“You taste like Dean.”
I laughed and stepped back, forcing her along with me. We made it up to my bedroom slowly, pausing along the way so that she could tear off my shirt in the hallway. I stripped off her jeans on the stairs and she straddled me in the doorway to my bedroom, curving her hips against me until I lost track of where I was going. We were supposed to head into my bathroom and shower the strip club off us, but instead, I carried her to my bed and we fell back onto the comforter.
No one had control of me the way Lily did. I laid back on my bed as she rolled on top of me, her hair tickling my chest. She was a force of nature, a swirling tornado that made me feel weightless and free one minute, and slammed into a tree trunk at 130 miles per hour the next. I let her hold my hands to the side. I let her think she had control for once. I had a dopey smirk on my face as she kissed her way down my chest. Inside, my heart rioted, warning me to proceed with caution.
This was dangerous.
She was dangerous.
“Dean?” she asked, staring up at me with her honey brown eyes. “I’m really happy you were there tonight, helping me.”
She was opening up to me, confirming with her words what she was showing me with her body.
“We make the perfect team,” she said softly.
I could handle the Tiger Lily, the fierce, independent woman who fought with me every inch of the way—but this? The vulnerable girl opening up to me as she lay naked across my chest?
She scared the shit out of me.
I had goals. I had restaurants to open. I had Forbe’s lists to top, and Lily would get in the way of that. Lily wouldn’t be an easy addition to my life. She wouldn’t appreciate the time I gave her. She’d demand all of me, every ounce, siphoning my focus away from my work until I resented her for it.
Love changes a person. I couldn’t let Lily slip into my life and change the core of me. The need for more was always there, lingering in the periphery of my mind. When I took a long lunch or slept fifteen minutes past my alarm, I pushed myself harder to make up for lost time. I had the world to conquer and Lily would only stand in the way of that.
…
I took my time showering, trying to gather up the wits Lily had stolen over the last hour and a half. The water steamed up, burning the skin across my shoulder blades, but I relished the sensation until the water ran cold. Only then did I step out and wrap the towel around my waist.
I wiped my hand across the fogged glass and met Lily’s gaze in the mirror. I wanted more time away from her, more time to regroup.
She was standing at the door of the bathroom, holding up a gold-leafed invitation with one hand and clutching her towel across her body with the other.
“What’s this?” she asked, turning it over in her hand.
It was an invitation to the James Beard Awards, essentially the Oscars of the food world. I’d worked my ass off for years to be noticed in the community and finally, for the first time, I was nominated for an award: Outstanding Restaurateur. Just to be nominated was an honor beyond anything I could comprehend, but I’d held the achievement close to my heart.
A nomination wasn’t a win.
“It’s an invitation to the James Beard Awards,” I said, reaching for my toothbrush.
Her eyes widened and her grasp on the invitation tightened. She knows how important the ceremony is. “It’s next week and you haven’t returned your RSVP.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think they’ll mind. I’m a guest of honor.”
She carried the invitation in and set it down on the bathroom counter, meeting my eye in the mirror.
“You want me to fill it out for us and send it in?”
For us.
Lily took that blank card and filled it in for herself. She assumed I would take her because she thought we were a team; she’d said so herself. I looked up in the mirror and saw her eyes brimming over with hope for us; I couldn’t mimic her sentiment. Where she felt hope, I only felt fear.
“I’m going alone.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Lily
My face stung as if he’d slapped me. I held my hand up to my cheek, just to check, but there was no pain, only red hot heat. The blotchy blush spread from my cheeks down over my neck as Dean stood with his back to me, meeting my eyes in the mirror and daring me to push him on his comment.