For a long time.
Neither did she.
And then he finally looked up.
“Listen, Eden, I’m sorry about what I said last night. I was out of line.”
“Well, I did show you my clavicle. You were overcome. I get it. I didn’t run away because of that, Gabe. Sheesh. Sorry I did that.”
“Are you sure? Because it was practically like watching the roadrunner flee the coyote. Like a vrooming sound and cloud of dust.”
“You thoughtthatquestion scared me?”
“Didn’t it?”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. She tucked the hair back.
Damn.
“I thought about it all night, as a matter of fact,” she said.
He almost closed his eyes at the notion of her thinking about sex all night long.
He did and didn’t want to know the answer, he realized.
He wasn’t going to press the point.
“So why’d you split like that?” he asked.
“Mmm... well, Annelise texted that Danny—that’s my assistant and babysitter—had accidentally locked himself out of the house on the roof when he went up there to get Peace and Love down. Peace and Love can get his own sweet self down, but Danny is quite a Boy Scout and saw the need to do the rescue and...”
“Everything turn out okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got the ladder out, and Danny used it to get down and Peace and Love came down over the fence.”
“Oh good. Because I was on pins and needles there for a moment.” His voice had gotten softer. A little drowsier.
Somehow he—they—were closer now.
“Welcome to my life,” she murmured. “Thrills, chills, spills, never a dull mo—”
He stopped her sentence with his lips.
Why then? He didn’t know. It just seemed like the only reasonable thing to do. When you touch something hot, you jerk your hand away; when something you want overwhelmingly isright there, you take it.
His defenses were shattered by the hangover and the coconut hair.
After a millisecond of frozen astonishment, he could feel her go soft as smoke, yielding, which made him nearly savage with want in a very primal way.
But they ended that kiss.
Tacitly.
He sat back a little.
Closed his eyes. Sighed.
Opened them.