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“You let the cold air in when you opened the door,” he noted.
“Sorry.” I grabbed my toothbrush, loaded it with toothpaste, and looked up to see him in the mirror, facing me this time.
He was covering himself with both hands. “I can bring swim trunks over to shower in, if that will make you more comfortable.”
I shook my head while brushing, admiring the strong arms I’d also missed last night. My gaze had raked down his torso to his…his hands hiding his equipment. “No need. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and we’re both modern adults here. It’s fine with me if you’re—”
“Naked as a jaybird?”
“Yeah.” I sounded like an imbecile. And, yes, I’d seen a guy naked before, but not a man like him. I needed a bigger thesaurus.Hunkdidn’t go nearly far enough in describing him. Keeping my eyes on the sink, I finished brushing.
He turned off the water, and seconds later was toweling off beside me. “Your turn.”
“I’ll wait till you’re done.” No way was I stripping off my nightshirt right here and stepping into the shower with him watching me.
“Suit yourself.”
I left, and a few minutes later, the door opened and he emerged wearing the same clothes as last night. “I’ll gather up some things to bring over while you’re at work. What do you normally have for breakfast?”
The question dumbfounded me for a second.
“You eat breakfast, right?” he asked. “Like you said, we’re modern adults, so I won’t insist you makemebreakfast.”
I moved toward the bathroom. “How enlightened of you. I’ll have oatmeal.” I hadn’t eaten a bowl of oatmeal in ages, but it was the first thing that came to mind I thought he could cook.
“You gotta spice up your life, girl.”
Soaping up under the hot spray, his words came back to me. I closed my eyes and imagined his hands gliding the bar of soap over me. Up my sides, under and over my breasts, and then down my legs and back up again, not stopping until they reached my heat. That would certainly spice up my life.
Get a grip, girl.
The man was a Cartwright, doing a job. He’d said as much last night. He’d drawn the short straw, they didn’t have anyone else for the job—however you wanted to look at it. He had no choice but to be here with me. His only interest was preventing a black mark on his record. Failing at witness protection had to be devastating for one’s career.
My hormones were pulling me the wrong direction. Being interested in him was off the table. I was a career stepping stone to him and nothing more.
Or maybe a career speed-bump was a better description.
He probably figured that being a Benson, I’d screw up his career any way I could, and it would justify his hatred of us. That’s how a Cartwright thought.
Running my thumb over my lips, I recalled the finger kiss from last night, and the smile it brought back made a liar of me. Even if it wasn’t logical to want to get closer to him, my hormones disagreed.
But, does he like math?
He was a natural born actor. Underneath the charm ran a river of hatred for me and my family a mile wide.
I’d almost believed he meant the romantic gesture.
Sugarbear, he called me. Closing my eyes again, I ran the soap bar over my body some more and allowed myself to wonder what it would be like if my name wasn’t Benson. How would he treat me, and how lucky would that girl be?
I can dream, can’t I?
I’d read studies that showed an active imagination and visualizing yourself in a happy place were good for your mental health. I deserved that, didn’t I?
My hands made another few circuits of my body, and I let my imagination run wild. It had been a long time since I’d had a guy’s hands on me—too long, way too long. I washed between my legs and for a moment considered going further, but that was a later exercise for my dirty imagination.
I put the soap back on the wall, rinsed off, and started on my hair.
It couldn’t be real between us, but I could wish to be whoever had been special enough to first earn the name Sugarbear and imagine how she’d felt.Positive visualization, good for one’s mental health, I repeated silently.
