Page 84

I couldn’t look at him.What had he seen in me, at that moment? Why had letting him in thisway make me feel so small and unsure, when we’d gotten to know eachother so well, physically?
“Are you okay?”
If he’d learned some awfultruth about me, it didn’t show from the way he gently tilted myhead up with two fingers below my chin.
I nodded, hoping myembarrassed flush would read as a sexual response. “Yeah. A-OK, onehundred percent. Who wouldn’t be?”
He grinned at me. “Goodpoint. Let me help you up.”
I was happy for theassistance he offered, because my leg muscles seemed to have lostconnection to my brain. “What’s the term for sea legs you get fromfucking?”
He held me with his handsat my waist, looking upward to consider. “Fuck legs is kind ofunimaginative, isn’t it?”
“We’ll have to think upsomething.” An unexpected sob hiccupped in my throat. I forced itinto a laugh and blinked my eyes. What was wrong with me? I nevercried after sex. That was so gross and emotional.
You’re jet-lagged, youpeanut.I stepped away from him. “You knowwhat, that might have been a mistake, after thismorning.”
He frowned in concern thatmade everything so much worse. “Oh?”
“Withbreakfast and the jet lag?” I heard a waver in my cheerfulvoice.Please, don’t let him noticeit.“I think I exhaustedmyself.”
He cursed under his breath.“That’s my fault. I’m sorry. I was so caught up in having you hereand all the fun stuff I wanted to do with you—”
“I want to do fun stuff!” Iwas quick to interject.
He went on. “I should haveset a limit. Like I said before, this place can be overwhelming.Too much of a good thing.”
“You’re saying that I needto pace myself.” Something nagged at me that pace wasn’t the realissue. It was whatever had happened between us. Had he not felt howweird that was?
“I mean, if you likedonuts, do you want to eat sixty of them in one sitting?” It wasrhetorical, but it was a bad rhetorical.
“Yes. I love donuts and ifyou put sixty in front of me, I would eat myself straight into mygrave,” I said without a shred of humor. I knew myself.
“Do I have to be the badguy and set limits for you while you’re here?” he asked. “I hate tobe the buzzkill.”
“You might have to be,” Iadmitted. “I can’t be trusted.”
He nodded in agreement.“You have tried to fuck me twice since we’ve been in thebuilding.”
“False!” The tension in myribs eased a little and the exposed feeling faded. “False. I triedto get you to jack off. I only tried to fuck you onetime.”
“Let a man have his ego.”He planted a kiss on top of my head and turned to the machine.“Give me two minutes to get this thing sanitized and reset. Sincewe’re the ones who messed it up. Then I think we should go back tothe house for a rest.”
I nodded and put my bikini bottoms backon, wrapping my shawl around my waist as Matt took the attachmentsoff the machine and put them in red baggies. I wandered around therest of the room—most of the equipment was self-explanatory—whilehe wiped everything down with a pungent disinfectant. He whistled alittle tune while he cleaned. It made that tension in my chest comeroaring back.
Oh god.
Oh no.
I didn’t like him. Ilikedhim. It wasn’t afriends with benefits thing. I was legitimately into Matt. And thatwas going to cause all kinds of problems.
****
I tried to be myself on theride back to the house, but I couldn’t quite remember how “myself”acted. All I could think of was that my crush on Matt had turnedinto a full-blown hope for something he’d never offered, and whichI’d never had the right to hope for in the first place.
Though I doubted I couldsleep, I laid down for a nap in Matt’s big bed, all by myself, andto my surprise, my racing brain and jumbled emotions slowed downenough that I could get some restorative rest. When I woke, thesunlight through the slats of the wooden blinds had turnedorange.
I got up and went to mysuitcase, only to find it was empty. Tentatively, I opened one ofthe drawers on the wardrobe. All of my clothes lay neatly foldedinside, except for my dresses. I assumed those were hanging in thecloset. I’d fallen asleep in my bikini—which had never even made itto the beach—and it seemed like I should at least have actualclothes on now that it was almost dinnertime.