“Feel better yet?”
He closed his eyes. “Mmm-hmm.”
Jane got the distinct feeling he wasn’t talking about his eyes. “If you’re enjoying yourself just because you’re two inches from my breasts, you’re not doing a very good job of proving wrong my theories about men.”
A half smile played on his lips. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Jane gave the water bottle a good squeeze, aimed at Luke’s crotch, and emptied the contents of the bottle onto his shorts. He looked from his lap to Jane, and back again.
Okay, she’d acted rashly. She’d let her emotions control the moment, and a perfectly good pair of gym shorts was wet now. Jane covered her mouth to keep from laughing.
After several moments of each of them frozen in place, waiting for the other to react, Luke expelled a disbelieving laugh. “I’m not safe around you.”
“Yeah, I’m deadly with spray liquids.”
He stood up from his chair and peered down at the sizeable wet spot on the front of his shorts. “I don’t suppose you have a pair of size thirty-four men’s pants lying around.”
“I’ve got some stretchy women’s shorts that might fit.”
He leveled a look at her that ended the conversation. “I’ll just borrow your dryer,” he said, and started removing his shorts right there in the middle of her kitchen.
She made a pointed effort not to look at his white Jockeys.
The shorts dropped to his ankles, and he bent down and took them off. When he stood back up, his eyes were daring her to look down.
“I’ll, um, get you a towel to wear.” She started to leave the room, but his next comment froze her in her tracks.
“Whoops, feels like my underwear got wet too.”
Jane debated whether to turn and watch the show or run from the room. The devil on her left shoulder begged her to stay, while the annoying schoolmarm on her right shoulder reminded her that she wasn’t thinking at all like the author of The Sex Factor.
She turned around slowly and caught him with his arms crossed over his chest, not making a move to remove the Jockeys. Then the devil won the argument.
“Better take those off then. Wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.” She stood rooted in place, daring him to get naked in front of her.
Apparently he didn’t possess the modesty of a normal human being, because without further ado, he took off his underwear and stood bottomless in her kitchen, wearing only his T-shirt and sneakers, lacking even the decency to be embarrassed.
“So where’s your clothes dryer?”
Yep, she’d just looked down at his schlong for a split second, and now she understood why he didn’t have any cause to be modest.
The burning sensation on her face clued her in to the fact that she was blushing furiously, but she figured she’d come this far, no sense in backing down now. “The dryer is in the hallway closet.” She stepped aside and motioned for him to go first. “Be my guest.”
Her gaze involuntarily dropped to his crotch for a split second again. This time, she caught movement. Definite movement. He was actually getting an erection right there in her kitchen.
He shrugged. “You’ll have to excuse him. He likes to perform for an audience.”
If she’d been blushing before, she must be absolutely scarlet now.
Luke tossed her a vaguely amused look and grabbed his wet clothes off the floor, then proceeded past her into the hall.
Jane figured if she’d seen what he had to offer from the front, she might as well check out the backside too, so she watched his muscular cheeks flex as he walked down the hallway. But she hadn’t bargained for the sight of male perfection having such an effect on her blood flow.
It seemed all the blood from her brain shot straight to her groin, leaving her dizzy as a Southern belle at a July picnic. She gripped the door frame to keep her balance.
Luke found the laundry closet and loaded his wet clothes into the dryer. When he’d gotten it started, Jane remembered she was supposed to be retrieving a towel.
“Enjoying the view?”
She forced herself to let her gaze linger below his waist for a few moments, just to prove a point. “Wow, you just fulfilled every woman’s fantasy—cute naked guy doing the laundry. Wash my dishes and I just might have an orgasm.”
WHEN JANE AND LUKE WALKED into Heather and Michael’s wedding shower at her parents’ house, a hush fell over the room full of family members and pretty people. Jane could think of cages at the zoo she’d rather clean than spend an evening with her sister’s crowd—or listening to her mother’s comments about how Jane would need to drop a few pounds for the wedding—but if she had to be here, it sure was fun to show up with a hunk on her arm. Heather stood up from her seat and walked over to them, smiling a quizzical greeting. The other two triplets, Jennifer and Lacey, looked on from across the room, wearing similar quizzical expressions.