toward the living room and into the room, just in time to see Liss scrambling up from the couch, throwing one of the decorative pillows back onto the cushion. She looked at him, her lower lip sucked between her teeth.
They just sort of stood there, frozen, staring at each other.
Then a gust of air tried to escape Liss’s mouth, turning into a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a snort.
He frowned. “Are you laughing at me?”
Her shoulders shook, her face turning redder. She shook her head, still biting her lower lip.
“I’m serious, Liss. You just saw me in my underwear, and you’re laughing? I have to figure out if I’m insulted by this or not.”
She shook her head again, sitting down on the couch, her face getting redder, the shaking in her shoulders getting increasingly violent.
“Either you’re having a stroke, or you are laughing at the sight of me in my undies.”
She released her lower lip and heaved in a deep breath, a guffaw escaping a second later. “No! No.”
“You’re not laughing.”
“No,” she hooted, “I’m not laughing.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Not at the sight of you in your underwear. I mean, not like you think,” she said, breathless. “It was just so absurd. You were looking at me. I was just looking at you. I happened to walk in and you were in the kitchen, and you were pretty much naked.” She was rambling now, but it was a whole lot better than the alternative.
Because things were kind of jumbled up in his head. And for some reason, he was still picturing her in her underwear, even though he was the one who had been caught in his.
“I thought you were at work.”
“I forgot my cell phone, so I came back because I didn’t have any important appointments this morning. I guess this is a part of negotiating the living situation.”
“I guess.”
She cleared her throat. “Really, though, it’s nothing I’ve never seen before.”
He tried not to be offended by that comment. As though any man in his underwear was exactly the same as him. Really, he had no place to be offended by that comment. Because the sight of him mostly naked should not be remarkable to his best friend. And yet, his masculine ego—which along with his nice-ass radar, was not as dormant as he had believed—was slightly dented.
“True. But then, I’ve seen plenty of women in their underwear—” only one, now two, in person and others in pictures, but Liss didn’t need to know that “—and that does not mean that you’re going to be prancing around in here in a state of undress.” He regretted saying that the moment he did, because it brought to mind those images he was working so hard to banish. “Are you?”
“No. Would you rather I act completely scandalized? Should I have had you fetch the smelling salts?”
“I don’t have smelling salts. All I have is barbecue steak rub. I don’t think it’s the same.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, so here’s the deal. I won’t assume that you’re not in the house anymore. And I won’t come walking downstairs in my underwear.”
“Deal.”
“Okay,” he said, taking a step away from her, rubbing the back of his neck. “I suppose you need to get back to work. I know I do.”
“Yeah, I should.”
He nodded, a thread of tension stretching between them, and he wanted to banish it. Wanted to do something to get rid of it, because this wasn’t normal. “Great, I’ll see you for dinner.”
“I might go out with Jeanette,” she said quickly.
“Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”
“Yeah, later.”
Connor turned and walked out of the room. It was probably a good thing Liss was going out tonight. After only a couple of days of cohabitation, he felt as though they could maybe use a little space.
But this was normal, this adjustment period. Connor hadn’t lived with anyone in a few years, and he’d lived with Jessie for a long time. Even then, they had a lot of miscommunications and a lot of ups and downs. There was no reason to believe it would be any different with a roommate.
He opened the door and took a deep breath, banishing all the weirdness that lingered inside him. There was no time to worry about any of that. He had a ranch to work on.
* * *
SHE’D HAD FANTASIES about Connor before. Here, in the darkness of her room, she was woman enough to admit that. And yes, she had seen him without his shirt on. They spent a lot of time on the lake, down by the river and on the beach. Copper Ridge was surrounded by water and they, like most of the other residents, made the most of it.
But somehow, seeing him in his underwear was different. Because it wasn’t just his perfectly muscular chest, with a very perfect amount of chest hair sprinkled over it. Or his washboard flat abs and the tattoo that was starting to drive her crazy. No, it was combined with the full scope of his very muscular thighs, compliments of years in the saddle, and, it just...well, and...the very prominent bulge at the apex of said muscular thighs. There. She’d admitted it.
It was burned into her brain now. The image of him standing in his kitchen nearly naked, looking as if he’d just been slapped upside the head with a two-by-four.
She rolled over onto her stomach and buried her head beneath her pillow. She had to be adult about this.
She snorted and rolled back over, uncovering her face. That was the problem. She was being adult about this. Very adult. With lots of adult thoughts and desires and needs.
What were you supposed to do when your adult needs were for your best friend and roommate? Where was her handbook?
“Ignore it,” she said out loud, “like always.”
It was the only thing to do. They would have to go on as though undiegate had never happened. She was just having a little Connor relapse due to the close proximity. Probably not aided at all by the recent amount of time she’d been spending taking care of him. And definitely not helped by her extremely long bout of celibacy and singledom. When things settled down she would have to focus on getting a date. Yes, that would help. A little bit of normalcy, a man who wasn’t Connor filling her time.
Yes, that would help. And if in the meantime, she spent just a little bit of time thinking about how Connor had looked in his underwear, well, she was only human. It didn’t mean anything. Just a little healthy female-to-male appreciation.
That was her story, and she was sticking to it.
