Kirby knew she was babbling. Realized she was acting like an idiot teenager who was stumbling over her words in the face of the school stud. Unfortunately, acknowledging the ridiculousness of it didn’t seem to make it stop.
After assembling her cluster of kitten-feeding amenities, she floundered for a moment. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”
When he didn’t reply right away, she was finally forced to turn and look at him. Still packed a punch. Jeans, broad, beautifully muscled shoulders, a six-pack that wouldn’t quit…and green eyes. Seriously? Didn’t seem fair, really. All that and killer eyes, too? Which were twinkling a little at the moment, despite the wriggling ball of black T-shirt dangling from his fist. So, he thought this was funny. That she was funny. Or, at least, pathetically amusing.
Also fair. Because she was certainly behaving pathetically at the moment.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I think I’ll just grab a few things and take them upstairs. I’m not thinking it would be a good idea to let my, uh, roommate here, out, until we’re behind closed doors.”
Heaven help her, that was the last image she really needed at that moment. Behind closed doors with Brett Hennessey. Oh, yes indeedy, that visual would be guaranteed a starring role in those dreams she’d be having, no doubt. “Here, let me,” she said, more to have something to do than because she’d really thought it through.
That came later, after she was trudging up the stairs behind him and the very annoyed kitten bundle, admiring yet another fine view and deciding that she really, truly, had to reconsider trying to develop some kind of social life here in Pennydash, and not just with the Friday-night ladies auxiliary bingo league.
Of course, any fantasy she might have harbored about possibly developing a nice, safe, temporary dalliance with one of the resort ski instructors, or emergency patrol guys, was, at the very least, going to have to wait a year, as most of them had either been let go or quit and headed west or overseas to find steady work where there was actually snow on the ground. Any other time, she’d have been okay with that. Or would have talked herself into being okay with it. After all, what were her alternatives, really? At the moment, however, staring at Brett’s insanely perfect ass, she was thinking a year sounded like an impossible eternity. But cheered herself by acknowledging that possible alternatives could, potentially, turn up at any time. Just as he had.
Not that he qualified as such. He, her much younger, incredibly hot guest. But he had at least opened her up to the idea that something could happen. With someone else. At some point. Possibly.
She should thank him for that.
At the moment she was sort of caught up staring at the back of his 501’s and wondering how that bit looked uncovered, as she’d pretty much seen everything else. Probably just as good. Or better, she thought with a long, mental sigh.
Naturally, this was when he topped the stairs at his third-floor landing and turned back, so that she was now staring directly at a part of his body she had, actually, seen unclothed, and immediately pictured again. She gulped, and might have wobbled back and fallen down all three flights of stairs, thereby ruining all of his best efforts at saving her from herself after all.
But he snagged her elbow as her tray full of goodies wobbled, and eased her up onto the landing next to him. He opened his door with his free hand, bumped it open wider with his hip, and motioned her inside with a tip of his head. “Trying to keep this one from being anywhere close,” he said, still juggling the kitty bundle, which said kitty was trying to climb out of, as one claws-extended paw made it out of one of the gaps at the top where he was holding the T-shirt bundle mostly closed. “You can just set it on the bed. Or the dresser. Wherever.”
She arranged the items on his dresser top, trying not to look at the mussed-up duvet that covered the sea of bed. The sea of bed that made his airy, sunshiny room feel suddenly just as small as her airy and sunshiny kitchen had a few moments ago. Yeah, she definitely needed a life. “Okay, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” The kitten chose that moment to give a particularly plaintive howl. “Good luck with that,” she added, with a dubious glance at the kitten.
“We’ll be fine,” he said, but the quick glance he gave the still-squirmy bundle wasn’t quite as convincing.
Which, somehow, was what restored her confidence. Big man leveled by a little kitten. Yeah, it might be small of her, but it helped her scrape at least a little of her self-esteem up off the floor.
“If you need anything else-”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“Okay.” She tried to find her calm, easygoing, polite innkeeper smile, but somehow they seemed a bit past that now. “I’ll be downstairs.”
He gave her a little salute and perched on the side of the bed. The big, fluffy, perfect-for-wild-sex sleigh bed.
“Right,” she added, apropos of nothing, then turned and all but fled the room. Before he could read on her face what was going through her head. She’d been humiliated enough for one day.
Once outside on the landing, the bedroom door safely shut between them, she’d had every intention of retreating to the main floor, heading to her rooms and doing a better job of attending her wounds. Somehow, instead she found herself hovering outside the closed door. His closed door. And listening. She told herself she was simply being a good hostess and making sure her guest didn’t get attacked by the ten ounces of terror wrapped up in that T-shirt. She told herself that. It was the making herself believe part that was a bit trickier.
There was a sudden spate of yowling, followed by the deep, soft rumblings of his voice that had her craning her neck, trying to hear what he was saying. Not that it mattered; he was obviously trying to calm the terrified kitten. She just…wanted to hear the words. She shifted closer, but it was all a softly spoken murmur. All the same, it did interesting things to her insides, listening to him. She had no idea how it was working on the kitten, although the yowling seemed to have stopped, but it would certainly have made her feel all warm and snuggly and content. Along with a few other things she doubted her four-legged guest would understand.
There was a rustling sound, followed by some other noises that she figured were Brett making something to eat for the little hellion. Just picturing him in there, being all domestic and caretaking for the tiny little furball, only served to further strengthen the warm fuzzies she was feeling. That softly crooning man, along with the one who had raced to her rescue, was such a far cry from the dusty, leather-clad, intimidating road warrior who’d shown up at her door a few hours ago. Or the man she’d ascribed him to be, given his appearance. Clearly those were at odds with the man himself. She recalled thinking upon checking him in that he’d actually been rather quiet and soft-spoken. A few hours of hard sleep, if his tousled bed head when he’d raced out to save her had been any indication, and a little shot of adrenaline had certainly livened him up.
Seeing him buck naked while she was hanging twenty feet up in a tree had certainly livened her up.
The sound of the phone ringing at the front desk on the main floor down below snapped her out of her reverie. Her heart skipped a beat, as it always did. It might be someone calling to book a room. Even though she knew it was far more likely a sales call, she clung to her optimism. Just as she turned to head down the stairs, the ringing stopped…and the door opened behind her.
She spun back around, wishing for the life of her she had something more official looking in her hands than the empty tray she’d left his room with. A clipboard, laundry cart, portable phone…something. Anything that would make it look like she hadn’t just been standing outside his door all this time…listening. “Um, hi. Can I help you?”