Page 21 of Hard to Hold

LENNOX

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS is your loo?” I ask, feeling ridiculous using the term, when I look to where Rush stands in the doorway, one arm resting on the jamb with those same sweatpants riding low on his hips. He smells like soap and citrus and hell . . . does he really have to smell good too?

“No, I said I have to go to the loo. This is the bathroom, and it’s mine. The one I’ve been using since I arrived. All of that shit you just slid into the drawer”—he motions with his free hand to the toiletries I just cleared into it—“is my shit.”

And there’s something about him standing here—or maybe it’s because I want him to notice me when he’s kept to himself all evening—that makes me push for banter, for an argument, for anything to ease that sexual tension snapping between us.

“And your point?” I smile sweetly in the mirror as I pull my robe tighter around my waist.

“God knows there are a million other bathrooms in this house,” he says.

“Good, then you can find one that suits you better. This one has the best lighting to do my makeup in,” I say and cross my arms over my chest as I turn to face him. Even now, I’m sucker-punched by the sight of him—the cut of his jaw, the fullness of his lips, and the thick lashes framing his crystalline green eyes. He’s truly stunning in the most masculine way.

“Sucks then that you’ll have to do without it since this is the one that suits me.” He returns the same catty smile back at me. “I was here first.”

If he wants to go there . . . “Finders, keepers.”

“Really?” He laughs and runs a hand through his hair to get it out of his face. “You’re something else.”

“So I’ve been told.” I angle my head and stare at him. The silence lengthens and begs me to ask the question that doesn’t fit in the playfulness of the moment whatsoever. “Why did you come here?”

“To Johnny’s?” He alters the question to suit him, and I don’t expect anything less. “Probably for the same reason you’re here. Because I needed a place to go where I knew there would be no judgment, and Johnny is that. Besides, the view and the pool don’t hurt.”

I’m both surprised and impressed by the honesty of his answer and give a nod in response. I recall my conversation with Johnny earlier. “Doesn’t any of what I just said, what Rush has done, give you pause in making those googly eyes at him?”

No.

In fact, there’s an allure to it. To wanting someone who everyone is warning you away from. It’s enticing and thrilling—rebellion always is.

He lifts his eyebrows to elicit a response from me, but I think the tension between us is response enough. It’s undeniable—I know he feels it too—and neither of us opt to break or dissipate it.

So we stand in the small space, inches apart, as so many more questions whirl in my head that I don’t dare ask yet: How long are you staying? What are your plans?

Most of all the same one I asked Johnny: did you do it?

Rush owes me no answers. Hell, he barely knows me, and yet here we stand, in close quarters with my mind wandering and my body wanting.

I itch to reach out and touch him. His jaw. His hair. His arm. Anything to make a connection, and that’s such a weird thought for me because I’m typically not a touchy-feely person.

But I refrain, because there’s something in the very little I know about him that tells me to take a step back. That listening to my gut instinct, I know he’d be devastating—to my senses, to the status quo I’m used to, and to my heart, when I swear it doesn’t like to feel.

“What are we doing here, Lennox?” he asks, his voice a whisper.

I part my lips to speak and watch as his eyes flicker down to look at them before coming back to my eyes.

“Negotiating with you,” I murmur, deflecting just as he did.

The space is large by any guest bathroom standards, but the minute he moves into it, I feel as if all the oxygen has been sucked from it. All that’s left to breathe in is him.

“Is that what you call this?” he asks as he takes a step closer. “Negotiating?”

Like I said, Lenn, he doesn’t need you right now.

“Yes. We’ve negotiated. I won.” I flash a victorious and over-the-top grin his way. “And now we’re figuring out what bathroom you’re going to use since this one is occupied by me.”

“I don’t think we were privy to the same conversation. There is no way I ceded this loo to you.” A little-boy smile paints his lips as he makes fun of my misuse of British terms. The smile and its charm need to go far away. The last thing I need is to find another thing attractive about him.

“You did. I heard it.”