Hell, I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been sleeping.
My memories were a little fuzzy, and all I could recall was a succession of waking, drinking, taking meds, and falling back to sleep again.
Reese had been here at some point to check on me, but we hadn’t had much of a conversation.
The lights were off except for the small bedside lamp, but I still scanned the room, and my eyes landed on a small figure napping in the big recliner not far from my bed.
I recognized her immediately.
It was Lauren.
Her position in the chair didn’t exactly look comfortable, but she was definitely asleep.
My eyes scanned her body. She was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.
Myshorts andmyT-shirt.
I recognized the old workout shorts that I hadn’t worn in years and the T-shirt with a logo of one of the companies I was invested in.
I should probably be annoyed that she’d gone through my clothes, but I couldn’t work up a single ounce of irritation at the moment.
Yeah, I was an asshole, but I couldn’t deny the woman who had taken care of me something clean to wear to sleep.
It was dark, so I couldn’t see what the weather looked like outside my bedroom windows, but I could hear the windshowling, so I assumed that we were right in the middle of the big storm system that had been coming our way.
Hell, Lauren looked better in those shorts and that T-shirt than I ever had. They were big on her, but she’d probably look sexy in almost anything she wore.
I wasn’t even going to try to deny that Lauren Collier got my dick hard.
Unfortunately, she was exactly the type of woman that I’d probably be trying to get into my bed if the circumstances were different.
There wasn’t a single thing about her that I didn’t like.
I was a big guy, and I appreciated a woman with curves.
I also liked intelligent women.
And she had the sexiest dimples I’d ever seen.
However, I didn’t do relationships.
I fucked.
And I hadn’t even done a one-nighter for a long time.
Lauren was absolutely off-limits for me.
She wasn’t a woman I could screw to scratch an itch.
She was under the protection of my cousins, and my Aunt Millie adored Lauren like an adopted daughter.
Generally, I didn’t give a damn what anyone said or thought about me, but Millie had been good to me since I’d returned to Crystal Fork.
For some reason, I really didn’t want to hurt her.
Not to mention the fact that there was no way that Lauren was going to have a fling with a guy who was suspected of murdering his father.
Yeah, she was one of the few people in Crystal Fork who didn’t look at me like I was a hardened criminal, but that didn’t mean that shelikedme or wanted to fuck me.
