Sweet Little Lies Read online

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  “Everything.”

  When he’d left, she got a text from Elle that had her staring at her phone, mouth open.

  I don’t know how or why, but thanks for sending last night’s comic relief to poker night.

  She stared at the text, horrified. She still couldn’t believe she’d done that to Finn.

  And that’s not the only thing you’ve done to him . . .

  She’d let her emotions get the better of her. That was a mistake, but oh God, what a delicious, sexy, heart-stopping wonderful mistake.

  She responded back to Elle with a? on the off chance she was jumping to conclusions, and Elle was all too happy to explain in her next text:

  Biweekly poker night in the basement turned into a peep show when Finn showed up in the dumbwaiter half nekkid. Lucy, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.

  Her stomach hurt. Her plan to bring Finn a little fun, a little adventure while waiting on the fountain to bring him love, had seemed so simple. Fun and adventure, and maybe even a little walk on the wild side. She honestly hadn’t meant to do that in bed.

  Or on her kitchen table.

  Or in her shower . . .

  Oh, God. This whole thing was bad. Very, very bad. And yet it’d all been so heart-stopping good at the same time that she found herself just standing in place at odd moments, her brain glazed over as it ran through erotic, sensual memories like a slide show behind her eyelids. Finn bending her over the end of the bed, his mouth at her ear whispering hot little sexy nothings as he’d teased and cajoled her right out of her inhibitions, his body hard against her.

  In her . . .

  She blew out a shaky breath. Dangerous thoughts. Because it was her being selfish, and she wasn’t going to do that again.

  Absolutely not.

  Or, you know, as much as she could.

  Ugh. She slapped herself in the forehead. Go back to your plan, she ordered herself, not giving her inner smart-ass a chance to chime in. No more sexy times, no matter how deliciously demanding he was in bed. And this time, she meant it. One hundred percent. Or at the very least, seventy-five percent.

  Certainly no less than fifty percent . . .

  Luckily, work was crazy busy and helped keep her mind off all things Finn-related. The weather was warm, which meant that everyone and their mama wanted to get outside. They wanted to be on the water, see Alcatraz, Treasure Island, the Pier 39 sea lions . . .

  She was on her second tour of the day when a guy tried to propose to his girlfriend. Unfortunately for him, he apparently hadn’t checked out her Pinterest page where she’d pinned pictures of acceptable rings. The proposal went fine until she opened the little black box. It didn’t end well, especially since he’d done it in the first five minutes of the two-hour tour, and then had to endure the rest of the ride in frosty silence.

  On her last tour, Pru had a bunch of frat boys who kept making jokes, wanting to know if she’d be their captain below deck as well, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, if she’d ever played pirates with her passengers, because they wouldn’t mind pillaging and plundering. At that she’d pulled out the baseball bat she kept beneath her captain’s chair and asked if anyone needed their balls rearranged or if they wanted to sit down and shut up for the rest of the tour.

  They’d gone with sitting down and shutting up.

  She’d gotten a call from Jake the second the last of her passengers debarked.

  “You have problems with passengers, you let me kick their ass, you don’t need to do it,” he said. “You’re not alone out there, I’m always in your ear.”

  Literally. They were in constant communication when she was on the water via comms. “Maybe sometimes I want to do my own ass kicking,” she said.

  “My point is that you don’t have to.”

  “It’s a good stress reliever,” she said.

  “Uh huh. As good as sleeping with the guy you haven’t been honest with and then shoving him bare-ass naked into your dumbwaiter to avoid your ex, your boss, and your best friend?”

  The air left her lungs in one big whoosh. “Who told you?”

  “Eddie would snitch on his mama for food or cash, you know that.”

  “And how did Eddie know?” she demanded. “I didn’t tell anyone!”

  “Didn’t have to. Eddie was in the basement at a very intense poker game with a select few when the dumbwaiter opened and out stumbled your boy, pants in hand.”

  “Shirt!” she yelled. “He had his shirt in hand. He was wearing his pants!”

  “Just tell me you told him.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “Dammit, Pru, it’s like you want to self-implode your own happiness. Promise me you won’t do anything that stupid again until you tell him.”

  She closed her eyes, knowing he was right. Hating that he was right.

  “Pru—”

  “—I hear you,” she said.

  “Promise me. I know you would never break a promise, so right here and now, promise me that—”

  “I promise,” she said. “I’ve always intended to tell him and I will. I get that it’s been two weeks but I’m working up to it, okay? I’m going to tell him soon as the time is right.”

  “Just don’t miss your window of opportunity, chica, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “I hear you.”

  They disconnected and Pru closed her eyes. Hard to pretend something hadn’t happened when everyone in the free world knew.

  She didn’t linger after work like she usually did. Instead she hightailed it out of there. Needing to clear her head, she and Thor walked. Well, she walked. Thor got tired about halfway and stopped. He planted his little butt on the sidewalk and steadfastly refused to walk another step.

  “You’re going to get fat,” she told him.

  Thor turned his head away from her.

  “Come on,” she cajoled. “I want to walk out the Aquatic Park Pier and watch the sky change colors as the sun sets.”

  Thor sneezed and she could have sworn she heard “bullshit” in the sound. And the sad thing was that her dog had more brain cells than she did because he was right.

  She was stalling going home. It was just that she’d come to count on Finn’s company so much. Too much. He made her smile. He made her ache. He made her want things, things she’d been afraid to want. He made her feel . . . way too much.

  Thor hadn’t budged so she scooped him up and carried him out to the end of the long, curved pier. She watched the water and thought maybe this wasn’t so bad. Yes, she’d made a mistake. She’d been with Finn a few times.

  So what.

  Other people, normal people, slept with people all the time and she didn’t see anyone else angsting over it. For all she knew Finn hadn’t given it a second thought, and in fact would laugh off her worries.

  But you’ve slept with him now, as in actually slept, snuggled in his arms all night long . . . And that was more intimate than anything else and it changed things for her. “Maybe I’m just being silly,” she said hopefully to Thor.

  Thor, lazy but utterly loyal, licked her chin.

  She hugged him close. “I always have you,” she murmured. “You’ll never leave me—”

  But he was squirming to get down so desperately she did just that. “What’s gotten into you?” She stopped when he bounced over to a fellow dog a few feet away.

  A small, dainty, perfectly groomed Shih Tzu. The dog stilled at Thor’s approach and allowed him to sniff her butt, and then returned the favor while Pru glanced apologetically at the dog’s owner.

  The woman was in her thirties, wearing running tights and a tiny little running bra, the brand of which Pru couldn’t even afford to look through their catalogue.

  “Baby,” the woman said. “What have I told you? You’re a purebred not a disgusting mutt.”

  “Hey, he’s not disgusting, he’s just—” But Pru broke off when Thor lifted his leg and peed on Baby.

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