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She blew out a breath, daring herself to open her eyes. She tried to take in her surroundings by only moving her eyes. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want Gabe to know she was awake until she knew where he was. Until she saw him and could determine…

Something.

“Morning,” he said casually.

She whipped her head toward the kitchen, where he was standing, back to her. She frowned at it. Military men. She should have known. He probably sensed it the moment she woke up in that weird, dizzying second of panic. “Morning,” she returned, peering over the bed to see if her clothes were within reach.

“Made coffee,” he said as she pawed the ground for her discarded T-shirt. “Didn’t see any breakfast food.”

“Cookies,” she said, pulling the shirt over her head.

“You can’t eat cookies for breakfast.”

She glanced at him again, and this time he’d turned to face her. His brown eyes dark and mysterious, his clothes the same as last night—jeans and a rumpled henley that hugged all those impressive muscles and the breadth of his shoulders. But he wasn’t wearing his boots, just socks. As if he were a normal man who would walk around anywhere in socks. Plain white socks.

She swallowed, because now she was staring at his socks and that was weird. She forced her gaze to move back up his body and tried not to catalogue every inch of him. Or think about how much she would have liked to have woken up with him naked next to her.

She cleared her throat. “Of course you can have cookies for breakfast. It’s no different than a donut or a muffin or a cinnamon roll.”

“All terrible choices for breakfast. Breakfast is supposed to have protein. It is the point of breakfast.”

Surely, she had something smart or arch to say to that, but she could only stare at him in her kitchen. There was a too-handsome-for-words man in herkitchen.She’d had sex with this man.Sex. She’d touched his naked body and welcomed him inside her naked body, and it was so surreal to stand here and just have to exist in that knowledge.

His mouth quirked as if he found her silence funny.

She sniffed daintily. “You’ve got a lot of opinions on breakfast food. I’d invite you to eat breakfast elsewhere, but I have a feeling that isn’t an option.”

He nodded toward the window. “Have a look.”

She was still mostly naked, and she knew her T-shirt wouldn’t even begin to be long enough to cover her if she got out from under the sheets. With her shirt now on, she could crane her neck a little farther out. Somehow her jeans were, well, not within reaching distance.

It was silly. She should slide out of bed and grab them. Hell, she should get out of bed and walk calmly and proudly half-naked to her room and change into sweats or something.

But this was the light of day. She could wrap the sheet around her, but that felt childish. As though she were ashamed to be naked in front of a man she’d already had sex with.

Well, ashamed wasn’t the right word. Nervous. She walked a lot, and only around Christmas did she indulge in cookies for breakfast, but she didn’t work out or anything. She was all soft, jiggly bits—jiggly bits that had once grown a child inside of her. He was honed muscle and perfection, day or night.

Then he was exiting her small kitchen and walking right toward her, and all she could think about was she finally knew what all thatmanlooked like underneath his clothes. She knew what it felt to be skin to skin and breath to breath with him. She knew what it was like to feel him surge inside her and—

She seriously needed to get a grip.

He bent over a few paces from the bed and picked her jeans up off the floor. He held them out toward her, but just before her fingers grasped the material, he pulled them back and held them farther away. She couldn’t reach them without getting off the bed, and though it was more than possible to pull the sheet with her, she couldn’t get over the idea that it seemed rather cowardly. Somehow more cowardly than staying put on the bed.

So she held out her hand and donned her most imperious voice. “George Bailey, give me my robe.” He looked at her as if she’d grown a head, and she sighed gustily. “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

“What’s wonderful about it?”

“You’ve had to have heard ofIt’s a Wonderful Life.”

He shrugged.

“You really are a grinch,” she muttered.

“The grinch I’m familiar with. George Bayfield—”

“Bailey.”

“Sure, whatever. Never heard of him.”