Page 15 of Say Yes

Any second now.

If she just waited…

“Sara?”

No such luck. Sara peeked one eye open and saw that Gavin loomed over her, his brow lifted in question. She blinked, caught her breath and her stomach began flip-flopping.

Gavin was still wearing his cutoffs, but now they were unsnapped and only partially zipped.

Partially was enough to make her eyes buggy.

In the full light of morning, he was simply breathtaking. And with a dark beard-shadow covering his lean jaw and his hair sleep-mussed, he looked good enough to be breakfast. He was also waiting for an answer to his question. “I, ah…”

“I slept great,” he said. “Your bed is a little short for me, and it was hotter than hell with both of us snuggled in there, but then—” he gave her a wink “—I could overlook the little discomforts.”

Everything in her jerked to a shuddering standstill. Her heart stopped beating, oxygen snagged in her lungs. She was frozen, staring, mouth agape.

He had to be teasing.

Oh God, please let him be teasing.

There was no way he’d slept with her. Surely, even through a drunken haze, she would have remembered such a momentous occasion. She looked directly at him, refusing to flinch, prepared to dispute him and call him on his bluff. She opened her mouth, cleared her throat, and out came something that sounded vaguely like, “Hmgarph?”

Gavin set the coffee mugs on the nightstand, then plumped the pillows behind Sara. “Here, lean back and get comfortable. I thought we’d have our coffee in bed.”

“Hmgarph,” she said again, because his warm hands had closed around her calves as he swung her legs onto the mattress, settling her despite her stiff resistance.

How many times had she imagined something like this? Something like this…after something much more significant of a sexual nature. She’d dreamed such things, but she’d certainly never considered them actually happening. After all, Gavin was…well, he was Gavin. And she wasn’t his type, not at all. She’d even been stretching the boundaries of fiction to imagine it in her dreams.

Yet here he was, and here she was, and all she could do was make nonsensical garbled sounds. If she could only understand why he was here, maybe she wouldn’t be so nervous. It couldn’t be for the most apparent reasons. Gavin couldn’t be interested in her. After all, even Ted had found her so lacking, he’d quickly wandered. Her own parents hadn’t deemed her interesting enough to want to have around. There was simply something about her that made people keep their distance. So surely Gavin wouldn’t…

He scooted in with her, quite at his ease, his big luscious body taking up a lot of room. He casually handed her a mug of steaming coffee. His smile now was one of satisfaction and contentment. “Now, isn’t this better?”

Better than what? she wondered, and drank half the cup in one gulp. Despite the heat of the drink, she shivered. It hit her suddenly how cool the room was. Before she could ask, Gavin offered an explanation.

“The electricity came back on about five this morning. It had gotten damn steamy in here, so I turned on your air.”

That got her tongue temporarily unglued. “I can’t afford to run the air conditioner.”

What an inane comment to make, she thought, given the fact she was lying in bed with a mostly naked, utterly devastating man, who surely wasn’t there for the usual reasons a man put himself in a woman’s bed yet she didn’t know why he was really there and couldn’t seem to find the wits to ask him.

But her mind simply refused to focus on the real issues. It was too much to take in, and with her heart doing wild leaps around her chest, and her eyes busy exploring every inch of Gavin’s hard body, her concentration was nil. Her brain kept screaming, What happened? but her heart kept whispering, I’ll bet it was good!

Gavin took a long sip of his coffee before turning to her. “You can afford to be comfortable, Sara. Remember, you’ve got a roommate now to split the bills, so there’s no need to suffer this heat wave.”

Roommate? She remembered mentioning the half-baked idea to him, but she never claimed to have found anyone. She wasn’t even looking, not since she’d decided she had no choice but to sell. She bit her lip, frowning.

Gavin reached up and rubbed his thumb across the edge of her teeth, freeing her bottom lip and halting her heartbeat in erratic midpump. “I love how you do that.” His voice was a rough whisper, deep and compelling. “It makes me hot.”

Sara felt like a zombie. A wide-eyed, speechless, sleep-rumpled zombie who could do no more than stare. She swallowed hard to remove the choking disbelief from her throat. “How I do…what?”

“The way you chew on your lip.” His big thumb continued to caress her mouth, his eyes watching as she struggled to breathe. “It’s so damn sexy. Especially with that little crooked tooth. When I kissed you last night, I felt that tooth with my tongue.”

He thought her crooked tooth was sexy? Sara laughed, comprehension dawning. Of course. It was all a dream! She was probably still in the damn tub, and she’d drown herself before she actually woke up. It would be poetic justice.

“What’s funny?” Gavin still looked at her lips when he asked that question, and Sara had to fight not to smile. She didn’t want him to think she was deliberately flaunting her sexy tooth.

She laughed again, covering her mouth with a hand. How ridiculous that sounded, even in a dream. She shook her head. “I just realized I must still be asleep, that’s all.”

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