Chapter Thirteen

Chelle

Feet aching from walking a million miles in IKEA, Chelle settled back against the booth at Bottle Rocket and did her best not to notice the live wire of sexual awareness lighting her up from the inside.

The wine bar was down the block from Chelle’s apartment, and she’d fallen in love with the place the moment she’d stepped inside the soft-lit cozy space. A hockey-themed wine bar may not be something that seemed to make sense at first, but Ice Knights player Alex Christensen was a guy that always made things happen on the ice and off of it. He was definitely a Harbor City favorite, which showed in the mix of clientele at the wine bar, where, in addition to the wine snobs, there were the Ice Knights fans and neighborhood regulars who showed up for the California rosé and conversation.

Chelle swore she always saw more folks from her building at Bottle Rocket than the quarterly tenant meetings. Of course, since the wine bar didn’t include Chelle’s building nemesis, Suzanne, who dreamed of being the tenant dictator, it was a lot more relaxing than tenant events—including the annual holiday party.

Which was next week and—to make it even more horrifying—her uncle would be there as Suzanne’s date. Oh yeah, and there was no way Chelle could skip the event. Gut twisting in anticipated agony, she sank back against the tufted upholstery of the two-person booth at the back wall, closed her eyes, and let out a miserable groan.

“Should I have gotten an extra glass?” Nash asked.

Chelle cracked an eyelid open. “Probably an extra bottle.”

He handed her a glass of pink-bubble goodness and sat down next to her, his thigh touching hers and sending a frisson of awareness shooting through her. “Anything I can help with?”

“Only if you can make my jerk of an uncle disappear permanently so I don’t have to see him at the building holiday party.” The words were out of her mouth before the alternate meaning of them was processed. “Wait. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Nash turned his head so his lips nearly brushed against her ear. “You mean you don’t want me to off him?”

He wasn’t serious, she knew that. Still, there was something a little feral in the way he said it that made her twisted little heart grow a few sizes. Okay, fine, it reminded her of the alpha heroes in her paranormal romances who went all in for their loves. Not that Nash loved her—or would ever love her—but mental muscle memory was a thing.

“Sweet of you to offer,” she said, “but I look horrible in jailhouse orange.”

He winked at her, setting off a whole heart-flutter thing, and took a drink of his wine. “I was concerned when the bartender said this was made with Concorde grapes, but it’s actually really good.”

“Yeah, it’s my favorite,” she said, taking a sip of the rosé, the tiny bubbles fizzing against her tongue before she swallowed. “It’s happiness in a bottle, and who doesn’t need a little of that?”

“You know, I could go to that holiday party with you,” he said, double dimples on full display. “To run interference with your uncle. Really, it would seem a little weird if your husband didn’t go.”

“You’d do that?” Chelle tried to remember the last time she didn’t have to go solo when a probable confrontation with family was involved and came up blank.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“There will be games and mandatory fun with watered-down drinks,” she said. “Why I ever suggested having a building holiday party, I have no idea.”

Well, beyond the combined high of finishing a book and getting to dive into the annual reread of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Earthsea Cycle. Yep. Sometimes two rights did make a wrong, even if it didn’t work the other way around.

“Maybe it will be so bad it will be good,” Nash said.

“So it could be the ugly Christmas sweater of holiday parties?” She snorted, trying to imagine the perpetually uptight and bitchy Suzanne in a garish green-and-red sweater with a cat wearing a Santa hat on it. “It’s going to be the absolute opposite of the perfect night, which would involve wine, a fireplace, and having my favorite book read to me. To think the party will be anything but misery, you must be an optimist.”

“Some days.” He took another drink of his wine as he glanced around at the Ice Knights memorabilia on the walls. “You know, we have a company suite at the Ice Knights arena. Maybe we can go sometime. Just not when they’re playing the Cajun Rage. My cousin is a Rage fan, and he is unbearable during those games—even with Fiona shooting death glares at him that would make a normal man’s balls explode.”

“I take it she roots for the correct team?” Chelle asked with a chuckle.

Nash’s blue eyes rounded comically. “Oh yeah, her family is pretty rabid—not to mention her brother-in-law is Zach Blackburn.”

She lifted her wineglass in a toast. “To opposites attracting.”

He tapped her glass with his, and after that they sat there, hip to hip, tucked into the narrow booth, and watched people in the bar as they flirted and gossiped and relaxed with friends. As a writer, observing folks was part of her daily existence. It made sense that someone whose job focused solely on how to get people to want things they didn’t realize they needed in their lives would be as into people watching as she was. At that moment Nash nudged her and jerked his chin toward an older couple sharing a bottle in the corner, holding hands on the tiny table between them.

“Actually spies tracking down an international wine thief,” he said.

Oh yeah, this was a game she could play.

“That guy in the gray plaid scarf is the number-one suspect,” she said, looking in the direction of the guy with the floppy hair, sitting by himself at the end of the bar.

Nash stretched, and his arm came down across the back of the booth, casually curling around her shoulders and setting her pulse to ultra-aware mode. It was like being enveloped by a thick, knit blanket, soft and solid at the same time. And very, very warm.

“Of course,” he said as he took another drink of his wine, “it could also be the woman over there in the head-to-toe black. She looks like she could kill a man with only her thumbs.”

Chelle laughed out loud. She couldn’t help it. He was right, the woman with a bunch of friends at one of the tables totally had the look of a well-trained assassin. “That’s Ryder Falcon, and she probably could take someone out with only her thumbs. She and her brother Tony own this investigative firm I’ve used a few times.”

She left off the part about using it to check him out before she agreed to get real married to a fake husband.

“Called it,” Nash said and clinked her glass with his.

They spent the next few hours going back and forth between speculating on the secret life of the other people in the wine bar, stories about her pugs and his mom’s chihuahua mix, and somewhat questionable wine puns (why have less scato when you can have mo’ scato?) while finishing off the bottle of rosé they’d ended up getting. By the time Nash topped off her glass with the last of the wine, she was mellow, giggly, and more than a little horny. A woman could only spend so much time wrapped up in the almost-embrace of a sexy, thick rock of a man without worrying that her nipples had become perma-hard.

“You know,” Nash said, pulling back so they weren’t touching anymore, “we could renegotiate our agreement about nothing physical between us.”

Did she really want that? The fizzy feeling bubbling inside her screamed yes. It took everything Chelle had not to scoot over to be touching him again.

“What are you thinking?” A quickie in the bathroom? Was she too old for that? Because at the moment, it seemed like a damn fine idea.

“That you’re as attracted to me as I am to you,” he said, absolutely 180 percent confident in his declaration.

Play it cool, Michelle. No, correction, play it cold.

Yeah, easier said than done when she was pretty much Mt. Vesuvius at the moment.

“That’s a big assumption,” she said, sounding more than a little breathy even to herself.

“But if it’s true,” he countered, “why not be adults about it and do what husbands and wives do?”

“Exchange icy glares and engage in passive-aggressive snit fits?” The question was out before she could censor herself.

Nash let out a low whistle. “Your parents’ marriage must have been really something.”

And this was why she didn’t talk about her parents. They were, in a word, a nightmare. Still, she’d brought it up, so she might as well explain. “My dad had some very old-school, patriarchal views about a woman’s place in a marriage, and my mom coped with pills and booze, which my dad pretended was a bug in their marriage as opposed to a feature.” She forced a light tone into her voice despite the heavy ache in her chest. Old traumas always left scars. “I suppose your parents are married and living that perfect life?”

“Not even close,” he said with a laugh that lacked his usual sincerity. “They’re…well, they’re a lot to take care of. I have to make sure the bills are paid, since neither of them will hire a business manager, then there’s the reminding them of birthdays and important dates, and yeah, I have to check in but, despite it all, they are pretty amazing. My mom finds the good in almost every situation, and my dad, well, he’s got a way of looking at the world that always makes me sit back and reevaluate what I’m doing. They’re both smart, loving, and completely oblivious to all of the little things that have to be done to function in the real world.”

Chelle pivoted in her seat, her hand dropping to his thigh. “Is that why you do what you do? All of the mansplaining and telling people what to do?”

“Someone has to, and I’m the oldest, so there it is.” He drained the rest of the wine in his glass. “I make sure they don’t Absentminded Professor their lives into a mess. They’re good people. They’re just preoccupied. A lot. You have brothers or sisters?”

She shook her head. “Only child.”

“Do you talk to your mom still?”

“No, uh…she died when I was in high school.”

He reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

Chelle mentally pressed back on all of the anxiety and hurt that started to swirl around in her chest. “Dad and I weren’t close after I left the family fold, only the obligatory call on birthdays and holidays. If it wasn’t for the family foundation, I’m not sure we would have talked beyond that.” Realization of the emotional black hole they were walking toward hit her, and she pulled up before they crossed into the weepy stage of wine drinking. “Okay, we’re supposed to be celebrating killing it at the IKEA scavenger hunt, not falling down the rabbit hole of how our parents messed us up.”

Nash dropped his arm across the back of the booth again, his fingertips brushing against her shoulder. “Tell me about the foundation.”

Chelle relaxed, and most of the sadness stirred to the surface by thoughts of her mom settled.

“It’s small, but we have a solid crew of people who really care about helping people, and Hadley Donovan, our fundraising consultant, has made it possible for us to do that.” Hiring Hadley after she’d just started her own business had been a risk, but wow, had it paid off. “We offer rental assistance, food subsidies, educational and training opportunities, and anything else we can possibly fund that can get real-world results for the folks that need it. I love making things better and helping people to flourish.”

Outside of her books, the foundation was the only place where life guaranteed a happy ending—as long as she could stop her uncle Buckley from taking it over and shutting it down.

Nash lifted an eyebrow. “So you’re helping without mansplaining?”

She chuckled. Okay, fine, he got her there. “Except people are actually asking for my help.”

“I see.” He glided his thumb over her shoulder, setting off a jumble of sensations through her. “And that’s why you’re helping me with the mansplaining and everything else?”

She let out a shaky breath. “You mean winning your bet?”

“I’d almost forgotten about the bet.” Heat flared in his gaze when it dipped to her mouth as she took the last drink of her wine. “I guess I’m a little preoccupied with the possibility of us changing the rules of our marriage. Chelle…I want to seduce you. Would you be all right with that?”

A shiver of awareness zipped across her skin, she let out a shaky breath, and she barely managed to stop herself from answering with a yes please to his plan.

Instead, she did the smart, grown-ass woman thing and said, “I’ll think about it.”

As if she would be not thinking about it any time soon. The truth was she was having more and more difficulty not imagining Nash naked. Was there really any harm in a little no-strings fun with her husband?