Page 27 of Take Care, Taylor
I stared at her.
“I’m not making it up,” she said, picking up a few of the pots. “They sent it out at midnight — typical for the first two weeks of‘hell’ that everyone who’s ever done this has warned about, you know?”
She bent over and picked up more of her mess, and I brushed away the dirty thoughts flooding my mind.
“Now that I’ve explained myself and alerted you to the surprise essay?—”
“I knew about that damn essay,” I interrupted. “And I just pulled up ‘pans falling,’ ‘shattered glass,’ and ‘kitchen sounds’ on YouTube like a normal fucking person.”
“Oh…” Her lips fell open and her cheeks reddened.
“Exactly,” I said, stepping back. “Cut this shit out, and let’s set 7 a.m. as the time for noise in the shared parts of the suite, shall we?”
“Can we also set a rule for not walking around in nothing but briefs, too?”
I looked down, realizing that I hadn’t put on anything before coming out here.
“An oversight on my part,” I said, noticing she was still staring—her nipples standing at full attention under her thin shirt. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good.”
“Since I’m already out here, though…” I moved past her and turned on the coffee maker.
“I was about to make some for myself.”
“‘About to’ isn’t a real thing,” I said. “But if you ask me nicely, maybe I’ll consider making some for you, too.”
“I don’t trust you not to poison it.”
“You honestly think I would risk going to prison for you?”
“You might.”
“I won’t,” I said. “You like it with lots of cinnamon and caramel, right?”
“No…” She frowned. “Yes.”
I opened the cabinets, expecting to see what I saw when I was in here hours ago for dinner, but there was a long stretch of yellow tape running down the middle of the shelf. And there were labels on everything:Do not touch,Mr. Taylor’s,Miss Parker’s,Not for football players, andNot Yours.
What the…I looked over my shoulder at her.
“You have my permission to touch the cinnamon if you don’t have any.” She avoided my gaze. “But you can’t use my stevia packets. Those are expensive.”
“If you’re going to be this petty with me, we’re going to have a problem, Audrey.”
“You mean ‘another’ problem,” she said. “We had millions between us long before we came here.”
She had a point, but I didn’t feel like reminding her of her “we never knew each other” spiel from earlier.
“Fine.” I grabbed her labeled sweeteners and made the coffee without saying another word.
I carried mine to my room and downed it in one gulp. And at the thought of Audrey in that T-shirt, her nipples hardening as her eyes met mine … I took the longest cold shower of my life—and it still wasn’t fucking cold enough.
TRACK 10. I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE (3:54)
AUDREY
Omg! HELP! I’m in HELL.
