21. Friday
CHAPTER 21
FRIDAY
“O h my god again with the fucking geese,” Maggie groaned into her pillow. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, steeling herself for the blinding sun shooting through the cottage’s hinky curtains. When she opened them, she was greeted instead by the lower half of a leanly muscled torso propped up against the headboard.
And she definitely wasn’t in the cottage.
And this was not her pillow.
Shit .
Obviously, she had stayed over at Becker’s. Again. She hadn’t once been tempted to make that mistake in years. And this was twice. Twice was a pattern.
How did she keep letting this happen? A hookup had seemed safe enough. Extending that into friends with benefits territory had been a calculated risk. But sleeping—actually sleeping—with Daniel Becker? That meant the intimacy of bedhead, and morning breath, and bickering over the blankets. And that wasn’t something she had room for in her life.
She needed to have a firm chat with herself later. But first she had to get out. Of bed, of the cabin, possibly of the country.
“Good morning!”
Maggie craned her neck to look up and squinted, bleary-eyed, into Daniel Becker’s smiling face, then smushed her head back into the pillow. She took a moment to collect herself. To take stock. First order of business: what, if any, clothing did she have on? She wiggled a little, trying to feel the twist of a tangled shirt around her waist or the elastic of her underwear digging into her skin. Nothing but sheets. Fantastic.
She pushed herself up, rolled over, and sat cross-legged, holding the sheet up to her chest. Modesty was really not her thing, but she felt so…naked. Her hair was probably a tangled mess. And she hadn’t brushed her teeth. Her mouth felt cottony and pungent. Why would anyone intentionally wake up next to anyone else, ever?
“Ok, I’m up,” she grumbled. She could barely hear herself over the honking geese.
“Really thought you’d be more of a morning person,” Daniel said with a disgusting amount of cheer.
“I am a morning person,” Maggie groaned.
She was. She usually was. She didn’t feel like one at the moment. Her body was heavy, and she felt a little like throwing up. She’d probably only slept a couple hours. Historically, she could do a week or two on less than four hours of sleep a night without it really getting to her — work could be intense around project deadlines, and she’d pulled more than a few all-nighters with her team. Maybe she was getting old.
“If you say so.”
Maggie could feel him grinning. Ugh. “I’m a morning person when the morning is preceded by a good night’s sleep.”
“Did something keep you up?” he asked innocently.
“You’re enjoying this.” She took a few deep breaths. The nausea was not getting any better and the geese were somehow only increasing their volume.
“A lot.” Daniel was so genuinely pleased to be teasing her in bed too early in the morning that he seemed not at all put out by the invasion of waterfowl. His sunny warmth might begin to thaw even her resolutely frozen heart. Better put the kibosh on that.
“Fucking geese,” she said, throwing off the sheet and letting the motion propel her out of bed and over to the dresser like she was ripping off the getting-up band-aid. “At least they’re not just our problem, I guess.”
“Where do you think they go when they’re not at Blue Harbor?”
“Back to the cursed dimension from which they sprang forth,” Maggie said, opening the top drawer of the old wooden chest. Shirts. Excellent. She picked out one of Becker’s wardrobe of identical solid-colored crew necks — a dark navy, since she hadn’t worn a bra over last night, and she was about to be traipsing across a children’s summer camp in broad daylight. At least her breasts were not particularly bouncy. “Can I borrow this?” But she had already pulled it over her head.
Becker wasn’t much taller than her — an inch or two, maybe — and he was relatively lean, so the shirt fit her surprisingly well. It was a little looser than one she’d pick out for herself, probably the size up, but a stranger seeing her on the street wouldn’t have any reason to think that she hadn’t chosen it out of her own closet. The stranger might wonder why she had no pants on, though. She headed toward the door to the living room in search of her underwear.
They were not on the kitchen floor. They were also, thankfully, not on the table or any of the counters. They weren’t hanging on any of the chairs, although she did find the paisley necktie in a heap near the table.
Maggie felt her entire body flush and her stomach clench. God last night was…something else.
Focus. This was not the time. She turned away to search the living room.
Unfortunately, her underwear were not just conveniently lying on the carpet. They hadn’t, apparently, been tossed over the back of the couch or onto the coffee table. She checked to see if they’d somehow gotten caught in the lampshade but no dice. Could they be, somehow, under the couch?
There is no elegant way to look under a couch when wearing only a slightly oversized t-shirt, but there are bad ways and worse ways. She wasn’t going to lay down on her stomach on the carpeted floor. She preferred not to double over, ass to the front window, curtains or no. So she crouched. And she leaned. And, of course, there they were, along with her tank top and shorts, a solid foot and a half away. What had she done, actively shove them under? Bracing her left hand on a seat cushion, she turned her face to the side and stretched her right arm as far as she could under the couch until she struck cotton. Hallelujah. She grabbed the underwear and hooked her tank and shorts on the way back.
She rose from her crouch to the foreboding sound of a slow clap and turned to find that Becker was leaning against the kitchen table five feet away, watching her pantsless flailing with obvious delight. Unlike her, he was now fully clothed in his daily uniform of shorts that hit perfectly mid-thigh and a duplicate of the t-shirt she was wearing but in a robin’s egg blue.
“Thank you, I’ll be here all week.”
He raised an eyebrow.
God, she really needed some coffee.
Blushing very much against her will—damn Irish ancestry—she untangled the clothes clutched in her hand and slipped on her underwear and then her shorts, as smoothly as was possible under the circumstances. Which, if she were being honest, was not very.
“Sorry there’s no time to toast you a bagel, McArthur, but I have to go yell at some overgrown birds.”
“What?”
“I have a secret stash, too — you can’t get bagels like this in North Carolina — but it’ll have to wait until next time.”
He tossed something at her, and she caught it, reflexively. A sandal. Yes. Good. She slipped it on and he tossed her the other.
“Let’s go yell at birds,” he said, heading for the front door.
“You go. I am going to walk quietly to my truck and drive back to Blue Harbor before anyone wonders why I’m here at 6 o’clock in the morning.”
“Yelling at birds sounds like more fun,” he said, standing against the open door to let her pass, “but suit yourself.”
As Maggie pivoted to slip past Becker’s bulk in the door frame, he pulled her phone and her keys out of one of the pockets in his shorts and held them up for her to grab. He didn’t say anything, but she could read his expressive face well enough. She was a mess, and he was finding it delightful.
She held out a hand, and he passed over her belongings. “Thank you.”
“One more thing.” They were both standing in the doorframe now. If she inhaled too deeply, her chest would brush his. She met his gaze, expecting to find more laughter. What she saw looked more like…she wasn’t sure.
“Becker, don’t you have some geese—” She was interrupted by his mouth on hers, so soft and sweet it was indecent. When he pulled back, she immediately missed the minty taste of him before she remembered that no she didn’t. And also that she still hadn’t brushed her teeth and oh my god.
Then she left, finally, without another word.
And when she made it back to Blue Harbor, she forced her aching body to go for a run that, despite being soundtracked with the greatest his of the aughts, felt oddly… quiet.