Page 80 of Blue Jean Summer

“Goodnight, Lewis,” Catherine said in that sugar-sweet voice, then tugged on my hand, leading me into her bedroom.

Maybe we should have gone into mine, since it didn’t share a wall with Lewis, but her room was bigger. I had given it to Catherine so she would have all the space she could ever want.

Space. That was what I needed. Space, and a lot of it.

The click of the door closing behind us was barely audible, but it might as well have been a gunshot. The room smelled of the sultry floral perfume she had been wearing that day. It was hypnotizing. Alluring. Intoxicating.

I had been hanging on by a thread all day, doing my best to respect those boundaries that I wanted so badly to blur.

But now? I was fucked.

Chapter 20

Catherine

The door closed behind us with the whisper of an atomic bomb. Hayes still had my hat in his hand. The tulle hung from it like a weeping willow. Our eyes met as unspoken questions of “What now?” danced between us.

The balcony wasn’t a “climb over and sneak out to the room beside it” kind of balcony. It was a “fall and break your neck” kind of balcony.

Lewis’s bedroom door closed with an earth-shattering slam, and Hayes tensed. There was silence for a moment, then rustling behind our shared wall.

Fuck.

I pressed my ear to the wall, listening for the ambient thumps as Lewis did whatever the hell he did in his lair.

“What are you doing?” Hayes whispered.

“Trying to figure out if he’s listening,” I hissed back.

The commotion on the other side stopped.

I mouthed a pissed-off “Fuck!” as gracefully as I could.

“Why would he be listening?” Hayes said quietly as he plopped down onto the love seat where he had held me this morning.

“Because it’s Lewis. He refuses grant funding and probably kicks puppies and steals candy from little kids just for fun.”

“He’s not a cartoon villain, Cath,” Hayes groused as he set down our cowboy hats and pinched the bridge of his nose.

I toed off the white boots Savannah had generously gifted me and propped my hands on my hips. “I wish he was a cartoon villain. Then all I’d have to worry about are falling anvils and TNT. He’s way worse.”

Hayes huffed. “I’ll wait an hour or so and then sneak over to my bedroom like we always—what are you doing?”

I climbed up onto the giant bed and started jumping. The mattress squeaked and thumped. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Damn, this is a workout.

I held on to the headboard, making it rattle as I jumped, and glanced over my shoulder at Hayes, who was staring at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind.

Hayes loosened his bow tie, letting it hang from his collar as he unfastened the top few buttons of his crisp white dress shirt. “It looks like you’re auditioning to be the town’s Easter bunny.”

Maybe it was the champagne talking, but Hayes looked good. One long leg was bent while the other was stretched out wide. He had an arm draped lazily across the back of the love seat while the other rested on the armrest.

Being that casually sexy should have been a crime.

“If you’re not going to pitch in,” I said with wheezing breaths between bounces, “you can keep your commentary to yourself.”

Hayes rubbed his temples. “Pitch in doing what?”