is crazy. It’s stupid. Silly. You don’t have feelings for him, Emmerson. You didn’t want to kiss him. You simply wanted affection. Someone to…someone to…”
I looked up and stared out the window. Someone to feel a connection with. Someone to desire in a way I had never experienced before. I’d felt all of that with Landon this morning. Lord, if I was being honest with myself, I’d wanted to crawl on top of his amazingly fit body.
A bark came from the backyard, and I realized I had left poor Lady outside.
“I’ll let her in,” Landon said as he walked by in nothing but a pair of sweatpants. My mouth fell open as I took in the aforementioned amazingly fit body. It wasn’t like I’d never seen him without a shirt on. Hell, I’d seen him wear less than that, but it never made me want to offer up my body in the middle of my kitchen before.
I looked away quickly.
“Man, I’m glad you talked me into leaving some extra clothes in the guest bedroom.”
With a nod, I replied, “Yep. Me too. Did you have any, um, shirts?”
He smiled and held one up. “Yep.”
“Great. Maybe you should, you know, put it on. For Lady’s sake.”
Landon’s eyes drifted down to the puppy sitting at his feet, who was staring up at him in the same way I imagined I had been staring only seconds ago.
Yeah, I know what you mean, girl. He’s hot. He’s sexy. He has a body to die for, he’s… he’s Landon!
“You want me to put a shirt on for the dog’s sake?” Landon asked.
I nodded and put his French toast on a plate before motioning for him to get the syrup. “Syrup and butter.”
Landon slipped his T-shirt over his head and walked over to the pantry. When I turned around, I got a better look at him.
No, no, no! He was barefoot.
Spinning away, I clutched the counter and drew in a few deep breaths. Why was a barefoot Landon the sexiest thing I had ever seen before?
“Hey, are you okay, Emme?”
“Yep. Fine. I’m good. So good. Like, better than good.”
He placed his hands on my arms and gently turned me around. With his finger under my chin, he lifted my head so that our eyes met. “What’s going on?”
My mouth suddenly felt dry, and I forgot how to form words. Why was Landon’s touch sending little jolts of electricity through my entire body? Why did I want to reach up and kiss him, and why did he have to look so damn good with his stupid, wet, messy hair and soft, plump lips?
It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it. Once upon a time I imagined that Landon and I might end up together. But that was years ago, back in middle school and the beginning of high school. Hell, every day I used to pretend what it would be like to be kissed by him. Then we got older, Landon and I started dating other people, and I pushed those feelings for him so far down inside that I had forgotten what it felt like to captivated by Landon. To…to want him.
Was it the auction? The idea that I, of all people, pushed him into a place where women would bid on a date with him? When I blurted out his name, I never thought about the end result. But now, good Lord. Now it was all I could think about. Did my stupid lapse of judgment and all this sudden jealousy pull those feelings back up from the abyss?
I closed my eyes and shook the wandering thoughts away before I focused on that caring gaze of his. “A client of mine has a problem that I’m not sure how to fix.”
He frowned. “Is it anything I can help you figure out?”
I chewed on my lip. “No, I think it’s something she’s going to have to figure out on her own.”
“I’m sorry, Emme. I wish there was something I could do to help.”
Staring up into his blue-gray eyes, I slowly let out a breath. “Me too, Landon.”
The last two weeks had dragged by as I waited for the day of the charity ball to finally arrive. I had avoided Landon like the plague. It hadn’t been hard, really. He’d been so busy with the shop that we’d missed Monday movie night last week, and he wasn’t in town last Sunday for family dinner night because he’d flown to Vegas to do a guest commentary for a NASCAR