“What?”
I gave him a blinding smile. “I hope they fall all over you.”
“You said, ‘I hope it falls off.’ ”
“Did I?” I shrugged innocently. “Slip of the tongue.”
“Aye, if I remember correctly you’re good at that too.”
I glowered at him, scowling harder as I felt the seat shake with his laughter.
Bastard. Scot.
Eight
So … what you’re telling me is that you had sex for the first time in seven years with a hot stranger who talks like a guy out of Outlander?” Harper asked.
Hiding a smile at the shock on her face, I nodded casually.
She leaned forward from her curled-up position on my couch to say, “Are you kidding around or not? Because I’m starting to think not.”
“I’m not kidding around.”
“You slept with a hot Scottish stranger at O’Hare?”
“Yup.”
Harper broke out into a massive grin. “You know you were pretty much my hero before this, but you just upped the hero worship by a hundred and ten percent.”
“Because I slept with a stranger?”
“Uh, correction—you had sex with a kilted Highlander.”
I burst into laughter. “They don’t all go around wearing kilts and swords, you know. I’m guessing most of them stopped doing that about a few hundred years ago.”
“You know what I mean!” she cried, bouncing up off the couch and making my heart leap into my throat at the way her wine sloshed around in her glass. “Just when people think they have you figured out … boom! You do something completely out of character.” She raised her glass precariously again and rolled her eyes at me when she noticed my wince. “Which is a nice vacation from coaster girl.” She placed the wineglass down on a coaster and took her seat again.
I sighed. “What is so wrong about not wanting to leave ring marks on my furniture?”
“I could say something dirty to that but I’m going to refrain.”
“Talk about shocking,” I teased.
Harper rolled her light gray-blue eyes again and shook her head. “I can’t believe you had a one-night stand.”
“Not just any one-night stand. An epic one-night stand.” I could admit that to my best friend. We told each other everything. People were often surprised by my friendship with Harper. I was thirty years old, slightly conservative, reserved with most people, well educated and, yes, I could admit it, a bit overly organized. Nothing in my apartment was out of place … or on me either. Even lounging at home with Harper, I wore yoga pants and an off-the-shoulder blouse. Makeup on and hair done. I didn’t own a pair of jeans.
Harper, on the other hand, was twenty-six years old, and had very short platinum blond hair that was cut close at the sides and left long on top so she could style it. Some days she styled it into a sharp, messy quiff, other days in a softer one with a retro vibe. The cut did not at all detract from my friend’s femininity—it just gave her an edge. She had soft features—pert nose, full lips, wide eyes, and long lashes. Then there were her dimples. Every time she laughed or smiled, these adorable dimples flashed in her cheeks. Harper was multifaceted in many ways. Looks-wise, when she was straight-faced and staring at you with those soulful big eyes, she was downright beautiful and striking with her daring haircut. But when she smiled, she was absolutely cute as a button.
In her right ear were multiple piercings. As a pastry chef in one of Boston’s best restaurants, she wore only studs and tiny hoops. Three close-to-the-skin hoops on the bottom and then five studs up along the cuff of her ear, each a different-colored stone that winked and sparkled when the light caught it. In her left ear was only a hoop and a stud.
Right now, on her day off, she wore gold rings on nearly all her fingers, some that sat below the knuckle and others above.
I thought of Harper as a glamorous punk. She liked edgy, but she liked her edginess to glitter and sparkle. Today she wore skinny jeans that were ripped at the knees, biker boots, and a cropped T-shirt covered in rose gold sequins that reflected light everywhere she turned.
She was the most beautiful person I’d ever met—on the inside as well as the outside—but because of her past she had a hard time believing it. Yet it was exactly because of her past that I admired her so much. Harper had been through the unimaginable and yet she didn’t let it affect who she was. Someone outspoken, opinionated, open-minded, brave, loyal, and determined. She’d left home at eighteen with very little money, had been just a step up from homeless when I met her … and now she was the pastry chef in the only Michelin-star restaurant in Boston.
“Ava? An epic one-night stand?”
“Huh?” The sound of her voice pulled me out of my musings.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I shrugged. “I just missed you.”
She gave me a sad smile, her dimples appearing and disappearing so quickly it was almost like I’d imagined them. “I wish I’d gone with you.”
Thinking about my trip back to Arizona made me want to curl up in a dark room and not leave for a good long while. Instead, I shrugged it off with a joke. “And have you cockblock me? No, thanks.”
Harper chuckled. “I wouldn’t have.”
“He would have taken one look at you and forgotten me entirely.”
She snorted. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”
“No, really.” I studied her, thinking I wasn’t wrong. “You are probably more this guy’s type.”
“How so?”
“Uh … he looked like something off that show … Vikings. He was covered in tattoos. And his hair was a guy version of yours.”
Her lips parted in shock. Again. “No. Way.”
“Yes way.”
“Not exactly your type.”
“Nope. And I wasn’t his. We didn’t even like each other,” I admitted. “He was so rude and obnoxious, had no manners …”
“But …?”
I huffed in exasperation. “My body disagreed with me. I can’t explain it … the attraction was inexplicable but explosive and … he found my G-spot.”
Amazement brightened Harper’s eyes. “He sounds like a god.”
“A Norse god. A bastard. An asshole. But the man sure knows what he’s doing in the bedroom.”
“Do you think we could find him and have him teach Vince about the G-spot thing?”
I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you and Vince were good?”
Vince was the guy Harper had been dating for the last two months, which was a long time for her. Like me, she didn’t trust people easily. Plus, her job might sound fancy, but it entailed a lot of long hours and none of the men she’d met so far had been able to deal with the fact that Harper’s job came first. Vince was different. He was a drummer in a local band that had found some success playing bars and clubs all over Massachusetts. He seemed to understand her dedication and admire it. I liked him.
“We are and the sex is good … but G-spot? I’ve only met one guy who found that.” She wiggled her fingers suggestively.
I laughed and blushed a little. “He didn’t find it with those.”
She gasped. “Oh my God … how … what?”
I buried my face in my hands, embarrassed but amused. “I’m not giving you details.”
She understood the muffled words and cried, “I need details!”
“Oh Lord.” I dropped my hands and looked up at the ceiling, unable to meet her gaze. “He—he—”
“Stop stuttering. He what?”
“He just … he positioned me … you know, at an angle, and, well … he knew what he was doing, okay,” I rushed out, my cheeks burning with mortification. I told Harper pretty much everything, but an explanatory description of how I reached orgasm was crossing a line I didn’t want to cross.
She eyed me in awe. “I have to meet this man.”
“No, you don’t.” I stood up with my empty wineglass and strolled over to my kitchen to put it in the sink.