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“Oh, hey, quick question,” came Ice’s voice as she turned towards the dark bedroom and the big bathroom. “How exactly is your soon-to-be-naked ass planning to hang your bagged-up clothes outside the room door? Not to mention receive them when they get back. Because I’m sure as hell not your damn butler.”
Indy froze, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Thankfully she had her back to him, but she could almost hear him grinning behind her.
Now she was trapped. The easy solution was to forget about the laundry. She could just take that hot shower, get back into the same clothes, panties included.
Panties that had been uncomfortably sticky when she went to bed.
Panties that had been just as sticky when she woke up warm and sweaty beneath the bedclothes.
Panties that felt suspiciously stickier right now.
Now as she contemplated her next move.
Now as she dared herself to make that move.
A move that would either break his ice-cold frame.
Or send her own dignity down in flames.
Suddenly her heat flared up, and it was only when she forced herself to consider what she was thinking that Indy realized shewasn’tthinking.
Not clearly, at least.
“There are like twenty towels and at least two bathrobes stacked near the shower,” she informed him without turning, without daring to look at him lest her eyes and her lips and her mouth reveal what she’d briefly considered in that moment of hot madness. She held her casually cool frame, padded barefoot towards the bathroom, making sure not to rush.
Then Indy felt something rush past her.
It was Ice, and he thundered into the bathroom and emerged a second later clutching two big armfuls of towels and bathrobes and washcloths and napkins, perhaps even the darn shower-curtain mixed into his haul.
“The towels are all mine,” he informed her with an impressively straight face as Indy stared in wide-eyed disbelief. “So are the bathrobes. And the washcloths. Napkins too.”
Indy blinked away her surprise as her heart thumped behind her breasts. She watched him stomp past her with his plundered treasure. Then she scampered to the bed and began dragging the bedclothes off it to wrap herself up once she disrobed.
“Those are mine too,” Ice shouted, dropping the stack of towels and dashing over to the bed. He grabbed the bedclothes and wrenched them out of Indy’s giggly hands, bunching them up feverishly, then carrying them over to his stack of towels and smushing the mountain of crumpled cloth together.
Indy’s entire body quivered with laughter as Ice somehow managed to keep his lips tight and unsmiling as he gathered up a ball of cloth bigger than himself and tried to escape through the bedroom door with it.
After some squeezing and grunting he made it out into the living room, and when he turned Indy saw the smile tease the corners of his mouth as Ice tried to keep it in.
“You’re ridiculous,” she informed him through a rush of giggles. “I thought your earlier behavior was childish, but this is downright infantile. What are we, six years old?”
Ice grinned like he couldn’t hold it back any longer. He let the massive pile of white cloth drop to the carpet, then dived into the clump, rolled around in it, finally laying on his back and pretending to make snow angels.
Indy’s heart thrummed as she watched this stone-cold killer act like a six-year-old boy celebrating a snow-day. She knew what was happening, understood that this was Ice’s way of communicating what he couldn’t articulate, couldn’t find the words to express.
Perhaps because therewereno words to express what they were both feeling right now.
Because the only word that seemed appropriate was also unspeakable.
Love.
Which of course was eminently impossible.
Positively preposterous.
Rambunctiously ridiculous.
But Indy couldn’t stop the feeling, couldn’t stop the word from echoing in her head, couldn’t stop herself from giggling like a goose at this monster of a man grinning at her from a pile of towels that he’d claimed was his.