Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2) - Tessa Bailey Page 0,1
if he were to buy the scent as a gift for his wife, the dude definitely wouldn’t want to go home reeking of women’s perfume.
Rosie assumed the man would pass on by, but he stopped at the counter across the aisle, peering into the glass case for a moment. Then he straightened and sent her a warm grin.
“Hi.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, and Rosie performed her usual customer checklist. Nice watch. Tailored suit. Potential for an upsell if she could convince an obvious businessman that the three-scent gift box was a must-have for his lady. “Shouldn’t they have sent you home by now?”
Was he talking to her? Weird. On the cosmetics department floor, most people passed by Rosie as if she were an inanimate object. A minor annoyance they had to successfully avoid for 3.7 seconds, unless they needed directions or help wrangling their kids. She had an urge to glance over her shoulder to confirm the man wasn’t addressing someone behind her. Maybe Martha had doubled back to make sure she was spray-ready.
“Um.” Rosie tried not to be obvious about shifting in her heels, transferring the ache between feet. “No rest for the weary, I guess. The mall closes at ten, so . . .”
Speaking to a man felt strange. Foreign. She hadn’t even talked to her husband, Dominic, about anything of real importance for years. And, God help her, someone giving enough of a damn to ask why she was terrorizing people with a perfume bottle at nine-thirty did feel important. Someone asking about her, noticing her, felt important.
For a split second, Rosie let herself notice the man back. In a purely objective way. He was cute. Had some dad bod going on, but she wasn’t judging. With both hands in his pockets, she couldn’t look for a wedding ring. Some intuition told her he was divorced, though. Maybe even recently. There was something about how he’d approached as if intending to go straight for the exit that told Rosie he was only pretending to be interested in the jewelry case now. His tense shoulders and stilted small talk suggested he’d actually stopped to speak to her and wasn’t overly comfortable doing it.
“Have you been working here long?”
This man was interested in her. In the space it took Rosie to have that realization, she noticed her own wedding ring was hidden behind the perfume bottle. Without being obvious, she curled the bottle into her chest and let the gold band wink at him from across the aisle. The light in his eyes dimmed almost immediately.
Rosie had been faithful to Dominic since middle school and that wouldn’t be changing anytime soon, but she allowed herself the feminine satisfaction of knowing a man had found her attractive. Had she even allowed that simple pleasure for anyone but Dominic? No. No, she didn’t think so. And in the years since Dominic had returned from active duty, she hadn’t gotten that light, bubbly lift from him, either.
Everything between them was dark, lustful, confusing, and . . . so far off course, she wasn’t sure their marriage would ever point in the right direction again.
Maybe it was silly, allowing this stranger’s attempts at flirting to bring everything screaming into perspective, but that was exactly what happened. On a boring Tuesday night that should have been like any other. Suddenly, Rosie wasn’t just standing in her usual spot beneath the fake crystal chandelier while boring piano music was piped in over the speakers. She was standing in purgatory. Whose life was this?
Not hers.
Once upon a time, she’d been a straight-A student. A member of the Port Jefferson High School volleyball team—B squad, but whatever. She’d been an aspiring chef.
Wait. Wrong. Rosie was an aspiring chef. She needed to stop thinking of that dream in the past tense. Something that faded with a long-ago wish upon a star.
Rosie set the perfume bottle down on the Clinique counter and sent the man a wobbly smile. “How long have I been working here?” She laughed under her breath. “Too long.”
The man laughed, seeming grateful that she’d broken the wedding-ring tension. “Yeah, I can relate.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well, I guess I should get going . . .”
He trailed off but made no move to leave. It took Rosie a tick to realize he was gauging her interest level, even though she was married. With a quick intake of breath, she nodded. “Have a nice night.”