Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 66978 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66978 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I lie down on the couch, wishing I could crawl into bed next to her and settle in. I pull a throw blanket over myself.
Nothing like a good climax inside a beautiful woman to relax me enough to get to sleep very quickly—even on a narrow couch.
“Wake up!”
I jerk my eyes open.
Kelly stands above me. As I wipe the blur out of my eyes, I see that she’s still naked.
Damn.
“What you still doing here?” she demands. “I thought you said you were leaving.”
A yawn splits my face. “I… I didn’t want to leave you alone.”
“You’ve told me before how safe I am here.”
“You are safe here. But we…”
“Fucked. We fucked, Leif.”
“Yeah. I guess we did.”
“You guess?”
“For God’s sake, Kelly, can you give me a minute to wake up?” I sit up on the couch, get my bearings. I hate sleeping in my clothes. It’s so uncomfortable. Normally I sleep in my underwear.
“You got any coffee?” I ask.
She grabs a pillow from a chair and attempts to cover herself. “I’m sure there’s plenty of coffee over at your place.”
“Then…do you have a robe?” I say angrily.
“This is my place. If I want to walk around naked, I will.”
I rake my fingers through my hair, which I’m sure is a mass of unruly blond waves. “What’s with the pillow then?”
I have no idea what else to say to her. She was so sweet last night, and she responded to me so completely when we made love. Now?
Old Kelly is back.
I don’t know why I expected anything different.
In fact, I didn’t expect anything different.
I stand, stretch my arms over my head. Then I amble into her kitchen.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demands.
“I’m going to make a pot of coffee, if that’s all right with you.”
As a matter of fact, that’s not all right with me.
I expect those words any minute.
But oddly, they don’t come. I find the coffee maker, root around for the grounds, and start a pot. Then I open the refrigerator.
Again, I expect a sarcastic and nasty comment, but I don’t get one.
She is such an enigma to me, even though I understand her in a lot of ways. Her troubles didn’t begin on that island. She’s made that clear.
I wish I could secretly look at her therapy files. I want to know all about her. Maybe she’s a new project for me.
Except I don’t feel like she’s a project. I feel like she’s a woman I want to get to know. A woman I have intense physical chemistry with for sure, but there’s so much more beneath her exterior, and I want to know everything about her. Every single thing.
I want her to know every single thing about me.
God, this is so fucked up.
Kelly arrives back in the kitchen, this time wearing a robe, thank God. My dick would never go back to normal size with her walking around naked.
She pulls two mugs out of the cupboard and sets them on the counter.
I guess that’s her invitation for me to stay for coffee. “Do you have any eggs or anything? I can make some breakfast.”
She doesn’t answer, but she walks to the fridge and pulls out eggs, a package of bacon, and a loaf of bread.
Bacon, eggs, toast. Sounds good to me.
“Where’s your frying pan?”
Again she doesn’t answer, but she opens the cupboard below the oven and pulls out a frying pan. Next, she lays strips of bacon in it, places it on the stove, and turns on the burner.
Okay. I guess she’s making breakfast.
The coffee is ready, and I fill each of our mugs. “Cream and sugar?” I ask.
Again she doesn’t respond, so I leave her coffee on the counter, and I take mine out to the living room and sit back down on the couch.
Now what? I guess I wait for her to tell me breakfast is ready.
Why doesn’t she want to talk to me?
My phone is about dead, but I check some emails and texts, reply to a few, and then my phone rings. It’s Buck.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey, Phoenix. Where are you?”
“I’m at Kelly’s place. Why?”
“Because I’ve been knocking at your door for a few minutes, and I was wondering where you were.”
“What do you need?”
“Reid’s been trying to get hold of you.”
“Yeah, I know. I just responded to his text, but he hasn’t called me.”
“He got a message early this morning,” Buck says, “from Kelly’s mother.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yeah, which is really weird, because Kelly’s mother lives in Phoenix, which is three hours’ time difference. And that means the text came in at like four thirty in the morning her time.”
“Unless…”
“Right,” Buck says. “Unless she’s here in Manhattan. Or at least somewhere in this time zone.”
“Can’t he figure out where the text came from?”
“It came from a cell phone with the Phoenix area code. At any rate, the text said that she wants to see Kelly.”