the thin walls. I’m nothing but a pasty, scrawny stick figure that looks like she has pink highlighter scribbled across her. This is not going to work.
I tug a t-shirt out of the open drawer and yank it over my head. Ran said he wanted me to wear this suit. I’m wearing it; I’m doing as he says. But I’m also wearing something over it. That’s not quite breaking the rules if you ask me.
Ran’s already at the spa when I make my way to the downstairs rec room. His back is to me and he’s lifting the cover off the tub, thick coils of steam snaking around him. He’s seriously hot. I’m gawking again, I’m sure, but his back is to me so I steal another glimpse at him as he crosses his arms at the waist and lifts his shirt off. I hadn’t seen his back before, which is probably good because if I’d seen it along with his incredible chest and stomach earlier, I would have fainted and hit the ground, which would have added to my long list of embarrassments.
Ran’s broad shoulders and the muscles that wrap around them pull with each movement, and his waist tapers perfectly into a V like a swimmer’s body. He still isn’t facing me when he slinks slowly into the water and settles in. The jets make the water roll like it’s boiling, and the steam rising out of it produces a haze that makes the disparity in temperature between the water and the air so evident.
I close my eyes, pull in air because I had briefly stopped doing that, and reach my hand to the door. I’m met with an icy chill that freezes me in place.
Ran spins around at the sound of the door gliding open. “I didn’t think you’d actually show.”
I’m a little insulted, though I shouldn’t be. I’m still shocked that I’m here, too.
“I’m a woman of my word.”
Ran snickers. I walk the four feet on the decking toward the hot tub, my bare toes curling against the contact on the frozen wood. Ran scans me up and down, and a look of disappointment flits across his features before he replaces it with a wide grin. “I’m glad you came.”
The hot tub is sunken into the deck, so I’ll have to step down into it. But I hadn’t counted on him being here, watching me as I take off my t-shirt to enter the water, so I pause, playing out the scene in my head. If I remove my shirt now, then it will look like I’m stripping for him, and I’m not about to do that. I would look awkward and clumsy, and on top of that, it’s totally ridiculous. But if I wear the shirt in the hot tub, I’ll look like an idiot. After two minutes of vacillating, I decide being an idiot is better than an inexperienced, amateur stripper.
Ran’s been eyeing me the entire time, and when I put my toe in the water with my over-sized t-shirt still clinging to me, he lets out a soundless laugh of air that hangs frozen in front of him until the steam from the spa vaporizes it.
“That’s how you’re going to do this?”
“Do what?” I’m up to my thighs now, and the water burns my skin like hundreds of tiny needles slicing into my flesh. My legs feel like an abused pincushion. How did he slip in so gracefully? “Is this like a thousand degrees?” I suck in a breath that puffs up my chest and I’m grateful for the shirt because I really don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to how ill fitting this swimsuit is on me.
“It’s 102.” Ran slides down in his seat and angles his neck back to take advantage of the spa’s headrest as the jets bubble right at his shoulders. “And it’s perfect. You’ll get used to it.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Ran lifts a brow. “I can name a couple other incredibly hot things that you’ve gotten used to, Maggie,” he says, his white teeth gleaming under a haughty smirk.
I have to grit my own teeth for so many different reasons: to keep them from chattering in the below freezing temperatures, to keep them from grinding against one another to absorb the pain the searing water inflicts, and to keep them from letting the sigh slip past that’s been on the back of my tongue since first seeing Ran in just his swim trunks. I lower myself so the