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He spoke again, after an endless few minutes. “They liked to play games and I didn’t like the games. When I wouldn’t cooperate, they locked me up in an old dunny out the back. It doesn’t take long to lose weight under those conditions.”
“They withheld food and locked you up because you wouldn’t do what they wanted?”
“Pretty much. At least I had a toilet handy, even if it was an old pit one.” That wry grin and distinctive dismissive roll of the shoulders again. She was starting to read the body language. The way he physically shook the past off like a duck shedding water.
“And then you came back to the Crossing.”
“One of the other women carved up Sid with a carving knife when she found out what he was doing to her kids. With him dead, the other guys ran for it. Once the police were involved any unattached kids were taken by social services. They shipped me back home.”
“You think of the inn as home?”
“Why not? It’s the only place I’ve ever been safe.” The grin shone out again, a little stronger, more Xander Mac. “Besides, you’re here.”
He dropped back down onto the bed, his fingers gliding over her knee in the thin cotton pyjama pants. “In your bed.”
“Our bed.” Did she really say something so… so come-on-ish?
“Our bed. Mine and yours.”
“I meant it was yours before it was mine.”
“With a little overlap.”
She couldn’t argue with him, when it was true. Whenever he came home she slept here with him, until she’d refused to go with him to Nashville and he’d got fed up with her stalling. “We have condoms.”
Expecting a smile, his drawn-together brows surprised her. “You keep condoms here?”
“In the guest basket with the soaps and toiletries. There was a basket in the room when I arrived, and I haven’t used anything.”
He propped himself up, looking around. “Where is this manna from heaven?”
Bonnie giggled. “More likely from your grandmother.”
His eyes scrinched closed. “Please don’t make me think of my grandmother supplying me with condoms.”
“I don’t imagine she was thinking of you benefitting from her largesse. The room had been used by guests over the Easter break before I arrived, so it was set up for holiday couples.”
She was talking too much. Was she really going to sleep with Xander with so much unresolved between them? He watched her face, a faint question in the creases around his eyes. There was need there too, something to wipe away the dark memories. Could she refuse him, knowing he needed her? Hell. She needed him too. Needed to feel what only he could make her feel. Special. Maybe even a little bit loved. Is this love? This urge to give and give. Had the conviction she’d been subject to a teenage crush she’d never grown out of been a lie she’d told herself?
“Check in the bathroom cupboard, on the bottom shelf.”
“Are you making me work for it?”
Leaning back against the pillows, she smiled. “Absolutely.”
*
Xander shuddered, hisbody taking the hit. Even in her low-slung floral pyjama trousers and cropped cotton shirt with tiny buttons, she made his body want. Her hair was bunched up in a funny sort of folded bun at the top of her head, to keep it from tangling while she slept. He scooted off the bed and rummaged in the bathroom cupboard, pulling out the shallow basket with all the bathroom toiletries his grandmother favoured for the guests.
There were two small condom boxes specially packaged with the Highland Inn logo and a picture of a bare-chested piper in a kilt. Two different sizes with two condoms in each. He really had to wonder what his grandmother had been thinking. Maybe they were inspired by some of her favourite romance novel covers. He’d read one off her shelf as a teenager and it had been a real education. What he’d liked about it was the happy ending. He wanted one for himself but, at the time, he’d doubted he’d ever be able to make it happen.
He tucked the basket away and held up the condoms so Bonnie could see them as he left the bathroom. “Only four. Maybe we should have picked some up at the supermarket.” Her eyes were eating him up and his body reacted predictably. If anything, her eyes were even wider.
“The town would be buzzing. If you bought them, they’d wonder who you were shagging.”
“And if Miss Bonnie Callaghan bought them?”
“They would all die of shock trying to figure out how I got lucky.”
