Playing Mr. Perfect (The Bradens at Ridgeport #1)

Pepper

I wake up Saturday morning to my empty bed but not an empty house. The faint smell of coffee hangs in the air, and the clothes we’d left strewn around the room in our haste to get naked are draped over the chair by the window with the sketch of us from Paris. It feels like a dream, that Clay is here, shattering my comfort zones one at a time. I’ve never had a man spend the night at my house. I lie still, surrounded by his scent on my sheets and my body, expecting to feel strange or anxious about him being here, but I don’t. I like seeing his clothes on my chair and knowing he’s downstairs. That should bring anxiety, too, but it doesn’t. It’s that thought that rattles me.

I climb out of bed, put on the T-shirt he wore under his sweater yesterday, and head into the bathroom. I use the toilet, and as I brush my teeth, I see the evidence of our wild night in the red mark peeking out from beneath the collar of his shirt. I touch it absently, thinking about last night.

After much back-and-forth, Clay somehow convinced me to let him download the footage of our sexy office encounter— We’ll laugh about it when we’re old and gray —before deleting the original and the backup. He talks like we’re a given and we have a future, and he makes it easy to get caught up in it with him. I know we have things to talk about and figure out, but I’ve never felt like this, and I’m not ready to rock the boat.