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“I do! I need…my retainer!” I said desperately. “I can’t live without it!”
He gave me the amused look of a parent entertaining the wild story of a three-year-old.
I couldn’t stay the night in this room with Jacob. I couldn’t share a bed with him. I looked over at it in a half panic. I’d never actually seen a bed that small—wasn’t this a bed-and-breakfast once? Didn’t they specialize in beds meant for couples? Was this a child’s room???
“I could always get a ladder up there,” Daniel called through the speakerphone. “But you’d have to climb out onto the roof—”
“Yes. Absolutely.” I nodded enthusiastically. “Let’s do it.”
“You are not climbing out onto a roof,” Jacob said.
“Why?”
“Because you could fall. And look at the windows. They only open four inches wide. You’d have to birth-canal yourself out of it, you’ll get stuck.”
“I agree, Bri,” Alexis said through the phone. “It’s too dangerous. I think the plan is good, just stay where you are.”
I looked at Jacob in despair.
“Excuse me,” I said, and I took my phone to the bathroom and shut the door.
“Alexis, take me off speaker and go to your room,” I whispered.
There was a pause and the sound of a door closing. “Okay, you’re off speaker.”
“I cannot sleep in here tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because I will have sex with him.”
She snorted.
“It’s not funny,” I hiss-whispered. “Your house has locked me in a thirst trap and I’m so sex starved and into him I’m not going to be able to say no. My legs will probably shoot straight out like one of those fainting goats the second he so much as breathes on me. This is a crisis!”
I could tell she’d moved the phone away from her mouth so I wouldn’t hear her laugh—which I totally did.
“Ali, the man literally propositioned me last night.”
“He asked you on a date,” she said, still snickering. “He didn’t ask you for sex.”
“Yes, he did. We already go on dates. Every day. He wasn’t asking me to get emotionally involved with him, because he’s not emotionally available and he’s seen my dating profile and he knows I’m not either, so what he was actually asking was if I’d be interested in maybe having sex with him.”
“That is a very dizzying argument…”
“So now I’m locked in a room with a man that I’m half in love with and extremely attracted to, who wants to have sex with me, and I’m sorry, but I have about as much willpower as a piece of broccoli.”
She lost it. It took her a solid minute to stop laughing long enough to reply.
“Look, there are extra toothbrushes in the drawer under the sink,” she said, still wheezing. “I can slip your retainer under the door and we’ll take care of Lieutenant Dan. Also, you should know the walls are very thick…”
I groaned, sitting heavily on the closed lid of the toilet. “I cannot believe this is happening…”
“I can.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I grumbled.
“Let’s just say that sometimes things happen here that I can’t explain.”
