Page 67 of Wish I Might
“I’m not mad.”
“You look mad,” she argued, and he did.He looked mad and grumpy and hot and half-naked, which she was supposed to be ignoring but it wasright there, the half-nakedness, it all its thick, hairy, half-naked glory, and it went so well with the mad and grumpy that she started feel hot.
Well.Hotter.
“I’m not mad,” he repeated.“I’mannoyedthat you think I won’t help you move your mattress, like someasshole.”
“I never said you were an asshole.”
“You implied it.”
She snorted.“If I thought you were an asshole, I’d tell you.”
“Well, that’s true,” he said grudgingly and bent to set his beer on the floor.“Okay, come on.”
She set hers next to it.“Where are we going?”
“To get your mattress,” he said, exasperated, and started for the stairs.
She scooped up her shoes and trailed after him, trying to remember what state she’d left her bedroom in that morning.She’d been in hurry—she’d overslept, having left her phone, and its alarm, in her bedroom overnight—so there was some disarray.But she’d done her annual clean out just before her birthday, and that meant it was good enough.
She walked up the stairs behind Nash, watching his butt flex in the thin blue boxers, then almost rammed face-first into it when he stopped dead on the top stair.
She dropped back a step and slapped a hand on the railing, and told herself the heat in her face was weather related.“What the hell, Nash?”
“Why isn’t there a door on this room?”
“It’s a converted attic,” she reminded him, staring at the small of his back.His boxers had ridden down, exposing the dimples low on either side of his spine that had always driven her mad with lust.His skin was damp with sweat, and she started to look away—her self-preservation instincts weren’t completely dead—then something else caught her eye.“Did you know you have an ingrown hair on your back?”
“No, you can’t pick it,” he said immediately.“Attics can have doors.”
“Yeah, well, the designers of the 1926 Sears Crescent didn’t think an attic door was necessary.It’s just a little one,” she wheedled, leaning close to peer at the hair in question.“Barely under the skin.I can get it with my fingernail.”
“No.”He reached back and hitched his boxers up, hiding the hair behind blue cotton.“Attics can have doors.”
“Spoilsport,” she muttered.
He walked into her bedroom.“It’s a safety hazard.”
She rolled her eyes and climbed the remaining steps into room, grimacing at the heat.It was like a blast furnace.“It is not.”
“It is,” he insisted, turning to frown at her, grumpy and mad again.“If a fire breaks out downstairs and you don’t have a door to close, it’s going to get to you that much faster.”
“Fire is not going to break out downstairs.”She tossed her shoes in the direction of her closet, starting to feel mad and grumpy herself.“And if it does, I have smoke detectors.”
“You should still have a door, and keep it closed when you sleep.”
“You don’t close yours when you sleep.”
“Can we just get the mattress already?I’m sweating my ass off here.”
“You’re the one who decided to play Smokey the Bear,” she pointed out and moved past him to strip the duvet off her bed.
“Smokey the Bear is for forest fires,” he said, just, she was sure, to be contrary.
She tossed the duvet and the top sheet to the floor, leaving the fitted sheet and mattress protector in place, then snatched up the pillows.“I’m starting to change my mind about you not being an asshole.”
He grinned at that, all the grumpy disappearing in a flash of teeth and dimple.It did not, unfortunately, make him less hot.
