“I’m pretty sure you dropped your purse on the floor when we got in,” I told her, waggling my eyebrows, wanting to remind her of the exact circumstances that had made her forget everything else—namely, my tongue in her mouth.
She blushed a little and shot me a grateful smile before rushing from the kitchen. She managed to get to the phone before it stopped ringing and her house was small enough for me to hear her end of the conversation in the other room.
“Hey, what’s up?” she sounded breathless. A little uncertain. There was a pause, presumably while the caller spoke.
“You did? Sorry, I didn’t hear the phone.” Another pause. “Excuse me for still being in bed before nine on a Saturday, Andy.”
Andy. Her brother. My boss. The guy who had hated me pretty much from the day we met.
I wondered how much more intensely he might hate me if he knew what had gone down here last night.
“You’re coming early?” she practically yelped, and I sat up straighter. “We always meet up at nine.” She was quiet for a moment. “No, I mean, there’s no reason I can’t get together earlier, I just…”
Gracie was stammering. There was no way he wasn’t going to be able to figure out that something was up. The two of them had always had that freaky twin read-each-other’s-mind thing. Once, when we were fifteen, Andy took the edge of a skate blade to his cheek in a freak crash at practice. Luckily it hadn’t done much real damage, but he’d needed a few stitches. Even though Andy insisted no one call her, Gracie had shown up at the rink, breathless and scared, before the team trainer had even stoppedthe bleeding. I heard her telling her brother that she’d had a bad feeling.
So her acting all weird right now? Yeah, he was going to be suspicious. Sure enough…
“Nothing is wrong. No, I’m not.You’reacting weird.”
I didn’t bother hiding my smile. She sounded like a whiney teenager. “Fine, Andy. No, I said it’s fine. I can be ready.Fine. See you then.”
She appeared in the doorway to the kitchen a few seconds later, phone clutched in her hands, eyes filled with the same panic I’d seen earlier.
“I take it that was your brother?”
She squeezed the phone tighter, her knuckles turning white. “We always get brunch on Saturdays,” she said. “At nine.”
“Ahh. And he wants to move it earlier today?”
She nodded, looking miserable. “Apparently, he has some emergency meeting in Hong Kong tomorrow so he’s flying out this afternoon.”
“Mmm,” I said seriously. “I know the feeling. If I had a dollar for every emergency meeting I’ve had to rush to in Hong Kong…”
That got a smile out of her, and some of the panic in her face seemed to retreat. I got up from the table and went to her, wrapping her in my arms, relieved by how easily she melted into me. Our first morning together hadn’t gone at all like how I planned, but I couldn’t call it a total loss so long as she still let me hold her like this.
“You need me to get lost?”
She sighed against my chest. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re getting kicked out.”
“Don’t worry.” I kissed the top of her head, breathing in that familiar scent. “I don’t particularly want my boss to find me in my boxers in his sister’s kitchen.”
She pulled back and grinned up at me. “But you look so nice in your boxers.”
The flash of heat in her eyes had me groaning. “How long until he gets here?”
She winced. “Twenty minutes.”
I released her, knowing that if I didn’t, I was going to end up with her thrown over my shoulder on the way back to her bed, Andrew Knight’s imminent arrival be damned. “Can I call you tonight?”
Her expression turned adorably shy. “I’d like that.”
She led me back to her room, rummaging through her closet while I pulled on my cargo shorts and now wrinkled T-shirt. “I need to jump in the shower,” she told me. “Do you mind seeing yourself out?”
“Not at all. So long as I get a kiss goodbye.”
She relaxed the moment I pulled her into my arms. I knew she was in a hurry, but I couldn’t help deepening the kiss, running my tongue against hers until she moaned into my mouth. Fuck. This woman was going to kill me.
“Wish I could stay,” I muttered against her lips.
