FLIRTING WITH 40

how to keep it alive.
And for fuck’s sake. Barbie? After being married to a Blakely? Isn’t he afraid he’s going to say the wrong name when he’s groaning a name mid-orgasm?
“Barbie,” Blakely says, her face pulling tight as I gently squeeze her waist, “was telling me about how she and Paul just came back from a trip of a lifetime in Fiji.”
“Fiji.” I lift my brows. “How trendy.”
“We got engaged there,” Barbie gushes as Paul shifts his feet, definitely uncomfortable now that I’m in the mix.
“I assumed with the fiancée part.” I wink at her, and she smiles coyly.
“And now we’re busy planning the wedding and figuring how soon we want to have kids. I say wait a year, but Paul thinks we should start right away.” Her voice squeaks as Blakely’s body tenses. Clearly, that is news to her.
“Look at you, Paul, trying to get her all fat and happy so no one else snags her away from you.” The dig hits its mark, and Paul winces, but my smile is all warmth like a practiced politician’s. I’m not sure if Barbie is too preoccupied with making her diamond sparkle, but she sure as hell doesn’t get my gist. “Good for you. They’re a little more ambitious than the plans Blakely and I have made.”
“Like what?” Paul asks, more than willing to get in a pissing match with me.
“When you’re as in love as the two of us are, all you want to do is spend every waking minute together. In bed. Out of bed. Then back in bed.”
“Oh, so this thing between you is new?” Paul asks, because of course, he’s so arrogant that he can’t fathom Blakely could possibly move past him like he did her.
“New?” I chuckle in disbelief because the prick deserves it. “What’s it been? Four months? Or we already on five?” I meet Blakely’s eyes and let her take the lead as Paul’s stuttered breath tells me he’s fucking livid.
Serves the fucker right.
“Almost five,” Blakely says and smiles so sweetly at me that I almost believe the lie.
I pause to let it sink in before looking from Blakely to him and love that, when I do, the sudden redness to his cheeks tells me he’s buying it too. Buying it and not liking it because he just realized that Blakely isn’t sitting at home pining for his arrogant ass and that she moved on way before he ever assumed she did.
“Oh.” He clears his throat. “I wasn’t aware that—”
“No one was.” I smirk. “When something is this good, sometimes you don’t want any outside influences to spoil just how fucking great it is.” Paul starts to talk, but I continue right over him and lay it on thick—just like Barbie and her goddamn blinding diamond ring. “But I finally explained to Blakely the other night that I’m so damn proud to have her beside me that I can’t wait for the world to know. So, you may have had Fiji, and from the sound of it, you will soon have sleepless nights, diapers to change, and no social life, but we’ll have The Hamptons next month for a family wedding,” I say, nuzzling Blakely’s neck in the least creepy way I can considering we don’t really know each other. “The mountain retreat next week. Then after that—”
“Mountains? You, Blakely?” Paul laughs, grabbing on to something, anything, to stop me from rubbing salt in the wound. “You’d never step those heels of yours off a city sidewalk.”
“Those heels,” I say with a whistle and lift of my eyebrows in that boys-will-be-boys type of way, “are fantastic in so many more places than just a sidewalk.” I slide my hand ever so subtly against her rib cage, mirroring his stance with Barbie, to let the insinuation hit home.
Irritation feathers in Paul’s jaw while Barbie continues to smile cluelessly as he pushes back at me. “She’d never risk ruining them. Believe me. I know.”
Another claim made on the woman he walked away from.
“I don’t think you do. It’s amazing the things a fresh perspective can do. You know, out with the old, in with the new. It just brings out sides of you that you never knew you had.” I say the words to Blakely, but they’re a pure fuck you to her ex.
“And what is it you do?” Paul asks, his head angling to the side, the alpha male trying to thump his chest, ready to let me know how much money he makes or some shit like that.
Asshole.
“I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon.” Blakely stills beside me as I meet his eyes. I challenge the question in his, the warring, the proverbial measuring stick that just slipped from his fingers. Yeah, I save lives. If I told him I’m also a Big Brother at the Y and that I love puppies, then his new fiancée would be walking toward me within seconds. “And you?” I ask.
“Investment banking. Mergers and acquisitions. I just made partner.”
The way he says that last part, like he’s staking a flag in some uncharted territory so that I’ll praise him for his accomplishments, is more than pathetic.
“Mmm.” It’s all I say. Enough to let his big prick ego wonder what it means and why I’m not congratulating him. “It isn’t saving lives”—I exhale audibly as he grits his teeth—“but then again, money does seem to make the world go ‘round these days.”
“Is that how you met? At the hospital?” Paul asks. The five-month thing must be fucking with his head.
“Nah. I was at a bar when I looked over and saw Blakely. Talk about being sucker punched. Especially after I realized I was going to have to compete with the three other men who were trying to get her attention—”
“Blakely doesn’t go to bars,” he says in dismissal.
“Seems you don’t know Blakely very well then—or chose not to take the time to. First high heels. Now bars. Seems you missed a lot.”
He’s like a voodoo doll I keep sticking pins in. Each