Page 2 of Just This Once (Stone Family #2)

Taryn

I take a long sip of my Aperol Spritz, savoring the bubbles and citrus flavor.

Marianne wanted to order a whole bottle of Prosecco to celebrate, but more than two drinks in one night sends me right to bed.

Not to mention, this once-a-month sip and chat is more than enough for me.

I don’t like testing the genes that run in my family.

I trace the condensation on my glass with the tip of my finger as Clara chatters on about some funny interaction she had with a customer at Lux & Lace, the lingerie boutique she and Marianne own.

While I love the girl, have known her for a few years now, with her being married to my best friend, I still haven’t gotten used to how she can talk .

She well and truly could hold an entire conversation with herself. As she goes on about lace getting caught on hair in delicate places, my mind drifts back to the renovations starting next week.

The Nest is my baby. I don’t own the bed-and-breakfast, but the place has meant so much to me, I want everything to be perfect. It’s where I took my first steps toward independence after my divorce, and I want to show it off. Give it the facelift it desperately needs.

“Hey.” Clara elbows my side with a laugh. “You still with us?”

I blink and take another sip. “Sorry, just thinking.”

“The renovations?” Marianne guesses, and I nod.

“It’s so exciting. You should be proud of yourself,” Clara says. “Taking that place from nothing to everything.”

“Not nothing,” I correct, and Marianne raises her brow in disagreement.

“Kinda.”

The Nest was a bit run-down when I took it over.

But the former manager hadn’t been able to market it correctly.

Didn’t know how to reach a new audience.

West Chester is picturesque, Instagrammable, and The Nest merely needed someone to know how to showcase it within the location.

In the age of digital media and online influencers, a person had to know how to highlight its uniqueness.

How the backdrop would be perfect for pictures.

Add in a little folklore about a certain celebrity who was born in the area staying there, and voilà. Back in business.

Clara lifts her drink. “To Taryn, for being forty-two and a boss-ass bitch.”

Marianne raises her glass. “To all of us being boss-ass bitches.”

“Hear! Hear!” I agree and take a long drink.

“Sounds like a party.”

Clara whips her head around to the man suddenly standing behind her. “Oh my god!” She throws herself at him. “Oh my god, Dante! I can’t believe it!”

I scoot my stool back, giving Clara room to jump around, arms flailing as she goes a mile a minute, her hands bouncing from his shoulders to his face back to his shoulders. “I haven’t seen you in a hundred years. How are you? You look exactly the same.”

“I’m good.” He grins. “And you look exactly the same too. I saw you earlier and wanted to say hi, but I was having dinner with my family.”

“Oh, well, come here. Come here. Come sit.” She takes his hand, pulling him in to our group, depositing him on the seat between Marianne and me. “This is my wife, Marianne, and our best friend, Taryn.”

He turns to each of us, nodding his greeting, though his attention stays on me longer than it did on Marianne. As his dark eyes coast over me, his lips twist up in a ridiculous smile—one-part mischief, one-part sex, and a whole lot of not working on me. “Nice to meet you, Taryn.”

“Hi,” I say, ignoring how he brightens when he says my name. How he takes in my body like a dehydrated man getting his first taste of water, his tongue wetting his lips.

I mean… Come on .

It might have been a while since I had sex, but not that long.

He only smiles bigger at my disinterest then slants his focus back to Clara. I angle away so my legs aren’t in his manspreading vicinity. Though I don’t know how his thighs can even move that much with the fit of those pants.

“Dante and I graduated high school together,” Clara explains, and it all makes sense now.

He’s a baby. A generation that loves tight pants and showing a lot of ankle.

I let my gaze wander down, and, yep, his pants are cuffed, and he’s got a bare ankle above his Adidas. I don’t understand why the fashion industry insisted on prying my skinny jeans away, just to let men have them.

“We were basically best friends back then,” Clara goes on, stealing my focus away from Dante and his legs, only for it to stick on his mouth when he clucks his tongue.

“Clara Shaw, I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Actually, it’s Clara Wilkenson-Shaw now.” She wraps her arm around Marianne’s waist. “But, yeah. I can’t believe you’re here. You said you were having dinner with your family?”

He glances my way, lazily rubbing his hands up and down his thighs, and I don’t let my eyes or mind linger on his thick fingers or the well-defined forearms, shown off by shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Yeah, my brother got engaged.”

“Which one?”

“Johnny. Robbie’s married with kids now.”

Clara coos. “Amazing. Good for them. What about you? You have anyone?” When he shakes his head, she pushes his shoulder, “Now, that is unbelievable.”

He chuckles good-naturedly, and I don’t like how the sound reaches my ears even over the din of the restaurant.

He’s tall and clearly muscular beneath his clothes.

With shoulders that seem sturdy enough to, like, haul a tree trunk across them.

I clear my throat with a long drag of my drink, forcing myself to stop admiring him.

If he graduated with Clara, that means he’s thirty years old.

Much too young for me. And from all his laughing and smiling, much too peppy.

I don’t trust peppy people.

No one can be that naturally optimistic all the time.

But unfortunately for me, he angles his head my way again, and my traitorous eyes find his strong jaw with scruff, a long, wide nose that speaks to some Mediterranean heritage, and up to find his brown eyes studying me.

I flash hot. Not unusual in my perimenopausal state, but I don’t normally get the sweats from men.

That’s saved for the two a.m. wake-up, drenched and tangled in my bedsheets.

And suddenly, my brain assaults me with images of being drenched and tangled in bedsheets for whole other reasons that begin and end with Dante’s lips.

I zip my gaze away, fiddling with the napkin on the bar top as he leans toward me, speaking to no one in particular. “Seemed like I interrupted a celebration.”

“We’re celebrating Taryn’s birthday,” Clara says, and if I could reach her, I’d punch her in the tit because Dante goes positively neon.

“Really?” He brushes my thigh with his—seriously, how big are his legs?—as he shifts for the bartender’s attention. “We need to order another round on me.”

“No. No, thank you.”

He glances at me over his shoulder, brows drawn down. “It’s a big day. You only turn…”

“Forty-two,” Clara supplies, and I shoot her a death glare. She shrugs in innocence, and Marianne laughs into her shoulder.

My birthday was actually last week, and I had a small cake with my kids, but I couldn’t get away until now to celebrate with my friends. Not that it matters. I don’t have friends anymore.

“You only turn forty-two once.” Dante helps himself to a sip of my drink before I can stop him, and my jaw hangs open as he orders me another spritz. Once he faces me again, he shakes his head, like he doesn’t understand why I’m glowering at him. As if what he did wasn’t totally inappropriate.

“You can’t have a sip of a random stranger’s drink.”

He tips his head to the side. He might think he’s adorable, but I do not. “You’re not a random stranger. You’re Clara’s best friend, which kind of makes you mine, by association.”

“That’s not how friendship works.”

He ignores me, simply nodding at the bartender when she delivers my drink and smiles at me. “Plus, I crashed your party, so I have to gift you something.”

I have a feeling I won’t win this argument—or any with how he exudes confidence and charm, ugh—but I try anyway. “I don’t want anything.”

He lifts his shoulder. “Maybe not, but you deserve it. If you don’t like it, I’ll get you something else. Did you eat? Want a special dessert? They have a dark chocolate mousse I think you’d like.”

I huff. “You are…”

He grins, waiting.

“Ridiculous.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Don’t be mean,” Marianne says, but Dante waves his hand.

“I like her kinda mean.”

“I’m not mean.” I scowl at my so-called best friends, who are watching this…spectacle with interest. Then I arch my brow at Dante in a challenge. He’s practically a child, obviously still working on his frontal lobe if he thinks he can swoop in here and take over. He has a lot to learn.

He crosses his arms, and I absolutely do not drop my gaze to his chest, where his collar is open, revealing the hint of a tattoo. “Maybe, maybe not. But you are beautiful.”

I cough a laugh. I’m not beautiful. I’ve never been called beautiful. By now, I’m confident in myself and who I am and what I look like, but I’ve never been the pretty girl. I’m too tall or too thick or too muscular. My face is too long, my lips too thin, and my personality too harsh.

The funny thing about being too much is that it doesn’t extend to time or fucks. And I’m almost out of mine for the night .

I roll my finger around in a circle. “Can we skip to the end of whatever it is you’re here to do? Because if it’s to reconnect with your old pal, you’re facing in the wrong direction.”

He smiles, sucking air through his teeth. Pure male satisfaction. And I squeeze my legs tighter together. I will not give in to the tingle rushing over my skin or the way my blood responds when he whispers, “What if I came over here to make new friends?”

“No.”

He chuckles. “No?”

“No,” I repeat. “I have enough friends.”

He glances at Clara and Marianne as if to say Is she for real?

And, yes. Yes, I am for real. Who the fuck does this child think he is?

When he lazily props his arm up on the back of my stool, I straighten my spine, moving away from him to concentrate on ripping my napkin into strips, balling each one up, readying them to throw at Clara and Marianne once this guy leaves.

Because I know he will eventually, and when he does, I will be ready to bring the hammer down on them for continuing this farce.

I keep quiet as Dante and Clara catch up.

He asks what she’s up to now, and she explains how she and Marianne own Lux & Lace, and how they met shortly after she graduated from Drexel with a degree in fashion design.

Apparently, Dante didn’t go to college, went right to work instead with only a few community college credits under his belt. Not that it matters. I don’t care.

Couldn’t care less when he talks about how proud he is of Clara and how happy he is to hear she’s doing so well.

Especially because he was there for her when she began to explore her sexuality.

Of course I know her history. Even though she gets along great with her parents now, they’re heavily involved with their church, and she’d been afraid of what her parents would say when she came out as gay and hid it through most of college.

And the stories about how Dante was there for her in those early years in high school don’t warm my heart.

At all.

I finish my drink and start in on the one he bought me, which is probably why I don’t feel it when my stomach rolls because of his fingertips skating across my back. Nope. It only makes me realize I’ve gotten too comfortable, and I have to adjust my position on the stool. Away from him.

“And how do you fit in, Taryn?” he asks, and I really wish he’d stop using my name.

In that voice.

Like sandpaper and honey. Rough with a hint of sweet.

When I don’t answer, Marianne does. “We’ve been best friends since we were kids.”

He nods knowingly. “Third-wheeling it.”

“No,” I snap because he’s really starting to get under my skin. “Actually, Mari was my third wheel way before I became theirs.”

“I didn’t know you’re married,” he says, eyes on my bare left ring finger, his hand finally falling away from me.

And I don’t regret losing the heat.

It’s not as if I enjoyed the curve of his arm behind me. Or his crisp, woodsy scent. Like he chopped down a few trees before coming to dinner.

And despite myself, I tell him, “I’m not married. Not anymore.”

He hums next to me, his heat and smell and presence close to me once again. Taking over. He lowers his voice so I’m the only one who can hear him. “I should probably say I’m sorry. But I’m not. ”

That has me meeting his eyes, honesty tripping off my tongue in more ways than one. “Me either.”

His gaze coasts over my face, and I can’t deny the way he makes me feel. As if he does actually believe that I’m beautiful. Then he parks his attention on my lips, and the warmth in my chest shifts to a fire in my belly.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt this way—have wanted to feel this way. I don’t know what to do—I don’t understand it. Or him.

So I ask, “Why?”