Not About Love

Chapter Fourteen

He first proposed the idea during what he called "almost naked dinner". When a blond haired, blue eyed California god suggests eating dinner while wearing only his boxers, a smile, and oodles of muscle covered in golden skin, you'd be stupid to turn him down.

Which is why I was sitting cross-legged on his couch, wearing a pair of lacy midnight blue bikini-cut panties and a matching camisole, occasionally batting his wandering hands away as I ate my sushi.

"When's the last time you took a vacation?" He raised his chopsticks to my mouth, a piece of yellowfin tuna between them.

"Mmm." I swallowed the fish and reached for my wine. "Does being out for two weeks with pneumonia count?" Laughing as he sighed in exasperation, I concentrated on getting my chopsticks around the avocado roll refusing to leave the plate. "Before the store opened. I went to Europe for three weeks, knowing it would be the last trip I'd get to take for quite some time."

He stared at me in disbelief. "You haven't taken a vacation in over four years?"

"What?" I said defensively. "I haven't had the money to go anywhere, or the time. Owning a business is hard, Braden. You take time off, you don't necessarily get paid. I'm luckier than most, I guess, that I've been able to take a few days off here and there, but leaving for a week or more? I don't know if Derek, Craig, and Tracy could handle it for so long."

"They did while you were ill," he pointed out. I begrudged him the point. Our sales during that time period were on par with the previous two years, so me being out hadn't caused the store to suffer greatly, if at all.

I regarded him over the rim of my wineglass, my mind clicking along. Much as I didn't want to agree with her, my mom was right. A vacation sounded wonderful. Too bad I couldn't afford it. Nor could I leave at this point, not with the future of the store so up in the air. Braden never asked idle questions, though. There had to be a reason he'd brought up the subject. I lifted a brow. "I can see the wheels turning, Surfer Boy. What's up?"

Taking the sushi tray and placing it on the coffee table, he grabbed my ankles and pulled me toward him, then pinned me to the couch. His impatient mouth connected with my earlobe, nibbling his way along my jaw to my lips. "What would you say to an all-expenses paid trip to Buenos Aires? We could learn how to tango."

I arched up, running my hands over the ropes of muscle covering his back. "It sounds amazing." Lacing my fingers through his hair, I tugged up until I could see his face. "Except there's a couple of problems with that."

He smiled ruefully. "You can't leave now, I know. I was thinking maybe in August. It'll be winter down there, and it would give us a break from the heat. You'd be able to step outside in the daytime," he teased. With my skin so pale, I spent much of the summer months indoors or in the shade. Living in Southern California didn't make it easy on me, that's for sure.

"You're buying a house, so you'll have a mortgage payment draining a lot of your extra cash. I also can't let you pay my way, Braden. I wouldn't feel right about it." I silenced his impending protests with my lips. "Maybe someday, when I don't have to worry so much about my damn budget, I'll get there."

He studied me for a moment, his face growing darker and darker, before he sat up, blowing out a breath in frustration. "What? What's wrong?" I asked, rolling into a sitting position myself.

"I'm trying to do something nice here, China. You're kind of ruining it." He glared at me, the expression so fierce I wanted to flinch. As I stared at him, unsure what else to say, he rose from the couch and stalked over to the kitchen, retrieving a bottle of water from the fridge. "Fuck it," he muttered. He stalked back and slumped down on the couch, water bottle thunking onto the carpet as he reached over and hauled me onto his lap until I was straddling him. "Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn all the time?"