“Maybe I was just being funny when I answered the phone,” she said flippantly.
“Perhaps.” Distracted silence stretched for several seconds.
“So, who were you trying to call when you misdialed me?” It wasn’t that she cared. She just wanted to keep the conversation going.
“Would you be disappointed if I said I was calling my girlfriend?”
A tiny shiver of jealousy irrationally flashed up her spine. “Why would I be disappointed? I don’t even know you.” But the longer they talked, the more she wanted to know him.
He made a noise of introspective contemplation like he knew he’d ruffled her feathers, then said, “I was calling my sister.”
She shouldn’t have been pleased to hear that it was his sister and not a girlfriend he’d been calling, but she was.
“You don’t know your own sister’s phone number?” she teased.
There was that delicious dark-chocolate chuckle again. “I did until she got a new phone number last week.”
“And you didn’t just update her contact record in your phone?”
“I’ve been busy.” He sounded as if he enjoyed the way she was badgering him.
“So, do you always ask your sister such intimate questions?” She got up from her desk and strolled toward the window as a cool breeze blew back the sheer curtains. “Because ‘Are you coming?’ isn’t exactly how I expect my own brother to start a conversation with me?”
“I’m waiting for my sister in front of her apartment building. I’m picking her up to take her to the Hamptons.”
“At ten thirty on a Friday night?” she said, throwing his own words back at him.
He chuckled, catching her jab. “A family friend is getting married out there tomorrow. I promised to take my sister so she wouldn’t have to drive herself or pay for a Lyft, but I got caught up with a problem at work, so I’m running late, and now she’s running late. At this rate, we may never get there, but—ah! There she is.”
She heard a woman’s voice in the background. “I’m late, I know. I’m sorry.”
Her unknown caller’s voice grew muffled as if he’d covered his phone with his hand, but Jenna still heard him say, “It’s okay, let’s just get your bags in the trunk so we can get on the road.” He must have uncovered the phone, because when he spoke again, his voice was clear. “My sister is one of the bridesmaids, so she’s a little frazzled.”
“If she’s a bridesmaid, shouldn’t she have been there today for the rehearsal dinner?”
“Yes, which is why she’s frazzled.”
Jenna laughed. “I see.”
“She’ll have to get the CliffsNotes in the morning.”
“Has she ever been a bridesmaid before?”
“No.”
As a former bridesmaid for three of her sorority sisters, Jenna considered herself a bit of a professional, so she knew the drill. “It’s not too difficult. You line up, wait for the music to start, then walk down the aisle before the bride does. Then you spend the rest of the day making the bride look like a queen and the star of her own Hallmark movie.”
He laughed. “Sounds simple enough.”
“I’m sure your sister will be fine.” She dropped the curtain back over the window and returned to her desk. “So, I guess you’ve got to go then, huh?” She tried not to sound disappointed.
Writing was lonely work. She enjoyed it, but spending all her spare time living in a make-believe world created a vacuum of human contact that her mysterious caller was filling quite nicely. She didn’t want to hang up.
“My sister ran back up to her apartment to grab one more thing, but as soon as she returns, we’re heading out.”
“Well”—her head jerked around as a police siren blared to life on the street below and zoomed past her building—“have a safe trip.”
“Thanks.” He lowered his voice. “And you have fun making yourself come.”
Butterflies whirled to life in her belly at the way he said that. “Oh, trust me, I will. I’ve got a couple more hours of writing ahead of me, and then it’s just me and my vibrator.”
She never would have said something so audacious to someone she knew, but her unknown caller was a complete stranger. And with that bodice-ripper voice made of smoke and velvet, why not have a little fun with him?
“Mm, that’s too bad,” he said, his voice growing even quieter, as if he didn’t want his sister to hear him in case she returned.
“Too bad?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because wouldn’t you rather be fucked?”
She sucked in her breath at his boldness, and a flash of heat exploded between her legs. She hadn’t had sex in over two years. She’d been too busy working on her dream of becoming a full-time author and having fantasy sex with her heroes to bother with the complications of the real thing. But now, all she wanted was her legs wrapped around this man’s hot body.
“Well, yes, but—”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
He made a noise, like “What a travesty,” then said, “If only I wasn’t going out of town, I would offer to stop by and fill the vacancy.”
The thought excited her. Which was completely crazy.
“I don’t even know you.”
“And I don’t know you,” he countered. “Makes it exciting, doesn’t it?”
She refused to admit that it did. He didn’t need to know how turned on she was right now. And not because of what Delano was doing to Josephine on her computer screen.
“You don’t even know where I live,” she said, redirecting the conversation.
“Oh, I have a pretty good idea.”
Jenna frowned at his self-assured tone. “How’s that?”
“You know that police car that turned on its siren by your apartment a minute ago?”
She glanced at her open window again. She wasn’t surprised he’d heard it, as loud as it had been. “What about it?”
“It was one block over from my sister’s apartment building.”
The line went dead a moment later, but not before she heard his smooth-as-ebony-silk chuckle one last time.
Chapter Three
The next
