I want her to give me another chance to get it right with making love to her.
And when I realize I’m calling itmaking loveand notscrewing around, that’s when I realize it’s time to get going for the day.
To get some distance.
To focus on what I can and can’t give her.
To quit fantasizing that Icangive her anything beyond a fake wedding ring and my friendship.
So I’m up before the sun, rolling out of bed with a new guilt sitting on my conscience, leaving Sloane sleeping because she needs it and I need to get a grip on my head and my emotions and my body.
I hit the weight room off Beck’s garage and punch the shit out of a bag for a while. Chuck’s still on duty. When I pass him on my way back to the pool house, he nods.
I nod back.
No other talking necessary.
Maybe he meanslove sucks.
Maybe he meansyou’re up early.
Don’t care.
Both are true.
The bedroom door’s still closed—good—so I grab a change of clothes and head into the bathroom.
I’ve just wrapped a towel around my waist after stepping out of the shower when the bathroom door bangs open fast enough to startle me.
Sloane’s wide-eyed, fully awake, with my computer in her hand, looking every bit as bright and cheery and excited as I’ve ever seen her. “Why did your cabin have two outhouses?”
“What?” I shift so she can’t see the effect her excitement is having on my biological weapon.
I see her, I get hard.
Every time.
“Two outhouses. Two bathrooms. It’s barely a two-room cabin, and it had two outhouses. That’s an outhouse, right? And there too? Or they were. That’s what all of the other closed but not discarded outhouses looked like on the old satellite imagery we got for the interactive part of the museum that hasn’t opened yet.”
She sets the computer on the sink and points to two small squares on the cabin property, as zoomed in as she can get the satellite imagery.
I lean over and peer at where she’s pointing, grateful that she definitely won’t notice the movement in my dick while I’m leaning like this.
Also grateful that she’s close enough that our arms are brushing, and the steam still in the bathroom is making her familiar cinnamon scent stronger.
I love the way she smells.
And I need to fucking focus.
I blink at the computer again, identifying the remnants of the outhouse I’m familiar with on the north side of the cabin.
I verified that it was an outhouse when I first arrived here, but she’s right.
There’s another square that could’ve been another outhouse tucked in among a thick layer of bushes.
I didn’t zoom in this close on the cabin with the maps and satellite views because I was on the ground. I could inspect every inch myself.
Except I didn’t go crawling into a big clump of bushes.
