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The first thing I noticed was his smell. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever smelled back in Kentucky—jasmine or sage, I wasn’t sure. It was crisp, clean, and smelled expensive.
“Aye. Leslie and I are mates. You just took me by surprise.”
I rolled my tongue over my teeth as I tried to gain control of the weird, fluttering sensation in my chest that had begun to travel up, making my throat warm and red.
“Did I tell Leslie the wrong date? I was sure I emailed that I was arriving today.” I shook my head.
His hands were at his sides now, but his head was angled, the muscles in his jaw tight as his eyes dipped down to my chest. “Are you cold?” He perked a brow.
My nipples grew painfully hard as goose bumps scattered across my skin and my cheeks flushed. “No.” I pushed my long, wet hair to my back, crossing my arms over my damp nightshirt.
He slowly dragged his gaze to my eyes, and I couldn’t escape the hint of a smile pulling at the edges of his mouth.
“I knew you were coming,” he said, smoothing a hand down his tanned throat. “But I didn’t know you were a woman.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I looked around the living room, wanting to sit down as my chills wrapped up and around my almost naked legs. But sitting in front of a stranger seemed too casual.
The man scratched the back of his head, and my eyes were drawn to the metal watch on his wrist.
“Leslie’s got one hell of a sense of humor.” He walked past me and over to the fridge. As he opened the door and bent forward, my eyes found his backside, which was freaking perfection. I had never been one to do backflips over a guy’s ass, but holy mother of all things sacred!
He turned toward me with the Guinness beers in hand and then popped the tops before returning to me. “Here.” He handed me a bottle, and I had to remove one of my arms that protected my annoyingly perky nipples.
The sexy stranger cleared his throat and took a sip.
Oh my God. I was ready to smack the beautiful right off his perfect face if he didn’t explain himself immediately. Still, here I was, standing in front of some guy I didn’t know, in another country, and at night—and somehow my skin wasn’t crawling with fear.
That had to go in the books as a success for me. Right?
“He played the old name game with you, huh?” His eyes gleamed as he brought the bottle to his lips.
“What? Leslie’s a guy?” I shrieked, and the stranger nodded. “But we swapped messages, and she—I mean he—never mentioned . . . I thought the name Leslie was female. Back home—”
I waved my hand in the air rather than finish the thought. It didn’t even matter what he would say. There was no way I’d live with a guy, especially one who had kept his gender hidden from me.
“Leslie’s just a bit of a trickster. After all, I was expecting a guy when he asked me to bunk here tonight.”
“Yeah, sure. Hilarious.” I slumped down on the couch but saw how high up my nightshirt had risen. I grabbed a pillow and placed it over my lap. When I worked up the nerve, I looked at him, and his eyes met mine. They were a dark band of blue wrapped around soft denim—captivating.
I shook my head. “So why are you here? Besides some sick joke?”
“You know, to make sure you’re not some gobshite.”
“Gobshite?”
“An idiot. A crazy person.”
“Of course,” I muttered. “And when will Leslie be back?”
The stranger before me—whose name I still didn’t know—sat in the reclining chair opposite me. His eyes darkened a little as he took another sip of his drink. “I don’t know. He might be gone for a few weeks now.”
This is insane. And how would I find another place to live? It had been a miracle when I’d discovered Leslie’s ad. No one else was offering anything remotely close to it at the price.
“I feel like an arse.”
I laughed. Arse? “Well, you aren’t the ass. Your friend is.”
He rubbed a hand over his clenched jaw. “He’s a good guy,” he finally said. “But since he’ll be, um, out of town for a bit, you should just stay.” He shrugged. “You guys can work it out when he’s back.”
