“You agreed to let me stay for a while, right? Well, I’ll need some clothes.” He put up a hand. “I know. You’d prefer I go around in just jeans, but really, Glory, think of Old Lady Simmons. What if she has a weak heart?”
Though she knew he was teasing, he wasn’t wrong. She’d love to have Kam strutting his goods for her from dusk to dawn. That could beherfantasy, except that reality intruded. “We could drive separately.” That would help to quell suspicion.
“Trust me, Callie, Tanner, and Addie, all three would think that was silly. There’s no reason to take both cars, so how about I drive? I have more room.”
“How much stuff do you need?”
“I have the essentials boxed up already.” He leaned back against the counter. “But you need to understand, I’m not moving in on you. You won’t have me underfoot forever.”
Bummer. Since she couldn’t say that, she lifted her brows in silent query.
“I have my own place. An apartment. Very near here, in fact. When we head out, I can show you.”
Very near sounded good to her. Not as good as him beingunderfoot, as he’d said, but still. “I’d like that.” For now, she needed to understand the scope of his... Well,nota proposition. “So what will you be bringing here?”
“Some clothes, toothbrush, razor. That sort of thing.”
That wasnotexcitement zinging around in her heart. “Sounds reasonable.”
“I’ll get everything moved to my apartment over the next few days, then while I’m here, if I need something, I can easily run over there and grab it.”
Glory nodded. “Okay, then.”
A new sultry, suggestive light came into his eyes. “I’ll be handy to have around. I cook, you know—not like Addie, but you won’t starve.”
“I’ll want to see Ted and Ed again, too.”
“We’ll go together.” He stepped away from the counter. “Tonight, though, I think Addie would like us to eat with her. What do you say?”
“I say we have a lot to get done in the next few hours, so how about you show me the apartment now?”
Dazed at how easily he’d convinced Glory to let him stay over, Kam unlocked his apartment door and walked in. Had she agreed because Mike scared her? Because she’d enjoyed their frenzied hallway sex?
Or was she starting to care for him?
Not knowing kept his thoughts churning this way and that.Hecared, damn it. Far more than he’d expected. In a single night, everything had changed. The threat of another man hurting her—and yeah, that awesome sex against the wall—had conspired against him, making him face up to unfamiliar feelings. Things he didn’t want to feel. Emotions he hadn’t known existed.
He’d gotten the apartment for independence, to prove—to himself more than anyone else—that he was more than others had so often claimed, more than the genetic makeup of an absurdly awful father.
More, damn it, than either of his parents had expected.
Seeing the apartment now, he accepted that it wasn’t much. Not big. Not open. Not new. Nothing like her stylish house, but he refused to be self-conscious about it. “Once I get more furniture in here, put some stuff on the walls and things like that, it’ll look better.”
Keen interest took Glory’s gaze everywhere, scrutinizing in minute detail. “It’s nice.”
Scoffing would only make him feel more absurd. “I haven’t done much yet. Just got furniture dropped off and sort of shoved around.” The couch was against a wall with end tables shoved up against it. His TV, the only new item, sat across the room on a peach crate. “We had the wedding, and Addie’s been so emotional about it...”
A smile preceded her teasing, “Forever blaming Addie.”
Skipping past that, especially since he knew it was true, Kam concentrated on the living space. “You’ve given me some ideas.”
“Sexual ideas?”
Her quick wit continued to amuse him. “So you always have sex on the brain, huh?”
“I... What? No.”
The flustered denial certainly gavehimideas. “So only around me?”
