Page 36 of Deadly Secrets
Chapter Seven
Brooke was pretty sure she was still dreaming when she woke up in Roman’s king size bed on Egyptian cotton sheets and wearing his T-shirt. The aroma of freshly ground coffee met her nose as she yawned and turned over to find a cup of the freshly brewed stuff on the nightstand.
He was in here while I was sleeping?Gah! She prayed she hadn’t been drooling. Or snoring.
Wiping sleep from her eyes, she felt the last, lingering snippet of a dream slide away. She’d been running from someone—a stranger—but she hadn’t been scared. Not too much anyway.
Why?
Her gaze landed on a picture of Roman and another man on his dresser across the room. Roman was younger, shirtless—my, my, my—and wearing some god-awful silver belt around his waist. His hands were wrapped in tape and a pair of boxing gloves, tied together by their laces, hung over his shoulder.
The other man in the picture was older and beaming from ear to ear. His hair was more gray than black and she could see a familiar tilt to his eyes. The hard planes of his cheeks and jaw were similar too.
Roman’s dad.
The warmth of the sheets made her want to snuggle farther down in them and stay there. Another flash of the dream skated across her memory, as translucent as smoke.
Roman. She hadn’t just been running from the stranger. She’d been runningtothe man who’d given up his bed for her.
Roman had been in the dream. Probably because she was surrounded by all things Roman here in his bedroom. Even the sheets oozed his presence and smelled like his laundry soap.
Brooke sat up and reached for the coffee. What was it like to wake up next to Roman, the man himself, every morning?
Her nipples hardened at the thought, her pulse doing a happy skip.
Tell me that kiss last night was only a dream.
But no. Her lips tingled at the memory of his lips on hers. She might be able to fool her mind, but her body knew the truth. She’d kissed him, he’d kissed her back, and she wanted more.
He’s put a spell on me.
A spell she would do well to ignore. He’d already gotten her to tell her secrets. Like all heroes worth their weight, he wanted to help her, save her, fix her life.
There’s no fixing me.
Her past relationships, the few that even qualified in that department, had failed for one basic reason—she couldn’t tell her secrets to anyone and not have them look at her funny afterwards. Even men who claimed to love her. Women who professed to be her friends. They thought she had it all together, that she was smart, accomplished, an overachiever in a world of them, who knew exactly what she wanted and was going after it full throttle.
She did know what she wanted, and yes, she enjoyed her career, putting relationships second. But underneath the satisfaction of her three degrees and her love of uncovering the past and all its history, she was downright lonely.
So far, she hadn’t seen one iota of evidence suggesting Roman had a girlfriend. She suspected he had plenty of friends, the kind that came with benefits, but perhaps for all his perfection, he was lonely too.
That would explain why he kissed me back.
Had he been telling the truth when he’d claimed being attracted to brainiacs like her?
The coffee was delicious, and Brooke closed her eyes and soaked the whole thing in—the bed, T-shirt, and coffee—pretending for a moment that this was her life, not another cheap hotel room or dirty tent in the middle of nowhere. That she finally had a place to put down roots and have a committed relationship.
Ten to one, she’d get bored in the first week.
Laughing at herself for being such a nomad, she sipped the coffee, got out of bed, and tried not to care that the clock on the nightstand read 8:43.
I slept in. The thought mildly surprised her. She had an internal alarm clock that never let her sleep past seven. But she hadn’t gotten to bed until after three a.m., so she considered herself entitled.
After cleaning up in the bathroom, she put her hair in a ponytail, dabbed on some mascara, and went to find her gracious host.
He was in the kitchen, dressed in sweatpants and a white T-shirt that molded against his chest as he leaned back in a chair at the breakfast bar, talking on his cell phone. His hair was mussed, looking like he’d been running his hands through it, and his jaw sported a healthy day-old beard.
When he saw her in the doorway, he lifted his chin in greeting and motioned her in.
