she was still in bed with her blue-eyed stranger. But maybe Maeve was right and she should talk to—
“Garrett,” came the gruff, deeply masculine voice from above her.
Her eyes blinked wide as the flutter in her chest dropped into her belly, turning leaden and still.
“I can feel you getting tense.”
The decadent weight she’d been basking under eased as he shifted to his elbows and peered down into her eyes. Familiar eyes.
Oh, God.
“It’s fun to play and all, but I didn’t want you to wonder or worry about who you were with. My name’s Garrett.”
“Garrett … Carter?” Her throat closed over the name, fighting what she knew deep in the pit of her stomach to be true.
His muscles tensed. “You know me?”
Oh, yeah. She knew him. And her face must have said as much because Garrett flinched, looking pained and then … resigned. Moving to a chair in the corner, he grabbed the light quilt from the back and tossed it to her.
Shoving one leg into his jeans, and then the other, he pulled them over his hips before he turned back. “I don’t know what you heard, but this—tonight, Nichole—it’s not—”
He stood immobile, his gaze searing over her skin, her hair—sweeping across her bedroom until it settled at the ladder-style bookshelf at the opposite side of the room. His body seemed to lock tight. She knew what he’d see there. The photo Maeve had given her for Christmas last year. The one where their grinning faces filled the frame.
He took a halting step forward, his features hardening.
His eyes slammed shut. “Nichole?”
Pulling the quilt around her breasts, she tried to ignore the sensitivity of her nipples and the knowledge Garrett had made them that way. With his mouth. His teeth. Tongue—
“Nikki Daniels?”
Garrett Carter. Maeve’s brother. The Panty Whisperer.
Yeah, she couldn’t quite believe it either.
Stalking across the room as he raked his fingers through his hair, Garrett—because, as clumsy as it felt tumbling around her thoughts, that’s what his name was—looked as dismayed as she felt. One thing was certain. She didn’t have to worry about the night turning into anything more complicated than—well, this.
Granted, this was messy. But the makings of some emotional train wreck it wasn’t.
Maeve would laugh about this. Nichole knew she would. She had to.
There wasn’t any risk to their relationship—not over one innocuous little slip she hadn’t seen coming.
“What is that?” demanded the voice that had been growling her name in her ear mere minutes before.
Her head snapped up and then followed Garrett’s pointed gaze back to her hand and the slim rectangle of technology she’d unconsciously reached for. “My phone.”
Her lifeline to sorting out the mess in her head. To Maeve reassuring her their friendship was as strong as ever. There wouldn’t be any awkwardness. Not this time. Not like with—
“No kidding. A phone, Nikki?”
Jerked back from the brink of one of the worst memories of her life, Nichole refocused on the man glowering down at her.
Her brow pushed up a degree. So now she was Nikki? Like Garrett thought he knew her or something? But before she could call him on his presumption he was back at her.
“What are you doing with it?”
Nothing yet. But the intent was obvious. Even if it had taken a moment for her head to catch up to her thumbs. “Texting Maeve.”
He’d crossed to the bed in two strides.
“Like hell you are.” Paling, he grabbed her hand and turned it over in his. “If you snapped a picture of me on this thing, so help me—”
“What? Are you insane? You think I took photos of you when you were … were … doing that?”
Arms folded over his chest, Garrett pulled back. “No. I hadn’t actually thought—” Another, deeper growl. “But you tried to take a picture of me at the party.”
“And you said no, so I didn’t. Though in retrospect I’m fairly certain both of us would have preferred I had.”
What Garrett had given her was beyond anything she could have imagined. But regardless of how good it had felt—how much she might have needed it—nothing was worth risking her relationship with Maeve.
Brows drawn, he asked, “You think Maeve would have warned you off me?”
Seriously? “Don’t you?”
Granted it would have been for reasons different than Nichole’s, but, yes, she was fairly certain Maeve would have wanted her to know who she was about to take a dip with.
One dark brow cocked in amusement. “I think she’d have been laughing too hard to hit ‘send.’ But for you, she’d have tried.”
Nichole felt her lips twitching at the thought, along with relief flooding through her at hearing Garrett too believed Maeve would have a good sense of humor about this. “You could be right.”
Garrett sat at the foot of the bed—not close enough to touch, but not a total snub either. Just maintaining the distance between them.
Snaking a leg out from beneath the blanket’s overlap, she stretched, trying to reach the panties lying three feet from the bed without actually leaving it.
There was something significantly different about being naked in front of Garrett now that she knew who he was. What he was.
At risk of severe cramp, she strained further, extending her leg until finally she was able to snare the little heap of lace-edged cotton with her toes. Only just as she had them Garrett turned, one arm braced on the bed, muscles bunched thick from the weight of his torso, and cocked a curious brow at her. “What are you doing?”
“Panties.”
His brow drew down as his gaze flickered over the length of her barely concealed form, making her pull and pluck at the corners of the blanket to try and hide further beneath it.
“You really didn’t know who I was?” he asked, pushing to his feet.
“I would have run the other way. No offense,” she offered belatedly, wondering whether it was possible not to take offense.
But apparently he hadn’t. “No, that’s good.”
“Why?”
“I just didn’t like the
