Monica would smack me if she saw how I was acting. Not just the inability to keep it in my pants, but the way I responded to it all. I was incapable of rational thought, and the further I got away from Ally, the more I knew I had made a series of mistakes, not the least of which was stomping away. Monica would have told me I was acting like an idiot. She would have told me a lot of things I had done wrong, but she would have done it in a way that didn’t make me feel like shit.
And currently, I felt like shit.
Hell, my brothers would probably smack me too. Here I was putting the entire renovation at risk. For what? I didn’t know. I just couldn’t keep my hands off a woman that absolutely drove me insane. I had to shake that off though. I was the oldest, and I was better than this. They had to follow my example, and that meant I needed to figure out what to do on my own. If I wasn’t capable of handling my own urges, how could I possibly be the kind of big brother who helped his family with their problems? I was acting like a stupid teenager.
I made it to the bathroom and quietly went inside, shutting the door and locking it behind me. After I latched the lock, I crossed over to the sink and turned on the faucet.
Splashing cold water on my face was a bracing way of trying to break up my thoughts. The cool water stung my eyes and seemed to shock me out of the swamp of confusion I had been mired in. I looked up and stared at myself in the mirror. Water dripped from my eyebrows, and my eyes were wild and crazed. My beard had started to grow in, giving me stubble that was unusual for me. I had thick lines on my forehead where I had been stressing and thinking so much, and my eyes had deep lines underneath that showed I had not been sleeping well. I didn’t even recognize myself.
What was it about her? She was gorgeous, sure, but what was it about her that overrode how much she drove me insane? She was rude and dismissive and blunt, at least to me. With everyone else she seemed to be a freaking angel. Duncan thought she was the sweetest woman he’d met in a long time and had said so out loud, in earshot of me.
She wasn’t the kind of girl I usually found myself attracted to. That was part of it. I found it hot when women stood up to me, sure. That had been something Monica did so well that attracted me to her. But Monica would call me on my shit, not start a war over nothing. Ally seemed to want to be able to tell me what to do, to have me just obey her like I was some underling. When I refused, it only made her angry, and then we’d end up fighting.
Then we’d end up doing much more.
With Monica, there was an assertive side and a sweet side. She could turn it on and off like a switch.
This woman was all assertive. Everything she said to me was a challenge or an insult. Every look she gave me was another withering glare. That was until she was suddenly locking lips with me and ripping my clothes off. So why did we fall into each other with a desire to bang each other’s brains out? At work, no less. Had I just gone mad? How could she pull at me in a way I was so wholly and completely unready for?
I put both hands on the sides of the sink, resisting the temptation to rip it out of the wall and toss it. Instead, I looked down into the well of the sink and tried to think of what to do next. How could I get through the rest of the day knowing what I had just done and who I had just done it with? I could go see Duncan and try to distract myself with his inane conversations about TV shows we both watched. I could go see one of my other brothers, though I might have so much guilt on my shoulders I would end up spilling it all.
One thing was for sure. I needed to get the hell away from the restaurant. I simply could not subject myself to seeing her again, or else something would end up happening. Either I would blow up at her and we would have a screaming argument right there in front of everyone, or I would throw everything away, taste her tantalizing lips again, and go for round two wherever we were standing.