Watching her date other men had been hard, and if someone were to ask him if he’d deliberately sabotaged those short-lived relationships, he’d deny it. But deep down, he knew that jealousy had played a factor in how often he called her when he knew she was out with another man. Was it fair to either of them? No. Yet he hadn’t been able to stop himself.
And now she’d chosen to go from his bed to Ryker’s. Jealousy was too pale of a word to describe how that made him feel, but if the last couple of weeks had shown him anything, it was that he needed to let it go. He’d flat-out turned her down, which had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. To know, definitively and not just as a guess, that Sage wanted him had been a heady thing. The feel of her in his arms, the press of her lips against his … the sight of her naked in that bathtub, her soap-slickened hands touching her breasts, her stomach—
Parker tossed back the rest of the scotch in one swallow, forcing the images from his mind. He had to stop obsessing, and stop sabotaging her. It wasn’t fair to Sage, and it was just his own fucking bad luck that he had to figure this out now, when she was with Ryker, than before when she’d been dating what’s-his-name. The guy she’d said had been bad in bed.
His lips twisted at that. She’d been so adorably embarrassed when she’d blurted that out he’d had a hard time not laughing outright, until he’d realized that she’d only know that because she’d slept with him. Then the green monster had dug into his gut and he’d been viciously glad to have interrupted her date the night before.
But not anymore. Enough. It was done. Parker would exercise self-control and ignore the jealousy, because otherwise he’d never let Sage find someone, and she deserved to be happy.
Even if it was with Ryker, the closest friend he’d ever had, who now hated him beyond all reason.
CHAPTER ONE
Four Months Later
It’s amazing how sleeping with a hot guy with rock-hard abs provides motivation to get one’s ass to the gym.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I sweated my way through twenty minutes on the elliptical. I watched the closed-captioning scroll across the mounted television tuned in to the news, increasingly resentful of the female anchor with perfectly toned and tanned legs on display.
Finally, the timer beeped and I turned off the machine, stepping back to the floor with legs that felt like rubber. Megan bebopped up to me, her ponytail bouncing with each step.
“I always feel so energized after I work out,” she said, grinning.
I stared daggers at her. “I hate you so much right now,” I panted, still trying to catch my breath. Megan was petite and tiny with a personality I adored … usually. We’d worked together at KLP Capital for almost two years now.
“C’mon, Sage, you know you’ll feel better after a shower.” She grabbed my elbow and dragged me with her to the locker room. “Then we’ll have lunch. I know this great new sushi place just around the corner.”
The prospect of food made me perk up a little and I glowered slightly less. By the time I’d cleaned up, blown my hair dry, and added some makeup, I was congratulating myself on how healthy and diligent I was to get up early on a Saturday to go work out. Which lasted precisely as long as it took to walk to the sushi place and see the donut shop next door.
“So how’s Armed and Delicious?” Megan asked, biting into a powdered donut.
I answered around a mouthful of strawberry jelly. “Ryker’s fine,” I said. “He had to work late. Was still asleep when I left. So … I guess we’re kinda … living together now?” I meant it as a statement but it came out as a question.
Megan’s chewing ground to a halt. “Kinda?” she asked, mouth full. She swallowed. “How do you kinda live with someone?”
“Well, I gave him a key, because his hours are so weird,” I explained. “And now he just comes by when he gets off—whenever that is—and stays. He gets up when I leave for work and has a cup of coffee with me, goes home and sleeps, then the process kind of repeats. So is that living together?”
“Does he have clothes and toiletries at your apartment?” she asked.
I thought about it. “A toothbrush and a few changes of clothes,” I admitted. “Sometimes he showers there, so yeah, there’s some of his stuff.”
“Congratulations,” she said. “Your boyfriend is living with you and you didn’t even know it.”
I rolled my eyes at her dry sarcasm, taking a sip of my coffee. It was chilly and rainy today—autumn was rolling in—and the coffee was like a soothing blanket.
“So is this a good development or bad?” she asked, peering in the bag for another donut.
“Good, I think,” I said. “It just snuck up on me, that’s all.”
“It sounds like things are progressing,” she said. “You’re sleeping with him, it’s a given that you’re together as much as possible, and now you’re ‘kind of’ living together.” She used quote-y fingers for kind of. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Parker’s face drifted through my mind. I shoved it away. “Yeah,” I said. “It just seems a bit … fast, that’s all. We’ve only been seeing each other for a little over four months. Do you think that’s fast?”