Liam stood in the doorway to the kitchen, fully dressed. Jeans. Boots.
Shirt. His gaze moved over me slowly.
And that was when I realized I was standing in my kitchen in nothing but black panties, holding a mug of coffee.
I looked down at myself, then back at him as I took another sip of coffee.
Well.
There were two options.
Option one: panic and sprint out of the room.
Option two: behave like a woman who had very recently climbed this man like a tree and therefore had nothing left to prove.
Shrugging internally, I chose option two.
I leaned one hip against the counter and took another drink. “It’s morning.”
He was still looking at me, but not in the crude way I had come to expect from men who suddenly found themselves confronted with unexpected skin.
His expression had gone still, focused. He was looking at me the way he looked at something he intended to remember.
The attention rolled across my skin, making goosebumps jump up along my skin. My body reacted before my brain could intervene. A dangerous amount of heat pooled low in my stomach, and I had the immediate and deeply inconvenient urge to jump him again.
Stop it.I scolded myself.Absolutely stop that.
Liam moved again; three calm steps carried him across the kitchen.
He stopped in front of me.
Up close he smelled like what I had come to know washim. Soap and cedar. Clean, salty sweat.
Before I could react, his hand was on my waist, and he was kissing my cheek.
“You’re stunning, Zoey,” he murmured.
I smiled. Just enough. “Thank you.”
That was it. Because if I gave him even one inch of emotional engagement right now, my brain was going to start doing extremely irresponsible math about the rest of my life.
He watched me for a moment, then stepped back.
“I should get back to Pine Hollow,” he said. “I’ve got a few things to check before guests start moving around.”
Relief and something else I didn’t want to think about twisted together in my chest.
“That makes sense,” I said.
He nodded once.
Then his attention shifted to my laptop. “Work waiting?”
“A horrifying amount.”
His mouth curved slightly. “Good luck.”
“I’m going to need it.”
