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“Brad talked about himself for two hours?” Kenan turned, resting his hips against the railing in the elevator as it came to a stop for a family to file out.
I rolled my eyes. “That he did. He likes himself,” I said sarcastically.
There. I could get us back on safe ground. Just joke about my bad date and lament dating in Fireweed Harbor.
“Well, I haven’t eaten dinner. Let’s get room service,” Kenan suggested.
“You don’t want to go down to the restaurant?” I asked just as the elevator stopped on a different floor and a couple stepped in.
The elevator began moving as Kenan replied, “Not really. There’s supposed to be a football game on. I’d rather kick back and relax. What do you say?”
I should’ve said no, but we were friends, so I usually would say yes. I didn’t want him to get suspicious. At all.
“Sure.” I shrugged lightly. The elevator stopped at another floor before we finally got off on ours.
“Where is your room?” I asked.
We had fallen into step, heading in the same direction. “702.”
“Oh. You’re beside me.”
“Tish must’ve made the reservations for you and Rhys at the same time. She switched his room to mine.” Tish Reeves was the lead executive assistant at Fireweed Industries and helped coordinate travel for staff.
“Mmm,” was all I could manage in reply.
We stopped at the doors to our rooms. “Maybe we have a connecting door,” he said. “Your room or mine?”
I tried to ignore the way my pulse kept revving and the way heat spun fire through my veins.
“You pick,” I rasped.
“I’ll come to yours. I already left my suitcase on my bed. It’ll look messy. I know your room will be tidy.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Do you need to go into your room first?” I asked as I waved my key card in front of the lock.
“Nope.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall.
When my attempt to get the lock to open didn’t work, I waved the key card again, muttering, “I hate these things. It’s bad enough when we used to slide them in, but now you have to wave it just so.”
After two more tries, Kenan held out his palm. “Hand it over, Quinn. That was three tries. Let me have a go at it.”
Our fingers brushed as I handed him the key card. It felt like sparks leaped where we touched. The sensation sizzled up my arm, spinning into my body.
A moment later, he deftly moved it across the sensor pad, the light turned green, and the lock clicked open. “See, easy,” he teased.
“Kenan, the great key card door opener,” I returned dryly, relieved that I could at least slip into our easy banter.
Maybe an hour or so later, we had eaten, and Kenan had lavishly tipped our server when he came to collect the cart of empty plates. I’d been too nervous to eat much, but he’d scarfed down a whole plate of pasta with a cream sauce.
Kenan flopped back down on the couch beside me, while I tried to think of how to get him out of my room. I was flustered, my skin almost itchy from the prickly heat of desire that just wouldn’t dissipate.
We had both kicked our shoes off. Kenan wore jeans with an untucked button-down shirt. My eyes lingered on the vee of skin exposed just above where his collar fell open. He was the kind of guy who always seemed a little bronzed, as if the sun shone just for him all year long, even in the long winters of Alaska. He wasn’t a vain man. I knew he didn’t go out of his way to stay tan.
He stretched his arm across the back of the loveseat. My room had a seating area, but it wasn’t big. Just a small loveseat and another single chair. A part of me wanted to leap out of the loveseat and stay in the chair so an entire coffee table remained between us. But that might draw attention.
Kenan was definitely an eyebrow raiser. He’d given me a look. Hell, he communicated with his eyebrows arching, one or the other up, waggling them and the like.
“So that’s a no to Brad?” he prompted.
