Room at the Inn

Unfortunately, she’d spent too many years as one of his mother’s closest friends to deny Glory’s son a cup of coffee on such a cold day.

“Come on, then.”

She turned around and walked ahead of him, telling herself, This is how it’s going to be this time. You’re the one who walks away.

But she could feel his eyes on her all the way down the hall, and she kept waiting for his hands to land on her hips. To push her against the wall. To sneak inside her shirt, flatten over her stomach, roam over her breasts, and make her crazy.

She couldn’t let him stay.

She would never survive it.

Chapter Three

Someone had set off a powder bomb in the kitchen.

“Whoa,” Carson said.

Julie’s appearance had warned him she was doing some home-improvement work, but he hadn’t been prepared for this kind of mess. A ladder stood in the center of the room, rags and buckets littered the floor, and every surface was coated with white dust and flakes of paint.

“What are you up to in here?”

“I’m cleaning the ceiling with baking soda.”

“Are you just flinging it up there and hoping it’ll stick?”

“No, Carson.” She spoke to him like a schoolteacher might lecture an unruly eight-year-old. “I made a paste, and I’m scrubbing it into the cracks with a toothbrush.”

“Is it working?”

“Not really.”

He set his hands on his hips and considered the ceiling. Better than staring at Julie. She’d grown her wheat-colored hair out long and covered it up with an ugly bandana, but other than that, she was just how he remembered her.

Dangerous.

“What’s under all that paint?”

“Tin.” As she said it, he saw the answer for himself—one area that she’d managed to get cleaned off enough so he could spot the dull gray beneath. A single square foot surrounded by 199 more that were still coated in a century’s worth of blistering paint. Plus baking-soda paste.

“Pain in the ass of a job.”

“It’s going to be beautiful.”

“Yeah, but it’ll take you a few months, at least.”

She frowned. “I have a few weeks. I’m going to be full for Christmas, so it has to be done by then.”

“You’re off your rocker if you think you can do this in a couple weeks.”

He checked himself. It was a terrible habit, baiting Julie. He needed to knock it off.

She always messed him up this way, turning him into a version of himself even he couldn’t like. Not that she purposely transformed him into a giant walking penis when he got in her vicinity. It wasn’t her fault at all. It was just their past. More than that, it was her. He got edgy and turned on and irritable around Julie, and he always ended up doing the wrong thing. Arguing with her. Putting his hands on her just to feel that soft skin and all the heat they created. Getting lost in her body and the sound and smell of her.

Part of it was how much he hated the way she treated him now—just like when they had met at Alfred University. Three hundred miles northwest of Manhattan, well up in the boonies, and yet she’d been so snooty, a real-life New York City rich girl sitting next to him in class. He’d burned to know if she was like that all the way through to her bones, or if it was just an act. When he finally did get her talking to him, they’d bickered. A lot. Half the time, he’d picked fights with her purely for the pleasure of watching her eyes brighten and her skin flush.

It turned out she was like that in bed, too. The contrast drove him crazy. For most of college, he split his time between studying and debauching Julie. Messing up her hair. Feeling her frantic fingers at his fly. Sinking into her while she moaned in his ear and whispered words no blushing virgin should have known. Words he’d taught her for the sheer pleasure of listening to them spill from her mouth as he thrust inside her.

Carson shook his head to clear it. Jesus. He’d just gotten here, and she was already frowning at him in that superior way she had, and he was already dying to fuck her.