“So, Benny girl, I think we should press pause on this fantastic moment—because you can bet that sexy ass of yours I want to revisit this—and let’s throw some clothes on you and find something a little less tempting to do.”
I thought it over for a second. “Do you have any pizza?”
A wry grin creased his mouth. “You want pizza?”
I nodded. “Pizza and Netflix. We’ll save the chill part for later.”
Kline lifted me off the bed and onto my feet as he sat up. “How about you rummage through my closet and find something you like and I’ll order us one?”
I pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Deal.”
As I turned for the closet, his hand met my ass, spanking a high-pitched squeal right from my lips.
“Hey!” I shouted, turning toward him.
He shrugged, smirking like the devil. “Can’t expect a man to ignore a perfect ass shimmying around in front of his face.”
“I was not shimmying.”
“Baby, you were shimmying. But don’t worry, I was definitely watching and enjoying the show.”
I ignored him, striding—okay, sashaying—into his walk-in closet, where I enjoyed a few moments to myself to swoon over the whole “Baby” sentiment.
There may have been jumping and silent screaming. Who knows? Maybe I even buried my nose into his dress shirts and put myself in a momentary Kline-induced coma?
But I will tell you this.
The pizza was fucking delicious.
Confused and sleepy, Georgia stumbled out of my bedroom and into the hall, the light from my sun-beaten bedroom windows backlighting her in the doorway. My shirt hung off of her tiny frame in a bloblike shadow and covered her completely, but the image of her naked body underneath was burned on my brain from having it straddling me last night.
She’d been out of her mind, completely out of control, and most of all, irresistibly fucking adorable. She made the term hot mess look good, and the rambling thoughts of her Benadryl-influenced mind would stick with me forever.
Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d ever met someone funnier—and I knew a whole lot of brilliantly funny people.
“I feel like someone buried me alive last night and I spent all twelve hours trying to claw my way out.”
I smiled apologetically.
She stopped to lean on the wall at the mouth of the hallway, putting the tips of her fingers of one hand to the skin of her forehead.
“I’m so sorry about last night,” I told her.
But I wasn’t sorry. Not really anyway. The only thing I regretted was that I should have taken her to the goddamn hospital in spite of her protests. It could have turned out so much worse. My Catholic roots were a little rusty, but I’d dust off the old prayer playbook to thank the big guy for keeping an eye on this one.
Inching her way into the room, she settled on the other end of the couch and pulled her knees carefully into her chest, stretching the cotton of my t-shirt to cover them.
“Fucking lime juice,” she muttered into her knees, the skin of her now normal lips teasing the soft knit of the fabric before looking up at me. “Scotch with lime juice, really? Who even drinks that?”
I leaned back into the couch, stretching an arm along the back and propping my feet up on the coffee table in front of me to keep from reaching out and running a finger along those lips.
“Ernest Hemingway drank scotch with lime juice.”
She chewed the recently healed skin nervously, and I could imagine what she was thinking. Trying to assess how she felt about waking up here, with me, at the same time she considered what I said. She seemed genuinely intrigued that I’d know something like that, but she warred with herself when it came to concentration on it. “Really?”
I laughed, explaining, “Well, I never witnessed it for myself, but I read it once somewhere, yeah.”
A smile crept into the corners of her mouth and brightened the blue of her eyes. And the maroon of my shirt already had them blazing.
Moving her eyes from the couch to the kitchen, down the hall and back again, she asked, “What is this place?”
I pinched one eye in winklike confusion, attempted to survey the scene from her point of view, and then answered the only way I could. “Uh, it’s my apartment.”
“Your apartment?”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Why did you say ‘your apartment’ like it’s infested with bed bugs?”
“No!” she denied vehemently in surprise. “No, it’s nice. It’s just…”
Silence lingered where words should have been.
“It’s…” I prompted. “What?”
Her cheeks puffed out slightly with the sour taste of her thoughts, and I could see her run the scenario of saying it out loud through her head more than once.
“Georgie. It’s what?”
“Normal.”
A laugh slipped out. “Yeah, well. So am I.”
And it wasn’t that normal, I thought a little bitterly. It had a doorman, for fuck’s sake. I was a single guy. What the fuck did I need a penthouse with six bedrooms for?
I didn’t want Georgia to think I needed some big apartment. I wanted her to get it.
“No,” she disagreed. “You’re Kline Brooks.”