Page 13

Eden

R hys unlocks the flimsy door with an actual metal key and makes a weird deflating-balloon noise when he looks inside.

I peer past him.

It’s not awful.

It looks clean.

There’s a bed, a couch, a coffee table, a small dresser, and a nightstand. One of us will have to take the bed and the other the pullout. I normally hate pullouts—thin mattress, poky springs—but I’m so tired, I almost don’t care.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that neither of us has pajamas with us.

What will we sleep in?

Does Rhys look as good out of his clothes as he does in them?

“Hey,” he says, and I swim to the surface of this flustering line of thought to find him watching me with one eyebrow arched, amused. “I’ll take the pullout.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “You drove the whole day. You need good rest way more than I do.”

Also, he’s about twice my size, which means his weight will sag a pullout even more than mine. He’s way taller than I am. And—I eye him—broader.

Not hating Rhys has done something unfortunate to my brain. Because while I always knew, intellectually, that he was ridiculously attractive, now I know .

Broad shoulders. Muscles that strain the seams of his expensive dress shirt. At some point tonight, he rolled his sleeves, and his forearms are bare. They’re strong and sinewy and end in thick wrists and tapered fingers, the ones he was licking earlier…

Do. Not. Lick. The. Lawyer.

It’s just that I’m exhausted and my defenses are down. Impulse control is the first thing to go, right? And judgment?

Obviously, I don’t actually want to lick the lawyer. I was jilted this morning .

“Eden,” he says.

I pull my gaze away from his forearms and find him watching me, a question in his eyes.

Whoops.

“I’m really tired,” I explain.

“Which is why you’re taking the bed,” he says.

“We don’t even know if the couch is halfway comfortable.”

“It’s fine. ” He tugs it open—blessedly, it’s already made up—and settles his body onto it.

It sags like a hammock in the middle.

“No way that will be comfortable all night. Get up.”

He pounds a fist against the sorry excuse for a mattress. “No. I’m happy here.”

“Get. Up.”

The corner of his mouth turns up. “Whoa. Bossy. Nope.”

I try to wrestle him off the pullout, grabbing his arm and tugging, then reaching for his shoulders and rolling, but he’s utterly immovable, even stronger than he looks.

Under my hands, his body is warm and hard, all muscle, and unwanted warmth washes through me. I drop my grip, suddenly hot all over.

“Look in my bag,” he says.

“What?”

“My bag.” He points to his laptop bag, leaning against the cheap pressboard dresser.

I eye him suspiciously.

“I did some petty larceny of my own,” he says, corner of his mouth quirking again.

I open his messenger bag and find two unopened toothbrushes, a half-empty tube of toothpaste, and two Old Spice deodorants in plastic shrink wrap. “I figured Paul and his family owed me that much,” he says. “And they apparently stock the beach house from Costco—good news for us.”

I have never been so glad to see a toothbrush in my life.

Also, I have a plan for getting Rhys to sleep in the bed.

I take one of the toothbrushes and the toothpaste into the bathroom and brush my teeth.

The bathroom is small and basic—a sink with a single vanity door, painted white, a stall shower—but like everything else, it’s clean, and I sigh with relief as I scrub my teeth and then use the small bar of soap and provided washcloth to wash my face.

Then I shuck my sweatpants, remove my underwear, pull my sweats back on, and rinse my thong carefully in the sink, wringing it out in a hand towel and hanging it on the bathroom’s least conspicuous hook. I cover it with the hand towel, hoping Rhys won’t move the towel and see it.

I come out, past where Rhys is sitting on the pullout peering at his laptop, and slide under the bedcovers. They’re cool and soft, and they smell clean, and for a moment, I question the sanity of my plan to give Rhys the bed.

But he drove me eight hours today without complaining. He fed me dinner.

He saved my business.

I mean, he didn’t do that today . But he did do it.

It means the score between us is even, which means that after he spent today taking care of me, the least I can do is let him get a good night’s sleep.

As soon as I’m settled, he gets up and goes to the bathroom, and I get out of the bed and hurry to the pullout.

In the bathroom, the shower turns on with a quiet groan of pipes and a rush of water.

Oh. He’s taking a shower.

Which means he’s stripping off his clothes in there.

Unbuttoning the expensive dress shirt. Unbuckling his belt—probably supple Italian leather—and unfastening his pants.

Letting his clothes fall to the floor… No.

He’s probably carefully folding his clothes—not letting them touch the floor—and setting them on the edge of the sink, after first checking to make sure the counter isn’t damp.

Hopefully he’s not peeking under the hand towel I hung over my thong.

I hear the cadence of the water change as he steps under it, and my palms get hot.

I will not picture him soaping himself in the shower.

I will not picture him soaping himself in the shower.

What is wrong with me? This morning—I guess technically yesterday morning, since it’s God Knows What O’Clock—I was engaged to marry Paul Graves. By noon I’d been jilted, and now, a little over twelve hours later, I’m fantasizing about another man.

Or not fantasizing about him. But still.

The events of the day have destroyed my sanity. That’s all.

The water shuts off.

There’s a pause—him toweling himself off?—and I hear the water running in the sink. Brushing his teeth. The door opens, and he steps back in.

His eyes find me on the pullout. “No.”

I look over at him. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt and boxer shorts, and I have to immediately look away because it feels way too intimate to see him like that. And because his legs are tree-trunk thick, with the perfect amount of dark curly hair.

He strides across the room, scoops me off the pullout like I weigh nothing, and carries me to the bed.

His body is a wall of muscle, and he smells—God, he smells good.

His T-shirt is soft and still scented with laundry soap but also musky with today’s efforts, and under that, I can smell hotel soap and Old Spice, the clean scent of his skin, and I turn my head to get closer?—

He deposits me unceremoniously, and I try not to want it back: his warmth and scent and strength.

I’m just feeling needy because I was dumped this morning .

He glares at me, then crosses back to the pullout and plops himself down.

“Go to sleep,” he says.