After three weeks of dating, it was becoming harder and harder to fight it—she was dangerously close to falling for Parker Wilson.
“Want to grab some lunch?” he asked after they’d returned their equipment and changed into their street clothes.
“God, yes. I’m famished. I had no idea paintball was so intense.”
He laughed, linking their fingers together as they strode across the parking lot. “Was it more or less intense than the sex we had last night?”
A delicious shiver scampered up her body as she remembered Parker’s cock furiously pumping inside her. “Oh, definitely less.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said smugly.
They hopped into his SUV, and ten minutes later they were seated in a booth at a diner near Parker’s house. They’d just ordered lunch when his cell phone buzzed. Parker read the incoming text, then grinned.
“Pepper just drove into Texas. She’s planning on buying me some cowboy boots and making me pose in them for the family Christmas card. Ha. Fat chance.”
“Pepper?” Lynn said blankly.
“My sister. Remember, I told you she’s road-tripping home from the East Coast?”
“Wait a minute. We’ve been dating for three weeks and you only now decide to tell me your sister’s name is Pepper?” Lynn snickered. “Do you also have a brother named Salt?”
“Ha-ha.”
“Seriously, her name is Pepper?”
Sighing, he offered a nod.
“Why?”
Parker ran a hand through his messy blond hair, shifting awkwardly on his side of the booth. “Okay. I wasn’t planning on telling you this until I was sure you wouldn’t dump me for it, but…I was named after Spiderman.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Peter Parker,” he clarified. “You know, Spiderman’s alter ego. My parents named me after him. And my sister is named for Pepper Potts.” Another sigh rumbled in his chest. “There. I’ve said it. You know the truth.”
He looked so miserable Lynn choked down her laughter. “Your parents are really into comic books, huh?”
“You could say that. They’re both illustrators for Marvel.”
Her jaw dropped. “No way. That’s so cool.”
“What do your parents do?” he asked, sounding curious.
“My dad worked in insurance, and my mom taught high school math, but they’re retired now.”
“Really? Already?”
“Yeah. They’re both pretty old. They had me when Mom was forty-five and Dad was forty-nine. I was a late-in-life surprise.” She sighed. “They’re also kind of boring, if I’m being honest. I think it would have been way more fun growing up with comic-book-artist parents.”
“My folks are awesome.” He suddenly grinned. “And I guess I’m lucky they didn’t decide to name me Wolverine or Thor or something equally horrifying. My sister can’t say the same—you wouldn’t believe how much she was teased growing up.”
Lynn could imagine. Pepper wasn’t exactly a traditional female name, and kids could be cruel when it came to anyone who was “different”.
“Well, I think your names are unique,” she said. “And you should have totally told Suz the story. She could have mentioned it in her article—readers would have gotten a kick out of it. Good publicity.”
He shrugged. “Trust me, the article already got us enough publicity. We’re goddamn swamped because of it.”
Lynn grinned. “Do you still have men lined up all the way around the block from the office?”
“No, but we have so many new clients we had to turn some away.” He reached for the glass of iced tea the waitress had dropped off and took a quick sip. “What about you? You still haven’t heard back from your department head about the program?”
“Nope, not since she emailed to tell me they’re still considering it.” Lynn worriedly toyed with the straw poking out of her Coke glass. “And Suz heard from someone in marketing the executives have been whispering about potential changes at the paper, and something about ‘reshuffling’, whatever that means. Normally I would ask Phil about it—he’s the only person in management I would have been comfortable asking—but that’s out of the question now.”
“Is he still bugging you at the office?” Parker’s tone was cautious, but there was no mistaking the note of displeasure in it.
Lynn stalled by taking a long sip of soda, then decided not to tell Parker about Phil’s latest romantic gesture. The man had been hounding her ever since she’d ended it, first with the flowers then with a box of chocolate-covered toffees—she hated toffee with a passion. He’d followed that with an enormous stuffed panda bear she’d given to one of the kids who lived in her building, and yesterday, he’d surprised her with a star.
Yep, the jerk had bought a star and named it after her. Well, to be exact, he’d named it LynnAndPhilForever.