Page 20 of The Perfect Deception

“So you can get some sleep.”

She jumped up. “You want me to sleep in your bed?”

Heat flooded his groin at the men­tal pic­ture his mind painted. He grit­ted his teeth. “Yes.”

“I can’t do that. I have to go home.”

He threw his head back and with­held a scream. “It’s late. You’re tired. Stay here.”

“But I’ll have to leave in the morn­ing.”

“That’s usu­ally what’s re­quired to get to work.”

She shook her head. “No, in the morn­ing it will be light. Peo­ple will see me.”

Oh my God, she’s talk­ing about the walk of shame. She thinks peo­ple will see her and as­sume…de­sire mixed with sym­pa­thy. He doubted any­one would think any­thing of it. But the thought of wak­ing up in the same apart­ment as her made him hard, and he wasn’t even plan­ning on touch­ing her.

“It will be fine,” he said, when he could get the words past his stran­gled throat.

“Then give me those and I’ll sleep out here.” Be­fore he could protest, she pulled the blan­ket and pil­low from him.

He hadn’t meant for her to sleep on the couch. He hadn’t meant for her to use…His arm froze as he reached out for the blan­ket, but she pulled it onto her lap, sat cross-legged on the couch, and turned to him. “If you’re go­ing to make me stay, then you have to talk to me.”

He liked talk­ing to her. So this wasn’t a prob­lem. As long as he didn’t re­veal too much. And as long as she didn’t no­tice the pat­tern on the blan­ket. “Let me just get changed.” And maybe find some­thing else for her to cover up in. When he re­turned to the liv­ing room in sweats, he car­ried an­other blan­ket. But she was al­ready wrapped up in the first one, and he would draw too much at­ten­tion if he made her change blan­kets. In­stead, he held onto it and eased onto the re­cliner next to the sofa.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He didn’t know he’d been so ob­vi­ous. “Mus­cles are sore.”

She nod­ded. “What’s mak­ing them sore?”

He shrugged and then winced. “No idea.” She didn’t need to know why he was tense.

“What hap­pened to­day to make you so up­set?”

This is what she wanted to talk about? He would much rather talk about other things. Like her. “So tell me about the guy you were see­ing tonight.”

“There’s noth­ing to tell,” she said. “You showed up and I can­celled my plans.”

His hands clenched at the thought of her go­ing out on a date. “Must not have been a great guy if you were so ea­ger to can­cel on him.”

“He’s nice.”

“That’s it? Nice?”

“And isn’t em­bar­rassed to be seen with me in pub­lic.”

What the hell was she talk­ing about? Oh. Right. Dammit. “I…” What was he sup­posed to say to her? That he was so con­cerned about what oth­ers thought of him that he raced to es­tab­lish his rep­u­ta­tion, for­get­ting about who he might al­ready be with and how they would feel? “I’m sorry. My be­hav­ior was in­ex­cus­able, but you don’t em­bar­rass me.”

She picked at the blan­ket. “Cute,” she said.

Damn. She no­ticed. His stom­ach knot­ted. She was wrapped in his Star Wars blan­ket. The one Kim’s kids had given him as a thank you for spend­ing time with them. “Ex­cept when you make fun of my blan­ket.”

She wrapped it tighter around her­self. His em­bar­rass­ment dis­ap­peared, re­placed once again by de­sire. Even tired, he couldn’t stop look­ing at her. Her face was clear, open, and she had such warmth em­a­nat­ing from her. He wanted to soak some of it up for him­self.

“So why are your mus­cles sore?”

She was also stub­born. He shrugged.