Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

Not that it had worked, but he’d been trying. It was either go to sleep or get shit-faced, and he refused to be that weak. Not about Katie. Not about anything.

He refused.

She bent over the dresser and started opening and closing drawers. Sean glanced at the clock. Twelve thirty.

Her flannel pajama pants landed on the bed, followed by the blob of her T-shirt. A moment later, socks and what was probably a pair of panties, though he looked away too quickly to be sure.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” she said without looking in his direction. She tipped her head to the right and took out an earring, then tipped it to the left and removed the other. “I had a bunch of tequila, and if I tried to do this in the dark, I’d probably break something.”

She scooped her clothes off the bed and entered the bathroom without another word, and Sean stared at the space where she’d been while the shower started up.

He didn’t know how to feel. Jealous. Ticked off. Surprised. Turned on. Tired.

Pleased?

Maybe. She hadn’t spent the night with Judah. She wasn’t in his bed, flat on her back, moaning with pleasure.

She was naked in the shower, twenty feet away from him, preparing to put on flannel pajama pants and go to sleep.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

He listened to the noises she made, the muffled thuds of bottles of shampoo and conditioner against the shower tile, the water cutting out after a while. Silence as she toweled off. The faucet running as she brushed her teeth. The loud white noise of a hair dryer.

Familiar sounds, though it had been a while since Sean had heard them. More than a year since he’d spent the night with a woman and even longer since he’d lived with one. What was it now, two years since Sarah had moved out? Three?

He wondered where she’d ended up. She’d been so disappointed when she realized he wasn’t half as serious about the relationship as she was, so angry by the end at the way he’d failed to live up to her expectations, that he’d become more cautious about letting women into his life. Dating was fine, short- or long-term, but the older he got, the more reluctant he became to give any woman keys to his house.

By the time Katie came into the room again, he’d turned his back on the bathroom. He wouldn’t indulge his curiosity or spin some happy fantasy where she was in this room with him by choice. She’d just been with Judah. Possibly had sex with Judah. No, probably had sex with him. Which meant Sean needed to drop the fantasy. Katie had made her choice.

Not that he’d given her a choice.

“I know it’s late,” she said from behind him. She flopped heavily onto her bed with a creak of the box springs. “I know we’re supposed to go to Louisville tomorrow. I know I just woke you up, and I’m not in charge, so I don’t even get to decide. But we quit.”

Sean turned over. She was sideways across the bed, staring at the ceiling, her head dropping off the mattress edge and her hair dangling.

She looked at him upside down. It wasn’t the most flattering angle. He could see right up her nose. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. He doesn’t trust me. We’re wasting our time.”

Katie didn’t sound like a woman who’d been in the throes of pleasure mere minutes ago. She sounded tired and cynical, and hearing the displeasure in her tone was the best thing that had happened to him all day.

Nobody sounded like that after fantastic sex. Only after bad sex. Phenomenally bad.

Or after no sex at all.

“I want to go home,” she said. “I can’t drive, though. I had too much to drink. So I guess I’m asking you for a favor. Can you drive me home? Tonight? It’s kind of a big favor, since I’ll probably pass out in the car.”

He met her eyes upside down. So big and brown and honest. Katie could be prickly, but there was no pretense to her. No reserve. She was what she seemed to be, always.

What would it be like to move through life that vulnerable? Like taking off your skin and just letting the world have at you.

Sean could think of few things he’d hate more. Yet he didn’t pity or resent Katie’s openness. It was one of the things he liked about her.

“I’ll handle my brother,” she promised. “And I’ll make sure Judah pays us for the whole weekend. It’s not our fault he’s got a screw loose.”

He stared at her for a few illicit seconds as triumph pounded through him and he had to stop himself from kissing her again, upside down, with his knees on the carpet and her head immobilized between his hands.

She wasn’t for him.

But she wasn’t for Judah, either.