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There wasn’t much she could say or do at that point. Summer was pouting about taking Josh’s new Jaguar instead of a limo. Josh looked annoyed, and Meg was going over her notes for the speech she was giving tonight.
So Caroline just watched as the two gorgeous Campbell brothers prepared to escort their equally beautiful dates to a ball.
In contrast, Caroline was preparing for an evening of Disney movies. Kind of perfect since she was feeling a little bit like a pumpkin.
Meg and Jason kissed Molly goodnight and warned her to be good. Josh said good-bye too,, but there was no warning. Summer stood there. Like a mannequin.
Within a few seconds the voices, the sound of the high heels clicking on the tile, the jingling keys were gone with the partygoers, and Caroline was left with Molly and her cat, who was purring at Caroline’s feet again.
“I’m not stupid, cat. You might look cute, but I’m not going to let you bite me.”
Ironically, that’s the same way she felt about men right at that moment. The cat meowed.
Caroline walked away.
She wasn’t about to be bitten.
* * *
Josh pulledinto the long driveway at Meg and Jason’s house, thankful the evening was over. Summer had caught a ride back to the city with friends after the benefit, and Josh was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
God knew he barely slept last night. Having Caroline in his bed made that pretty much impossible. Even when she’d dozed off, he lay there, watching her sleep. It wasn’t anything he’d ever done before, with any woman, but she was different. He felt the need to watch over her. To make sure she was okay.
Just seeing her before they left for the benefit got his blood humming. She had been a total mess, and looked at him like he’d kicked a puppy, but he’d still felt drawn to her. And thinking about how touching her would make him feel.
He was in such trouble.
She hadn’t been all too happy about seeing him either, and he could only imagine what she thought of Summer.Summer.Pretty girl, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Caroline in terms of brain power, and as a result his evening was filled with insipid chatter about what everyone was wearing at the dinner. At least her friends could give her the limo ride she so wanted.
Very different from the evening he’d shared with Caroline the night before.
When he got into the mud room, he saw a light glowing from somewhere near the kitchen, and as he entered the main part of the house, he heard a familiar tick-tick-tick sound of someone’s fingers tapping on a keyboard.
The light was coming from the den and that’s where Josh found Caroline sitting cross-legged on the plush, over-sized sofa, her computer in her lap, totally zoned on whatever she was doing.
He approached her from behind and watched. She was writing. The words were flying onto the page and Caroline had no idea he was even in the room. It was a wild thing to watch. He’d seen athletes in the zone, and he assumed it was the same thing for her. She was working the page, typing so fast he couldn’t follow her fingers.
The shocker came when he saw what she was writing.
Sex.
Hot, sweaty sex. The girl may not have a lot of experience, but she had a hell of an imagination.
He read over her shoulder for a minute and let himself get drawn in. It was kind of amazing because she was writing about sex from her male character’s point of view. And she was doing it pretty well. There were just a few things she could have tweaked. Mostly that the guy, Travis, wouldn’t be thinking so much. Why did women always want men to think so damn much?
She was writing something now about a burn.A burn? Eh. He felt a lot of things during sex, but no burning. She should fix that.
“I don’t think that’s right.” There was no way for Josh to predict how Caroline was going to react.
“AHHHHHH!” She jumped and had to clutch her computer to keep it from falling, and the look on her face was a wash of emotions he couldn’t read. “What the hell! Oh, my God! Are you crazy?”
“What?”
“You scared the shit out of me!” Caroline flipped the laptop closed and held it to her chest like a shield, all while trying to steady her breath. She looked really shaken. Instinctively, Josh reached out, laying his hands on her shoulders. The second he touched her he knew he’d made a mistake. Both of them froze and Caroline’s face told him everything.
“Josh, um...”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He was whispering, wanting to soothe her, reassure her. “I’m sorry.”
