“I won’t want to say no,” he said in a gruff voice.
“But the quartet!”
“Fine, the quartet.” He was pretending to be angry, but she knew he loved the quartet as much as she did. She knew he saw her point. “I guess we’d better get up,” he said. “Jon gets bitchy when we miss the shuttle. But before that…” He pulled her into his arms. “One last kiss, and you’d better make it a good one.”
All your kisses are good ones, she thought as he claimed her lips.
* * *
After a quick shower, Ruby made it downstairs with a few minutes to spare. To her chagrin, she saw Ethan had just arrived in the lobby too. Steve and Jonathan watched as they took seats across from each other. Ruby pretended to check her luggage tag, and hoped her blush didn’t show.
“So, did you two sleep well?”
There was an edge to Jonathan’s question that made Ruby look up, but she looked at Steve, not Jonathan. Steve was always up front with her, and his expression said it all.
“My room was on the other side of Ethan’s,” he said with a shrug. “And the walls aren’t as soundproof as you probably thought.”
She and Ethan looked at each other, but neither of them seemed willing to talk first.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Jonathan as the silence strung out. “You’re both adults, right? Hope you had fun.”
“Ethan and I did have fun.” She felt she owed it to her friend to announce this to the group. “We had a lot of fun.”
“Seriously, a lot of fun,” Ethan echoed.
“But we also agreed it might mess with the quartet’s dynamic if we started a relationship, so last night was a one-time thing. We’re going to be friends who slept together once.”
“Well, more than once, kids,” Steve said. “According to what I heard.” He flicked them a thumbs up. “Got kind of excited myself.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Good God. Let’s not hash over what you heard again.”
“Again?” asked Ruby.
Jonathan frowned at her. “I had to sit here and listen to the play-by-play while we waited for you two to come down. It’s up to you guys, if you want to keep your…whatever…going, but yeah, it could affect the quartet, and that’d be a shame.”
“I don’t want it to affect the quartet,” Ruby said, although Ethan’s lips stayed mashed shut.
The shuttle van arrived a moment later, saving them from the awkward conversation. Ruby climbed to the back bench with her violin case, and Ethan took the seat in front of her. When Steve and Jonathan struck up a conversation, Ethan leaned to the side and stared out the window. Ruby gazed at the back of his neck, at the curly, dark hair she’d clutched in the throes of ecstasy.
Damn. No matter how they’d tried to spin the morning after, things still felt wrong. They’d made this shuttle trip to the airport a hundred times, and she usually enjoyed a feeling of ease and accomplishment the morning after a travel gig, but today she felt unsettled and horribly confused.
After a bout with traffic and an extra-long line at security, they barely got their luggage checked on time. They were so late to the gate that they couldn’t get seats together. Normally, Ruby hated being separated from the guys, but today it was a relief.
Damn Ethan for being so hot and seductive, and damn her for giving in to his marvelously kinky talents. She sat hunched between two businessmen, trying not to remember all the fun she’d had with him, and trying not to turn and look at him a few rows back. He might smile his famous smile, that low-key mysterious smile that had bloomed into so many more things the night before.
“Ugh,” she said aloud.
One of the businessmen beside her moved toward the window a couple inches, like she was complaining about the space. Ah, well, she needed the extra room for her regrets.
She closed her eyes, wishing she could sleep on planes, because she definitely hadn’t gotten her eight hours in. Just as the white noise of flight started to relax her, her phone buzzed in her lap, showing a text from Ethan.
This is bullshit, Ruby.
Damn him. She covered her eyes with her hands and barely restrained herself from saying “ugh” again. She had to be strong. The Gold Quartet had to come first.
It’s not bullshit, she typed back. I explained why we have to keep things out of the bedroom. You agreed.
I agreed because it seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do in the moment. But I was lying.
She wished she had the balls to turn around and beg him across the three rows of seats to stop. She was barely holding onto her willpower, her resolve.
You can still brush my hair if you want, now and again.