When I get upstairs, I find Holly sitting at my kitchen table in front of a monitor and keyboard, with a computer tower next to her. She glances up in surprise when I walk through the door.
“I thought you were ghosting me.”
I glance down at my drenched shirt, then back up at her. “Nope, cleaned out a clogged drain, and now I’m wearing half of it.” I tilt my head. “And why would I be avoiding you?”
I know damn good and well why she’d think I was avoiding her, but I’m not going to admit that I’ve been thinking about that kiss too.
Her cheeks flush slightly, and I try to hide my amazement. Holly Mayberry is blushing?
“Well…you…” She takes a breath. “After our last encounter.”
“I’m not a coward, Holly. I’m not going to ghost you, andIdon’t run away.”
Her brow lifts. “Is that what you think I did?”
“It’s your specialty, isn’t it?” Before she can answer, I stomp to the bathroom and strip off my wet T-shirt and jeans and climb into the shower.
I’m pissed, irrationally so. Sure, I wasn’t thrilled about getting doused in sewage water, but I wasn’t mad at Aaron, just irritated. I wasn’t pissed until I walked into the apartment and started talking to Holly. I don’t actually understand why I’m pissed at her. Sure, she can be irritating as fuck, but she came here to do Jane a favor—a big one at that.
I hurry to wash my hair and my body, and it’s only after I dry off and climb out of the shower that I realize my mistake.
I didn’t bring any clean clothes into the bathroom with me, which means I’m going to have to walk out and through the living room to my bedroom to get dressed.
Now she’s going to think I did it on purpose.
Would it be so wrong if she did?
Drawing in a deep breath, I walk confidently out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my hips. “I forgot my clothes, so turn around while I go to my room to get dressed.”
I’m not surprised when she doesn’t look away, because Holly’s never been one to do as she’s told. In fact, she usually does the opposite.
A little voice in the back of my mind suggests I knew that when I told her.
She’s still sitting at the table, but she gets up and takes a step toward me.
“Maybe I want to look.”
My breath catches as her gaze drops to my still wet chest, then down to my crotch and back up to my face.
“Got a good look?” I ask, the blood rushing to my cock, because the look in her eyes tells me she likes what she’s seeing.
“Actually, no,” she says, closing the short distance between us. She stops a couple of feet in front of me. “What if I want to look more?”
Jesus. This woman.
I give her a cocky grin. “It’s a free country.”
Her mouth tips up. “God bless the USA.”
I tilt my head, my dick growing harder by the minute in anticipation of what she plans to do.
Her hands rest on my pecs and she lets her fingers press into my skin, searing me. “So that’s what you’ve been hiding under all those T-shirts.”
“It’s against health code regulations to strut around behind the bar shirtless.”
She makes a face. “That’s a pity.”
“What are we doing here, Holly?” I ask against my better judgment. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, yada, yada. This is strike three. Are you going to go running this time?”
Her darkened gaze lifts to mine. “You’ve racked up some strikes of your own, you know. Do you want me to run?”
Her question twists something inside me. Holly aggravates the hell out of me, but I want her. I’ve wanted her for years. Hell, I was interested in her even before Millie, which makes this feel wrong.
Still, she’s a runner. While she’s not wrong—I’m the one who flaked on her first, all those years ago, we were kids back then. She’s run from me twice now. Hell, she left town not long after our first kiss. If she doesn’t cut out on what she seems to be starting, she’ll run right after. So it’s not like this is the start of something involved. She won’t want anything from me, and I don’t have to ask anything from her other than a good time.
“No,” I say in a low voice that rumbles in my chest. “I most definitely do not want you to run.”
