Chapter 21
HE’S VERY INCONVENIENT FOR A CONVENIENCE STORE HEIR
Daphne
I’m not trying to bait Oliver by lounging on his bed and eating Lava Cheese Puffs when he returns from grabbing his bag, but it’s very clear that irritating him is exactly what I’m doing.
Let’s be real though.
I irritate him by breathing.
I scoot to one side and gesture to the other.
“Look. I found the reality TV channel. Have you ever watched Romance Castle? They drop two dozen men and women into a run-down castle somewhere in Europe and see who runs out screaming first. Usually they’re haunted and the electricity never works right and you never know what kind of animal will break in and freak them out. ”
He stares at me like he can’t decide if I’m messing with him on purpose or not. “If you made any phone calls, I’ll see it on the bill.”
“Dude. I’m not making phone calls. I’m an irresponsible brat who’s gonna love all of the attention I get when I show back up at home after everyone thinks I’ve gone missing and died.”
Why am I like this?
Why?
I don’t want to be an asshole, but Oliver looks at me and issues an order, and I answer in my favorite way without thinking.
And now he’s probably realizing that if I don’t check in at home, someone’s going to notice, and that’s going to be a problem.
If I were making the face that he’s making, that’s exactly what I’d be thinking.
But if he is, he doesn’t say it. Instead, he drops a duffel bag on the floor—one of the money bags—and turns with his suitcase in his other hand. “I’m taking a shower.”
“Cool. Don’t use all of the hot water.”
And now his expression is exactly what you’d expect of someone who has no idea the hot water might ever run out.
“That happens in regular houses or apartments,” I tell him. “My roommate has a friend who’s been staying over a lot this summer”—he’s her brother, but that’s none of Oliver’s business—“and he is such a hot-water hog.”
Oliver doesn’t thank me for the information.
He ignores me and carries his suitcase into the bathroom and pulls the sliding barn door shut behind him.
And then sighs very, very loudly.
It’s probably the echo of the sigh against the tile in the bathroom making the sound louder as it slips between the cracks of the door.
Barn doors for the bathrooms in hotel rooms might look pretty, but they do not give the kind of privacy someone like Oliver would probably prefer.
It’s no picnic for me either, honestly.
I have to turn the television volume up to keep from hearing the sounds of him unzipping his pants.
Tossing his clothes on the floor.
Turning on the shower.
Sliding the shower door.
Is it possible to hear water hitting naked skin?
Because I’m positive I can hear water hitting naked skin.
And now I’m thinking about Oliver completely naked.
Head arched, water hitting his neck and collarbones, sluicing down his solid chest and abs to where he—
Stop it, Daphne.
I snap my attention back to the television, where Heidi from Scranton is arguing with Todd from Portland about something to do with the plumbing in the castle.
Plumbing.
Water.
Naked Oliver.
I should’ve called Bea while he was gone, but I didn’t know how long he’d be, I can’t see the car from our windows, and I didn’t want to get caught with my new burner phone.
I powered it up long enough to check and make sure she hadn’t texted, and then powered it off and shoved it back into my dirty laundry.
Oliver sighs again.
This one sounds like the sigh of a man who’s having his first hot shower in weeks.
You know the one.
The water is a miracle and I can’t get enough and how do I get to live in times when I can turn a knob and have this magical device on the wall pound my shoulders with hot water? sigh.
The kind of sigh that makes a woman want to join him, because if he thinks hot water in a shower is great, he should know about a few other things you can do in a shower.
I dial up the volume a little more while I fan myself.
Is the air conditioning not working in here?
Or is there steam coming from the crack between the barn door and the frame? Is that why it’s getting hot?
I can’t see in the bathroom, but I can imagine what’s happening in there, and—yep.
That’s the problem.
Me imagining Oliver naked is making me sweat.
I try to imagine him in the tighty-whities, and instead of the slender, almost meek frame I remember, I see tight muscles and a trim waist with a man-V sloping down from his hips, and him grabbing his own—
What the hell is wrong with me?
I shovel too many Lava Cheese Puffs into my mouth and stare at the TV again.
I’ve lost the plot.
Both of my life and the TV show.
I have myself under control by the time Oliver steps back out of the bathroom thirty minutes later.
But unfortunately for me, he walks out without a shirt on.
And he does, in fact, have one of those man-V’s sloping down from his hips, disappearing beneath his gray cotton shorts.
Much broader shoulders than I remember him having.
Biceps of steel.
No six-pack, but he’s not flexing, so I’m not writing it off.
And his thighs—the definition of his thighs over his knees, beneath the hem of his cotton shorts—if I took a picture and framed it back home in Athena’s Rest, at least a half-dozen old women would call and accuse me of distributing pornography, and many, many, many more people would ask how much to buy a print for themselves.
And don’t get me started on how it’s undeniably obvious that he’s not wearing underwear beneath those shorts.
Did the man run a multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate the past few years, or did he take up training for that obstacle course show with all of the swinging and jumping and climbing and dodging?
And to have the nerve to walk out of the bathroom with his hair still wet and his face unshaved too?
I try to eat another Lava Cheese Puff and miss my mouth.
“Stop eating on my bed,” he says, sounding bored.
I snatch the cheese puff up and shove it in my face again, this time hitting my mouth. “You gonna want dinner, or was the fish enough for you?” I ask.
He stares at me.
It’s a pointed stare.
A get out of my way stare.
I roll my eyes and lumber slowly off his bed.
He hits the button on the back of the TV to turn it off.
I hit the button on the remote to turn it back on.
We do that dance another thirty seconds or so before he lunges for me and claims the remote too.
I get a whiff of lemon and fresh-cut grass again and a brush of hot, still-damp skin against my arm.
He’s traveling with his favorite body wash or shampoo or something, and it reminds me of a cold glass of lemonade after a long day working along the road, and I want to sniff him more.
Get it under control, Daphne.
Like I can help it.
This is dangerous.
Boundary-pushing.
I’m slipping into the same old habits, with the same old person who’s…not the same old person I’d subtly test whenever I saw him with my sister.
He’s from my past and a complete stranger at the same time.
So while I might try to act the same, his reactions are anything but.
“I’m going to sleep,” he informs me. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret when I find out about it.”
Little too late for that.
Except for the part where he doesn’t have to find out I’ve suddenly realized he’s a grown-ass man and I kind of like him bossy.
He grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me to one side, strides past me, yanks the blackout curtains shut, and then flops face-first onto the bed.
He doesn’t even pull the covers back.
Simply flops down, the curve of his back and shoulders and gray-cotton-covered ass on full display.
Taking up the entire king-size bed himself.
“Yeah, I wasn’t hungry either,” I mutter.
“You haven’t stopped eating all day. Be quiet and go to sleep.”
“It’s five thirty.”
“It’s midnight somewhere.”
He slaps at the nightstand until his hand connects with the switch that turns off the wall lamp, and the room plunges into mostly darkness.
“Don’t,” he says to me, like he knows I was a hairsbreadth from asking him if he’s going to get under the covers.
I shift to the couch—tiny couch built for two, definitely not a full-size couch—and move my bags off of it.
He audibly sighs again, like the rustle of the plastic bags is irritating him.
“I have this app on my phone—” I start.
Naturally, he doesn’t let me finish. “I have every app in the known universe for sleep assistance and sound cancellation, and they’re all shit.”
“If none of the apps work, maybe the real problem is—”
He growls.
I stop talking.
Not because he growled.
More because I liked it.
He’s Margot’s ex, I remind myself.
Margot wouldn’t recognize him if he leapt in front of her stark naked in the middle of a boardroom meeting, I retort to myself.
As if that would ever happen.
Which is part of why she wouldn’t recognize him, but also, he wouldn’t do it.
Or would he?
In fact, I think this Oliver might if it would get him whatever he wanted.
I test the couch to see if it’s a pull-out bed, discover it’s not, and stifle a sigh of my own before curling up into myself and trying to position the single throw pillow appropriately for me to rest here.
I’m hungrier than I want to admit out loud, and I’m exhausted too, but I miss my freaking stuffed lobster that I sleep with every night at home and I’m too keyed up to sleep.
So I lie there, waiting for his breathing to even out.
It doesn’t.
He flops to one side.
Sighs heavily.
Wrestles with the covers until he’s underneath them.
Flops to his other side.
Sits up and beats a pillow.
Flings himself back down again.
Breathes heavily, but never steadily.
It’s like he can’t fall asleep either.