Page 36 of Love Bomb

Rona’s big green eyes widened. “I didn’t burn anything important, did I?”

“My wallet,” Bain said, backing toward the door.

He grabbed his jacket from the chair and felt behind him for the handle.

“I’m going home now,” he said, sounding panicked.

“Maybe we should get you out of those jeans first,” Rona said.

An image of him naked in front of her popped into his head. He swallowed hard. This was Rona. His mini stalker. The kid who drove him nuts. And he had no idea what was going on. He wasn’t attracted to Rona.

Was he?

“No,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

She stared at him, her hair wild around her shoulders and her lips swollen from their kiss. The urge to throw his jacket down on the floor, strip naked, and drag her into the shower with him was almost too strong to resist.

Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. He broke out in a sweat and his hands started shaking. He’d never reacted like this before. When it came to women, he was always in control. He led the dance, not them. He had no idea why he’d reacted the way he had.

“I’m leaving,” he said firmly. “Now.”

And then he opened the door, backed out into the hall, and practically ran for the stairs. All the while his mind was racing to make sense of what had happened.

He’d kissed Rona.

He’d almost bedded Rona.

Did he want to bed Rona?

No. That couldn’t be. She was Rona. His stalker. The demon.

The kiss…the kiss had just been...

He had no words and it terrified him. He could still taste her, and his whole body vibrated with the need to go back for more. He was losing his mind. He needed a doctor. A psychiatrist.

A priest!

Maybe Father McMurtry could perform an exorcism and remove Rona from his brain.

He was so discombobulated that he almost tripped over the stupid tartan stairs and broke his neck. Forcing himself to concentrate on getting home in one piece, Bain made his way through the bar.

Dougal appeared from the direction of the kitchen.

“Morning.” Bain nodded as he kept on walking to the exit, hoping Dougal didn’t notice his jeans.

No such luck.

“They’ve got pills for that, son,” Dougal called. “Try some Imodium. It works wonders when you have a touch of diarrhea.”

Bain let himself out of the pub.

Rona plopped down on the edge of the bed. She was not thinking about kissing Bain. It had been a figment of her overactive imagination. A slip in the space-time continuum. Or brought about by brain freeze from having been out in the snow for far too long.

Nope, she wasn’t thinking about it. Because if she did, she might slip back into the habits she’d broken years earlier. The ones she’d developed as a lovesick teen, following Bain all over Invertary, dreaming of kisses, and marriage, and happily ever after.

NOT HAPPENING.

Bain wasn’t the ‘happily ever after’ type. He was more the ‘happy right now with whoever happened to be in front of him’ type. The town was filled with women he’d slept with. And Rona didn’t want to be another conquest on his list.