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But what is Sebastian Murdoch doing on my sunroom roof?At my bedroom window?
Whatever it is, it can’t be good.
I approach cautiously and notice the corners of his eyes crease in confusion when he spots me. It’s a massive window—about five feet high—but it’s just the bottom part that opens. I unlatch the lock and heave it up, just a foot.
“What are you doing here?” My tone is harsh. Even harsher than I intended.
But it’s Sebastian Murdoch. And he’s on my roof… at my bedroom window. At night. And I don’t trust him. Like, whatever the opposite of trusting him is, that is how I feel toward this guy.
I scan the rest of the roof and then past that to the front yard, but I don’t see anyone else. It doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them, though.
Sebastian doesn’t answer right away. He still looks confused. It’s a look he wears a lot, so it doesn’t really mean anything; only that he is baffled by any situation that falls outside the realm of football and sex and Saturday night keggers.
“Are there other people with you?” I ask, my eyes still darting from him to the yard, and back to him again, over and back, trying to cover all my bases. Just in case.
“Huh?” His eyes narrow even more.
“Are you alone?” I ask. And then, before he can answer, I repeat, “Why are you here?”
It’s almost a full moon outside and I can see him clearly; his flushed cheeks, and bee-stung lips, and the sinful glint in his caramel-colored eyes, even narrowed in confusion the way they are right now. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to Sebastian Murdoch, and it takes all my willpower not to take a step back because he really is“ohmygawd sooo good looking. Like, the total hottest thing to walk this Earth. Ev-er.”
And I hate myself for even thinking it. I hate the idea of siding with any of those idiots about anything. Even if it’s something as shallow as Sebastian Murdoch’s good looks.Especiallysomething as shallow as Sebastian Murdoch’s good looks.
Also, his good looks put me on edge. I’ve been conditioned to recoil from beautiful people—they’ve always been horrible to me, and his closeness makes me itch to retreat into the safety of my bedroom. And that makes me feel weak. Like I’m the one at a disadvantage here, even though he’s the one who infringed onmyterritory. My one refuge from people like him.
His eyes skim my body in a way that starts out as a cursory, almost dismissive glance, but then falters when he takes in my jellyfish-print pajamas. “Uh…” He looks back at my face, with eyes that bring to mind the sort of things I have no place thinking about with a guy like him.
I know his type.
Idespisehis type.
“Is, uh… is Britney here?” he asks.
His voice matches everything else about him: smooth and so very, very male.
“What?”Mytone is anything but smooth. It’s rattled and doesn’t even remotely mask my suspicion. “Who is Britney?”
“Britney McLaren… this is her place, right?” He seems legitimately baffled.
“No. It’smyplace.”
I keep my eyes on his face as he stretches his neck to peer over my shoulder as if I might be hiding this Britney McLaren girl under my dresser or something.
“Are you sure?”
God, his lips are distracting. And his cheek bones… just… Wow. Everything about him makes me feel inadequate. And it’s not like I’m exactly brimming with self-confidence to begin with. Just one more reminder of how unfair life is, because I don’t think Sebastian Murdoch is even a nice guy. Or particularly interesting or remotely intelligent, and yet he still has the power to make me feel like less than him.
Case in point: I have a snarky answer on the tip of my tongue, but I rein it in and keep to my rule of saying as little as possible, with as little inflection as possible. I have become an excellent eggshell-walker over the past couple of years. I am a clam: perpetually sealed shut.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m positive this is my house.”
Still, it’s hard to make a statement like that without sounding at least a little bit snarky. And I could be wrong, but did his cheeks actually just flush?
They’re always kind of flushed though, so it’s probably not embarrassment, but the fact that he just came straight from a spontaneous game of football or frisbee with his friends or something. That’s what popular jocks seem to always be doing in their downtime in movies. I have no idea if that’s accurate or not, but since I have nothing else to go on, I’m going to assume it’s true.
His thumb starts tapping really fast against the windowsill and he drops his gaze. I can’t see his face anymore, and not having those hazel eyes trained on me makes me a little less uneasy. Just a teeny bit less intimidated.
“I thought this was her place…” He looks up again and raises a hand to plaster his messy bangs on top of his head, out of his eyes. “I was supposed to meet her tonight. At her window.”
