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A sound decision. If only her body believed it, and sitting this close to him did serious damage to her equilibrium.
Faking a yawn, she stretched. “Actually, I think I’m pretty beat. I might give the movie a miss.”
He was onto her.
She could see it in the slight narrowing of his eyes, the uncharacteristic downturn of his beautiful mouth.
“Cam, you can’t go on avoiding me forever. We live in the same apartment and I rarely see you.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his where it rested on the sofa, and she struggled not to snatch it away. His palm radiated heat, and on top of her wavering hormones, it wasn’t a good combination.
“What happened to hanging out as friends? Surely we can do that?”
“Of course,” she murmured, clamping down on the strongest urge to turn her hand palm up and intertwine her fingers with his. “I’ve been super busy, that’s all.”
He could’ve pushed the issue and made her confront the truth, but he was too much of a nice guy and she knew it.
Giving a gentle tug on her hand, leaving her no option but to lean toward him, he said, “So you’re not running scared?”
“Of what?”
Releasing her hand to slide his palm up her arm in a slow, sensuous caress, he bridged the short distance between them to whisper in her ear, “Us.”
One tiny syllable with so many connotations.
Us, as in the giddy, impulsive, head over heels in love youngsters they’d been? Or us, as in the older, wiser, mature adults they’d become?
It was the latter that scared her the most, because if she’d loved Blane, a twenty-one-year-old struggling tradesman with a thirst for adventure, what hope did she have of not falling for the sexier, mature, successful version?
She didn’t move, savoring the sensation of his breath fanning against her cheek before he pulled away and released her arm, every cell in her body on high alert, crying out for more.
“Let me guess. You’re going to say there is no us.”
Amusement tinged his voice rather than rancour and her mouth twitched despite the urge to deny, deny, deny as he’d predicted.
Shrugging, she toyed with a stray popcorn kernel that lay in her lap. “We’re friends, so that’s an ‘us’ of sorts.”
“Friends. Right.”
He didn’t believe her. He knew she was a fraud. That with every passing day it was getting harder and harder not to fall under his spell all over again.
Pushing to his feet, he rubbed his hands together as if concocting some grand Machiavellian scheme.
“Then you won’t object to catching up asfriendsthis weekend. After all, it’s your first weekend off in months and I’ve been very patient and—”
“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point.” Grateful he’d put some much needed distance between their bodies, she tilted her head to look up at him. “What did you have in mind?”
Thrusting his hands in his pockets that resulted in an eye-catching display of soft cotton pulled taut across his broad shoulders, he said, “Leave it to me. Whatever I come up with, rest assured, it’ll be mighty friendly.”
He winked, and as Blane headed for his bedroom, she wondered what on earth she’d got herself into now.
Chapter Eight
Blane stared at Cam as she dismounted the jet-ski, the expanding tightness in his chest scaring the hell out of him.
He couldn’t be having a heart attack. He’d had his annual physical last month and the doc had pronounced him fit and healthy for the average twenty-seven-year-old that had spent the bulk of his life doing manual labor before trading his tools for a desk.
If his heart was fine, the tension in the vicinity of that organ could only mean one thing.
