AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It is great. You’re a lucky woman.”
“Funny. I don’t feel so lucky.”
“Then you need to change your attitude.” He glanced up at her, really looking at her for the first time that morning.
“I’ll take that under consideration. Well, maybe.” For the first time, she noticed the steaming cup of coffee sitting on a side table. He’d made coffee? That definitely improved her mood.
She made her way to the kitchen, found the carafe of coffee and poured herself a cup, and asked him, “What’re you doing?”
“We’re out of cream.”
We, she thought, rolling that over in her mind as she took a long swallow.
As she started past the living room again, he said, “You asked what I was doing.”
She paused. “And?”
“Research. Looking over what Emma sent me.”
“Who’s Emma?”
“The techie who works for me. Emma Yardley. I told you about her.”
“Just not her name,” she said as Romeo finally deigned to open his eyes and stretch, extending his paws so that his claws were momentarily visible. “Anything important?”
“Don’t know. Possibly. Just going through it now.”
She thought about taking a seat next to him and trying to decipher whatever he was studying so intently, but, remembering her state of dress, said, “Brief me in fifteen. I’m going to get dressed.”
“Okay,” he said, and if she’d expected at least some acknowledgment that he’d heard she was going to be naked, if only for a second, she was disappointed. He kept staring at the computer monitor and typing quickly, ignoring his barely touched coffee. Whatever he’d found, it certainly held his attention.
She grabbed a pair of jeans and a sweater, bra, panties, and socks, then went into the bathroom, where she thought about locking the door, hesitated, then pressed the button and turned on the shower.
Stripping out of the nightshirt, she felt a little strange. Noah Scott was in the next room, after all this time, seated on her couch, while she was stark naked and stepping under the steaming spray of the shower. She lathered herself, and in a ridiculous but quick feminine fantasy, she imagined him rushing into the room, the mist parting as he, naked, threw back the shower curtain and spent the next hour kissing her neck, soaping her breasts, splashing water over her nipples, and lifting her onto—
She shut her brain down. “What’re you thinking?” she asked herself, turning the water several degrees cooler and rinsing off. He still was essentially a stranger to her.
“Remember that,” she told herself as she toweled off and dressed. She swiped the condensation off the mirror and combed her hair into a ponytail. A touch of lip gloss, a little mascara, and done, in under fifteen minutes.
She stepped out of the room and saw Ghost slithering down the stairs. “Curiosity kills cats like you,” she reminded him as his tail disappeared around the open landing.
“What?” Noah asked.
“Just talking to one of Greta’s ‘babies.’ Ghost isn’t very friendly.”
“Gray cat?”
“That would be the one.”
“He seemed fine to me,” he said. “Hopped right up on the couch and started batting at my fingers as I typed.”
“No way. You’re kidding.”
“Yeah. I am,” he said with a laugh. “He came to the top of the stairs, took one look at me, and did a one-eighty.”
She grinned back at him. “That sounds more like it. What’ve you got?”
“Nothing yet, but Emma says she’s sending something important. We’ve been e-mailing.”
