Maybe if she was really still, Taylor would vanish. A figment of her imagination.
“Not much of a morning person,” came an amused male voice from the other side of the room.
If Nicole had thought her heart had raced at the sight of Taylor in her bedroom, it went off the scale now. Even after their very brief encounter, she recognized that slightly Irish voice, she recognized it immediately. And if it brought a series of shivers down her spine that she couldn’t attribute to a morning chill, she could shove the reaction aside in favor of temper. “What the hell—”
“Now before you get all pissy at me…” Taylor put a hand over Nicole’s chest, pushing her back. “Let me explain.”
Nicole could take Taylor down any day of the week. Her workouts, when she could fit them in, guaranteed that.
The only exercise Taylor ever did was lifting and setting down her hairbrush. Oh, and her lipstick.
No, what held Nicole back from wrapping her fingers around Taylor’s neck was one tiny little detail.
She slept in the nude.
Which meant that in order to kick Taylor’s ass, she’d have to get out of bed.
Naked.
“Why is he in here?” she settled for asking between her teeth while clutching the sheet to her chest.
From his perch holding up her wall, Ty’s gaze zoomed in on her—a very blue gaze that was lit with amusement, curiosity and plenty more—and for just a flash in time, she lost her train of thought.
Taylor craned her neck and looked up at the tall, dark, ridiculously gorgeous man. “You’ve met?”
“You could say that,” Nicole said.
“Oh, good, because I’m thinking of hiring him to fix up the building, which apparently is about to fall off its axis. Not,” she added quickly, “that you need to worry about it, I’m getting it all fixed pronto.”
“Taylor.” Nicole rubbed her temples. “The point. Get to the point. Why is he here? Specifically, in my bedroom.”
“Well, I was standing there in the hallway yelling for you, and beginning to freak out when you didn’t answer, when he offered to break in since I didn’t have my keys on me. He’s not only an excellent architect, he’s quite the handyman.”
“Let me guess,” Nicole said dryly, watching Ty smile at her from behind Taylor’s back. “He got in with a credit card?”
“Why, yes. A handy little trick, don’t you think?”
“Hmm.” Nicole narrowed her eyes at the ease he displayed standing there in her bedroom. As if he belonged.
But no one, especially a man, belonged in her bedroom, no matter how good he looked in a light-blue chambray shirt shoved up past his forearms, and a pair of jeans that made her hormones stand up and quiver. “Is the credit card trick something you picked up in Ireland?” she asked.
“Why ever would you think that?” he asked innocently.
As if he’d ever been innocent. “Because I hear it in your voice.”
“That’s the English, luv,” he said, pushing lazily away from the wall, coming close enough to peruse the tray from Suzanne. Then, picking up a piece of toast, his gaze tracked over Nicole from head to toe, and back again, making every single atom in her body leap to attention. Sinking his teeth into the bread, he chewed a moment, then licked the butter off his finger with a sucking sound that caused an answering tug in Nicole’s nipples for some annoying reason. “Went there for a while,” he said.
“Thought it was Scotland.”
Leaning in, he put the toast to her lips, pressing until she had no choice but to open and take a bite. “There, too,” he said lightly, making her take yet another bite, his thumb stroking across her bottom lip at a dab of misplaced butter. “And also Australia, if you’re interested in keeping track.”
She felt the touch all the way to her toes and back up, and at all sorts of other interesting spots along the way. It didn’t help that her eyes were level with a most erotic spot on his body—the juncture between his thighs—and the intriguing bulge there.
“I had to make sure you were okay,” Taylor said, picking up a piece of peach from the tray. “I’m sorry for the invasion, but you’ve done nothing but work since you moved in here, and you sleep like the dead.”
Ty let out another innocent smile. “And you talk to yourself while doing it.”
Nicole opened her mouth, but Taylor stuffed the peach into it. At the explosion of sweet nectar in her mouth, she sputtered.
“That was a piece of fruit,” Taylor said. “I realize you might not recognize it, given that it’s actually one of the important food groups and not purchased from a drive-through.”
“Taylor—”
“You’re going to kill yourself this way,” Taylor said softly, her eyes showing their worry. “It’s not right. Promise me you’ll eat all of this mountain of food. The eggs, the sausage, the toast, the fruit, everything.”
Nicole sighed. “I never had a landlord care what I put inside my body before.”
Taylor went still, then brushed the crumbs off her hands. “Is that all I am?”
Nicole looked into Taylor’s eyes, saw the hurt added to the worry, and flopped back to stare up at the ceiling. “This is why I don’t socialize.”
Taylor stood a little stiffly, when the elegant Taylor was never stiff. “I’m sorry. I’ll go. Just make sure Suzanne gets her tray back—”
Nicole reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Look…I’m the sorry one.”
“No need.”
Nicole sighed at the cool hurt lingering in Taylor’s face and tugged on her wrist until she sat back at her side. “I’m an idiot, all right? An idiot who doesn’t know how to…have friends.”
“So we are friends?”
“You know we are. Unless you shove any more fruit down my throat.”
“In that case…” Taylor spread her silk skirt carefully and made herself comfortable on the bed before reaching for a piece of toast. “There’s enough here to feed an army. Ty, some sausage? Don’t be shy, hon, Suzanne is so nervous about her upcoming nuptials that she’s overcooking to compensate.”
“Taylor,” Nicole said in a warning voice that turned into a squeak when Ty suddenly joined them.
On the bed.
His long denim-covered legs brushed hers. There were the covers between them, but given the electric zap she felt at the brush of his warm, hard body, and given the way the current continued to run through her, there weren’t enough covers in all of South Village to keep between them.
And then there
