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Apparently, I passed out without setting an alarm.
And when I crack my eyes open—
Crap.
It’s ten a.m.
I was supposed to meet Roland fifteen minutes ago, and I’m still slumming around in a t-shirt and panties.
“Just a minu—ULP!” I yell, tumbling out of bed.
Legs, meet sheets.
Legs, get intimately acquainted with sheets.
Legs, dump me face-first on the floor when I try standing with the sheets tangled around my calves.
Yep, I basically just hog-tied myself.
I go down hard, groaning as another knock rattles the door. This time, it’s firmer.
“Callie? Are you all right in there?” Roland’s voice drifts through the thick wood.
Oh, boy.
“M’fine,” I mumble into the pillow that fell with me, thankfully cushioning my head smacking the floor. “Just tripped. Give me a sec.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his silence whispers skepticism.
Who could blame him?
I fight off the sheets, totter to my feet, and dump the bedding back on the mattress before snagging a pair of running shorts from the suitcase I’d left open in the corner easy chair.
Hopping on one foot, then the other, I shimmy into them, yanking them up over my hips. Then I stagger to the door and pull it open with my arms moving faster than my brain.
Eep.
One look at the bosshole makes me realize what a disheveled mess I am.
We’re talking oversized shirt falling off one shoulder, hanging down just long enough to hide my tiny shorts. Bedhead hair sticking up like a cactus—I’m surprised I don’t scare him—and I don’t even want to know what I look like without my makeup.
Especially not after sleeping with my face smooshed in a pillow.
He’s my total opposite.
How predicable.
Even dressed down, he looks so cool and collected and put together that he’d wreck a GQ model.
He’s just wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans with thick-soled black workmen’s boots—but it’s a designer shirt, designer jeans, designer boots in fine leather.
The dark-grey shirt clings to his chest like it’s painted on, pouring over his beastly pecs and dipping down sculpted abs in ridged patterns.
God. Even the stitching on the short sleeves strains against the rock-hard cut of his biceps like it’s struggling to hold them in.
Dark, faded jeans hang low on his hips in the right and oh-so-wrong way, held in place by a leather belt that just barely keeps them from dipping down to pure sin.
A little lower, and I know they’d reveal the narrow V of his pelvis.
The fit hints at the power between his legs, from his thighs underneath to a piece of him I dare not imagine.
Not if I want to keep my last worn thread of sanity.
“Callie?” he whispers with a smug look from hell.
I’m speechless, and he knows it.
His ruffled hair swept to one side is black magic that has me spellbound. Ditto for his left forearm swirled in a full sleeve of twining, angry-looking ink.
There’s no stopping my brows when they try to fly off my face.
Stripped down without his suits and godly vests, he doesn’t look like some holier-than-thou rich prick.
He looks...
I don’t even know.
Like a bad boy decked out in designer labels, rough and tumble and roguish?
Yeah.
And I think I might hate him a little more than I already did for it.
But it’s not hate that hits me when he sweeps me with a slow look, starting on my naked legs and winding up my body until he stops on my burning face.
“Is that what you’re wearing today?” he drawls slowly.
“You...you have a tattoo,” I blurt out.
“Army,” he answers without missing a beat, his mouth quirked, twilight-blue eyes relaxed and looking at me like I’m brunch. “I’ll tell you the story while you get dressed. Hurry up.”
He moves a step closer, almost crossing the threshold.
His tall body fills the entire doorway, blocking out the light until he’s a ginormous shadow. Crowding me.
My heart skips—and with a soft sound I step back quickly, nearly tripping again as I skitter toward my suitcase.
“Sorry,” I say as I pile my arms high with clothing. “I overslept. If you don’t mind waiting, I just need a quick shower, and we’ll be on our merry way.”
Roland steals the easy chair under the window and drops into it with the devil’s grace, spreading his legs, hips slouched forward.
Help me.
He never stops watching me the entire time, stripping me with that gaze. He props his arm on the chair and rests his chin in his hand.
“Dress light,” he orders. “We won’t have the pleasure of air conditioning for most of the day, and this is Texas.”
“Oh, please. I know southern weather better than you ever will, Chicago boy,” I fire back without thinking. “I’m from New Orleans. I’m made for getting sticky.”
Crap, crap, crap, and crap.
I so want to tape my mouth shut since it’s hellbent on destroying me. Maybe even faster than this insufferable man.
My appalling tongue slip doesn’t throw him off.
