Page 38 of The Player

He moves past me and pulls the sheets back. He climbs into the bed and gives a sigh of happiness.“Oh, that’s lovely. Cold, fresh sheets.”

I glare at him.

“Getting in?” he says. When my glare intensifies, he grins. “You’re blocking the view of the footie on the TV.”

My mouth drops open in outrage, and he breaks into peals of laughter.

Shaking my head, I pull the sheets back and then look at the bed in dismay. It’s enormous, the mattress hitting me at chest height. “How high is this fucking bed?” I squeak. His laughter gets louder. “No, really. Did medieval people carry ladders around with them when they fancied a kip?”

“Want a hand up?”

“Only if you fancy losing some digits,” I snap. I lift my leg, considering the height. “Good heavens, this is like Mount Everest,” I say faintly. He starts laughing again, and I shake my head. “Did they bring George Mallory here to do his training?”

“Knowing his set of friends, they’d have found other uses for the bed.”

“What a scandalous set. All those young men photographed in the nude and historians are still trying to persuade us that it was just high jinks between manly young men.”

I try another hopeful hop, and he shakes his head. “There’s a stool under the bed.”

“What?” I glare at him. “When were you going to tell me?”

He chuckles and lies back. “I was aiming for another five minutes, but you were starting to look a little plaintive.”

“Wanker,” I say succinctly, prompting another burst of laughter. I retrieve the stool and climb into the bed, falling onto the sheets as if I’ve just completed a hike up a mountain and I’m about to plant a flag. I look over to find him biting his lip and smack his arm.

“Shut up,” I say, and he makes a performance about zipping his lips.

I kneel up and pull off my robe, and there’s an instant hush. “Shit, Frankie,” he mutters.

I look over my shoulder at him and smile. “Not so lippy now, are you?”

“Those are the skimpiest pair of briefs I have ever seen.”

“Oh, these old things,” I say airily, running my finger along the edge of my black briefs. He makes a choked sound, and I laugh. “You’re so easy.”

“I must be.”

“I sleep naked,” I inform him climbing under the sheets. “So, you should be glad I’m wearing anything at all.”

“Why the hell should I be glad about that? Are you daft?”

I laugh and nestle back into the bed. The sheets are cool and soft against my skin, and the duvet has just the right kind of crinkly expensiveness to please me. The pillows are the perfect shape and consistency to cradle my head. The only problem is the size of the bed. Seen from the floor, the bed looked the size of a football field. Now, however, sharing it with Con, it seems to have shrunk. His scent of freshly washed skin and sweet shampoo appears to weave a spell around me, and every time he moves, he brushes against me.

As if on cue, he shifts, and I feel his hairy leg against me.

“Sorry,” he says meekly as I tut. “These beds aren’t made for men my size.”

“You’re six foot four. Not the Hulk,” I say pettily, and he snorts.

“Shall I put a pillow between us on the bed?”

I gape at him. “No, because I’m not Doris Day.”

“Definitely not. I bet she was infinitely sweeter-tempered.”

I can’t help the twitch of my mouth and turn my back on him. He laughs. The sound is sexy right next to me, and I wonder how I can have sat in a room with him for years and never noticed. Now, it’s all I can focus on. That and his smell of warm skin. I feel my lids lowering and my breath coming short, and I immediately take evasive action.

“Ooh, football,” I cry, looking at the TV. “How exciting. Who are we watching?”

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