Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
I cleared my throat. “I’m not a mess.”
Wow, even I didn’t believe me. Great.
“Sure. OK.” He drummed his fingertips against Rip’s desk. How were even his hands attractive? “I never said being disorganized was a bad thing. I like messes. But more importantly, my point is you’d be good for him, and because we’re friends now—”
I tilted my head to the left and subjected him to an assessing stare. “Are we, though?”
“I’m going to help you.”
“Help me what?”
“Win him over. Get him to give you some slack.”
“Ha!” I crossed my arms. “It’s impossible. I’ve tried.”
So damn much it was almost embarrassing. I did everything in my power to make him see me as an equal and always came up short, which just irritated me more because I knew my worth—the problem was, he didn’t, and he never would. He wasn’t the type to see my accomplishments, only my failures, and it sucked because I truly did want his respect. I wanted so much more than that, truthfully, but I’d given up on that a long time ago.
“Guys like Rip need a different approach. If you turn into his perfect woman, you’re going to turn into him, and he’s going to be bored to tears. He just needs someone who can force him to acknowledge his attraction to you.”
Wait. What? We had been talking about Rip being appreciative of me. Not being attracted to me! “He’s not—”
“Unless he’s blind,” Banks interrupted, “he is. Quick question, were you two sexting yesterday? Around ten a.m.?”
My cheeks heated. “More like hate texting.”
“Hate texting.” He shrugged. “Sexting.” Another shrug. “It’s really the same thing, you know that, right?”
I rolled my eyes despite my sudden excitement that Banks somehow knew that Rip and I had been texting. And having fun while doing it. Had Banks walked in on Rip staring at his phone? Had Rip told him he was enjoying our conversation?
Ugh, now I was daydreaming again about the guy who thought I had the maturity of a preschooler. Great.
“Actually we weren’t even hate texting,” I announced. “It was more like threat texting.”
“He was smiling,” Banks said triumphantly. “Down at his phone, with a giant grin on his face that I haven’t seen in forever. Plus, he’s not really a texter, comes across as a giant jackass when he uses the written word, doesn’t know how to cut things up with an emoji or funny meme. Hell, he even uses proper grammar; would it kill him to use a contraction?”
“And corrects others’ grammar, don’t forget that.” But even as I said it, my heart was lodged in my throat, my pulse quickening. Was it true? Could Rip actually… like me?
The last thing I needed was an awkward situation between me and Rip, though. I immediately deflated. Getting my hopes up was so not the way to make things less awkward with the guy I was raising two kids with.
This conversation with Banks was just confusing me even more. I didn’t want Banks to be right. I didn’t want to hope. All hope did was make me think there was a chance something was there, a something I’d always wanted, and I wasn’t rested enough or emotionally stable enough right now to take rejection from the man who was sleeping just down the hall from me.
I shook my head as if to say, No, no, I can’t have this conversation.
Banks rested a hand on mine. “Nope, no giving up before we even start plotting world domination or, you know, Rip domination. Now, steak or Italian?”
The guy was exhausting; beautiful, but exhausting. “Why?”
“Answer the question.”
“Italian?”
“Great, I’ll pick you up around nine. Bedtime is around eight thirty, correct?”
“Wait, what do you mean you’re picking me up?” I asked, suddenly confused.
“We’re going to start dating.” He winked. “But don’t worry. I won’t fall in love with you. It’s really hard for guys like me to catch feelings.”
“Wh-why are we dating again?” My head spun along with the room. How would pretending to date Banks even work?
Rip would probably shove me out the door and tell me to have a good time just to get me out of the house—OK, maybe not that harsh, but he wouldn’t be jealous; he’d have to actually like me to be jealous. So he’d smiled at our text conversation. So what? I refused to believe that meant he wanted to date me and would be mad if Banks did. I wasn’t stupid.
Banks winked. “Because guys like Rip react to one thing and one thing only.” He got up and started walking toward the door before calling over his shoulder, “Competition.”
I fell back against my chair. “But—”
“Wear black. See you later, beautiful.”
“What the heck just happened?” I whispered to myself. At least I’d get Italian out of the deal and dinner with a hot guy, so really there was no loss there, but his plan just seemed like a way to get me out to dinner or maybe even get in my pants.