She got away.
This morning, she’d woken in her own bed, hair wild after sleeping on it wet from her shower last night. She went to bed completely sated and relaxed and woke this morning agitated and restless, her mind spinning from all the things she still needed to do.
Yes, even on a weekend.
Dressed and ready, she moved to the dining room table to grab her laptop only to find it wasn’t there. And the reason it wasn’t there was because it was in her bag that she’d left next to Asher’s couch.
In her rush to escape him and the I love you he’d dropped like a grenade into her lap, she didn’t look around before she left. She’d been too preoccupied with getting out of there.
She bit her lip and considered she could go to the office and work on her desktop. Then she further considered she could also man up, show up, and get her belongings like a big girl.
She wasn’t one to run and hide—well, not for long anyway. She could face him and handle the fact that—
Her phone rang from its home on her kitchen counter. She unplugged it from the charger, sighing when she saw Asher’s name.
“Hey,” she answered.
“Morning, Sarge.” His voice was raspy and low and she could picture him sitting at his breakfast bar, bare feet on the rungs of the stool, black boxer briefs and jewelry—nothing else. Bedhead and sleepy dark eyes.
Kind of made her wish she had stayed.
“It’s almost noon.”
“Still morning,” he said. “Your bag’s here.”
“Is it?” No sense in telling him she’d already figured that out and was debating coming to get it.
“Yeah.” She heard the smile in his voice like he knew. “Band will be here in a few for lunch. You can eat with us.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Glo.”
In a rare show of acquiescence, she pressed her lips together and listened.
“You don’t have to avoid me in the morning because you gave in to me at night.”
Did she do that? You do and you know it.
“See you in a few,” he said.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye, Sarge.”
She collected her purse and keys and locked her door behind her.
*
Smoothies.
Never in her life did Gloria think that four adult rock stars would be sitting around the bar in the kitchen drinking fruit smoothies at twelve-thirty. Weren’t rock stars supposed to open bottles of whiskey or tequila before they tuned their instruments?
“Bananas have no business in health drinks,” Shiff stated with such authority that Gloria began to wonder at her own enjoyment of a banana-strawberry shake like the one in her hand right now.
“Don’t be an idiot. Bananas are the foundation of any good smoothie,” Fonz stated. “Have you ever frozen them? Mixed them with cocoa and agave nectar? Tastes just like a Wendy’s Frosty.”
“Fuck off,” Shiff said. He and Asher had split the latest batch—spinach, apple, celery, lemon juice, and honey. Ash had a glass in hand while Shiff drank directly from the blender.
“It’s true,” Fonz said. “Ask Broderick.”
Broderick, cheeks full as he swallowed down his own banana-strawberry shake, shook his head. “Don’t get me involved in this.”
It continued a few more minutes. With a lot more swear words than necessary for such a tame topic. Gloria finished off her shake and went to the sink, feeling a presence beside her that could only be one man.
The same man who stripped her bare, body and soul, last night.
I love you, Gloria.
“We should get started,” Shiff announced.
“Be right there,” Asher said. One by one, Fonz and Broderick and Shiff took off for the studio—or as she’d forever remember it, the confessional. Who made a loaded pronouncement after doling out kinky spankings?
Asher Knight, apparently, she thought with a quirk of her lips.
Asher touched a fingertip to the corner of her mouth and she turned her attention to him. God. He looked amazing. Of course. His hair was its usual dark, styled mess, and he wore black jeans, a black tee, and his black cowboy boots. A necklace with an oblong crystal hung halfway down his chest and he wore rings on nearly every finger. Leather bracelets were cuffed at both wrists, no hemp ones today.
“How do you decide which jewelry to wear each day?” she asked, leaning on the sink with one hip.
“Whatever moves me, I choose that. Then if it doesn’t call to me the next day, I take it off, trade it out.”
She was having a hard time seeing that as anything other than a simile for them. Would he trade her out, too, once she didn’t “call to him” any longer?
This was his fault. He’d developed a case of the I-love-yous and now she had to deal with the aftermath. Only it couldn’t be fairly called a case of the I-love-yous, plural, since he’d only said it once. And unless he was going to bring it up right now, he didn’t seem to have the urgent need to talk about it again.