CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I knew I shouldn’t stare, but it was like my eyes had a mind of their own. All I could do was drink him in. I’d sort of guessed at his physique based on how he looked in his clothes and how strong he appeared to be, but I just hadn’t been adequately prepared.
It was like someone had lovingly and painstakingly carved him out of marble and all I wanted to do was touch him. There were muscles and abs and planes and edges everywhere. A candy house in the woods might not trick me, but I’d discovered that a gorgeous, shirtless man was enough to get me to forget about everything else.
“Rachel?”
I blinked several times, registering both that he’d called my name and sounded amused. He was holding out his top to me and I hastily grabbed it, taking care not to touch his hand.
My throat felt thick as I told him, “Turn around.”
“Right. Sorry.” He presented me with his back, and that was somehow worse. I watched the way his tendons and muscles flexed as he put his hands on his hips and all I wanted to do was go over and press kisses against every bit of his flesh.
I ached with need and had to turn around, too. It was the only way I could control myself. I took off my pajama top and bottoms, folding them and placing them on the dresser. I grabbed my keycard and my phone. I put on Camden’s shirt and inhaled deeply. It smelled like him.
“Okay,” I said and he turned back around and it was a bit like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. I’d thought I was prepared for it, but nope. Instead I was drooling over here like I’d never seen a shirtless, perfect specimen before.
It wasn’t one-sided, either. I saw his half-lidded gaze as he looked at the hem of his shirt against my legs. Awareness hung heavy between us, making me force air in and out of my lungs while my heart did a dance number. I found myself starting to walk toward him.
Fortunately, Mandy let herself back into the room. She looked faintly alarmed, and I quickly explained the situation, including pointing out where I’d left my pajamas for Brandy to change into tomorrow.
“I wouldn’t have even thought of that. You’re right, Sadie definitely would have noticed. Thank you,” she said.
“Of course. What else can we do?”
“Nothing. Go and enjoy your evening.”
I nodded and the Abdominal Snowman and I left the two sisters alone.
“Back to the tent?” he asked. That seemed like a solid plan. We would go back and sleep and let this night just fade into morning. Then two more days until we’d never see each other again.
That thought made me impossibly sad, and so I made a stupid decision. “I know this may sound hard to believe, especially given what we just witnessed, but I am starving. I haven’t eaten all day.” Other than cookies and s’mores, but that hardly counted.
“Did you want to go down to the restaurant? Or the bar?”
Neither one of those options seemed safe. Troy might expand his search. Or someone might see us and turn us in. “I have a secret weapon.” I held up my keycard. “Let’s get room service.”
“How did you manage that?” Camden asked as we went back to the elevators.
I tugged at the bottom of his shirt, noticing how his eyes tracked my movements. “I always get two keys and keep them in separate places because I tend to lose them and lock myself out. This time it works to our advantage.”
It took me a second to realize that I was presuming a lot. He might not be up for hanging out with me. Even if he had said he liked being around me. “I mean, if you want.”
“I want,” he said, his voice giving me impossible-to-ignore shivers. “Somebody has to keep an eye on you in case you slip up and reveal your nefarious intentions.”
Teasing or testing? It was hard to tell. We exited the elevator and began walking down our hallway. “My nefarious intentions to make sure the mother of the bride doesn’t humiliate said bride? Yep, whole lot of scheming going on there.”
We got to my room and I opened the door, letting us both in. I was glad that housekeeping had come and the room wasn’t in total disarray like it had been earlier. I grabbed a stray bra and shoved it into the top drawer of the dresser. Other than that it was fine.
The door slammed shut behind Camden and we were alone. Half-dressed. In a hotel room. With a giant bed.
Why had I thought this was a good idea?
“Changed,” I blurted out. “I need to get changed.” And give him back his shirt so that I wouldn’t start finding excuses to accidentally brush up against him. I grabbed a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt from the dresser. I could have gone into the bathroom, but I would have had to squeeze past him and I did not trust myself to accidentally touch him at the moment.
“Okay.”
“Okay. So ... I’m going to get changed,” I announced for a third time, holding my clothes in front of me, like they were a shield that would protect me. Why was I repeating myself?
He gave me one of those sexy smiles of his and said, “I have no objections.”
“Turn around, please.” I made a circling motion with my finger so that he’d show me his back. He gave me an “aw, do I have to?” expression but did as I requested.
I took off his shirt, placing it on the bed next to me. I paused for a moment to study the broad expanse of his shoulders and torso, thinking about walking over to him, pressing myself against his back, wrapping my arms around him. Would he be warm? Or had his skin cooled from being shirtless for so long? I imagined how he’d react, thinking he might stiffen up in surprise and then relax into my embrace.
How he’d turn around slowly and after looking deeply into my eyes, he’d lean down to kiss me, his fiery lips devouring mine, gathering me up against him and lowering me down onto the bed and ...
“Rachel?”
My heart beat so hard I was sure he could hear it. “What?”
“Are you having trouble with the buttons?” He sounded far too hopeful.
I grabbed my shirt and yanked it down over my head and realized that my face was currently stuck in one of my sleeves. “I’m fine.”
He turned his chin toward his shoulder, as if he were going to look at me, but he didn’t. “Did you decide not to put clothes on? I could understand why you wouldn’t want to get dressed. I am pretty irresistible.”
Now I managed to get both of my legs into one of the pant legs and I was bouncing around trying to get unstuck. “And yet somehow I’ve managed to resist you.”
Barely, but he didn’t need to know that.
I finally sorted myself out enough to get my pants on correctly and twisted and turned until my head was through the appropriate hole in my shirt. I got my arms into the right spot and announced, “All done.”
When he turned back around, I threw his pajama top in his general direction because I was unwilling to get too close. It was better to have a lot of space between us.
Especially given that we were standing here in this half-dressed state where I was having inappropriate fantasies when nothing could or should happen between us. It forced me to make a deal with myself. I was allowed to spend time with him as long as I kept things strictly platonic.
“Your shirt’s on backward,” he offered and I glanced down.
“Oh. Yeah. That’s how I wanted it.” There was no way I was going to try adjusting it again. I might wind up strangling myself or something.
Then Camden would have to do CPR on me and I’d pull him down into a real kiss and ...
I shook my head hard. I had to stop this. “Are you going to put that on?” I figured it might help my current situation.
He hesitated for a moment, as if he knew exactly why I’d asked the question, and he was enjoying my discomfort. “Are you sure you want me to put it back on?”
“I ... yes.” I’d said yes, right?
“Okay.” He shrugged with a playful smile. “Your loss.”
I mean, he wasn’t wrong. Then he put it on over his head, where he did not get stuck in his sleeve hole, and pulled it down slowly.
I held in my groan of disappointment. It was like standing in front of the most beautiful painting you’d ever seen and the artist covering it back up with a drop cloth. I wanted to yell out, “Boo!”
Camden grabbed the menu and sat on my bed, leaning against the headboard with his legs straight out in front of him. I considered sitting in the armchair near the patio door, but figured that might make me look like a coward. I settled on perching on the corner of the bed farthest from him.
“Come here.” He patted the bed next to him and I hesitantly crawled closer. He waved the menu in front of him. “What do you want?”
Food, I told my raging hormones. He’s talking about food.
He held out the menu so that I could see it, but sitting so near him and all of his yummy warmth was making it so that I couldn’t focus on the words in front of me. “I’ll have a cheeseburger and fries.”
“Maybe I’ll have some of yours.”
“Uh, no. You better get your own stuff. I don’t share food.”
He raised one eyebrow at me. “You think you can eat all that?”
“Not only can I easily finish off a burger and fries, but I can have some ice cream on top of it.” Ice cream was like shoes or handbags. You could never have too much of it.
“What kind?”
“Mint.”
He made a face. “How is that even a flavor? It’s basically toothpaste with chocolate chips.”
I considered what he said. “Honestly, I might eat that, too.”
He laughed and grabbed the phone, pressing the button for room service. He ordered his own burger and fries and ice cream for both of us (chocolate for him). I had a brief fantasy of dropping some of the melty ice cream on his shirt so that he’d have to take it off again, and then oops, the chocolate would spill onto his chest and being the good person I was I’d have to help clean it off by—
“Rachel?”
“What?” I asked, blinking quickly.
“I said it’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
I nodded, hoping that my face wasn’t saying out loud what I’d been thinking. He put his hands behind his head, and it lifted up the edge of his shirt, giving me another tantalizing view of what was being unfairly hidden from my view.
Clearing my throat I said, “If you don’t want to wait we could grab something from the mini-bar. Although that Wheat Thins bag has like six crackers in it and costs twelve dollars.”
“I don’t mind waiting. I’m pretty good at waiting for things I want.” There was that edge to his voice, the one that told me he was talking about something else.
Someone else.
I pressed my hands into my lap, mostly to keep them from lunging for him. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Doing what?”
His questioning tone was understandable. We weren’t actually doing anything. Not anything that I’d like to be doing, anyway. “Skipping out on Sadie and Dan’s camping party.”
He studied me for a beat. “Do you always do what you’re supposed to do?”
“Usually.”
“You never just throw caution to the wind?”
There was a time when that might have been true, but life had taught me a hard lesson there. “I’ve tried, but then I just freak out and try to gather up all the pieces of caution before they blow away.”
He sat forward, getting even closer to me. I breathed him in, letting the feel of his nearness wash over me. “We should have some antics.”
“I don’t antic,” I told him.
“Do you shenanigan? Frolic? High jink?”
“Not so much lately.” Wow, that was depressing. I’d told myself I was just really dedicated to my career and the women who worked for me, but it was more than that. I’d shut down the part of my life that remembered how to have fun. Krista was right. I did always work.
“I happen to be a master of antics, and the first thing about having a good time is that you have to let your hair down. Both figuratively and literally. May I?”
For a second I forgot to breathe and then I nodded, not sure I’d be able to get the words out. He scooted closer to me and raised his hands slowly, cautiously. My pulse thundered inside me, heating up my blood. His fingers made contact with my hair and I bent my head slightly, giving him easier access.
It was as bad as I’d feared earlier. His fingers running along my scalp were sublime in a way that was impossible to describe. He very carefully plucked the bobby pins from my hair, letting them just fall to the bed. One by one, and with the removal of each one, somehow my heart managed to beat faster and faster until I thought it might explode.
Then he reached the comb I used and tugged it slightly to get it loose, and my hair tumbled down in one big swoop. My hair was the one part of me that I was vain about. It was long and thick and curled slightly at the ends. I usually wore it up, like a piece of armor. It was my protection from people viewing me as anything other than a serious professional. I didn’t let anyone see this side of me.
Except right now, with Camden. I raised my gaze to look at him and didn’t understand the expression in his eyes.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, his fingers still running through the ends of my hair. His touch made me dizzy, light-headed. I’d never had a man smolder at me before, but it was absolutely happening now. I had to grip the blanket underneath my fingers in an attempt to ground myself and remember where I was.
His face moved toward mine, sending prickles of heat marching up and down my spine. “Rachel,” he breathed.
He was going to kiss me.