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He tried to yank his arm from under her head, but found it was stuck fast. By what, he couldn’t tell because of the placement of Teagan’s head.Andthe rest of her, which was currently flush against his front, her warmth and her scent flooding over him suddenly and drawing attention to the fact that he was afflicted in other places, not just his left arm.
This affliction, thankfully, couldn’t be attributed solely to her. It was a normal one. Especially considering the nature of the appendage currently afflicted.
It was morning. This had happened every morning since he was thirteen. Usually, however, it never happened while snuggled against Teagan Madden. More specifically, against her backside. That wasn’t helping matters, now that he thought about it.
He could only assume Teagan would feel a somewhat comparable degree of grogginess upon waking, but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t likely be as retrospective as he was. In fact, she’d likely kick one of her long legs back to afflict him in a very different way if he didn’t handle the extraction of himself from her side with great delicacy.
The tablecloth approach would be the best method, he decided, taking a deep breath and whipping his arm from beneath her as smoothly as he could muster.
Unfortunately, the thing that was keeping his arm from moving before was the fact that his and Teagan’s hands had become clasped during the night, fingers intertwined and tightly held. Therefore, his ‘tablecloth approach’ only succeeded in flipping Teagan around to face him, dragging her face against the floor and waking her suddenly nose to nose with him.
“Jaxon?” she mumbled, reaching up to rub her forehead. “What did… why… oh God, why are we—”
He didn’t have any time to answer her litany of questions, however, because at that moment, a set of keys jingled in the front door and none other than Shea Madden pushed it open, her eyes going even wider as she swallowed back her surprise at seeing the two of them enveloped in what, by all outside accounts, could be seen as a passionate embrace.
What Shea was doing with the spare set of keys he’d given Brad, Jaxon had no clue, but there were other more pressing matters to be attended to first. He was at least thankful it was Shea who’d discovered them and not Brad.
Teagan’s mouth flew open, and he reached for her with his good arm, clapping his hand over her just in time to muffle her cry of surprise.
They both must have looked petrified, because Shea’s evil grin disappeared and instead she called over her shoulder, “Brad, it’s weird. He’s not here. Maybe we should come back later?”
“What? Bullshit, his car’s here. And also… one that looks suspiciously like Teagan’s… Jaxon’s new bird drives the same car as Teagan. Isn’t that funny?”
“Shit…” Jaxon hissed, rolling over and looking around for his trousers. He found them in the corner, apparently having been kicked down there sometime during the night. He reached for them, dropping them on the floor again because his blasted arm was still asleep.
So there he was, hopping around the living room in his boxers, trying to pull on his trousers with one hand.
Shea was saying everything she could to keep Brad from concluding he was bound to come to.
And Teagan was just sitting there on the floor, frozen to the spot, facing telling Brad the truth. In fact, the only thing that got Teagan to jump up off the floor was Brad’s silhouette in the doorway. He stopped dead when he saw Jaxon. He let out a sort of death rattle when he saw Teagan.
This was it. The end of his and Brad’s friendship. They’d had a good run, hadn’t they? Fifteen years or so?
“I thought you said he wasn’t here,” Brad muttered finally, directing his question to Shea, who looked between them with nothing but sympathy in her eyes. He brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Jaxon couldn’t see his eyes for the dark sunglasses that covered them, but if he had to venture a guess, they were likely bloodshot and dry.
“Trick of the light. The sun hit my eyes just so and I couldn’t see a damn thing. “You should get curtains in here, Jaxon,” Shea said, walking into the room and standing beside Teagan, who was practically shaking apart.
“I didn’t know you were bringing Shea,” Jaxon replied. “Thought you were bringing Dave.”
“He’s coming later,” Brad replied from behind his hand. “He was worse off than I was this morning.”
Jaxon changed tactics. “Or, at least I thought you’d be coming later in the day than—”
His phone was somewhere not on his person, so Shea supplied the time. “Twelve forty-eight.”
“Later than one in the afternoon,” he finished lamely.
Ignoring Jaxon’s unhelpful rambling, Brad turned to his sister. The one trembling in the middle of Jaxon’s living room. Not Shea. “Teagan, what’s —” Brad began.
“We’re seeing each other,” Teagan blurted, her eyes wide as she glanced over at Jaxon with something between a plea and a warning. More plea, though.
Jaxon blinked rapidly, freezing where he was, one leg in his trousers, and the other not.Whathad she just said?
Her eyebrows knit and she bit down on her bottom lip. Her eyes were wide and watery and, and he was thinking she had him wrapped around her finger the same as everyone else in her life because, for some idiotic reason, he was nodding.
“Yes, we… we’ve been seeing each other, and we felt it wasn’t something we wanted to go public with. To our friends and family…” he stammered, his gaze ping-ponging between Teagan and Brad.
“Yet,” Teagan finished for him. “We wanted to be certain it was real before we told anyone.”
