But I was being a little bitch about it. I was the one who kept proclaiming I didn’t need love. I could do it fine on my own—having a woman, getting married, and shit like that was old-school. My parents had struck gold. They’d made it; they’d had the real deal. But these days, with people like us Conrads ... life just wasn’t the same anymore.
Bas had found love, and that had made me a little jealous back then. But he deserved to be happy, just like anyone else.
And I still didn’t think I needed a woman in my life. I was managing just fine. Whatever I couldn’t—or didn’t want to—do by myself, I hired services for. When I had needs, I found someone to take the edge off with. And the rest was all about business, which I was fucking good at.
Except, Emily seemed to have found a crack in all that. Because when I was with her, all I could think about was the way her hair smelled, or the one dimple on her cheek that formed when she laughed about something stupid I said. Or the way her eyelashes guarded her eyes when she blushed and looked down because she felt silly about the way she was reacting.
And I wanted her. Fuck, I wanted her so badly.
I wanted her beneath me, her face a mask of pleasure as I drove into her deeper and harder. I wanted her hands on my shoulders, her legs around my waist. I wanted her voice in my ear, moaning for more.
It was the fucking wine. It had to be. I should have just stayed away from the stuff. Any other alcohol and I could handle myself. Sure, some of them made me want to fight. And others made me wax nostalgic. But wine was the drink of romance, and because of it, I wasn’t thinking clearly.
When we were done with the pizza—I loved how down-to-earth she was when it came to food—I invited her to walk through the apartment again and show me what she had in mind. I’d seen the pictures, of course. But fucked if I could envision it the way she could.
And I wanted her to tell me what she had in mind.
“So, this is what I want to do here,” she said when we walked to my office. “These walls will all be sage.” I had no fucking idea what color sage was. The picture looked green. “And then oak furniture.” She glanced at the desk I already had there. “Are you okay parting with this?” She ran her hand along the desk.
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s just filler shit.” All the good stuff had stayed behind in Brooke’s place. Some of it was furniture I liked, but it was better to cut my losses.
“And you don’t have a budget?” Emily asked. Her brows knit together, and it was adorable.
“None,” I said.
Her eyes lit up. “Okay, I have a few ideas. I promise I won’t go crazy.”
I grinned. “Go crazy. Really, have at it. It will be fun.”
She turned and looked around the room, and I could see her actually seeing what she would do to the room. It was just an empty space to me, but to her, everything looked different.
I watched her, tracing her delicate features with my eyes. Her slender neck, her small ears, the thick dark hair that she’d pulled back into a ponytail that had started falling out of the holder. Her nose, thin and straight. And those eyes, filled with stars.
When she glanced at me, she blushed.
“What?”
“You can see it, can’t you?”
“I guess so,” she said. “Yeah. It’s something you work on, you know? Like a muscle you train. I couldn’t see it at first, not really.”
“Practice makes perfect,” I said.
“Right.” She smiled at me. “Let me show you the living room.”
“Okay,” I said. “And then I want to showyouthe living room.”
She frowned at me for just a second before leaving the room and I followed behind her to the living room.
“So, this”—she pulled up the pictures on her tablet—“goes over here.” She gestured to a wall behind her. “And then this is where you’re going to put your TV. Can’t have a bachelor pad without a good one, right?”
“For the games,” I confirmed.
She giggled. “Yeah. And then over here, I’m thinking we put one of these.” She pulled up a photo of some weird looking statue.
“That could work,” I said.
She nodded. “I think it really could.”