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“I won’t, I promise. Cross my heart and everything.”
It was going to be difficult not to laugh, she was sure of it. The whole situation was so ridiculous. How had she found herself here? But, if that’s what he needed, then she would do her best, even if the margaritas and the promise of a potential future seduction from this beautiful man were fizzing inside her veins.
“Well, since you were out, I decided to try doing my laundry for the first time.”
Kate suspected that he meant doing laundry for the first time ever, not just for the first time in this apartment.
Her suspicions were confirmed when Emile grabbed an item from the pile on the table and held it up in front of him. It looked like a child’s T-shirt. A slightly wonky child’s T-shirt.
“I’m taking it that it didn’t go so well?” she said.
“I don’t know what happened. It all just came out… small.”
His face was so bewildered, it was almost like a little boy whose ice cream had melted and he didn’t understand why. The rest of him, however… very much a grown man. It was a confusing spectacle.
“Emile?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you naked?”
“Oh. I was trying to be efficient. Do all of my laundry at the same time, so I only had to do it once. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
There was a strange kind of logic to that, she supposed.
“So… all of your clothes have shrunk? Everything?”
“Everything.” He sounded dejected, still clutching the tiny T-shirt.
“Okay, we can solve this.”
“Can we?”
“Yes. But first, you need to go and put on a towel or something because I can’t fix this if I have to have my eyes closed.”
“You don’t have to close your eyes…”
Still peering through her fingers, Kate caught his eye and saw him smirk.
“You’re so full of it.” She couldn’t help but smile behind her hand.
“Don’t pretend you’re not tempted.” He raised an eyebrow at her and she shut her fingers. Of course she was tempted. The glimpses she had caught were more than tempting. The muscles she’d felt under her hands when they’d kissed… well, they were even better when revealed. But that was beside the point, wasn’t it? She already knew Emile was attractive and that she was attracted to him. The reason she’d been out tonight, and the three nights before, was to avoid this very temptation.
“It doesn’t matter if I am. We agreed, remember?”
“I know what we agreed on. But I know that we’re both human. And it’s human nature to be curious.”
He shrugged, dropping the T-shirt and sauntering off to the bathroom. As he walked away, she allowed herself to drop her hand and take an unimpeded look at his disappearing figure. He looked like he’d been hewn from marble, all long lines and a perfect peachy ass. How was he real?
“I know you’re looking,” he called back at her and she flushed.
“So what if I am?” she shot back.
He only laughed at that, a cocky sound that should have annoyed her but didn’t, for some reason. Emile was a strange mixture. At times, he was so confident that he was bordering on arrogant and then, at others, like with the laundry and the washing up, he was the opposite. Never nervous, exactly, but definitely unsure of himself. She wondered how many people got to see that side of him; she noticed with the customers that he only ever projected his confidence. It was when they were alone in the kitchen or the apartment that she saw glimpses of his uncertainty.
When he sauntered back into the room, a towel slung low over his hips, she felt a kick of arousal deep in her stomach. She’d never known someone look so comfortable in their skin. Obviously, he was gorgeous. Carved muscle. A smattering of chest hair. A geometric-looking tattoo covering one shoulder. But it was more than that. It was the way he carried himself like he was born for greatness, like he had no reason to worry in all the world, that stopped her in her tracks. He raised an eyebrow when he caught her looking and she abruptly turned away, embarrassed.
Kate sifted through the pile of clothes on the table, all of them misshapen and shrunken in some way.
