Page 144 of For the Birds

Chapter29

When I awoke,the room was dark. The drapes had been pulled, but somehow I knew I’d slept late. James was in bed with his laptop, which he quickly put on his bedside table when he saw mestir.

“You’re wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt,” I murmured as I rolled over to facehim.

“I do wear clothes sometimes.”

I grinned. “What time isit?”

“Eleven thirty.”

“In the morning?”

“Yeah.”

I sat upright, then remembered I was still naked. “Why didn’t you wakeme?”

“Because you needed to sleep.” He tugged me back down, then lay next to me, on top of the covers. He brushed a stray hair from myface.

“What are you doin’ here with me? Shouldn’t you be workin’?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be takin’ care of what happened last night?”

“It’s been taken careof.”

“Jed took care of it alone?”

“No, Dermot helped. And Scooter. Even if I’d tried to help, Jed wouldn’t have let me. He was worried about you. How do youfeel?”

“Better.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, searching myeyes.

“Yeah.” I watched him in amazement. If you’d told me a year ago, or even last November, that big, bad, gruff Skeeter Malcolm would be lying on a bed with me one day, worried about me, I would have fallen apart laughing. And yet here he was, a different man from the one I’d first met. He’d been in there all along. I’d just helped findhim.

And I wantedhim.

“Are you hungry?”

I lifted my mouth to his and murmured against his lips. “Not forfood.”

A fire filled his eyes, and he leaned over and kissed me as though this was our last time together. As though we didn’t have enoughtime.

I wondered if this was what life with him would be like. Living for the moment and taking what we couldget.

But I didn’t want to think about the real world right now, or what this might mean. I only wanted to be here in bed withhim.

Afterward, we lay in a sweaty, tangled mess of legs and sheets, and I laughed. “If we were together, I wouldn’t need to worry about workin’ out.”

“What if we were together?” he asked quietly.

I froze. Yesterday morning I’d dismissed it. Today, I found that I couldn’t.

“You called me a coward,” he said, his gaze holding mine. “You said I was afraid to care about someone. You were right.”

“James.” I lowered my gaze. “I had no right to saythat.”

He lifted my chin until our gazes met. “You were right. I realized that last night. I was sure Merv was goin’ to kill you, and I thought about losin’ you, and I realized I’ve been wasting time. I’m scared of losing you, but it hurts so much more not havin’ you at all.” He leaned over and kissed me, then searched my face. “I want to try this withyou.”

“When you say try this, what do youmean?”

---