irritation and embarrassment, and he was sure. Impossibly, he was sure.
“It’s really nothing personal,” she scowled. “It’s just, you know. You look like that. And you can’t keep a bloody shirt on for more than five minutes!”
His mouth, previously so very active, was now having trouble forming words. “I… look… like…”
“You look like—have you ever read those books about Hades and Persephone where Hades is inexplicably hot and… okay, you know what? You have definitely never read one of those books.”
Nate resolved to memorise every word she’d just said and Google random combinations of them all until he found the books she was talking about.
“This really has nothing to do with you,” she said.
Finally, his mouth started working again. Maybe because he’d finally absorbed the fact that Hannah appeared to be saying she was… attracted to him? “What has nothing to do with me?”
She didn’t seem to hear. “I’m pretty sure I’m ovulating,” she went on, as if talking to herself. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “Oh, why the fuck did you say that, Hannah?”
“Why don’t you say more, Hannah?”
“No thanks,” she squeaked.
Her eyes opened slowly, as if she was afraid of what she might see. And, in the end, she was. Because the moment she realised that Nate was walking steadily toward her, she stepped back.
And again.
And again.
But he didn’t stop walking. He couldn’t. Instead, he said, “Let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly.”
“Or,” she interjected, “you could forget I ever said anything at all.”
He decided to ignore that suggestion. “You’re saying that I shouldn’t take my shirt off—”
“I don’t think I said that—”
“Because I’m…” his lips twitched. “Gorgeous.”
“You are so fucking smug. Why do I even like you?”
“And also because you’re ovulating.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, please don’t sack me—”
“Hannah. I’m not going to sack you. You could set fire to the dining room curtains and I wouldn’t sack you.”
She paused for a moment in her steady retreat. “That seems oddly specific.”
“You did set fire to my dustbin the other day.”
Her back came into contact with the fridge, bringing her retreat to a sudden stop. “That… that was for the kids. It was science.”
“I know. You’re big on experimentation, right?”
“Um… right?”
He put his hands against the fridge on either side of her head, caging her in. The appliance felt more like a freezer against his heated palms. Nate leaned down until he was as close to eye-level with Hannah as he was likely to get. It helped that she rose up on her toes to meet him. He wondered if she knew that she was doing it.
Probably not. Her pupils were so blown that, if he didn’t know any better, he’d think she’d taken something. Her tongue slid out to glide over her scarlet lower lip, and then she said, “You don’t seem very upset about this.”
“Guess why.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. You’re not interested in me at all, are you? You’re just…” he bit back a laugh. “Ovulating.”
13
Hannah: I think your lack of filter is rubbing off on me.
Ruth: Nah. You’ve always had a big mouth.
Hannah wasn’t sure what would kill her first: abject mortification, the way her heart was ricocheting around her chest (which couldn’t be healthy), or the rather concerning fever she seemed to have developed some time in the last thirty seconds.
Actually, that fever had started when Nate had whipped off his T-shirt like it was nothing—like he didn’t have a despicably broad chest covered in tattoos she shouldn’t like so much, with that little silver bar winking through one nipple. And her temperature had increased to truly dangerous levels when he started smiling like… like he wanted to eat her.
Which he was still doing right this minute, at worryingly close quarters.
She could see swirls of frost in his blue eyes, see the tiny, rough hairs that made up the shadow on his jaw—see the softness of that generous mouth. She wished she couldn’t. She should close her eyes. Things were bad enough right now without a close-up view of the handsomeness that had been turning her brain to mush for the last few weeks.
He buried his face in her hair and she felt him take slow, deep breaths. For a few precious seconds, she was enveloped in the shadows of his body and the sweet, smoky scent of him, and she felt incongruously safe. As if she could let down her own exhausting shields and allow him to take over for a while.