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"I’m sorry," he apologized.
Her eyes opened, and she could see the sincerity and concern in his gaze. "You don’t have to apologize. It was an accident."
He grinned down at her in amusement, and she felt like she’d missed something. "What?" she snapped.
"Nothing." He shook his head.
"No. Tell me." Maybe it was because she’d grown up in a big family, or maybe it was because she was a middle child, but shehatedbeing left out of things.
"I think you’re the first person who has ever said that."
She wasn’t following. "Said what?"
"I don’t need to apologize. It’s not something I do often."
Her lips curled. "Really?"
"Really. It’s a running joke in my family."
Laura was sure that her hormones were grabbing at straws, but finding out they shared an aversion to apologizing suddenly felt like the most romantic thing in the world. Everything in her was screaming for her to lean forward and press her lips to his.
If the look in his eyes was any indication, she wasn’t the only one with kissing on the mind. She felt her eyes close and the heat of his breath on her face. Somehow, she knew that if she didn’t do anything, Knox would be kissing her in five, four, three, two...
Before she got to one, she stood abruptly, causing the ice pack to fall to the ground.
Knox rose from his crouched position. "What are you—"
"I have to... I forgot I have... I have to go." Laura dropped the keys on the table and rushed out.
Her stammering exit wasn’t the most graceful, but as the door shut behind her and she rushed down the stairs, she was thankful that she’d been able to do it.
Not even five minutes alone with him, and she’d been ready and willing to kiss him. And if that man kissed herhalfas good as he looked, smelled, and sounded, she might be willing to forget about marriage and babies. Which was why she needed to stay away from him.
Her assessment had been right—Knox Savage was dangerous.
8
"What arethe odds of him being my tenant?" Laura asked her friend Kennedy, who was on FaceTime, as she washed her face and did her six-part nighttime skin routine.
In her twenties, Laura had slept with her makeup on or just used soap or whatever over-the-counter generic face wash was the cheapest. But now, in her mid-thirties, she couldn’t be so blasé about her skin. She cleansed, toned, moisturized, serumed, undereye creamed, and derma-rolled.
"Well, it is a small town with limited housing options, soooo..."
Laura knew that Kennedy was right. Whisper Lake was the size of a postcard, and the housing options were limited due to the influx of tourists. Short-term rentals were few and far between in the summer because most people wanted to charge higher rates with a greater turnover.
But for Laura’s purposes, having a three-month lease showed stability. She wasn’t just thinking in the short term. And she might need that proof of rentability if she were going to sell. Which was an idea she’d been toying with for the past year since she’d started investigating fertility clinics. If she was going to go down the having a baby alone road and was able to get pregnant, she was going to move back to Destiny Springs, where she could be around her family and have support.
It might be different if she was with a partner, but alone, she was going to need all the help she could get.
"So what happened?" Kennedy’s blue eyes flickered with interest. "Did he ask you out again?"
"No."
"Was he flirty?"
The closest he’d come to flirting with her was when he’d called her "good girl," which had been replaying in her head on repeat. But besides that, he’d been friendly but not flirty. She had thought he was about to kiss her, but from the confused look on his face when she’d made her hasty exit, she was starting to think she might have imagined that due to her head injury.
"Not really." Laura had to admit she’d been a tad disappointed by his lack of interest. He’d been attentive to her head wound, but he hadn’t brought up dinner again or even flashed his dimples at her.
