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She might have used them as a handhold more than once last night, and for some odd reason, she could not stop wondering if she’d left nail marks in his skin. Heat climbed through her core as she recalled the exact position, his body under hers, joined so very intimately. She’d ridden him with abandon. It had been glorious.
“Sure that’s what you want to talk about this morning?” he asked lightly as the cook served plates with stacks of fluffy pancakes, a platter of bacon and syrup warmed in a small white urn, then vanished. “There’s not something else on your mind?”
The heat in her core intensified as she stared at him. What was she supposed to say to that?
Yes, you rocked my world and I want you again right now?
Because that would be both true and a horrible idea.
She ate pancakes, instead. They melted in her mouth too fast to be a good diversion from the conversation because he just kept watching her as he forked up his own bits of fluffy goodness.
“Nothing is more important to me than getting this project completed,” she said firmly, because she had to say something. And then she shook her head. “I mean, not that I’m in a rush to be finished. I want to do a good job and it’s very important that each detail—”
“Tilda.” Warren reached out and laced his fingers with hers, no hesitation, which told her that he was already far more comfortable with her than she was with him. “You’ll ace this project, no doubt. We’re having breakfast on the terrace on Saturday after we took our relationship someplace unexpected. If you don’t want to talk about what happened last night, fine. Pick another subject. But not work.”
Agape, she stared at him. “Work is all there is between us.”
“No.” His fingers tightened, and his thumb found a sensitive spot on her hand to caress. “Not when you can’t even sleep in the same bed with me all night long, it’s not. We have an impending interview with the green-card people and the subject of sleeping arrangements may come up. Wouldn’t it be better to be prepared for that?”
Something with a dark edge flared through her stomach and she didn’t like the direction of the conversation. “What are you saying?”
He let her hand go and ran his fingers through his hair as he sat back in his chair. “I thought…it’s just that last night was amazing. Wasn’t it?”
Remembering last night, her heart went a little bonkers, flipping over on itself in time with a bird’s chirp in the garden below. “It was. So amazing. So unexpected.” But she’d made a resolution while lying in bed unable to sleep, and she would stick to it. “I don’t want to talk about last night. It was a onetime thing, a fantasy. We’re not a couple. We work together. The marriage part of our relationship is incidental.”
A heavy block of something landed on her chest and she couldn’t breathe.
Was that all there was for her for the rest of her life? The inability to sleep with a man and barely the ability to have sex with one? What about later, when she didn’t have someone as patient and kind as Warren? Who would care enough to tease out her fantasies, pay enough attention to her to know that she would like being on top when she didn’t even know that about herself?
It was too much. She couldn’t do this intimate breakfast on Warren’s terrace the morning after they’d slept together.
Of course, fleeing to her room didn’t help. She was still completely out of sorts. Warren seemed to understand that she needed space and left her alone.
For about fifteen minutes.
The knock on the door had his authoritative ring to it. The housekeeper had a much lighter touch, and besides, what had Tilda expected, that he’d let his project suffer because she was being difficult about having slept with him?
“Tilda,” he called through the door. “Talk to me. Please.”
And say what? Not talking was much easier and avoidance was her current coping mechanism. She’d sneaked away from Bryan when he’d been on an assignment, she’d left Melbourne the first opportunity Craig had given her and she continually shoved Warren into a box called “work” so she could pretend none of the other stuff was happening.
But that didn’t make it right to run.
She opened the door and his beautiful, masculine presence immediately swelled into the room, filling up places she’d only begun to realize were empty. “I’m sorry. I tend to run away from anything that scares me.”
“That’s part of the problem, Tilda.” His voice betrayed none of his emotions. But his eyes told a different, far more interesting story. “I don’t want to be one of the things that scares you.”
