“Thank you,” he said when he was finished.
“Breakfast is in ten, according to Charlotte, and I’d like to arrive a minute early so I can make sure she doesn’t sprinkle arsenic into my eggs. I’d suggest the same to you.”
“Since she hates my guts?” he said.
“Only outdone by how much she hates mine.”
“Then we’d better get down there quick. I’ve still got years of pissing people off in me. It would be a shame to go before I’d reached my full potential.” Boone shuffled to his feet beside the bed, the sheet still wrapped around his waist and hanging just below his hips.
He was still having morning . . . issues.
“Really, Boone? Not helping.” I waved in the general direction of his southern . . . region . . . area.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you’d turned into such a prude. Kind of went the opposite direction on me.”
I was looking away, but I heard him moving toward the bathroom.
“Don’t worry. The above-average tent pitcher is out of sight . . . but maybe not so out of mind, right, Clara?
“Boone . . .” I warned, not sure how I’d survive the day if it continued in the same manner. Morning wood and illicit comments revolving around it had exhausted me sufficiently—no need for anything else.
“You know I love it when you say my name like that.”
I ground my teeth together, cursing my moment of weakness last night. Sure, he was cute when he was sleeping, but the awake version wasn’t anything close.
“I’m just gonna take a quick shower, then we’ll go watch for arsenic poisoning, k?”
I rose up in bed and twisted in his direction. “Not enough time . . .”
Boone was heading into the bathroom, his back to me and still clutching the sheet around his waist. However, it wasn’t covering anything around his backside.
“Jesus Christ, Boone. What happened to your boxers?” I should have clamped my eyes closed again, but Boone’s backside . . . yeah, it would have been a crime against humanity to divert my eyes when his ass was in view.
“I took them off. Too restrictive.”
“Well, would you mind putting them back on? Preferably before I wake up and you start traipsing around my room naked?”
“I’ve got a sheet on.” He paused outside the bathroom door and turned around.
My eyes shot up from where they’d just been focused. I didn’t want him to know I’d been checking out his ass. From the flash in his eyes, he already knew.
“A sheet only works if a person cinches it around their front and back.” I lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, well, in that case . . .” Lifting his arms in a what the hell kind of gesture, he let the sheet float to the floor. And now he was standing in front of me, facing me, fully naked.
I tried not to look.
I wasn’t up to the task apparently.
“You’ve proven your point, Boone. You have nothing to hide. Would you mind covering up now?” My chest was on fire, spreading to the further reaches of my body. How I managed to sound so unaffected, I didn’t know.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before. Nothing you haven’t done a lot worse with either.” Giving another shrug, Boone disappeared into the bathroom, only closing the door halfway.
While he took his shower, I threw on a light cotton shift dress and a pair of sandals, and ran a brush through my hair a few times before I tied a scarf around it. I wanted to brush my teeth, but that would have required stepping into the bathroom, and after everything that had already happened between Boone and me this morning, I didn’t need to add seeing him step out of the shower, wet and naked, to that list.
There was only so much a woman could take before she broke. I was fast approaching mine.
So the tooth brushing was delayed, temporarily filled in by a couple pieces of mint gum I’d unearthed from one of my suitcases. I’d just finished popping in my second piece when I heard the shower turn off.
I sat on the edge of my bed, having already made it, and waited for Boone to get dressed. When he emerged from the bathroom a minute later, in the same clothes he’d been wearing last night—since the whole packing a suitcase for my plus one hadn’t crossed my mind—he broke to a stop when he saw me.
“You waited for me,” he said, more like a question than a mere observation.
“You seem surprised.”
He rolled the cuffs of his sleeves up past his elbows, giving his wet hair a shake. Droplets of water rained around my room, catching the sunlight breaking through the windows and forming hundreds of tiny prisms.
“I just assumed you would have headed down when you were ready, you know, so you wouldn’t keep your family waiting.” He bent over to tug on his boots, seeming grateful for the distraction.