Page 26 of Hold Me Until Morning

I nearly fell on my ass when he suddenly took a step back, like whatever tether had stretched between us had been holding me up and it’d just snapped.

Then that smirk was back in full force. “Unless you want me to hang out for a bit, and once the two of them go to sleep, you can snuggle up on it with me.”

There he was.

The player I knew him to be.

Careless and only out for one thing.

I scoffed around the chaffing at the edges of my heart. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

He shrugged, all kinds of casual as he went back to the last boxes remaining on the couch. “Suit yourself. Just was checking to see if you’d decided to take a little of the good when it’s presented to you.”

“You’re awful sure of yourself,” I gritted out.

He came my way with a stack of boxes in his hands, and he leaned in close to my ear. “Oh, darlin’, you can be sure it’d be good.”

Chills skated down my spine and lifted across my flesh. I wanted to be sick at the reaction.

His chuckle was dry as he wound around me and jumped down from the back of the truck, still balancing four boxes and slanting me one of those looks that shivered through my insides.

“And why don’t we drop that whole Mr. Cooper bit and stop pretending like you don’t know me, yeah?”

Then he turned and strode up my walkway with the boxes in hand, not bothering to look back.

I was only accepting the good when it was presented to me.

That’s what I kept telling myself as Cody Cooper brought load after load into my house.

I had to wonder if he was doing it as some kind of penance.

It was bad enough that I’d given up the fight of letting him bring in the couch, but before he’d brought it in, he’d disappeared back over to his place and returned wearing boots and pushing a hand-truck, which he’d assured me could do the work of three men, and he was going to knock this job out lickity-split, before he’d rolled out the ramp and started in like he somehow thought it was his duty.

“That man is something, isn’t he?” Lolly sat on that very couch where we’d placed it under the window and facing the wall where the TV now sat. She sipped at an iced tea as she watched Cody disappear back out the front door on what had to be about his twentieth trip.

His shirt clung to the small of his back from the sweat that slicked his skin and those jeans hugged an ass that had to be every bit as ripped as the rest of him.

He was most definitely something and every freaking thing that I couldn’t want.

I had to remember that.

Even having him here sparked with betrayal.

Still, there was a gratitude that kept threatening to rupture through the barriers I was struggling to keep intact.

I scowled at my meddling grandmother. “And that man gave up his whole evening thanks to you.”

I still wasn’t letting on that I knew him. Lolly had to remain in the dark or else she was really going to start needling her nose into places that I couldn’t let her go.

She waved an errant hand in the air. “Oh, he’s happy to do it.”

My gaze narrowed. “And you know this how?”

“All the whistling he’s doing and the skip to his step is proof of that. Not to mention he can’t wipe that smile from his face every time he looks at you.”

“I’m pretty sure that man’s smile is permanently tattooed on his face, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with me.”

Except something about that didn’t ring true, and my thoughts kept flashing to the way his expression would dim and all that carelessness would fade away. When he’d suck me down into some kind of darkness that lurked in the deepest part of him, like he too would get caught up in that summer.

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