She was going to get cold, he thought with a little annoyance.
His first thought was, "Oh well," but then he glanced back down at her, and she looked so…innocent in her sleep.
With a slight guffaw, he rolled his eyes. Yeah, she was real innocent. She had gotten knocked up by a married man by being innocent—that made a lot of sense.
Feeling mildly disgusted with himself, his thoughts, and the girl sleeping on an air bed in his living room, he decided just to give in and go to bed. After all, it wasn't his problem if she got cold.
As he showered and brushed his teeth, he thought of a million other things, anything to keep him from going soft and taking a blank
et in to drape on his brother's sleeping mistress. If he had to sing the alphabet backwards until he fell asleep, he refused to extend that gesture of kindness—it would only make her more annoying.
But after lying in bed for a good 15 minutes and not being able to go to sleep, he finally gave in and stomped out to the living room with an extra blanket, refusing to look at her innocent-looking face as he draped the blanket over her sleeping figure.
The breeze from the blanket must have stirred her—she was a light sleeper, he would have to take note of that—and her eyes fluttered open as she looked straight at him, her groggy gaze settling on him with a little smile.
"You're nice," she murmured, closing her eyes.
It took him off guard, so he accidentally smiled a little ironically.
Her eyes opened again, and she smiled a little wider, but her eyes lost the battle, fluttering shut again.
"Go back to sleep," he said quietly, just in case she could hear him.
"You have a pretty smile," she murmured, yawning and then rolling over, seemingly oblivious to his presence once more as she drifted right back to sleep.
Immediately, he scowled at her sleeping form.
"You have a pretty smile," he heard again.
Sighing in defeat, he turned around and headed back to the bedroom, wishing that he would have just let her be cold.
Chapter Twelve-
It had been nearly a week since Julie fell asleep reading The Scarlet Letter and woke up with a blanket draped over her, and she still hadn't figured out whether or not she had dreamed telling Aaron that he had a pretty smile.
She really hoped she had dreamed it.
But she didn't know, because even though Aaron had actually been there the next morning when she woke up—apparently Sunday was the one morning he didn't open the café—she didn't have the nerve to bring it up, and he didn’t act any differently.
Matt hadn't come around all week, had only called once, and even that time he had rushed her off the phone because he was busy.
She didn't care. She wasn't going to be his mistress, baby or no baby, and that was a conclusion she had come to as she sat alone in her own company all week. Every night it was the same—Julie home alone with a book or the TV or the Internet, Aaron out…doing whatever Aaron did and speaking to her as little as possible.
That helped her decide she must have just dreamed she told him he had a pretty smile. Surely if she would have complimented the man he would have softened toward her a little, right?
Saturday rolled around, and Julie dreaded it, even though she only had one party. She was home by two o'clock, so she took a shower—even though there was no water pressure, she tried to enjoy it—and then thought about what to make for lunch.
The ringing of her cell phone took her mind off the pro/con list between making broccoli and cheese and munching on some saltine crackers vs. ravioli—ravioli required cooking tomato sauce, which seemed to make Poppy Seed very unhappy, so that one had been losing anyway.
But when she picked up her phone, she saw the same number that had called her the week before, so she answered, not sure whether to expect Leigh or Aaron.
"Julie?"
It was Leigh. "Hi, Leigh."
"I'm surprised you haven't already learned to ignore this number when it calls you on a Saturday—everyone else seems to have picked up on that."
Smiling, Julie asked, "Did someone call off again?"