the bathroom and pushed the door half-closed in front of himself. “I didn’t realize you were in here.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she hastily told him, heading for the bedroom door. Which meant she also was headed toward the bathroom door. And Turner. And Turner’s towel. Among Turner’s other things.
“I thought you’d be longer in the shower,” she added as she made herself race through the bedroom door and into the living room.
“Longer?” he echoed as he poked his head back out to look at her. “All I had to do was get clean. What else would I be doing in here?”
Don’t answer, she told herself. Don’t even think about an answer.
Oh, damn. Too late…
“Uh…” she began as she turned her back on Turner to give him some privacy and herself some sanity. “I’ll just be out here in the living room, ’kay?”
Out in the living room trying not to think about you all naked and steamy, with water streaming down over your skin, and you pushing the soap across your chest and over your abs and stomach, the frothy foam oozing between your fingers and over taut muscle, and then your hand moving lower, over your lean thighs and toward your, um, uh…lower lip?
She cleared her throat indelicately. “I’ll be out here in the living room,” she repeated, striving for lightness in her tone, but thinking she probably only succeeded with lewdness instead.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought Turner mumbled something in response. She was too busy not thinking about him to ask him to repeat himself. Though she was pretty sure she heard the words crazy lunatic female somewhere in the mix. She also thought she heard the sound of a towel being whipped from a wet, steamy, hard body, but that could have just been her imagination. Wishful thinking. Whatever.
Oh, where had she put her cigarettes?
Recalling that she had smoked the last of them before going to bed, she gave herself a good mental shake and told herself to calm down. It wouldn’t be fair, anyway, to smoke in front of Turner when she’d bet him he couldn’t go all day without. She could go without, too. She’d just have to keep her thoughts focused, that was all.
Yeah, focus, she reiterated to herself. That’s the ticket.
Unfortunately, when Turner emerged a few minutes later from his bedroom, wearing snug, faded jeans and an even more faded denim work shirt that he hadn’t bothered yet to button up, Becca’s focus flew immediately to his person. To be more specific, her focus flew to that part of his person that was currently uncovered. And then her focus focused way too well. The rich scattering of dark hair that peeked out from his open shirt spanned his chest from shoulder to shoulder, she knew, because she’d seen him shirtless on more than one occasion.
But somehow, seeing him this way now felt different from the way it had on those other occasions. Before, when Turner had been shirtless around her, it had been in some public venue. Because they were swimming or he was working out in his parents’ yard or playing basketball or something else equally harmless. Now his state of dishabille seemed anything but harmless. Here, in the privacy of his apartment, when it was just the two of them, alone, it seemed more intimate somehow.
Lack of sleep, she reminded herself again. Yeah. That was for sure why she suddenly felt so restless around him.
“So what do you want to do today while you’re not trusting me to light up in secret?” he asked as he began to button his shirt. “Besides pretend we both don’t want a cigarette, I mean.”
Becca shrugged. “I don’t know. We could see a movie.”
He gazed at her through narrowed eyes. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Had enough, have you?”
“Let’s just say that when it’s my time to go to that big disease-of-the-week in the sky, I’ll know all the right things to say about moons and stars and no regrets.”
“Mmm.”
She watched as he finished buttoning himself up, and continued to watch as he rolled back his sleeves over strong forearms, and continued to watch as he dragged both hands through his still-damp hair, slicking it straight back from his face. And then she continued to watch some more as he gazed back at her.
“What?” he asked.
“What, what?” she replied.
“Why are you looking at me? Do I have toothpaste on my lip or something?”
Oh, she really didn’t want to talk about his lip right now. “It’s nothing,” she said quickly.
Probably a little too quickly, because he narrowed his eyes even more. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Why do you think something is wrong?”
“I don’t know. You’re looking at me kind of funny.”
“Well, I don’t know why. I don’t feel funny.”
“How do you feel?”
Oooh, not a question she wanted to answer right now. She needed a diversion. Quick. So she strode across the room to where she had slung her purse over the back of a chair, rummaged through it until she found what she was looking for, then shamelessly withdrew a limp, bent, God-only-knows-how-long-it’s-been-in-there cigarette, plus her lighter, and strode back over to Turner.
“Hey,” he objected. “You can’t smoke today.”
“Why not?”
“Because we have a bet, that’s why.”
“I didn’t make any bet,” she pointed out as she tucked the cigarette between her lips. “You did. I can smoke if I want to.”
He gaped at her. “But that’s not fair!”
She smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
“But…but…but…”
She withdrew the cigarette from her mouth and extended it toward him. “Would you rather have it yourself?” she asked sweetly.
For some reason, it suddenly seemed imperative that she get him to smoke. Not just because she needed him to lose the bet in order to accompany her to the hypnotherapist, but because the sooner he lit up, the sooner she could win the bet and vacate the premises. Then, in the privacy and safety of her own home, she could wonder just why the hell she suddenly felt so weird around Turner. So she moved the cigarette closer, rolling it between her fingers in an effort to free the sweet aroma of unsmoked tobacco, a fragrance she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.
“C’mon,” she taunted him. “You know you want to. Can’t you smell it?” she cooed in the sexiest siren voice she could muster. She took another step closer, until her body was almost flush with his, then pushed the cigarette even closer to his face. “Smell how good it smells,” she entreated him seductively.
But Turner glanced away, silently declining her offer. She frowned at the rebuff, feeling strangely rejected. So she lifted her free hand to his face, cupping his jaw in her palm until she could turn his head
