Just as that mushy spot on his body registered in Rebecca’s brain, Matt had her by the shoulders and was propping her up in her seat.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed, mortified, and gaped at Matt, who was likewise gaping at her, apparently just as mortified. Oh, for the love of Pete, how did that happen? Rebecca blinked several times to clear her vision, and noticed that Matt was staring at her so intently that she began to worry how long she had actually been lying facedown in his crotch. And to make matters worse, there was a guy at Matt’s window, tapping on the window. Only Matt didn’t seem to hear it. He didn’t seem to be even breathing.
“Ah . . .” She gulped, wide-eyed.
“You have my undivided attention,” he said.
Rebecca pointed at the window.
Matt slowly turned his head, at which point Rebecca covered her face with her hands. Humiliation aside (not possible)—she couldn’t remember the last time she had drunk too much, and really, at the moment, she couldn’t remember where she’d left her car. She took a breath and reminded herself that all of her books said there was always more than one way to look at a bad situation. So what if she’d just made a huge and enormous jackass of herself? Maybe she was just being the new Rebecca, the carefree let’s-have-a-little-fun Rebecca, who could let her hair down every once in a while instead of just dreaming about it.
Rebecca lowered her hands as Matt handed the guy a wad of cash. “Keep it,” he said, and took the Styrofoam containers the guy handed him, rolled up the window, and turned and deposited the containers on her lap. “Try not to pass out on those, will you?”
Rebecca blinked at the white containers and laughed desperately. “This is not what you think!”
“What I think is that you need a steak and a bed.”
“I just slipped. Haven’t you ever slipped?”
“Yes. In fact, I think I might have slipped right off my rocker,” he said and smiled a little. “But either you have a strange way of trying to get in my pants, or you’re seriously inebriated,” he said as he put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb.
“I am not seriously inebriated, only a little,” she said, holding up thumb and forefinger together to show him just how little. “And if I wanted in your pants, I’d be a whole lot more . . . more . . .”
“Careful?” he suggested.
“Interested,” she said, pleased that she’d actually thought of a word.
Matt laughed at that. “Admit it. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I know,” she insisted. “I am talking about never wanting sex from you, so . . . read something else into it,” she said, fluttering her fingers at him.
Matt was still grinning as the light changed. “Hey, sex with me is not half bad, if I do say so myself. But okay, let’s just pretend that you did want in my pants. How would you get there?”
A better question was, how were they having this conversation? Rebecca felt pretty certain that the words sex and Matt were a dangerous combination. “Come on,” she said, shaking her head.
“You know what I think?” Matt continued, clearly ignoring her. “I think you’d smile that little smile of yours,” he said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “You know, that pretty little come hither smile you have.”
“Puh-leez,” Rebecca said, swaying too far and bumping into him when he turned a corner. “I don’t have a come hither smile.”
“You do,” he insisted as he turned into a parking garage. “You’ve even shot it at me a couple of times, and don’t lie,” he said as he coasted into a reserved spot.
“You honestly believe that?” she exclaimed, almost dumping the containers in her determination to set him straight. What was he talking about? When had she ever smiled at him, much less in a suggestive way? “Whatever I flashed at you was not a come hither smile, Popinjay,” she said heatedly. “Because I smile all the time and I haven’t had sex in four years—” Something in her Chablis-soaked brain stopped her—she sure hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
For his part, Matt didn’t even move, just stared at the concrete wall in front of them. “Did you . . . did you just say what I think you said?” he asked at last, his voice full of awe. “I mean, I was just kidding around. So were you kidding, right? Right, Rebecca?”
“Where are we?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Ohmigod, how is that possible?” He turned to look at her now with the same morbid fascination of viewing a wreck on the highway. “How can someone go four years without sex?”