Did I have time to shower? Would I be able to get ready before he got here?
Oh, who gave a fuck? I wasn’t trying to impress him. I didn’t care what I looked like as long as I was clean.
My towels were on the rail, so I started the shower, brushed my teeth, then stripped off.
Fifteen minutes later I emerged from the shower with the answer to my question.
Yes. I did have time to shower.
I did not care if I had the time to do anything else except locate a clean bra and comfortable panties. If I was going to be on my feet all day, I wanted to be comfortable. Honestly, if it weren’t fucking freezing outside, I wouldn’t wear a bra, either.
Alas, I’d probably take someone’s eye out with a nipple the second I stepped outside, coat or not.
The bra was most definitely necessary.
I trudged back into my room in search of my underwear, but there was no clean bra in my drawer. Great. I was going to have to go down and hope there was one in the laundry room.
Ugh.
I pulled on a pair of clean panties and tightened the towel around me, then made my way downstairs. The farmhouse was old, and as our family had gotten bigger, we’d added onto it in a bit of a hodge-podge way.
That hodge-podge way meant the laundry room was on the other side of the house, and the house was cold.
I really should have put my robe on at least. I was downstairs now, though, and I wasn’t going back up for that.
Meowing was coming from the other side of the door, and I opened it with a sigh. “Did someone forget to let you in last night, Fudge?”
Fudge, the ginger tabby cat, stared up at me and meowed again.
Obligingly, I bent down and scratched under his chin. His meows of annoyance quickly morphed into happy purrs, and he stretched, shoving his butt in the air, then bounded past me with an energy far more befitting a kitten than his own nine years.
Not that it ever stopped him. Three days ago, he’d been on the barn roof. We still didn’t know how he’d managed that, especially in this weather.
A breeze was coming through from the cat flap, so I gave it a nudge to make sure it was fully closed, then went hunting through the basket with my clean laundry in. One of the machines had a load of my clothes in, and I was almost certain they needed to go into the dryer—if I’d even remembered to turn it on—so the chance of me having a clean bra was getting slimmer and slimmer.
Damn it.
What was it with bras? Why were they always dirty or graying? Or trying to murder you with their underwire?
Boobs, man.
Who needed them, really?
“Pfft.” I pulled a bright pink, lacy number out from the laundry. “Oh, come on,” I muttered. Wasn’t there a nice t-shirt bra in there? Smooth and comfortable?
No.
No, there was not.
Fabulous.
A peek into the washer said I was correct—it was a load full of my underwear and towels and other things I didn’t mind being dried, which meant this likely was my only clean bra.
Look, it was Christmas. Nobody had time to separate their laundry out, okay?
They hadn’t been washed anyway, so it wasn’t even like I could wait for one to dry.
Fuck my life.
If this was how the rest of my day was going to go, I wanted absolutely no part of it.
I quickly set the load to wash, grabbed the pink bra, and exited the laundry room. I needed a coffee to get me going today, so instead of heading right upstairs, I walked toward the kitchen.
Yes, yes, I was still in a towel, but it still wasn’t seven yet, and the only other person who would be awake would be my mom.
It was fine.
I hung my bra over my shoulder and entered the kitchen, and my gaze caught Nicholas’.
I froze.
He was sitting at the kitchen table with my mother, sipping from a cup of coffee, and so help me Lord, if I was actually salivating for real, I was going to sit outside in nothing but this towel in the hope Jack Frost would freeze me to death and take me with him.
Nicholas’s sweater was a deep jade green that complemented his eyes perfectly, and it was far too fitted for my tired ass to do anything other than stare at his broad shoulders that were clearly muscled and strong.
You know what shoulders like that were good for?
Hooking your legs over.
Ahem.
I was not wearing enough clothes to be having thoughts like that.
Nicholas raised his eyebrows. His gaze raked over my body slowly, lingering both at my pink bra and at the hem of my towel that barely covered my underwear.