinker she’d once been, but she always seemed to be testing fate.
Silly of her to sneak out. She shot off a text, thanking Noah for being so cool about her meltdown and suggesting they keep in touch.
It was too bad she was already so preoccupied with someone else because Noah was going to make some lucky girl very happy someday.
And as she was not that girl, escape was imminent. Outside, the bite of fluorescent sunlight ate away at her corneas. She shielded her eyes as she half stumbled onto the sidewalk. She looked down at the light pink splotch marring the front of her gray T-shirt, and her stretched and worn jeans. Rubbing a fingertip under her eyelids, she erased the inky remainder of her mascara. She no doubt looked a hot fucking mess. At least she wasn’t in heels and work clothes stranded at the airport during a blizzard. Or lying on a bed in a hotel with a stranger. She mentally slapped herself for thinking about Carter.
A botched hookup was no big deal but fixating on one night with one man was simply unacceptable. Why was it he’d gotten under her skin so much? Good looks, money, skill, power? Too obvious. His interest in her? It was no small blessing she didn’t have Carter’s personal number, or she’d probably give in to the overwhelming urge to text him a time or a thousand. His firm’s website listed his work number under his site bio, but even she wasn’t desperate enough to contact him that way. Or worse, his work email. They’d briefly exchanged emails to settle the case, but she’d be in trouble if she started composing love letters. HR would get a kick out of it too.
Perdie chewed on her lips. She was lost in the middle of a neighborhood she’d never been in before. She would need a car to get her. She consulted her phone to order one when the screen blacked out. A glitch in the matrix? Nope, a dead battery.
“Dammit.” How had people gotten places before the invention of smartphones? Her car was parked at the taco joint, and she had not one iota of a clue how to get out of this Stepford-style residential neighborhood. The houses were also growing theatrically larger and larger the farther she traveled.
Panicking, she hurried, looking both directions for a sign of anything familiar. All that surrounded her were swaying palmetto trees and grandfather live oaks gilding the fancy brick.
She’d have to head back to Noah’s and borrow a charger. While they’d established a new friendship, she inwardly cringed at the idea of turning up on his doorstep with a dead phone. She was doing some kind of subverted walk of shame and as such she’d like to finish out the task. He would probably offer to give her a ride home, of course, but...
As Perdie spun on her heel the other way, she ran smack into the middle of a hard figure.
“Fuck me.” Her headache slapped inside her skull on impact, and she blinked up at the person in front of her, the face and body backlit like a mirage in the sun.
“Well, that’s an enthusiastic greeting.”
A prickle of familiarity ran up her spine at the deep voice. Carter motherfucking Leplan?
“Oh my god. What are you doing here?” She glanced around to spot the teleportation machine from where he must’ve emerged.
Before Carter answered, a woman appeared at the entrance of the house they stood in front of. Not just any woman, but a blonde, perfectly coiffed Southern belle wearing a royal blue Lilly Pulitzer jumpsuit. The kind of jumpsuit that required supreme confidence in one’s body to pull off. And she was pulling it off.
“Carter, darling, come on in.” The woman smiled, not giving Perdie so much as a second look.
He smiled back. “One minute, Aubrey.”
A hot surge of jealousy shot through the bottom of her belly. Had Carter Leplan come all the way to Charleston to see a woman? A woman who wasn’t even her? She pinched the sensitive skin inside her forearm. You have no right to be jealous. No right.
Carter ran his hand through his hair, stepping under the shade of a tree. Her rogue brain took over then, the vision of him almost too much to handle when combined with a hangover. She had thought about him a lot these last few weeks. A. Lot. Her eyes swept down his body. His hair was shorter than when she’d last seen him, the sides shaved closer but still that beautiful toffee-brown wavy hair. And he was wearing a gray T-shirt, displaying muscled biceps with a half sleeve of tattoos on his left arm. Expensive-looking raw denim hanging on his hips, all the way down to...
