“I’ll find something,” I mumbled, and fled.
In my closet, I rifled through options with increasingly desperate energy. Everything I owned was tailored, fitted, designed for a body that was objectively smaller than Samuel’s. I’d packed for a solo mountain retreat, not for the possibility of clothing a six-foot-something soap opera star with shoulders that belonged on a Greek statue.
Finally, I found them: a pair of flannel pajama pants that I’d bought two sizes too big because they’d been the only ones left in the pattern I wanted. Christmas plaid. Red and green. Utterly ridiculous.
I brought them back to the hallway, where Samuel was still standing in his towel, apparently unbothered by his state of undress.
“These might work,” I said, thrusting them at him. “They’re—the elastic is generous.”
“Christmas plaid?” He held them up, grinning. “Farley Davenport owns Christmas plaid pajamas?”
“They were on sale.”
“These are festive.”
“Do you want pants or not?”
“I want pants.” He was still grinning as he turned to go back into the bathroom, and that’s when it happened.
The towel, which had apparently been held in place by nothing more than hope and poor knot-tying, chose that exact moment to give up on life.
It slipped.
Not all the way—Samuel grabbed it with his free hand before it could fall completely—but enough. More than enough. I gotan eyeful of hip bone and the curve of his lower back and the dimples just above his—
I made a sound. I’m not proud of what sound it was.
Samuel turned around, towel now clutched to his front, eyebrows raised. “Did you just squeak?”
“No.”
“You definitely squeaked.”
“I cleared my throat. It was a throat-clearing noise.”
“That was not a throat-clearing noise. That was the sound a dog toy makes when you step on it.”
“Could you please just put on the pants?”
Samuel’s grin widened. He was enjoying this, the bastard. “I don’t know, Farley. I’m thinking you might have a thing for me.”
“We’ve established that I have a thing for you. We discussed it at length. You were there.”
“Right, but then you said you wanted to be friends.”
“I do want to be friends.”
“Friends who squeak when they see each other’s ass?”
“I didn’t see your—” I stopped, because that was a lie, and we both knew it. “Okay. Fine. I saw. A little. It was involuntary.”
“The seeing or the squeaking?”
“Both. Please put on the pants before I have a stroke.”
Samuel laughed—a genuine laugh, warm and delighted—and disappeared into the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind him, and I slumped against the wall, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Friends. I had said we should be friends. And now I was squeaking at the sight of his bare skin like a Victorian gentleman who’d glimpsed an ankle.
