Page 39 of If We Were Perfect (If Love 4)

Sammy’s molars ground against each other so hard his entire face hurt.Kayaking under the Golden Gate Bridge? Give me a break.

Olivia wasn’t a kayaking type of person. She was a wine-tasting, weird-but-delicious-as-fuck-conceptual-dinner kind of person.

“Hey, man.” Sammy clamped a hand on Trey’s shoulder and bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Aaron’s looking for you.”

“Really?” Trey glanced around. “He looks busy to me.”

Dammit.Aaron was indeed busy whispering sweet nothings in Melissa’s ear by the pool.

“He got bored waiting for you,” Sammy lied. “I’d check in with him now. It seemed pretty urgent.”

Trey’s gaze flitted between Sammy and Olivia. A slow smirk took over his face. “Sure, dude.” He kissed Olivia on the cheek and whispered something that caused her to laugh again before he sauntered off, whistling a jaunty tune.

“What’s so funny?” Sammy demanded, inexplicably irritated.

“Nothing.” Olivia squashed her smile. “You better have a good reason for chasing away my dance partner. We both know Aaron wasn’t looking for him.”

“I know no such thing, and is that what you call what you two were doing? Dancing? Looked more like groping to me.”

She lifted a perfect dark brow. “Jealous?”

“Not even in your dreams.”

“I hate to break it to you, but you have no place in my dreams.”

“You sure about that?” Sammy stepped closer, challenge glinting in his eyes.

Olivia’s chin lifted. “One hundred percent.”

“You’re lying.” Sammy encircled her waist with one arm and brought her close until their bodies pressed flush against each other. He hadn’t drunk much today, but he’d had enough. His thoughts were muddled, and instead of taking a rational course of action—like staying the fuck away from the one woman with the power to undo him—here he was, holding her close and breathing in her fresh, intoxicating scent.

The music and chatter faded away until all he could hear was thethud-thud-thudof his heart beating a rhythm as wild and unpredictable as the charged molecules in the air.

Olivia’s face bore a pale pink flush from her drinks, and her eyes shone beneath the darkening skies as she stared back at him, her lips slightly parted.

In that instant, they weren’t Sammy and Olivia, ex-lovers locked in a silent standoff on a summer California night; they were Sammy and Olivia, slick with sweat and heady with alcohol, dancing the hours away in a Shanghai nightclub.

He blinked, and they morphed into Sammy and Olivia, entangled in passion on lust-drenched sheets.

Blink.

Sammy and Olivia, sneaking kisses in dark, intimate corners of dark, intimate restaurants in New York.

Blink.

Sammy and Olivia, lying on the grass, staring up at the stars and weaving dreams of what their futures would look like. They hadn’t discussed how those futures would intertwine or for how long; it’d seemed like a silly question, as irrelevant as asking whether the sun would rise the next day or whether the ocean would kiss the shores. There was an infinitesimal chance it wouldn’t happen, but it was for all intents and purposes a foregone conclusion.

What fools they’d been.

“What are you doing?” Olivia didn’t wrap her arms around Sammy as any woman in her current position would, but she didn’t pull away, either.

“Dancing.”

“We’re not moving.”

“It’s not that kind of dance.”

Olivia’s breath quickened. He could hear it, feel it, practically taste it.