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CHAPTER NINE

PROBLEM NUMBER I’D lost count was that fucking pool party.

A pool party that was supposed to be fun and completely free of stress. It was an afternoon to decompress after being locked away for months in my writing cave.

It wasn’t even one problem. It was a whole new slew of them. All under the category of problematic Ro.

She organized the whole thing without a hitch, I’d give her that. She went above and beyond. She usually did. That wasn’t the issue. The real issue was her. Her behavior and her attire.

Also an issue: It’d been way too long since I’d gotten the fuck laid.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, I told myself. I was a writer. My schedule was a bi-polar nightmare. Sometimes I got caught up in a book and didn’t get laid for months . . . Well, probably more like month as in the singular.

But it’d happened before. Certainly this latest bout of abstinence wasn’t unheard of.

Certainly it wasn’t because of her. That would be a significant problem. Unthinkable, really. So unthinkable that the second the thought hit the edge of my brain, I shut the door firmly in its face.

Not today, Satan.

The party didn’t start until two, but the house was flooded with activity by noon. A few were early partygoers, but mostly it was various service staff: caterers, waiters, bartenders, and the like. Ro handled most of it without a word to me, but occasionally she had to seek me out to ask my personal preference on something or other.

One such time I was in my bedroom and had just changed into swim trunks.

She barely knocked on my door before charging inside, the bold little minx. Luckily for her, I’d covered all the essentials first. No use putting a picture in her head.

I slipped my thumbs into my shorts, resting them there, but more importantly, pushing the waistband down to expose more skin, watching her face the entire time.

Her eyes followed my hands, and I watched with smug satisfaction as she flushed, looked away, then dragged her eyes back like she couldn’t keep them away.

“Hey, eyes up here, cupcake,” I told her mock sternly.

Her big Bambi eyes glared at me.

She got her revenge for that soon enough.

“Come here,” she said to me sometime later as I walked into the kitchen. Her hands were behind her back.

I was instantly wary. She was up to something.

“You’re fucking with me,” I pointed out.

She pointed at herself, one hand still held behind her back, her face a mask of innocence and sarcasm that only she could pull off. “Me? Nooo.”

“I don’t trust you,” I said.

“This won’t hurt, I promise.” Her voice was mostly neutral, but there was another thread to it, one I was only beginning to recognize now, as I learned to read her better.

“I don’t believe you,” I told her, glaring. “That’s your bad girl voice.”

“All the good girls go to hell anyway. At least, that’s what Billie Eilish says.”

“Who the hell is Billie Eilish? Is she coming to the party? She doesn’t sound like someone you should hang out with.”

She just laughed and laughed. She was mocking me.

And I liked it. A little too much.

Way too much.