As everyone began to sing “Happy Birthday,” Zander slipped fromthe restaurant, desperate for quiet, solitude, and a reprieve from the pain in his head and in his heart.
Britt knocked on the door of Zander’s room at the Inn at Bradfordwood at 11:07 p.m. Thanks to the fact that her parents owned the inn, she had keys to the inn’s front and back doors on her key ring.
She heard rustling.
She knocked again, softly. “You’re not asleep already, are you?”
“In bed” came Zander’s response. His voice wasn’t sleep-roughened.
“But not asleep. So open up.”
Several seconds later he opened the door wearing drawstring pajama pants. Rumpled dark hair. Brooding eyes.
The smooth skin of his chest and abs made her mouth go instantly dry. They’d spent the better part of many summers in swimsuits. But something indefinable had shifted between them recently, and seeing him shirtless suddenly felt both intimate and dangerously thrilling.
“I disobeyed your order not to come by,” she stated.
“I see that.” The stony angles of his face informed her that he was still aggravated with her. She’d known when they’d been at the bar with Reid that Zander was aggravated. And she’d been able to tell, even though he’d been at one end of the table and she at the other during dinner, that he was aggravated. She didn’t want him aggravated with her on her birthday.
“Following orders was always Willow’s strong suit,” she said. “Never mine.”
“I feel for your parents.”
“So do I,” she said heartily.
He flicked on lights, then went to the room’s chest of drawers. She shut the door behind her. With his back to her, she watched him shrug into a gray T-shirt. He did so in one fluid motion that caused his muscles to ripple.
“I brought you a slice of birthday cake and a bottle of Advil,” she said. “It’s vanilla with buttercream frosting and confetti sprinkles from Stacy’s Bakery. Well, the cake is anyway. The Advil is regular brown-coating flavor.”
Once his attention settled on her, she lifted the to-go box of cake in one hand and the bottle of Advil in the other. She tested a persuasive smile.
It wasn’t terribly unusual for them to have disagreements. She was strong-willed. He was equally strong-willed, in his quieter way. They upset each other sometimes.
Because neither could bear to have the other mad at them for long, though, the offending party never failed to make things right with the offended party. Tonight, she was the offending party. Which, to be honest, rankled a little bit.
Yes, she’d given Zander a warning look when Reid had spilled his shot on Zander. The shot spilling hadn’t been Zander’s fault. However, the shot spilling hadn’t beenherfault, either. As far as she could tell, she was only technically guilty of having delivered a warning look.
“Would you like cake and Advil both?” she asked. “Just cake? Just Advil?”
“Just cake, please. I took Advil earlier.”
“And did it succeed in knocking out your headache?”
“For the most part.”
“Excellent.”
He motioned to the armchair in the room’s corner. She made herself comfortable and stashed the Advil in her purse.
Zander sat on the bed opposite her.Hisbed.
Their eyes locked. He said nothing as sexual tension stretched between them, charging every passing second with wattage.
Zander looked away, breaking the contact. Then he rose from the bed, clearly having thought better of sitting there. He angled out the desk chair, which was farther away from her, and sat. His bare feet rested against the room’s rug.
To distract herself from her attraction to him, Britt popped thewrapping around the prepackaged plastic utensils the restaurant had provided. She opened the to-go container and passed everything to him.
He took his time with his first bite of cake, chewing, swallowing. “It’s delicious.”
