She rolled her eyes. “I’m talking about Gabriel Lane. He’s so fucking dreamy.”“He is. Did you see the pictures of his vacation in Mexico a few months ago? Holy shit. I mean, if his swimming trunks—” Estelle said.
“Would have gone a little lower. I know,” Mia finished with a half shriek, half laugh.
I shook my head, making a distasteful face. “This is what you’re married to?”
“We all have our vices,” Jensen said with a shrug and a laugh.
“Hey,” Oliver said, walking in. He frowned when he saw me. “I didn’t hear the bell.”
“That’s because you psychos left the door unlocked and open again. I don’t understand how you live. This isn’t 1920, and you don’t live in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t you get the email about all the burglaries?”
“Oliver installed a camera system,” Estelle said as she poured herself and Mia each a glass of wine. She paused. “Who else wants wine?”
“We need something stronger than wine to watch this shit,” I said.
“So we save the cigar I brought you for later?” Jensen asked.
“When does this start?”
“Officially? In thirty minutes,” Mia said.
I looked at Jensen. We had thirty minutes to spare. Once we were outside, we closed the door and sat on the chairs out in the porch. He handed me my cigar and the lighter.
“How’s work?” he asked, blowing out smoke from his cigar.
“I need my drink, or something with a more calming effect than this for me to talk about it right now,” I said, holding up the cigar. He laughed.
“I was going to stop at a shop on the way here, but Mia thought Bean would have a heart attack.”
“Nah,” I said, laughing because none of us had done anything like that since college, but loved to joke about it now that it was legal in California. “That shit is natural. He’s good with the natural stuff.”
“Noted.”
“How’s the book doing?” I asked.
“Pretty well,” he said, putting his cigar down and swatting the air away, which meant he was basically blowing it all in my face. I put mine down as well and put it out slowly. I’d finish it another time. “How’s the single life? Still not bored?”
I smirked. “How’s married life? Insanely boring?”
“Fuck, no,” he said, laughing. “Being with someone every day doesn’t make it boring.”
“We were once on the same page about that.”
He shook his head. “We were once young and stupid. Some of us grew up.”
“I grew up,” I said defensively, taking the bait. He knew how much I hated when people put things like getting married and being a grown-up in the same box. “I have a house under my name. I have a car under my name. I’m hopefully about to make partner, if my client doesn’t fuck it up for me.”
Jensen’s eyebrows rose, his eyes appraising me momentarily, dropping to my curled fists and back up to my face. He smiled. “Did I hit a nerve?”
I exhaled loudly and slumped back in my seat, looking out to the horizon. I focused on the water that was just a few feet away from us. Not that I could see it, but I focused on the sound of the waves crashing.
“I’m representing my boss’s daughter in her divorce,” I said. I looked at Jensen from the corner of my eye after a beat and caught his mouth hanging open.
“The one that you—”
“Yeah.”
“The one you basically told things would never work out between the two of you?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice growing more impatient.
I wasn’t one to kiss and tell, but I’d told him and Oliver about our first wild encounter because even I’d had a hard time believing it had happened. This hot girl walking into my office and locking the door behind her to seduce me, and actually achieving just that. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the way she went from having a regular conversation about the office to asking me if I’d ever fucked anyone on my desk and settling herself between my legs. And inching up her skirt . . . and licking her lips as she placed her legs on either side of me . . . and saying, “Do you want it, Mr. Reuben?” in that sultry tone of hers. Fuck. Me.
“Damn. Well, at least it only happened that one time, right?” Jensen said, cutting my thoughts short. I swallowed, suddenly feeling the need to drink a gallon of water. Or the wine I’d brought.