Derrick ignored Hector’s ominous tone when Max asked, “All that aside, you still have to convince her to mate with you.”
He gave them both a sheepish look. “I didn’t have to. She offered to do it.”
“Come again?” Max said, clear disbelief in his tone.
“I said, she heard everything we explained to her when I brought her to your house. She agreed to mate with me on the full moon to save me as long as she could come and go as she pleases while she’s here, no questions asked, and in return, I’d let her go back to New York when it’s all done.”
Hector’s goggles fell down his astonished face to his chin. He swished them around his neck with his free hand, grating out a sigh. “Jesus,” he scoffed. “How do you manage all that machismo? Does it hurt to be so charismatic—is it a huge burden? ‘Hey, stranger I found at the 7-Eleven, I need you to mate with me on the full moon, you in?’ And like magic, no fuss, no muss? You kill me, Derrick. I’m thoroughly flayed.”
Derrick wanted to smile at Hector’s stab at him, maybe even take a little pride in the fact that he had a reputation as a ladies’ man. He liked the idea that he was a free bird and everyone knew it. But he couldn’t.
He didn’t understand why it bothered him so much that he had little to no effect on Martine, but that niggle he’d felt this morning was beginning to grow. “It was her idea.”
“Why is it that women never have that idea with me?” Hector joked, settling the bunny back into the hutch.
“Because you’re not cursed to die if you don’t mate?” Derrick shot back.
Hector tipped an imaginary hat at him. “Touché. Still, I think you’d better prepare for more. There’s more, Derrick. I know there is. Feel it in my gut.”
Max gave him a concerned-big-brother gaze. “Me too. There has to be some obstacle to it or the curse means nothing—especially with a guy like you, who scores more often than the NFL as a whole. Keep your eyes and ears open, would you? Don’t think this is over because Martine agreed to the mate so willingly. You might get to skip the hearts-and-flowers stage of things, but there’s a hurdle.”
Hearts and flowers. Hah. As if Martine would be receptive to that phase anyway. She’d been pretty no-nonsense from the word go.
And why do you care if she’s receptive to anything but the mate?
Hey, over-thinker, shut up. I don’t care.
Do so.
Glaring at Hector and Max as if it were their fault he was having all this inner turmoil, he said, “I have to get to the bar. Would you mind asking the girls if they have anything she can borrow to wear? She has nothing.”
He liked her in nothing.
Jesus. He had to stop remembering her naked and willing and perfect.
“You bet,” Max called after him, but he was too deep in thought to hear the rest.
Too busy trying to convince himself he didn’t care.
Chapter Seven
She’d spent the better part of her morning and into the later afternoon online, sifting through the wreckage of her wedding planning business, when she wasn’t thinking about Derrick and last night when his hand had touched her arm
Or the way his shirt clung to his thick chest, or how much she’d wanted to crack the door to his bedroom open and catch a glimpse of him sleeping.
This had to be a physical reaction, or maybe even an overreaction to the idea that she hadn’t been near another human being for such a long period of time.
Yet her mind’s eye had gone back to him over and over since she’d sat down with his computer shortly after he left. She’d never daydreamed about anyone, let alone a man.
Well, again, let’s be clear. You were without human contact for months. Maybe you just need it more than you thought you did.
Martine shook her head. No. She didn’t like that answer at all. It was an unacceptable answer. Better to focus on what to do with her crumbled life.
Leaning forward, she began to read the messages left by the hundreds on her Facebook page from infuriated customers who’d lost bundles of money as a result of her involuntary stay in Escobar’s prison.
Essentially, her small business, Just Say I Do Wedding Planning Inc., was toast. If that wasn’t enough, her employees and vendors had all left scathing messages on her Facebook page, too, calling her a con artist.
Though, she had to give it to Lilly Guthrie, her personal assistant. Right up until just last week, she’d defended Martine while fending off some of the most hateful comments about everything from her wedding planning skills to the size of her ass.
The soon-to-be Mrs. Whitshire had some nerve calling her ass big when her intended, Levi Whitshire the Third, couldn’t keep his damn hands off it every time his fiancée had her back turned.