Joe and Keri’s was, not surprisingly, don’t wake the baby. Kevin and Beth both wrote better than chocolate cake, whatever that was supposed to mean. Dani wrote gets better with time, like fine wine and Roger wrote like cheese, the older you get, the better it is, which led to a pow-wow about whether or not to give them a point. They probably would have gotten it if they weren’t tied with Keri and Joe, who took competitive to a cutthroat level.
When they all looked at Sean, he groaned and turned his paper around. They’d lost any chance of winning way back, but he was already dreading what the smart-ass he wasn’t really engaged to had written down. “She’s the boss.”
The look Emma gave him as she slowly turned the notepad around gave him advance warning she was about to lay down the royal flush in this little game they’d been playing.
“Size really doesn’t matter,” she said in what sounded to him like a really loud voice.
Before he could say anything—and he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth, but he had to say something—Cat appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I hate to break up the party,” she said, “but it’s getting late, so we’re calling it a night.”
Maybe Cat was, but Sean was just getting started.
If Gram wasn’t in the truck, Emma would have given Sean a ride home he’d never forget. As it was, she pushed it a little, enjoying his sucked-in breaths and the way his foot kept reaching for a brake pedal he didn’t have.
Because it was so late, Gram went right to bed and Sean followed her up the stairs. By the time Emma was done locking up, she heard snoring coming from her grandmother’s room as she paused on her way by.
Sean wasn’t snoring, but he was already in bed. He was on his back with his hands tucked under his head, scowling at the ceiling. Rather than give him time to grumble at her for driving like a girl, she went straight into the bathroom to clean up and get ready for bed.
In her hurry, though, she’d forgotten to grab her pajamas, which was a dilemma. She could either go out and get them and return to the bathroom to change, or she could go out there and put them on. If Sean didn’t like it, he didn’t have to watch.
After leaving the bathroom, she turned off the overhead light in the bedroom, but it didn’t do much good. The night was clear, the moon was bright and she knew she was all too visible when she undid her jeans and shimmied them down over her hips.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Changing into my pajamas.”
“You always do that in the bathroom.” His voice was low and rough, but she noticed he didn’t look away.
“I forgot them and there’s no point in going back in there.” She kicked off the jeans and was going to pull on the shorts before changing shirts, but then she remembered his stupid answers to the stupid questions in that game and changed her mind.
“The point is that you don’t do it in front of me.”
“Oh, did you forget? Being watched turns me on.” And she pulled her T-shirt over her head.
She had to bite down on a surprised yelp once she was free of it because suddenly Sean was standing in front of her, wearing nothing but blue boxer briefs and a scowl. “You said I had no imagination.”
“And having no imagination is so much worse than your best friend’s family thinking you’re an exhibitionist.”
“And we’re not ever going to talk about the other thing you said. Ever.”
He was crowding her personal space, so she put her hands on his chest to push him back, but he caught her wrists. Standing there with her palms pressed against his naked skin, she could feel his heartbeat beating at a quickened pace that matched her own and she knew she had two choices. Walk away or end up in bed with him.
She leaned her body a little closer and splayed her fingers across his chest. “Which thing aren’t we talking about? The fast-food joint bathroom or—”
“Don’t push me too far, Emma. It’s been a long time for me.”
“How long?”
“Too damn long.” He lifted her hands from his chest, but didn’t let go of her wrists. “And I never even got to scope out the dating situation here before you showed up at my door with this half-ass scheme.”
“And since we…you haven’t…”
“The last thing I need is to get caught cheating on a woman I can’t tell anybody I’m not really in a relationship with.” His gaze dropped from her face to her lacy white bra and he sighed. “You’re killing me.”
“Lying awake on the couch every night, wondering what it would be like to slide into bed with you has been killing me for two weeks.”
“Yeah.” He let go of her wrists and slid his hands up the back of her neck and into her hair. “I’ve thought about that, too. A lot. Pretty much constantly, actually.”
“We’re two single adults. There’s no reason we have to suffer.”
He was pulling her slowly closer, his fingertips still massaging the back of her skull and she was starting to lose patience with the talking. She wanted more doing.
Sean apparently hadn’t turned that page yet. “This won’t change anything, Emma, so I don’t want you getting any ideas. The day we drive Cat to the airport, I’m moving on. This isn’t…real.”
“The orgasms will be real, right?”
“Very real. And numerous.”