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Or damn?
When he turned into the living room instead of going back to th
e bedroom, she lifted her head, and her breath caught all over again. Although he’d pulled on a pair of black dress pants, his mussed hair, dark stubble, and bare chest had her pulse tripping all over itself.
She noticed he had her nightgown fisted in his large hand as she stood. The contrast of the delicate, light pink silk against his large, tanned hand made her stomach flutter. Too bad he hadn’t taken it off her instead of picking it up from the bathroom floor.
Stop thinking like that!
“Is this yours?” he asked.
“One would assume—unless you have one exactly like it?” she quipped as she crossed the room to meet him.
His thick, dark brows hovered low over his whiskey-colored eyes. “Did your apartment building burn down?”
She shifted her gaze to his hand. She’d only taken time to wash her underwear, so the pungent smoke odor that clung to the pink nightgown hadn’t faded one bit. “I don’t know that it burned down. The firefighters were still working when I left.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so last night?”
She couldn’t tell if the roughness in his voice was anger or guilt.
Loyal—feel a human emotion such as guilt? Hah. Right.
“What does it matter?”
“You should’ve told me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged his broad shoulders, his expression uncomfortable. “I’d have given you the bed.”
“Yeah, right. More likely you would’ve mocked me and asked, ‘If you’re a real psychic, shouldn’t you have known it was coming?’”
His lashes lifted, his gaze meeting hers as he tilted his head. “Well, shouldn’t you have?”
She narrowed her eyes at the cynical humor tugging at his lips. Yep. She wanted to hit him again. Hard.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said through gritted teeth. Although, with her dream last night, it had come close.
His expression softened. “Are you okay?”
Annoyed that his question made her pulse leap, she reached to yank her nightgown from his hand. “Don’t pretend like you care. You’re an ass, Loyal. Always have been, always will be.”
With that, she brushed past him and shut the bathroom door before he could see the tears that had suddenly turned everything blurry. She was not a crier, and yet the past twelve hours she seemed to be leaking every damn five minutes. She splashed cold water on her face, then found an unopened toothbrush and a tube of travel-size toothpaste to brush her teeth.
While she dressed, she made a face at her reflection in the mirror. The brown T-shirt she’d picked to go with the skirt was soft and stretchy. Being tall and slim—willowy, her mother used to say—her breasts were on the smaller size, but the snug fit made it embarrassingly obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Second on her list—shopping for a bra.
As she pulled on socks and the mid-calf military-style boots, she knew it wasn’t really second, but it would be up in the top five. In the meantime, she’d grab a sweatshirt or something from the shop.
Loyal wasn’t in the living room when she exited the bathroom. With all her things gathered in her hands, she started for the door. A sudden urge to stop and turn back had her wondering why? It wasn’t like they were friends and she needed to tell him where she was going, or even say goodbye, for that matter.
She kept going and quietly let herself out of the apartment. Down in her shop, she went through the motions of grinding beans for the fresh roast coffee, took a small bakery box of Honor’s pre-made cupcakes from the freezer in the back so they’d be thawed by eleven for customers, then stood in the office and stared at her desk.
Why had she let it get this bad again? She needed to find her spare Jeep keys and her rental insurance info, but would she find it in time to make the necessary calls and walk over to pick up her vehicle before it was time to open? Probably not.
With a low groan of resignation, she put the cupcakes back in the freezer and grabbed a clean sheet of paper from the printer. She wrote and taped a Closed for Personal Emergency sign on her front door before returning to her mess of a desk.
