In Name Only: Best Friend Bride (In Name Only) / One Night Stand Bride (In Name Only) / Contract Bride (In Name Only). Kat Cantrell
her. “What, like I take you to lunch and we just talk about stuff?”
“Sure.” She shrugged and reached out to lace her fingers through his free hand. “See, we can hold hands and it doesn’t mean anything. I’m just hanging out with my friend Jonas, whom I like. Hey, Jonas, guess what?”
He had to grin. This was not the worst plan he’d ever heard. In fact, it was pretty great. He’d missed their easy camaraderie and the lack of pretension. Never had she made him feel like he should be anything other than himself when they hung out. “Hey, Viv. What?”
“I made reservations at this new restaurant in Cary that sounds fab. It’s Thai.”
“That’s my favorite.” Which she well knew. It was hers, too. He took the first deep breath in what seemed like hours. They were friends. He could dang well act like one and stop nosing around Viv like a hormonal teenager.
“Drink your wine and then we’ll go. My treat.”
“No way. You opened the bottle of wine. The least I can do is spring for dinner.”
“Well, it was a major accomplishment,” she allowed, and clinked her glass to his as he held out the stemware. “I’m thrilled to have it recognized as such.”
And the evening only got better from there. Jonas drove Viv to the restaurant and they chattered all the way about everything and nothing, which he’d have called a major accomplishment, too, since he managed to concentrate on the conversation and not on the expanse of Viv’s bare leg mere inches from his hand resting on the gearshift. The food was good and the service exceptional.
As they walked in the door of the condo later, Jonas paused and helped Viv take off her jacket, then turned to hang it up for her in the foyer coat closet.
“I have to say,” he called over his shoulder as he slid the hanger into place. “Dinner was a great idea.”
He shut the door and Viv was still standing there in the foyer with a small smile.
“It’s the best date I’ve been on in a long time,” she said. “And seems like the plan worked. Neither of us is acting weird or jumpy.”
“True.” He’d relaxed a while back and didn’t miss the edginess that had plagued him since the wedding ceremony. He and Viv were friends and that was never going to change. That was the whole reason he’d come up with this idea in the first place. “We may not set off the fire alarms when we visit with your family on Friday, but we can certainly pull off the fact that we like each other, which is not something all married couples can say.”
That was fine with him. Better that way anyway. His reaction to the pull between him and Viv was ridiculous. So unlike him. He had little experience with something so strong that it dug under his skin, and he’d handled it badly.
Fortunately, he hadn’t done anything irreversible that would have ruined their friendship. Though there’d been more than a handful of moments in that bed at his parents’ that he’d been really afraid it was going to go the other way.
But then she stepped a little closer to him in the foyer, waltzing into his space without hesitation. The foyer was just a small area at the entrance of the condo with a coat closet and nothing more to recommend it. So there was little else to take his attention off the woman who’d suddenly filled it with her presence.
“We’ve been friends a long time,” she said, and it was such a strange, unnecessary comment, but he nodded anyway because something had shifted in the atmosphere.
He couldn’t put his finger on it. The relaxed, easy vibe from the restaurant had morphed into something else—a quickened sense of anticipation that he couldn’t explain, but didn’t hate. As if this really was a date and they’d moved on to the second part of the evening’s activities.
“We’ve done a lot of firsts in the last little while,” she continued, also unnecessarily because he was well aware that he’d shifted the dynamic of their relationship by marrying her.
“Yeah. Tonight went a long way toward getting us back to normal. To being friends without all the weirdness that sprang up when I kissed you.”
That was probably the dumbest thing he could have said. He’d thrown that down between them and it was like opening the electrical panel of a television, where all the live components were exposed, and all it would take was one wrong move to fry the delicate circuitry.
Better to keep the thing covered.
But it was too late. Her gaze landed square on his mouth as if she was reliving the kiss, too. Not the nice and unexpectedly sweet kiss at the wedding ceremony. But the hot, tongue-on-tongue kiss outside her bedroom when they’d been practicing being a couple. The necessity of that practice had waned since his family had bought the marriage hook, line and sinker. Sure, they still had to get through her family, but he wasn’t worried about it, racy lingerie gifts aside.
Now the only reason to ever kiss Viv again would be because he couldn’t stop himself.
Which was the worst reason he could think of. And keep thinking about, over and over again.
“I don’t think it was weirdness, Jonas,” she murmured.
Instantly, he wished there was still some circumstance that required her to call him Mr. Kim. Why that was such a turn-on remained a mystery to him. But really, everything about Viv was a turn-on. Her laugh. Her cupcakes. The way her hair lay so shiny and soft against her shoulders.
“Trust me, it was weird,” he muttered. “I gave myself entirely too many inappropriate thoughts with that kiss.”
And that was the danger of being lulled back into a false sense of security with the sociable, uneventful dinner. He’d fallen into friendship mode, where he could say anything on his mind without consequence.
The admission that had just come out of his mouth was going to have consequences.
Her smile went from zero to sixty in less than a second and all at once, he wasn’t sure the consequences were going to be anything close to what he’d envisioned. She waltzed even closer and reached up to adjust his tie in a provocative move that shouldn’t have been as affecting as it was.
The tie hadn’t needed adjusting. The knot was precisely where he’d placed it hours ago when he’d gotten dressed for work. It slid down a few centimeters and then a few more as she loosened it.
Loosened it. As if she intended to take it off.
But she stopped short of committing, which was good. Really...good. He swallowed as she speared him with her contemplative gaze, her hands still at his collar in an intimate touch. She was so close he could pull her into his arms if he wanted to.
He wanted to. Always.
Dinner hadn’t changed that.
“The thing is, Jonas,” she said. “I’ve had some thoughts, too. And if yours are the same as mine, I’m trying to figure out why they’re inappropriate.”
She flattened her hands on his lapels. The pressure sang through him and it would feel even better if he didn’t have a whole suit jacket and two shirts between her palms and his skin.
The direction of this conversation floored him. And if she kept it up, the floor was exactly where they were going to end up.
“What are you saying, Viv?” he asked hoarsely, scrambling to understand. “That you lie awake at night and think about that kiss, aching to do it again?”
She nodded and something so powerful swept through his body that he could hardly breathe. This was the opposite of what should be happening. She should be backing off and citing her inability to focus on a man and her career at the same time. She was too busy, too involved in her business to date. This was the absolute he’d banked on for long agonizing hours, the thing that was keeping him from indulging in the forbidden draw between them.
Because if he gave in, he’d have no control