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“Do you want the bathroom first?” she offered, hoping she sounded casual. She glanced toward the clock. Almost ten. They’d slept much later than she usually did. Much later than Blake slept too, since he usually went for a run in the mornings prior to his hospital rounds.
The picnic started at eleven.
In an hour she’d face her high school nemesis and the boy she’d once planned to give her virginity to. She’d be alongside a man pretending to love her and doing such a great job he’d thrown her internal circuits off kilter and was feeding her dreams of what it would be like to really be loved by him, both physically and emotionally.
Enough so that she’d almost throw caution to the wind and take whatever kind of relationship Blake would give.
A quickie relationship would cause everything between them to sour. But what if he really could fall in love with her? What if they could be both business partners and lovers?
“Let me go, real quick, then the bathroom is all yours.”
Quick. Quickie. Heat burned her face. Had he really just said “quick”?
She tried not to look as he slid out from beneath the sheet. More and more of his flawless chest and abdomen were exposed. She tried to tear her eyes away from the arrow of dark hair that disappeared beneath his boxers.
Boxer briefs. She’d thought his waistband had been to pajama bottoms or shorts. “You wore underwear to bed?”
She’d slept with Blake. In his underwear. When she’d awakened she’d known there weren’t many barriers between their bodies, had felt his hairy legs tangled with her smoothly shaven ones, but she’d thought he’d been wearing more than his underwear.
Stretching his arms over his head, drawing attention to the lean planes of his body, he lifted a dark brow. “Is that a problem?”
How dared he look so hot first thing in the morning? She’d wanted to see him ruffled, but she hadn’t meant like this, with sleep softening his expression, his hair sexily tousled, his body barely covered with brief cotton boxers that left little to her imagination.
“Yes, it’s a problem! You’re not wearing underwear to bed tonight. Not if you expect me to be in that bed with you. Got it?”
His lips twitched with amusement. “Okay. If you insist. I wouldn’t have last night if I’d known how you felt
.”
Scowling, Darby crossed her arms over her breasts, trying to hide her body’s reaction to his stretch, to his near nakedness, to his comment that she knew was only his usual teasing.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“Hey.” He put his hands up in mock surrender. “I was just trying to follow orders. You know I like it when you’re all Darby bossy.”
“Fine, let’s see how you do with this Darby bossy. Hurry up in the bathroom, because as you can tell—” she gestured to her make-up-free face and sleep-mussed hair “—I’ve a lot of work to do before we go to that picnic, and I don’t want to be late.”
Why miss a single moment of reminiscing over the most humiliating time of her life, with the man of her dreams there to watch?
CHAPTER FIVE
MANDY COULSON wasn’t what Blake had expected.
She was petite, blonde, curvy, brown-eyed, and had a friendly smile that appeared genuine.
From the way Darby acted each time her name was mentioned, he’d been looking for horns and a pitchfork.
However, when she glanced toward Darby something did shift in her gaze. Something Blake couldn’t completely read. Guilt? Regret? Anger? Resentment? Or maybe Mandy wasn’t looking at Darby at all, but rather the man chatting with her.
Trey Nix.
Blake stood a little taller, held his head a little higher. And attempted not to spy on where Darby talked to the man whom she blushed at with every other word he said.
Damn it. Blake was the only man she blushed for. Didn’t she know that?
He hadn’t realized until that moment, but it was true. Darby didn’t blush at any time except when he teased her as he had this morning.
She’d blushed like crazy when he’d climbed out of bed.
