Page 21 of Fire

She shook her head. “That scares me more.”

He pulled his brow into a frown. “Explain.”

She sighed, and her warm breath coasted along his jaw. He closed his eyes savoring the feeling but snapped them back open when she started to speak.

“People usually run from things that are new. I’m finding it hard to trust that’s not what you’ll do.”

He was losing her, so he goaded, “What’s life without risk?”

“I wore water wings until I was nine because I was afraid of the deep end.”

He issued a low chuckle, still amazed every time she made him laugh. Transferring both her wrists into one hand to have his other free, he moved it to cradle the side of her face, running his thumb across her soft skin. “But you eventually took them off.”

He watched her eyes as she processed his words and felt when she started to give in, her body relaxing into his hold. He pushed his advantage. “Dive into the deep end with me.”

Gwen closed her eyes against his stare and took a deep breath, her pulse racing beneath his fingers. “What if I drown?”

“Look at me, Gwen.” She instantly opened her eyes, and he got lost in a sea of green. “You’ll have to trust I’ll keep you afloat.”

Chapter 6

After theirtalk, Blake had insisted on not disrupting Gwen’s Sunday ritual, so they’d parked themselves on the couch, and she’d cued up the line-up of shows she’d recorded on the DVR. Then they’d spent the next five hours watching them.

Allie had made an appearance after the first hour, had given Gwen huge eyes—which translated intowe’ll be talking later—then had scuttled back to her room only to reappear a half hour later with some excuse that she’d forgotten an appointment and wouldn’t be back until later.

Pizza had been ordered and consumed after their marathon of TV then Blake had left but not before giving her a scorching kiss that included a little under-her-shirt hand action.

She’d been having a good time and had been disappointed to see him go so early. But she told herself he did have a business to run that he’d neglected for her the night before.

She hadn’t expected him at her door the next morning, dressed in black jeans and a gray—so dark it was almost black—tee, ready for a day of errands.

“Do you always wear black?”

They were standing in line at the grocery checkout when Gwen asked that question. So far, Blake had been a trooper and hadn’t complained once at what was sure to have been a boring time of dry cleaners, bank, and a week’s worth of grocery shopping.

He looked down at his chest then raised brow.

She laughed. “Okay, I’ll amend. Do you always wear black andothercolors that are so dark they are nearly black?”

A smile tugged at his lips, and a twinkle lit his eyes that was pretty darn hard to look away from. “I like to match.”

Still smiling, she shook her head. “You do know there are hundreds of other colors that go together, right?”

He lifted a shoulder, the shrug nonchalant. “I don’t like to think about it. I open my closet, grab shit, and go. If it’s all dark, I don’t have to worry if everythinggoes together.”

She supposed that made sense, but the clothes-diva inside her cringed at his lack of creativity.

Items scanned and the total given, he wouldn’t let her pay. Just as he hadn’t let her pay for her dry cleaning—and since ninety percent of the clothes she wore were dry clean only, that had been as expensive as the food bill. She argued. Blake didn’t. He just grabbed her credit card—he’d already taken her debit card at the cleaners—out of her hand and stuffed it in his pocket.

Not wanting to cause a scene and hold up the line, it hadn’t been until they got back to her apartment to put the groceries away that she tackled the conversation.

She held out a hand. “Let me have them.”

Of course, he knew right away what she was referring to. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out her plastic.

She snatched the cards from his hand and tossed them into her purse that was lying open on the counter next to the bags of groceries. “Just so you know, you’re banned from going on any more errands with me,” she said, yanking stuff out of a grocery tote.

He leaned back, butt to the counter, ankles and arms crossed, looking at her in a way she couldn’t quite decipher—half-inquisitive-half-annoyed? “Why?”

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