Chapter 20
TWENTY
LIKE ON HER FIRST visit, he gave her a tee-shirt, shorts, and a toothbrush. Not just any toothbrush. Her toothbrush, the one he’d kept since her last visit. He kept it. Wonders never ceased. That suggested he’d expected her back.
She had a toothbrush. At Bastian’s.
Sorry, that required a moment of… huh.
As promised, after setting her up in the same bedroom as before, he left her alone.
She didn’t stop him from leaving, even when he hesitated.
No matter how much she wanted him to stay, she did not want to wake up on top of him…
again. Liberties like that shouldn’t be repeated.
Once was an accident, twice was pathological.
Despite the warmth of the room and the luxurious covers, her second experience sleeping there didn’t match the first. They weren’t in the same ballpark. Not with him so tantalizingly close, yet completely out of reach.
Kind, generous, understanding. A man like Bastian shouldn’t be alone.
Everything about him suggested a desire to share, to care.
He needed a companion. He deserved children, friends, family.
He was built to be part of something. Half of a whole.
For whatever reason, he’d decided he didn’t want a romantic relationship with anyone.
It had to be his conscious choice. No other explanation made sense.
His determination and perseverance were apparent in everything he did.
He didn’t leave things like that to chance.
If he wanted romance, he’d have gone out there and got it.
Maybe Robyn hurt him and he was still raw.
Guilt crept in. Bastian knew almost everything about her personal life. He’d asked questions and been so attentive. To her shame, she hadn’t paid the same attention in return. She would fix that. He’d been her confidant, now she would be his.
That was her last thought before falling asleep and the first when she woke up. On leaving her bedroom, she ran down the stairs.
“May I borrow a pen?” Harper asked, reaching the kitchen.
At the opposite side of the kitchen island, Bastian stopped chopping fruit. His concentration ebbed. The flash of his dimple reinforced her faith. Did she put that there? Could he be pleased to see her? Sheesh, talk about excitable. Calm down.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked, popping a fruit segment into his mouth.
“I did,” she said, smoothing her hands from waist to hip.
It hadn’t occurred to her to be self-conscious about coming downstairs in his tee-shirt with mussed hair, not until she was faced with him.
“Good.”
Oh, it would be so easy to lose herself in his mesmerizing dimple. Tugging the hem of his tee-shirt down on her thighs, she was grateful to have, at least, donned underwear. In her defense, appearing for breakfast in a cocktail dress wouldn’t have been much better.
“Did you?” she asked. “Did you sleep well?”
He half-shrugged and put the chopped fruit into the blender. His tee-shirt was far too big for her. When the neck slid down her arm, she didn’t bother pulling it up. It would only fall again anyway.
“What does that mean?” she asked. “That shrug?”
“Are you hungry?”
Damn man was bullheaded. He was really going to ignore the question and expect her to let it go without getting an answer. Getting to know him would be more difficult if he resisted.
She wasn’t going to yield that easily. “What’s the shrug?”
“I’m an insomniac.”
Great, now she felt even worse. “You didn’t sleep?”
“I slept a little; it comes and goes.”
“You should’ve woken me,” she said, rounding the center island.
“What would you have done?”
“Bored you to sleep,” she said and smiled. “I’m a tongue twister expert. I know them all. It’s my party piece.”
Stealing a hunk of fruit from beside him, she popped it in her mouth just as he turned his smile her way. The unexpected whirr of the blender startled her, though not as much as the splatter of fruit that followed.
“Shit,” he mumbled as she squealed.
The grump complemented his frown. She, on the other hand, couldn’t hide her smile. It wasn’t like him to be out of sorts.
“Are you okay?” she asked, resting a hand on his bicep.
“Yeah, I… that sweet scent…”
When his attention dropped to her bare legs, she wiggled her lilac-frosted toenails. “Are you surprised I have legs?”
“Didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to see them.”
In relaxing him, she melted. “Your shorts wouldn’t stay up. Thanks for the tee-shirt.”
“Now I regret giving it to you,” Bastian said. “I might have got to see more of you if I kept it to myself.”
Being around him was so easy. Right there, she wouldn’t dwell on the show they put on for the outside world. This was a rare chance to chill and drop the pretense.
“We should clean this up,” she said, scooping some of the fruit goop from his arm then sucking it into her mouth. “This is good.”
“My secret recipe,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”
“I do,” she said, wiping more from him and licking her finger again.
“It tastes like you smell,” he said, running a fingertip across her temple. “I use peaches with the berries now… because of you.”
Whatever was in the blender tasted good. Or maybe that was enhanced by its source. She picked up a lump of peach from his wrist and sucked it into her mouth.
In apparent response, he took a long backward step.
Enjoying the new treat, she’d missed the sterner angle of his brow and the tension rippling his shoulders.
Uh… “You okay?”
“Don’t do that.”
Yeah, she shouldn’t eat fruit straight from her exhausted host, that was kinda rude.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t apologize, just—”
“Tell me about Robyn.”
He faltered. His pained expression faded in lieu of confusion.
“Robyn?”
Decision made, she wouldn’t beat around the bush. Bastian hosted her last night, he’d saved her from embarrassment in front of Damon and introduced her to his family. No, she was in no hurry to introduce him to her folks, but that was a whole different ball of wax she’d reserve for another time.
Friendship. Attentive friendship. That was what he deserved. And what better place to start than with his last heartache. That was the kind of thing friends talked about.
“Your ex. Your last significant ex. Were you serious?”
Stupid question. If the relationship wasn’t serious, would Robyn have met the Hunt family?
Although… she’d met the Hunt family and they weren’t even dating.
What did that tell her? Not to make assumptions, that’s what.
Her assumptions were almost always wrong, but they wouldn’t be assumptions if they didn’t just pop into her head as pseudofact, would they?
She wouldn’t judge him, he’d never judged her. This was a good man. One who didn’t deserve to be mistreated by anyone, certainly not by a woman entrusted with his heart. If she found out this Robyn woman hurt him, she’d wage all-out war.
Still, it appeared he didn’t understand the question. In his defense, why would he expect her to ask or care when she hadn’t before?
“I wouldn’t say she was significant,” he said. “We went out for four, five months.”
“When did you break up?” Harper asked.
“November, maybe December. Why are you asking about Robyn?”
She slid onto a nearby high stool. “You know about Damon,” she said. “We’ve talked about our families and you made the effort to get to know me. I haven’t returned that kindness. I’m sorry, Bastian. I didn’t mean to be so selfish.”
When his dimple peeked at her, she guessed he didn’t feel the same way.
“We had to be a couple in front of your family and friends,” he said. “We had to prioritize.”
At the time, sure, she’d give him that. Since then, things had developed, for better or worse.
“Now we have to be a couple in front of yours,” Harper said. Bastian began cleaning up. “Give me that.” She took the cloth from him and rinsed it out before carrying on. “I need a pen and a piece of paper… please.”
Bastian rested a hand on her hip to step in behind her, reaching for a drawer. Before he got there, she bent at the waist to pick fruit from the crossbar of a stool and—whoa. Bastian’s other hand found her opposite hip and—
She froze.
Her tee-shirt had ridden up, now Bastian was behind her, holding her hips… and he wasn’t letting go. But she wasn’t backing off either. Should she? Should she slip free? Oh, she didn’t want to.
Her heart thundered behind her ribs sending blood rushing straight to her dizzied head. Her inner muscles clenched, anticipating the forbidden. Oh, bad idea. Bad idea. Good sense understood nothing could happen, her heart wasn’t so sure, whereas her libido missed the message of the myth altogether.
This wasn’t a real relationship.
It wasn’t any relationship.
Being in the home of a gorgeous man first thing in the morning, in a state of undress, mutual undress, didn’t mean there was anything between them or that this was going anywhere.
Those strong, capable hands slid up to her waist. There was little pressure in the move, but the tee-shirt hitched up further. Her thong wouldn’t hide much. Other than that scrap of fabric, she was naked from the waist down.
It should be awkward and uncomfortable. There, together in his kitchen, silent, her body bent over in front of his, it was almost inviting him in. Like a confession she’d submit to whatever his body required, she just stayed there, exposed for his visual consumption.
When one hand moved, she stopped breathing, anticipating where it might explore next.
A shrill ring wrung a gasp from her lungs. She straightened up so fast, her back bounced against his chest. His palm skimmed from her waist around to splay on her upper abdomen, steadying her, encouraging her to lean on him.
The shock subsided and… what was…Something pressed into her spine… some—that thick, powerful shaft betrayed his reaction to their… proximity.
He was hard.
Oh, God—and there was something else, his pulse raced too. So fast that it was difficult to differentiate his from her own, frantic, eager, deafening beat.
The ring came again.