The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,9

the time I got to the bathroom, I was limping like I’d just been in a battle, as well as cursing under my breath—and hoping he’d somehow magically managed to sleep through the whole thing.

Unfortunately, I’d never been the lucky one in life. So it shouldn’t have surprised me when I got to the bathroom and was just shutting the door only to hear a sleepy voice saying, “Bella? Are you okay? What the hell are you doing?”

I slammed the door and threw myself up against it, my back hitting the thin wood with a solid thunk.

“Oh my God,” I moaned.

This was the opposite of sexy or suave. And it definitely wasn’t sophisticated.

In short, it was exactly what I would have expected from myself if you’d told me that I’d wake up one morning with Ethan Parker in my bed. Ethan Parker who, with any luck at all, would be gone when I went back out there. Hell, he was probably running for the hills as I stood here, convinced that he’d somehow managed to land in bed with an insane woman who got up and ran around her apartment naked every morning.

Luckily, getting away from him—and those piercing blue eyes of his—seemed to kick my brain back into gear, because the moment I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, rational thinking started to reassert itself.

Right, so Ethan Parker was in my bed. Who cared? I was a young, single woman of the city, and I’d had a celebratory drink with a hot guy and then brought him home to my apartment. All well within the boundaries of what one could expect from a single woman. All perfectly above-board.

Well. Not necessarily above-board. I’d slept with a man I’d only known for an hour, tops. But still. Not completely unreasonable. People did way worse things all the time.

Besides, I’d been riding high on my success in the courtroom. I’d thought I could give myself a little bit of leeway in terms of living it up while I had the chance. It wasn’t like I did that often. I was too busy working sixty-hour weeks to keep my job.

Too busy doing whatever it took to stick to my plan for my life.

I mean, I didn’t even keep many friends. I just didn’t have the time for it. So what if I’d spent one night of my life doing something a little bit crazy? It was long overdue. And that was all there was to it.

And with that, I glanced at myself in the mirror, did some damage control on my hair, wiped the mascara from under my eyes, and then opened the door and marched back out into my bedroom to face the music.

“Hey,” I said, as if this was the most normal thing in the entire world and I always woke up with random strangers in my bed. As if he hadn’t just caught me running toward the bathroom like my apartment was on fire and there was some sort of emergency exit in there.

He gave me a sexy, just-woke-up grin, his hair still tousled from what we’d been doing last night.

“Hey,” he said. “You okay? How’s the toe?”

Right. Because of course he couldn’t just let that one go.

“Still attached,” I told him ruefully. “Sorry, I was… surprised when I woke up and found a guy in my bed.”

He lifted one eyebrow. Totally sexy. Totally unfair. I’d never been able to do that—and believe me, I’d tried.

“And your usual response to finding a guy in your bed is to get away from him as quickly as possible? At the expense of your digits and your bedside table?”

“No, I— Well, not really. I was just surprised, that’s all,” I said.

Yep, the opposite of sexy. The opposite of sophisticated. I sounded like a girl who had never actually found a guy sleeping in my bed in the morning.

Mostly because, well, I never had. Not that I was going to tell him that.

“You know,” he said, throwing the quilt off and reaching for his jeans. “Seeing you running away like that… I’ve got to say, it’s not good for the old ego.”

I laughed at that, too surprised at how easy he was making this to stop myself.

“It was nothing to do with you. I swear. That said, though…” I tilted my head at him and shrugged, the gesture taking in everything—from him being in my bed to the fact that it was a not-so-great idea, which we’d probably only had because we’d