Once Upon a Sure Thing (Page 16)

“My next career.”

“I’d buy a sassy hat from you, Aunt Ally.”

I force my smile not to slip when she calls me that. Really, what do I expect? I’m not her mom. I’m her aunt, the sassy hatmaker.

She shuts down the computer and reaches for her hot chocolate, wrapping her hands around it as she takes a sip. A dash of whipped cream decorates her top lip.

“You have a mustache,” I tell her as I take another drink of tea.

“Maybe I want to have one,” she says in a silly voice.

“Maybe add a beard, then,” I say, and then I tell myself it doesn’t matter what she calls me. This matters. How she is with me. She’s playful and sharp, and she’s shared her work with me. That matters more than a name, more than a title.

She dips her finger in the mug, scoops off some whipped cream, and slashes some over her chin.

“No fair. No one told me we were making whipped cream beards today,” a deep baritone booms.

I look up to see Miller joining us. His hazel eyes sparkle with delight, and his smile makes my heart do a little kick.

My stomach decides to get in on the action, flipping and flopping as I linger on his square jawline, his lips, his lean, ropy body.

I grab my tea and take another drink, desperately needing something to do besides gawk at my best friend like I’ve only just noticed he’s one of the most attractive men ever in the history of the universe.

“I better get two hot chocolates, then, if we’re making beards,” he says.

I rise and grab his arm. “No.”

“What?”

“That night you had two, remember? After we went to see Jumanji? You made me promise to never let you drink that many again.”

“That’s true,” Chloe chimes in. “I pinky-swore to hold you back.”

“Ladies,” he says with a sigh as he shakes his head, “I’m a lost cause. I had a half dozen with Campbell the other week. You can’t save me. Save yourselves.”

“Can I have another, then?” Chloe chimes in sweetly.

“Because Miller is a piggy?” I ask.

Chloe laughs. “Seems fair.”

“Yes,” I say, giving her permission.

Soon, he returns with the drinks, adding a dollop above his lips.

Grabbing her camera, Chloe snaps a picture of him. Then she takes one of me when Miller swipes some whipped cream under my nose. I laugh, then wipe it off as Chloe gives him the same tour of her pictures she gave me. He pays rapt attention, asks questions, and shares his thoughts.

And the whole time, I’m thinking about licking that dollop of whipped cream off his lips.

* * *

Later, after Chloe goes to bed, Miller and I spit-shine and polish our song at my kitchen counter while I start on a new hat with a pink skull-and-crossbones design for Sam.

“Are you ready to record tomorrow?”

“I am,” I say, and that’s the understatement of the year.

“Will you be wearing your wig?”

“I should, right?”

“If it’s part of your persona, yeah. Are you going to keep up the whole Honey Lavender style?”

As my needles click, I swallow and ask nervously, “Do you like it?”

He looks me over and licks his lips. “Hell, yeah.”

I want to ditch the yarn, yank on the wig, and model it for him, then ask in a sexy, sultry tone if I turn him on.

But I can’t give voice to those feelings, nor can I give in to them. I’m doing this with Miller for the chance to make a little extra to support Chloe and me. I’m not doing this to scratch an itch for thirty days.

Sex itches can be scratched with battery-operated friends.

I’ll do what any brave heroine faced with a challenging task would do—badass her way through it with a sword, never giving in, never surrendering.

Before he leaves, we play a quick game of Bananagrams, unleashing our inner twelve-year-olds when he plays titular and I build dongle off his L. We decide that those two words are so quintessentially dirty-but-not that we might as well make the game a tie.

“I wish you a titular goodnight,” he says with a wink as he heads to the door.

“May you have a wonderful dongle,” I say, but I can’t stop laughing, and I’m glad Bananagrams has rerouted my racing hormones.

Once he’s gone, though, the silliness stops, and so does my laughter.

Instead, all night long I fight off images of him. His hazel eyes flickering with desire. His strong body, moving over me. His lips brushing mine.

The next day, those images intensify, so I take out my imaginary sword of resolve and slash them to tattered bits.

I head to the recording studio, prepared to do battle with my newfound and most inconvenient lust.

Chapter 15

Miller

As I sing to Ally, I tell myself I could just as well be singing with Campbell or Miles. “Maybe, if you come back to me . . .”

But hell, I wouldn’t sing those words to my brothers. We’d sing them together to an audience of faceless thousands.

Only, Ally is my audience, and I’m hers, and I should not be thinking of what my audience would look like in my bed.

Stunning, and hovering on the edge of pleasure.

I part my lips to sing the next line. “Maybe if you come hard with me.”

I groan in frustration as I botch the line of a song I wrote a few months ago and tweaked on my piano the other day for the two of us. My hormones are having a fucking field day. Little evil imps.

Ally stops, gesturing take five to the engineer in the sound booth.

She closes the distance. “You’re stiff.”

Stiff. She doesn’t know the half of it. Iron spikes have nothing on me. Because Honey Lavender is in the house, singing, dancing, shimmying, and raising my flagpole.

“You need to let go,” she tells me, smoothing her hands over my shoulders, and even that’s arousing.

Everything is with her today.

She’s like a sultry torch singer. She might as well don a red satin dress and slink her way across a baby grand piano, singing Billie Holiday’s “These Foolish Things.”

And I’d be that guy in the smoky, dimly lit jazz club, wearing a dapper suit, unable to take my eyes off her as she seduces me with bedroom eyes and her bourbon voice.

Only, I can’t be that guy. I can’t let my best friend turn me into a full-blown horndog.

So instead, I’m a robot today.

Clunky and awkward and banging into everything.

I never ever had these problems when I sang with my brothers.

Obviously.

“I’m all good,” I say, like I’m one cool cat. I roll my shoulders as if all I need is to slough off the day’s worries.

“You’ve been tense all morning.”

Singing with her is the cruelest torture, and it’s killing me not to grab her and yank her against me during every verse.

“Sorry. Didn’t sleep well last night,” I lie. I slept like a baby. I had a jerk followed by eight full hours, just like the doctor ordered.

She tugs my hand, pulls me through the booth and out into the hall. Weirdly, it’s more private here.

“Miller, you know what made us click the other day?”

I shrug, shoving a hand through my hair in frustration.

“You said it yourself. It was chemistry.”

“Right. Sure. We sounded good together.”

“And we looked good together,” she says. “Don’t forget that. We had that je ne sais quoi.”