The Gideon Affair

She wasn’t going anywhere until they had talked about what was happening. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Adding a second heavy bottom pot to the cooktop, he made quick work of some garlic, onion, Portobellos, fresh tomatoes, and finely diced carrots while his mind clocked in at maximum overdrive.

Keeping an eye on the softening veggies, his forehead furrowed from the effort of taking in the magnitude of how altering the dynamic of their association would change things.

As fucked up as it sounds, he’d never been best friends with any of his previous lovers. Not like he was with Paige.

Edward snorted disbelief. No, seriously man. I’m being real here.

On some level, he supposed, his high school girlfriend had been close, but the tell was in how he framed that thought. She’d been close, yeah, because he’d allowed it. But he’d be full of shit trying to make the case that the exchange was intentional.

It wasn’t.

He was a horny teenager with one thing and one thing only on his mind. She was the adoring girlfriend who gave in to his horn-dog demands because, and probably only because, he’d let her in enough for her to think she was different. What they had—special.

In other words … Teenage Fuckery 101.

Then there was his brief foray at the university with all the college insanity that was so much a part of the growing up experience. But after that? Fuck. After that, he’d gone Army all the way, where stuff like emptying his balls took on a new meaning when staying alive was a twenty-four-seven reality.

It wasn’t until his life collided with Paige Turner’s that he finally knew what it meant to have a true friend. Especially one of the female persuasion. Keeping that friendship was vital to his sanity, which was precisely why they had to talk.

Once he was satisfied that di

She’d been at it long enough. No amount of working the phones or crisis management was going to change what had already happened. Time for her to downshift.

Plodding barefoot to the study, Edward paused outside the French doors and listened. Nothing. Good. He didn’t want to wrangle the phone from her hands any more than he wanted to talk about business right now.

Quickly rounding the doorway, he stepped into the room. He found her hunched over, forearms resting on her thighs, with her hands clasped between her knees. Head down, it was bobbing as if she was coming to a decision.

She glanced up and froze when she saw him. Her eyes flared. Actually, really and truly flared like the pop of sparks at the end of a July 4th glory torch.

Pfft. Being a visual sort of a guy had its advantages. Now he was thinking of Paige in firecracker terms. Cool.

“Made di

She blinked, tilted her head, blinked again, and the corner of her mouth quirked up.

“So my nose gathered,” she quipped. “Bit heavy handed with the garlic, don’t you think?”

Banter. He could do banter.

Gesturing to her discarded phone, he said, “Garlic is an aphrodisiac. Ask Mickey.” With a shrug of feigned i

Her amused laugh made him smile.

“But it isn’t Friday,” she cooed with a smirking wink.

He couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that she was playing along, and it wasn’t about giving as good as she got. Paige wasn’t a game player, and she was hands down, next to his mom, of course, the most clever girl he’d ever encountered. She knew they were ushering in a new dynamic in their relationship. And she wasn’t pushing back. At all.

Folding his arms across his chest, his mouth twitched with a smile he fought while he gave her his best movie star leer. “Consider it research then.”

She stood. A deep chuckle rumbled between lips pressed together while she worried one corner with her teeth. “Mmmhmm. Research. Quick thinking, Ba

He gri

“Wash your hands, Turner,” he drawled. “Then get your ass in gear and set the table. Make yourself useful, woman.”

She was coming around the table as he finished, and without thinking, he reached out and swatted her behind as she tried to scoot by.

Her yelp of surprise struck him as endlessly fu

Fuck yeah, this was going to be fun.

“Hands, Mr. Ba

And then he lost his ever-loving mind. With a gesture that felt totally natural, he reached his hand out and curled it around her neck, pulling her to him.

“Mouth, Miss Turner,” he replied.

He hadn’t intended to kiss her, but she’d set it up with her flirty ma

It wasn’t a long kiss, but it certainly was deep. Offering zero resistance, she let him take her mouth through a soft brush of lips and on to something firmer until she gave in and opened—an invitation he quickly accepted. The second the unhurried dance of their tongues started to get out of hand, he softened the kiss and gently led her back till their mouths drew slowly apart.

Every fantasy he’d ever had about Paige was confirmed when her taste, a combination of the mints she seemed to live on and something else—something more sweet and pleasurable than he ever imagined—filled his senses.

Releasing her, he swiped his thumb over the corner of her mouth, gathering the remnants of the kiss. Then, with their eyes locked, he sucked the end of his thumb.

“More research?” Her voice was hushed and breathy.

He gave her a half shrug and smiled. “Think of it as before and after.”

There it was again. That flare in her eyes.

“You are a bad man,” she teased, shoving against his chest for effect.

He considered taking the moment further—she was being awfully receptive—but it suddenly struck him like a speeding freight train that this wasn’t about seducing Paige. Not at all.

Well, maybe in the classic sense he was, but definitely not in society’s translation of the word.

There would be no random hook-up with this woman. No hormonal explosion to satisfy an urge. What was happening between them was fucking huge. They were friends first and that one, important fact could not be ignored.

“No. No, I’m not, babe,” he countered solemnly. “Best you remember that, hmm?”

Her expression was uncharacteristically flustered. She nodded at him as she bit her lip again. He’d not seen this side of Paige before.

“Um, just give me a, uh…minute.” Her eyes lowered as she tried to hide her thoughts from him. He was okay with that. They were venturing into uncharted territory, and he understood she needed time to regroup.

“Meet you in the kitchen,” he murmured after a quick kiss on her forehead.

“You can’t feed me like this and not expect me to explode,” she grumbled after inhaling more food than would seem humanly possible. Dammit, but the man was a better cook than she was.

Edward chuckled as he took their empty plates to the sink. “Nobody put a gun to your head.”

They’d had many meals together over the years from your run-of-the-mill, fast food park-and-stuff to the formal elegance of an award ceremony, but nothing quite like what Edward and she had just shared.

Her dash to the bathroom under the guise of washing up was necessary to shut down the chain reaction his lips on hers had started.

Oh, my god. That kiss.

When she’d rejoined him in the kitchen, it was as if nothing had changed, even though it so had. Despite the upsets of the day, he was in a great mood, which she secretly hoped was because of her. He was singing along to a country song, quite a bit off key because Edward was amusingly tone deaf. Quite the opposite of the auto-tuned fake job Gideon Shaw gave on film. She loved that the real man wasn’t perfect. The cooking was bad enough. If he could sing too, well … that would have just been wrong on so many levels.