Sullivan stayed where he was until he heard the water running and judged enough time had passed for it to get it hot. God, he hoped she didn’t take cool showers. He liked them at a temperature hot enough to peel paint.
The bathroom had a nice steam going when he walked in. He took two white bath towels out of the linen cupboard and set them on the counter before he slid the shower door open. Ramsey was facing the shower spray, which gave him a very nice view of her flip side. He took a moment to observe and admire and then he lathered his hands and set them on her shoulders. He leaned in. “I’m jealous of the water.”
Frowning, she turned her head a fraction as he began to run soapy hands over her back. “What?”
“The water. That way it’s sliding over you. I’m jealous.”
“You’re sweet, but you’re an idiot.”
He shrugged and lightly pinched her bottom. When she yelped and came up on her toes, he attended to the abused cheek with a soapy hand until she relaxed and settled in. “This is a first for me. Showering with a woman. High school locker room was an open shower. Coed classes but segregated showers. College was mostly the same. Diane read somewhere that cooler water was better for her skin and she more or less froze me out. I guess I mean that in every sense.”
In spite of the heat, Ramsey felt a shiver roll down her spine as Sullivan soaped the small of her back. “Before you get any ideas, you should know I’m in here for a shower, not funny stuff.”
“Funny stuff?”
“Uh-huh. You know. Where intercourse and slapstick intersect because there are no grab bars in here and the shower mat’s slick with soap and we end up bangin’ against the wall but the faucet pokes me in the back and I shove off and we stumble, slide a little, and fold like lawn chairs. One of us is concussed. The other has a bruised butt and a bruisier ego. And then we spend the rest of the night in the ER.”
Sullivan chuckled. “Bruisier?”
“Yeah.” Ramsey turned, raised her arms to his neck, and leaned in. Her breasts flattened against his chest. “You get it.”
He smiled. “Mm. I do.” He touched his forehead to hers. “You want me to wash your hair?”
She nodded, rubbed her cheek against his. “Would you?”
In answer, he reached behind her for the shampoo in the caddy and squirted a quarter-sized dollop into his palm. Ramsey finger-combed her hair, separating the thick, wet strands plastered to her skull. She bent her head, closed her eyes and hummed a little when his fingers slid into her hair, against her scalp.
“You like that?”
“Bliss,” she said. “It’s bliss.”
Chuckling, Sullivan worked the shampoo into a lather, massaged her scalp with his fingertips, and drew the lather to the ends of her hair. He gathered her hair in one hand, twisted it, and arranged it on her head. The crown of lather did not last long. Sullivan took a moment to admire his work before he tipped her head back and let the needle spray sluice the shampoo from her hair. He sifted stands with his fingers until he knew it was clean. “Conditioner?” he asked.
“If I’m ever going to get a comb through it again.”
“Coming up.”
While the conditioner was doing its job, Ramsey insisted that they trade places so Sullivan had the pleasure of being under the water and she had the pleasure of soapy hands exploration. If it wasn’t the Merriman-Webster definition of win-win, it should have been.
Wrapped in the bath towels that he’d put out, they staked out territory on either side of the sink to complete bedtime rituals. Ramsey applied Jack Black Face Moisturizer after carefully reading the label to be sure she wouldn’t grow a beard while Sullivan brushed his teeth and towel-dried his hair. He watched her detangle her hair, but she gave him his marching orders when she found the floss. Some things, she told him, were simply too intimate this early in their relationship.
Sullivan was sitting up in bed, reading, when she reappeared. He closed the book and set on the nightstand. “Ready for bed?”
“Almost. May I have something from your closet to sleep in?”
“Take whatever you like.”
“Thank you.” She went to the walk-in. “I love this space. I swear I almost came the first time I saw it.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
Ramsey huffed a laugh. “Do you own pajamas?”
“A drawer full. When I was kid, I got a pair every Christmas Eve. To dress up for Santa, according to my mum. Later, long after the Santa discovery was made, she still made me a present of them.”
“Found the mother lode!” she called out. “Holy sleepwear, Batman. Did you save all of them?”
Sullivan didn’t dignify that question with a response. He’d saved maybe a third of them. When the bath towel came sailing out of the closet, he figured she’d found something to her liking. A minute or so later, she struck a pose in the doorway wearing a red-and-white diagonally striped flannel top and bottom. The sleeves, which ordinarily would have ended at her fingertips, were folded neatly back to her elbows. The pajama drawers had also been given a couple of turns so they didn’t get under foot. “You look like a candy cane.”
