She set the cookies on the counter directly next to the door and then stood in the doorway, fidgeting. Carter neatly settled their suitcases into a corner. He shrugged off his winter coat and suit jacket and hung them in the closet right in front of the entryway.
She watched him with fascination. She never bothered to do such things in hotel rooms, instead letting her clothes hit the ground like slop.
Carter padded into the room while loosening his tie, then turned suddenly to face her. “Coming in or are you just gonna gawk at me?”
She stiffened. “I’m working out logistics.”
He whipped his tie off with a whoosh. Perdie winced inwardly at the intimacy of it all. A little jump in her belly told her that her body wasn’t going to behave.
“What logistics?” He tossed the tie onto the pristine white down comforter.
She gestured broadly at the room, as if it were obvious. “There’s one bed.”
“Previously established. And?”
“Don’t act like I’m weird. One of us’ll have to sleep on the floor. Or in the tub. Or, I don’t know...on this chair right here.” She kicked the flimsy rolling office chair to the wall with a sad thud.
For the first time since they’d begun their journey, Carter showed a glimmer of frustration. He stabbed his hand through his hair and reclined at the edge of the bed, his long legs spread wide. Manspreader, of course. Ugh, but it was kinda sexy. How confusing. “Can’t we both sleep on the bed, like adults? It’s big enough for a nice divide down the middle.”
Perdie crossed her arms then quickly dropped them when she got a glance at her resulting cleavage. Carter got a glance of it too judging by the way his gaze went heavy then quickly shifted.
Trying to find something to do with her hands, she scrunched her hair to the side. “Adults don’t just sleep on beds together. They...”
He perked a brow. “They what? What do adults do in bed together?” The corner of his mouth twitched.
She glared at him because there were winners and losers in this conversation, and so far she wasn’t earning any prizes. She was a thirty-nine-year-old woman and this baby Ken doll was getting the best of her, riling her up both above and below the belt. Men almost never affected her as such, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“You’re right.” She threw her arms up. “We’ve made it this far, what’s sharing a bed with a stranger for a night?” Her hands came to her hips, a defiant pose. “You want dibs on the first shower? Or should we share that too?”
If he walked out in nothing but a low-slung towel across his hips, so help her god she might turn into a pillar of salt.
But she could survive this one night.
Tomorrow she’d be back on the beach and he’d be...doing whatever it is San Francisco lawyers did—drinking ginger shots at farmers markets? Going to a dog wedding?
Who was she kidding? She’d done those things. She couldn’t even mock this man properly in her head. Hell, she’d officiated at a dog wedding. It wasn’t her fault that Bananas was in love with Pudding, the dog in the condo across the street, and that their love was too pure and too true to not invite all their friends and family with gold-threaded hand-calligraphed invitations to watch the union between this dog and this other dog joined in holy wedded dogtrimony, for better and for worse, through sickness and through health, for as long as they both shall live (in dog years) at their Sullivan’s Island beachfront ceremony—
“Perdie.” His voice cut through her thoughts. “I think you’re inadvertently sending some mixed messages. But look, if you’re worried about me trying to take advantage of this close-quarters situation, you can rest assured that I won’t. My moms raised me right. I don’t hold on to outdated notions about opposite-gendered people sharing spaces together.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
He dug his hand into his pocket to retrieve his phone. “This isn’t the eighties. You’re welcome to call them up to verify. Of course they’d also be more than willing to spill all the blackmail material you could ever want. They’d love the chance to tell all the most embarrassing stories to a willing listener.” And with a smile, he held out his phone.
Perdie didn’t call his moms plural. Instead, she stalked off to the bathroom and showered first, carefully planning out the activity to reduce the sexual tension surrounding them.
She wouldn’t step out until she was fully dressed, and she would avoid allowing her clothes to stick to her damp body. Unfortunately, since she wasn’t planning on spending the night with anyone, let alone a beautiful man who was also her competition, she had little in the way of sleep clothes packed.
She gingerly toweled her hair and body, careful not to leave a huge puddle of water on the floor like she might normally do. Lucille was a saint for living with her for all these years with habits like those.
An unprecedented level of self-consciousness overcame her, and every single sound even from her smallest movement was unbearably loud. She hoped Carter couldn’t hear. She was out of clean underwear, so she had no choice but to go commando under her cotton sleep shorts, prompting her to shave everything in case said shorts were on the see-through side. Better safe than prickly was her motto.
With a heavy heart she snapped on her abused nude bra beneath the camisole she’d pulled from her suitcase.
There was no way in hell she was going bra free in front of Carter. Back in jail, girls.
When she burst through the door, her hair, now wet and curling at the ends, shed errant droplets, painting unanticipated, see-through spots down her camisole. Tiny, indecent windows to her soul. Oops. She held a towel over her chest.
“Have at it.” She indicated her thumb to the bathroom door. The sight of Carter sprawled out on the bed, though, stopped her in her tracks.
His large body was stretched out with one sockless foot resting over the other, iPad on his lap, brow furrowed. His immaculately fitted white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the top, revealing a light sprinkling of chest hair that made Perdie press her tongue to the roof of her mouth, and his sleeves were rolled up on his forearms so several inches of tattoos peeked out from the cuffs.
Carter had tattoos? It shouldn’t really surprise her since plenty of people did. Hell, Perdie had a regretful purple-and-yellow flower back-tatt done in someone’s basement when she was nineteen. Everyone had been doing it at the time, and she’d so desperately wanted to be like everyone.
He lifted his head from his work, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, up and down and up and down. “Thanks.” His voice was hoarse. He made his way from the bed, barely brushing against her as he passed by. She’d been holding her breath and realized she should’ve moved out of the way. She’d accidentally forced their touching. Oops again.
Soon enough the familiar drone of running water soothed her. She buried herself under the white down comforter, paddling her sore feet against the coolness of the sheets. A long exhale left her body, and she deflated. Two truths existed in that bed. The first: she was exhausted. And the second: she was horny as all get-out. The faint scent of chilled peppermint wafted from Carter’s side of the bed.
Her brain began etching naked images of him in the shower. Stop it, stop it, stop it.
God, she wished she could take care of her own business. Her head lolled on the pillow, staring longingly at the suitcase holding her vibrator, barely out of reach. She was like Jack stretching across the water to Rose on that piece of spare driftwood Rose definitely could’ve shared...
It was too risky to vibe one out while Carter was in the shower anyway, and she was too tired to get out of the bed now. Although, after its little tumble on the airport floor, she’d been sure to wash her vibrator thoroughly while in the shower. A girl had her priorities.
She settled for scrolling through her phone, vision blurred with fatigue.
She texted Lucille: Luce, you won’t believe where I am right now.
No answer. Probably because it was a Friday night and Lucille was busy chasing after a man who would never love her back. That guy was the actual worst. Perdie didn’t want to think about that now.
