pretty women with very pretty plans for their future. The few dates he’d been on in the past year had felt more like job interviews, and they’d fizzled accordingly.
But Chloe didn’t look at him as if he was a steak on display at a butcher shop. She wasn’t angling for marriage, sizing up his earning potential or evaluating his parenting qualities. Which was good, because marriage was not high on his list of priorities anymore. She was the kind of woman who understood that a date should be fun and flirty, two people trying each other on. No expectations, just opportunity.
Not that this was a date.
In fact, he wasn’t sure what this was, but he kind of liked it. Tonight he got to hang out with a flawed, stressed-out, hot-then-cold-then-hot-again woman with a kick-ass body, a pierced nose and a star tattoo on her right arm. And he couldn’t wait.
He moved her abandoned phone to the nightstand so he could prop the pillow upright against the headboard, and sat down against it. He’d just stretched his long legs out in front of him when he heard the bathroom door open.
She appeared from around the corner a moment later.
Ben let his gaze slip from her berry lips down to her bare shoulders, then to her arms—that star tattoo was going to be the death of him, he was sure of it—lingering a moment on the way she filled out her tank top before sliding past her black boxer shorts to take in her truly spectacular thighs, her shapely calves and the shiny black polish on her toenai—
“Oh, my God, are you walking on hotel carpeting in bare feet?” he asked, lunging forward. “Do you have any idea how gross hotel carpet is?”
He was half expecting another sardonic smile, but apparently the panic in his voice had registered, because her eyes widened in response to his alarm.
“How gross?” she asked, scrunching up her nose in preparation.
“My grandma was a nurse, and she once had this patient who ended up with cellulitis from walking barefoot on hotel carpeting—”
“Are you kidding me?”
“—and he didn’t get it checked right away, so by the time he went to the emergency room his whole leg was full of pus—”
“Ew, ew, ew!” She was hopping from foot to foot by this point.
“—and he had to stay in the hospital for three days so they could give him antibiotics intravenously.”
“Okay, enough, enough!” She jumped onto the bed beside him, scrambling into a sitting position and staring down at her feet. “Oh, God! My feet are itchy. Is itchy a symptom of cellulitis?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes went wide.
“Well, probably.” He didn’t remember all the details of the story...just the gross ones. “Do they feel swollen? Like there’s a bunch of pus accumulating under your skin, getting ready to erupt and—”
Chloe recovered enough to sock him in the arm. “Shut up with the gory details, wouldja?”
Ben rubbed his arm where her punch had landed. Chloe crawled over to the end of the bed. She braced one hand on the very edge of the mattress and reached toward her coat, which was hanging on the back of a chair that was just out of reach. Her fingertips brushed the thick material, but she didn’t quite get purchase on it. He watched in fascination as she set herself up for another attempt.
“What are you doing?”
“I left my suitcase in the bathroom, and if you think I’m setting one bare toe on that hideous, infested carpet then you’re way dumber than you look,” she said over her shoulder.
He shot her a tight smile. Ha, ha.
“So I’m going to stand on my jacket, slide my way over to the bathroom, and get myself some socks.”
“Or you could just ask me to get your suitcase,” he pointed out, getting to his feet.
She gazed up at him with such wonder that he honestly believed the idea had never occurred to her. “I... You don’t have to. I mean, I can do it myself.”
“I’m sure you could, eventually. But I’m happy to help, because if you slip and contract cellulitis, the amputation would ruin your sister’s big day.” Ben smiled angelically and dodged when she chucked a pillow at him.
Her ugly suitcase was sitting on the toilet. “You should really have a lock on this when you’re flying,” he advised, grabbing the scratched-up plastic case and heading back into the bedroom. He dropped it on the suitcase stand and set it down beside her. She threw open the lid to reveal bedlam inside.
“You know, most people fold stuff before they put it in the suitcase, just FYI.” Ben resumed his position on the bed beside her.
“Thanks for the packing tips.” Her voice sounded less than sincere as she hunted through the chaos. She rescued a ratty sock from inside the suitcase and jammed a foot into it. “Wow. That looks sexy.” She stuck her foot in the air so Ben, too, could admire the purple, elastic-challenged sock that was slouched around her ankle.
“Yeah, well, it’s sexier than athlete’s foot.”
“Amen, brother.” She reached out to give him a high-five before quickly pulling on the other sock. She closed up her suitcase. “Okay, now that that’s taken care of, on to more important things, like food.”
He reached over to the nightstand and dumped the contents of the plastic ice bucket on the bed between them. An avalanche of candy spilled across the sheet. “Dinner is served.”
“Whoa. What’d you do? Knock over a vending machine?”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d be in the mood for—salty, sweet, stale,” he offered, rapping a rock-hard, prepackaged Danish against the headboard with a disconcerting tap, tap, tap, “or all of the above—so I got one of everything.” He lobbed the Danish at the trash bin on the floor beside the television stand. It landed inside the plastic container with a heavy thud.
She did that cute nose-scrunch thing again as she deliberated over the colorfully-wrapped mound of sucrose and diabetes. “SunChips, Skittles, Aero Peppermint. And I’m taking the cherry Life Savers,” she decided, grabbing each of her picks from the junk-food dog pile as she named them. “You know, in case of emergency.”
Ben nodded contemplatively, undoing the buttons at his wrists. “Those are some bold choices, Masterson.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves in preparation for his own selection process. “Personally, I’m more of a traditionalist. I’m going for the Doritos with a side of Mike and Ike, Jolly Ranchers to cleanse my palate, and Twix for dessert. You want to split the pretzels as an appetizer?” he asked, ripping into them and holding the miniature bag in her direction.
“Why not?” Instead of taking one pretzel, though, she took a handful, and Ben liked that about her. She balanced them in a precise stack on her knee. “So does the wife know you leave the ring off while you’re away on business so you can lure pajama-clad strangers into sharing hotel-bed dinners?” she asked, crunching into a pretzel.
Ben shook his head.
