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Good grief, her prom dress even hung in there. Why would her mother keep that? Even if McKenzie had wanted to wear the dress, she wouldn’t be able to shimmy that tiny dress up past her hips, much less zip the thing.
When Ryder had finished in the bathroom and came back into McKenzie’s room, she’d finished unpacking her suitcase and was pushing the bag into her closet.
Glancing over to where he walked toward his suitcase, her gaze collided with bare feet.
She gulped.
She’d never been a foot person, quite the opposite, but Ryder’s feet were sexy. Her gaze rose higher, taking in his flannel pajama bottoms that somehow managed to look like they belonged in an ad, over his Seattle sport team T-shirt that looked soft, well-worn and accentuated his waist and shoulders.
She should have just stopped right there and looked away, but she didn’t. Instead, her eyes moved onward to pause at his lips.
His lips that had kissed her on the plane.
Kissed her quite thoroughly. Her lips tingled at the memory. All of her tingled at the memory.
Tingly pleasure swept over her. Then, realizing she was gawking at him, heat flooded her face.
Get your mind away from that kiss, she ordered herself. Thinking about kissing Ryder when he was in her bedroom was not okay.
None of this was real.
Her gaze caught his honey-colored one.
Oh, yeah, he knew she’d been checking him out. Her face burned. He was here as a favor. What was wrong with her that she was looking at Ryder as if...as if this was real?
He was hot and outdid any teenaged fantasies she’d ever dreamed up in this room. Or anywhere else. Just wow.
And not where her mind should have gone about a pretend boyfriend.
Seeing Ryder at the hospital and clinic and acknowledging that he was drop-dead gorgeous was one thing. Having him in her bedroom and perusing him in a completely sexual way was quite another.
She needed to get her head on straight. No doubt her reaction was just extreme travel weariness and her intense emotions to flying including gratitude for his distraction.
She straightened from where she’d been kneeling, putting the suitcase in her closet, and pasted a smile on her still-flaming face as if she hadn’t been looking at him as if he were chocolate dipped and she were a chocoholic ready to binge.
* * *
Ryder dropped his toiletries bag on top of his suitcase, then turned toward McKenzie. His lips twitching, he arched a brow. “All unpacked?”
She stood just a few feet away—anywhere in the room was only a few feet away.
“Um, yeah. You’re welcome to hang anything you
want to in my closet.” Her cheeks flushing, she immediately averted her eyes.
McKenzie had never looked at him the way she currently was.
As if she was seeing him as a man. A desirable man.
Okay, maybe during their kiss, but he wasn’t sure because she’d been so focused on the plane ride and had acted so no-big-deal afterward.
But in that moment their eyes met, hers had glowed as if she liked what she saw. A lot.
Ryder felt his own cheeks flush, knew he needed to get his thoughts back under control because nothing could happen physically between them.
Not tonight or at any point that weekend.
McKenzie was vulnerable, on the rebound. Ryder refused to be a rebound fling.
