Working It Out Read Free Page A

parties. You knew them!" Luke stared at him. "How do you know someone and not know they're evil?"
    He shook his head. "I don't know."
    "I don't either."
    He squeezed Luke's hand. "Can we start over?"
    "How? How do you start over from this?"
    "I still love you." He was not going to just let go. He wasn't.
    "You don't still know me."
    "Which is why we should go out to dinner."
    Luke chuckled softly. "We have a pastry here."
    "I suppose it's a start."
    "Dessert first, huh?" They'd spent a hundred evenings together in bed, sharing a decadent dessert, saying that.
    He felt his smile coming from deep inside.
    Luke cut the pastry in half, offered him the bigger side.
    "See? You do still care for me." He gave Luke a wink.
    Luke pinked, shrugged. "They're good here."
    He took a bite of the sticky bun, the sweet filling his mouth with doughy goodness. Crunchy, sweet, cinnamony. Yummy. He held Luke's gaze as he took another bite. Luke managed a gentle, soft smile.
    They stared at each other for a long moment and then he nodded at the treat in Luke's hand. "Eat, baby."
    Luke nibbled, picking the raisins out and eating them separately. He chuckled. He used to do that, feed Luke all the raisins in any dessert they shared.
    "What? I like the raisins best."
    "I know." He picked one of out of his half and offered it over.
    "Thank you." Luke ate it, seeming to actually relax a little bit.
    He offered over another one, holding this one right up to Luke's lips. Luke opened for him, the action natural, easy. He slipped the raisin in, his finger lingering on Luke's lower lip. Luke stopped breathing, stared at him.
    He licked his own lips, finger sliding in along Luke's tongue. Luke's lips closed around his finger, the barest suction making him shiver. He couldn't have stopped his low groan if he'd tried.
    Luke leaned back, his finger popping free.
    "I do love the way you eat dessert, baby." His voice had gone all husky.
    "I can't get it up anymore. I don't. You should know that."
    His heart broke for Luke. "Because of what happened?"
    "Yeah. Yeah. I just. You should know. I'm not like, lover material."
    "Stop trying to scare me off, Luke. I still want to take you to dinner." He wasn't giving up, wasn't going to walk away from Luke, no matter how much the man pushed him to.
    "Can we have Italian?"
    He made a show of rolling his eyes, but agreed readily enough. Luke adored Italian beyond what was reasonable. "We can."
    "Then we can have dinner."
    "You have a place you like or that you've always wanted to try?" He wanted to make things up to Luke. And he wanted to see if the love he was feeling was real.
    "There's a tiny little place around the corner. Mario's. They have a butternut squash ravioli..."
    "I'd like to watch you eat that." While he could take or leave Italian, he'd always loved watching Luke eat it.
    "It's good. They have a nice steak for you."
    "Maybe I'm a vegetarian now," he teased.
    "Then they have a nice eggplant parm."
    He couldn't keep from making a gag face. Eggplant sucked. Luke's laugh rang out, and everything in him melted. The man should always look and sound like that. Always.
    Luke ate a bite of icing. "Did the image work for your client?"
    "Yeah, he was thrilled." He raised his hands to ward off any comments. "All your protests were right, but they had their minds made up when they came in on this campaign."
    "Yeah, whatever. I do animation."
    "You're good at it, too. I'm not surprised Fillian hired you." He wasn't just blowing smoke up Luke's ass, either.
    "Daniel hired me. He's a good guy."
    "I don't know him well, but I'm glad our paths crossed again." So unbelievably grateful it had happened.
    "He promised me we wouldn't cross paths. I would see you sometimes, though."
    "He shouldn't have promised you that--he has no control over my movements."
    "I work from home a lot."
    "And the one day you didn't, I walked in to the graphics department for the first time ever... Destiny?"
    "Fate? I don't know. God has an evil sense