Page 39 of The Player's Club

“Mac, introduce me to your friend,” Andrea said in that annoying, sly tone she had. I could also hear the grin in her voice. Meanwhile, Elodie looked like she wanted to bolt.

“I’m so sorry. You have company,” Elodie said hurriedly. “I should’ve called first. Or texted.”

Elodie was about to turn tail and run, but I caught her by the arm before she could.

“Elodie, this is my agent, Andrea. Andrea, this is Elodie. She’s a friend,” I said.

Andrea shook Elodie’s hand, Elodie looking like a deer in headlights.

“Lovely to meet you,” said Andrea. “Mac, I’ll email you later. Have fun cooking.”

When I shut the door behind Andrea, Elodie’s brows dipped. “Cooking? Are you making something?”

I sighed. “Don’t ask. Come on in.”

I could tell that Elodie was looking around and noticing the changes. After teasing me about living in a total bachelor pad, I realized she was right. And there was zero reason I hadn’t finished furnishing the house. It wasn’t a priority, but I wanted Elodie to know I’d listened to her. And I also wanted her to feel at home here.

Laying it on kinda strong, my dude, I thought to myself. Though I pushed the thought aside.

“You’ve been busy,” Elodie finally said, her hands on her hips.

“Not really. I paid lots of other people to do this for me.”

She laughed. “Okay, well, whoever you hired did a good job.” Her eyes sparkled. “Now you’ve upgraded from a frat bro’s dorm room to a bachelor pad.”

“Hey, come on now.” I pointed at the vase on one of the many side tables. “I have décornow.”

“You sure do.” Elodie patted my arm.

I covered her hand with mine, and she didn’t pull away. All the worry about her not signing the contract disappeared. I could see in her expression she was still interested. Thank fuck for that, because I’d only wanted her more with each day that we’d been apart since Denver.

“I did want to talk to you about something,” she murmured.

“I figured. I’m also impressed you remembered where I live. And you got through the security gate...”

“I might’ve noticed the code you punched in the night we came here. Sixty-nine, sixty-nine wasn’t too hard to remember.” Her reply was sheepish.

“Well, I’m glad you found it memorable and made use of it.”

She nibbled on her bottom lip. “I wanted to ask if we could do something before I signed the contract.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d like to have sex with you. Just once.”

I froze. My entire body going on alert. The hairs on the back of my neck rose in both dismay and anticipation. “Oh really?”

Elodie put some space between us, again, to my dismay. “I just want to see how we are together without signing anything official.”

“Take a test drive, you mean?”

“Something like that. I mean, it’d stink if I signed the contract and sex between us sucked, right?”

I shook my head and pulled Elodie to me until we were nose to nose. “There’s no way in hell that’d ever fucking happen,” I growled.

Her eyes grew wide, her breathing heavy. She smelled like citrus, and it took all my self-control not to haul her upstairs right then and there.

“You’re probably right,” she whispered.