Page 58 of Enchanted to Meet You

Probably but my hand itched to do it anyway.

But I didn’t need to. Rhys grabbed her wrist—using only the tips of his fingers, as if he didn’t want more contact than necessary—and let her hand drop back to her side. She stared at him, jaw agape and eyes blinking.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding apologetic at all. He looked at me instead of her. “Offer’s open to one girl only.”

My heart thudded in my chest. And even though I wanted to keep arguing with him—not even necessarily because I didn’t want to go, but because that was the game we played—I marched around to the passenger side, yanked the door open, and climbed into the air-conditioned bliss of his SUV.

The cold air hit my overheated skin like a miracle. I closed my eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath, sagging against the leather seat.

“See?” Rhys said, shifting the car into drive and pulling away from the curb. “Was that so hard?”

“Shut up,” I murmured. I turned my head to stare out the window, trying to ignore the way my pulse hitched every time his knuckles brushed the gear shift.

I was grateful to find that his house was empty when we got there. I’d considered insisting that he just let me go home to shower and change, but I knew my house would most definitely not be empty and that meant, at best, being endlessly questioned about where I was going and at worst, not even being able to shower right away because it was already being used. I still felt weird taking a shower in somebody else’s house, but I couldn’t fault him for saying it made sense.

Rhys led me into his room first to get me a change of clothes. He spun around and closed the distance between us. I, unfortunately, was already extending my arms for them. I told myself it was because we were in too much of a rush to hesitate. He laid the pile in my arms, his fingers brushing mine in the process.

“These should work,” he said, jerking his chin toward the door to my right. “Bathroom is through that door. Fresh towels are in the cabinet under the sink. Take your time,” he added, turning toward his closet to grab his own gym bag. “We’ve got about twenty minutes if we want to get there on time.”

I nodded, my mind still on the tingling still in my fingers. I turned for the door but only made it a few steps when Rhys called out behind me.

“Hey, Ainsley?”

“Yeah?” I asked over my shoulder.

His gaze dropped to the pile of clothes in my hands, then dragged back up to my eyes, a bright mischief in them. “Can’t wait to see you in my T-shirt again.”

My cheeks heated. My body buzzed. My fingers chose that exact moment to forget how to work and the clothes nearly slipped to my fingers. I shot my hands out as quickly as I could to grab them all before they could hit the ground, because there was something more mortifying about picking them up off the floor than just catching them.

When I risked a glance back up at Rhys, I found him smirking, which only intensified that buzzing.

I pushed the smirk and the comment and the buzzing out of my mind and slipped into his bathroom and pulled the door shut, locking it with a quiet click. The bathroom was spotless, tiled in dark slate with a massive glass-enclosed walk-in shower. I finally peeled off my disgusting, sweat-soaked tights and leotard. Dropping them in a pile, I stepped into the shower and turned the handle.

The water cascaded over me in a cool, merciful blast. Normally, I liked to take showers so hot that I felt like I was being boiled, but today, I was just happy to cool down at all. I stood there for a full minute letting the water wash away the exhaustion, the sticky sweat, and the tension of the day before I reached for the soap that was sitting on the built-in wall niche. It was a dark, sleek bottle that said it was sandalwood and cedar and as I lathered it on my hand, the scent bloomed instantly in the steam, thick and intoxicating.

My breath hitched as I breathed it in. It was him.

This was the exact smell that lingered on his varsity jacket when he put it around me the other night. It was the smell that hit me every time he leaned in close to whisper a fake sweet-nothing into my ear whenever Kelcey was watching. It was rich, deep, and overwhelmingly male.

Smoothing the lather over my skin felt shockingly intimate. I was literally washing myself in his scent, standing in his shower, surrounded by his personal space. The realization sent a sudden, hot shiver through my stomach that had nothing to do with the cold water.

Get a grip, Ainsley, I told myself sternly, scrubbing vigorously at my arms. It’s just body wash.

I shook my head, turning off the water to drown out the thoughts. I grabbed a large, plush white towel from the cabinet under the sink and wrapped it tightly around my chest, tucking the end securely in the middle so it would stay up. I dried my face, running a quick hand through my damp hair, and turned to grab the clothes Rhys had lent me off the counter.

I pulled on the clean underwear from my bag I had carried in under Rhys’s clothes, then Rhys’s shorts. I had to roll them up a few times so they didn’t look like I was drowning in them. I reached for the T-shirt. My hand swept over empty marble. I froze. I looked down at the floor. Nothing. I looked around the sink. Nothing. Oh, gosh.

I spun around, trying to figure out where it could have gone, and then I remembered those mischievous green eyes and the distracting smirk and the near-drop of clothes. Except it apparently wasn’t a near drop. I dropped the shirt in the middle of Rhys’s room.

I stared at the locked door in unadulterated horror. I couldn’t go out there without a shirt on.

“Ainsley?” Rhys’s voice barked from the bedroom, followed by two firm knocks on the door. “You dead in there? We need to go in five.”

My throat went dry. “Uh. No! Not dead!”

“Great. Hurry up.”

“Rhys?” I called out, my voice squeaking slightly. I cleared my throat, trying to sound like a normal, functioning human being. “Rhys, hey. Um. I have a slight problem.”