No, she was sure she wouldn’t be able to walk away. Falling asleep in his arms had probably been a mistake because that had felt even more intimate than the lovemaking.
In the hallway, Oreo nudged her toward the stairs. He wanted food. She crouched low and hugged the dog. “Listen,” she whispered into Oreo’s fur, “I know he’s super sexy and he smells good and his smile makes us stupid, but he’s leaving. We need to remember that and be strong. No falling for him, okay? Promise?”
Oreo didn’t promise, and she sighed. Then she headed to the kitchen in desperate need of caffeine. She intended to wake up fully and get herself to work. She didn’t have any flights scheduled, but there was a staff meeting she had to attend. Joe, annoyed by the exorbitant maintenance cost of the aging Caravan, wanted to sell it and get something newer and bigger, and she wanted in on that discussion.
But mostly she wanted to keep busy so she could think about something other than Parker. His moan of appreciation when he’d tasted her French toast. The sound of her name on his lips when he’d been buried deep inside her. The look on his face whenever he touched her, a look that conveyed something his words never did, that he was every bit as into her as she was him . . .
Damn. She had it bad.
Hey, it’s not all doom and gloom, her little voice said. You learned to bake kick-ass blueberry muffins last night. Somehow, in spite of herself, she’d opened her life a little and was having some fun.
Actually, if she factored in all the sex, she was having lots of fun. After Wyatt and Darcy had moved out, she’d really thought all her fun was behind her, but she was happy to be wrong about that.
And there was a lot more fun out there to be had, she told herself. When Parker was gone and the glow of all the orgasms wore off, she’d still be going for life, one hundred percent.
Or at least seventy-five percent.
Determined to be fine, she decided it was a blueberry muffin sort of morning. While waiting for the coffee to brew, she carefully re-created a batch from the recipe Manda had written down for her, doing everything from the night before—except drink a bottle of wine—and stuck them in the oven.
Waiting was not a strong suit of hers, so she ran upstairs to shower and dress for the day, and then, because she’d forgotten last night, she started to switch her laundry from the washer to the dryer. But she got distracted by the kittens, whom she’d let run free while she was in the shower.
Massive mistake.
Wild woman was hanging from the curtains in the living room, swaying back and forth like Tarzan. The tabby had vanished completely. It took Zoe fifteen minutes to find the thing. Eventually she found him in the dryer she’d left open—snoozing on her fresh, clean whites. She scooped him up in her hands and he lifted his little fuzzy head to give her a sleepy “mew,” looking so adorable she couldn’t find her mad.
That was when she remembered the muffins.
A few minutes later she’d tossed out the burned muffins, run across the driveway to get a bag of muffins from Manda, and then corralled the heathens in the kitchen with her, and was opening the bag of muffins that Manda had given her. It took only a minute to decide that last night’s muffins would be better warmed.
Five minutes later, the room no longer smelled like burned muffins but instead like perfectly baked and warming muffins, and Zoe nodded in satisfaction. This was more like it.
She needed a Manda.
She looked up when Parker came into the room, dressed in jeans and a button-down, keys in hand. His hair was still damp from a shower. As she took a deep breath, her nose filled with the essence of Parker: soap, deodorant, and delicious, sexy man. Her body practically vibrated with unbidden memories: Parker in his bed, inside her body, his mouth hot at her throat, his hands positioning her as he wanted as he’d moved within her, driving her wild.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” He smiled and her heart hurt. “I thought I’d wake up with you.”
She ignored the way her heart squished at that.