Love Proof (Laws of Attraction)

Twenty-seven

Sarah ate pizza wearing only Joe’s dress shirt, loose and unbuttoned. She didn’t mind the splash of sauce she left on the pocket, any more than she minded that the shirt didn’t smell clean, but smelled of Joe’s perspiration from the day.

She liked the scent of him.

He reached out and pulled one of her feet onto his lap. “When you said that in the deposition the other day about painting your toenails pink . . . ” He got a lustful, faraway look in his eye that made Sarah laugh.

“You like that, huh?” She wriggled her toes until he closed his warm hand around them. With his free hand he reached for another slice of pizza.

“Could you get used to this?” Sarah asked.

“I already am.”

“No, the pizza,” she said, resisting the urge to answer Me, too. “I mean without pepperoni or sausage. Would you ever order it that way?”

“No, too healthy. But I know better than to cross you today, Henley. Why do you think I hustled my client out of there before you unleashed Armageddon on Chapman?”

“Armageddon’s too easy,” she said. “He’s just going to have to wait for it. He’ll forget about me, then one day it will become absolutely clear to him that he messed with the wrong person.”

“Does that go for me, too?” Joe asked, looking her in the eye.

Sarah shifted her gaze away and shrugged.

“I didn’t forget,” Joe said.

“We’re not talking about this.”

Sarah pretended to be very interested in the pizza. She lifted out another slice, even though she was already full.

Joe stroked a hand along her calf, then ended again at her toes. Sarah let his hand rest there. She liked the strange comfort of it. She had always liked all the various ways he came up with for touching her.

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, unable to stop herself from taking the conversation one step further, even though she knew she was treading into dangerous territory, “do you have a strategy here, Joe?”

“Somewhat.”

Land mines all around, she thought, but she took another step.

“What’s it involve?” she asked.

“Being nice to you.”

Sarah swallowed her surprise, then tried to cover it with another bite of pizza.

“Good luck,” she said, hoping to sound unaffected and tough.

“Thanks. Turns out it’s quite a project.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Joe smiled.

“Good thing I enjoy my work,” he added, pushing the pizza aside and tasting her instead.

***

This time when the alarm rang, Sarah settled back into the cradle of Joe’s arms and gave herself a few minutes more. She didn’t have to run out of there so early the way she had the other morning, because this time she brought her luggage with her and left it in the car until she was sure she was staying.

By midnight, when she was too tired to do anything but hand Joe her keys and ask him to please go get her bag, she knew she was staying.

Now she rolled over to face him and found his lips immediately on hers.

“Where are we going today?” he murmured.

“Pocatello.”

“Why’s that again?”

“To give us something to do,” Sarah explained. “Otherwise we’d just stay in bed all day.”

Joe hugged her to him. Her nipples were still sensitive from all the attention he’d given them the night before, and they seemed to like the combination of his warm skin and the soft dark hair on his chest. She draped her thigh over his and they stayed there kissing for far longer than they should have, considering they had another crack-of-dawn flight.

While Joe made coffee for himself and tea for her, Sarah closed herself in his bathroom for a quick shower. At the last second she locked the door before slipping the hotel shower cap over her hair. He had seen her in many conditions, but wearing a shower cap still wasn’t one of them. She wanted to keep her streak alive.

“Why do you get to stay in such nicer hotels?” she asked when she came out again, wearing a softer, thicker robe than the kind she was used to, and rubbing a thick lotion on her hands instead of the watery concoction she found every night in her hotel rooms.

“The firm gets a discount at certain chains,” Joe said.

For a second Sarah thought she saw some sort of look flash across his face, but then decided it must have been her imagination. Joe handed her the cup of tea and took his turn in the shower.

Sarah stood in the steamy bathroom at the same time, applying her makeup and brushing her hair into a more orderly shape. She liked this, too, she thought, the way she was enjoying far too many things about being with Joe again. She could get used to having him around, to sharing a bathroom and a bedroom with him, to going about the routines of her day with Joe’s schedule intersecting hers, Joe’s voice in the background, Joe’s arms around her when she fell asleep at night and still around her in the morning.

Not to mention everything he’d done to her last night, multiplied by seven for a good week. She could get used to that, and she understood that was a problem.

She pulled on a fresh pair of panties and the black lace bra from the day before. She had forgotten to hang up her suit, so it still bore some evidence of lying crumpled on the floor. But it would get wrinkled on the flight anyway, she thought, so she wouldn’t worry about it. She pulled on a clean blouse and then added the pants and jacket.

Joe’s hoodie still lay at the bottom of her bag. She transferred it to his.

“You can keep that,” he said, standing in the doorway of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.

Sarah went to him, a lawyer already dressed for her day, and ran her hands over his clean skin. She leaned forward and flicked her tongue over the bare nipple of her lover—who was soon to dress in his own lawyer suit and go back to being her opponent.

She pulled his towel away with a single tug and flicked her tongue maddeningly lower.

“Sarah . . . ”

“We have time,” she said, too entertained now by the idea of kneeling in front of him in her black wool suit and expensive silk blouse, knowing he’d have to deal with that image and the memory of what she was about to do to him all afternoon long as he sat across from her at the deposition.

She would have to deal with it, too, she realized, as she felt her own body respond.

And that night they were flying home. She wouldn’t see him again until Monday.

That might not work out at all.