Living the Charade

‘I don’t know, Sunshine,’ he answered. ‘Are you prone to sleepwalking?’

Miller narrowed her gaze, her mind flashing back to last night. A vague memory of being lifted floated to the surface of her mind. ‘You carried me.’

Valentino yawned and pushed up until he was leaning against the headboard. The sheet dropped down to his waist, and the morning sun fell over part of his bronzed chest and corrugated abdomen as if lighting him up for a photo shoot.

He scratched his chest and her eyes soaked him up. God, the man really did look airbrushed!

‘Damn. Maybe I’m prone to sleepwalking,’ he said.

Miller hugged the duvet closer and felt her nipples throb with awareness as her hands accidentally grazed over them. Heat immediately bloomed in her face at the memory of why her breasts felt so heavy and sensitive.

‘This isn’t funny. That’s sexual harassment.’

The great oaf just rolled his eyes. ‘As I recall it, it was you who cuddled up to me in your sleep—not the other way around.’

‘I did not.’

‘Suit yourself. But last night I put a row of pillows between us, and I know it wasn’t me who knocked them aside. Anyway, I disengaged my hand as soon as you asked.’ He raised and lowered his knee gingerly beneath the blanket and she hoped that she had hurt him.

‘Remind me not to do you a good deed again,’ he said.

‘Ha. Good deed, my foot. You wanted to...to...’

‘Have my wicked way with you?’ His eyes glinted. ‘If that was what I wanted that’s what we’d be doing.’

‘You wish.’

‘A challenge, Miller?’

She didn’t deign to respond. Why would she? Of course it wasn’t a challenge—especially when she had liked the feel of him against her a little too much.

Her breathless response reminded her of the time she’d been secretly trapped in the girls’ toilets at the hideous school she’d attended while the main bullies had loitered, giggling vacuously over some boy or another.

By the time they had hit fifteen, boys had been all they could talk about. Miller had wanted to yell, What about when it all goes wrong? But of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to look more like a freak than they already thought she was. All of them had seemed content to live in the moment in a way she never could after her parents had divorced.

‘There was no way I was letting you sleep on the floor. Get over it.’ Valentino’s gruff voice jolted her back to the present.

‘Turn the other way,’ she demanded, letting her painful memories slip away.

When he complied without argument she shot out of bed and snatched up her robe. Ignoring him, she grabbed her running clothes and stalked towards the bathroom.

‘Just so we’re clear.’ She stopped in the doorway. ‘This arrangement does not extend to sex, and even if it did you would be the last man I would choose to sleep with.’

He looked at her as if he could see right through her. ‘So you keep saying.’

His intense eyes never left hers and Miller found it hard to swallow. He looked irresistible and dangerous with his untidy dark hair and overnight stubble. By contrast she was sure she looked a fright, and all of sudden it seemed imperative that she get away from him. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so vulnerable.

She shook her head. ‘You’re too used to getting your own way. That’s your problem.’

Valentino threw back the covers and stood up. He was only wearing low-riding hipster briefs and Miller quickly averted her eyes. She felt irrationally angry when he laughed. He stalked towards her and Miller deliberately held his gaze, refusing to let him see how affected she was by his potent masculinity.

He shook his head. ‘Lady, you are one overwound broad. Yes, my hand was on your breast—but that little moan you exhaled before your uptight brain kicked into gear let me know that you liked it. More than liked it.’

‘Well, my uptight little brain rules my body, and what you felt back there was just a physiological reaction.’ Miller felt irrationally stung by his assessment, even though she had insulted him first. She couldn’t help it; he just made her feel so...so...emotional!

‘You’re telling me you’d get turned on if you woke up with TJ’s hand on your breast?’

Miller clamped her lips together. That was a no-win question and they both knew it. ‘There’s no way to answer that without stroking your mountainous ego, so I won’t bother.’