ache in my collarbone. I wasn’t made for sleeping on sofas but I didn’t want Katie to know that. I managed to extract myself from the sofa with minimal grunts and groans, and once I was on my feet, I stretched my arms over my head and straightened my spine.
It hurt like a bitch, but relief followed.
I strained my ears to see if Katie was stirring but I heard only silence down the hall. I didn’t want to make too much noise, so I held off on making coffee and opted instead to go outside and sit on the porch and kill an hour.
I thought of Katie the entire time.
The last three years of my life had been exhausting, taking care of everyone else but me, and when I’d come to this island, I swore up and down that I wouldn’t become someone else’s caretaker. But taking care of and looking out for Katie last night hadn’t felt like a chore at all. It didn’t cost me any energy to get her out of that bar and bring her somewhere safe to sleep it off.
In fact, it felt rewarding.
I didn’t know what that meant. I just knew I was looking forward to seeing her this morning and I hoped she didn’t feel like an absolute train wreck.
When I heard her moving around and making her way into the bathroom, I put the water on for coffee. She ran the tap in the bathroom and I knocked on the door, letting her know she could shower if she wanted to.
She took me up on it.
The knowledge that there was a beautiful naked woman in my shower made it hard to focus on anything else while I brewed coffee and went about making eggs and toast. It was too easy to picture droplets of water running down her perfect legs, over her breasts, and down her back as she massaged shampoo into her scalp—
“Peter?”
I turned sharply.
My hip hit the handle of the pan in which I was cooking the eggs. It tilted precariously and I scrambled to save the eggs. I singed the tips of my fingers on the edge of the pan, cursed in a supremely ungentlemanly way, shook my hand out, and tried to play it cool like I hadn’t just burnt the shit out of my fingers and nearly destroyed our breakfast.
Katie stood in the hallway wrapped up in a towel. Her eyes were a little wide, her cheeks a little pink from the hot water, and her legs were very, very bare. And tanned.
“Morning,” I said with a croak in my voice. I cleared my throat and leaned against the counter. “Morning,” I amended, sounding a bit less like a frog.
Her eyes slid from the pan to my hand. “Are you okay?”
“This? Yeah, I’m good. Definitely awake now.”
She smiled. God, she was beautiful.
Her hair was wet and way darker than it was when it was dry. Her skin looked dewy and it caught the light as she adjusted her towel.
“I don’t want to put my dress back on,” she said. “Do you mind if I borrow more of your clothes?”
Do I mind if the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met wants to lounge around with me in my clothes?
“Not at all.” I shook my head. “Let me grab you something.”
Katie waited in the doorway of my bedroom as I found her another clean T-shirt and a pair of my sweats. I left them for her to change into, and when she emerged from the bedroom in them, I looked her up and down with an approving glance.
“It’s very becoming on you,” I said.
She looked down at herself and then gave me a cheeky grin. “You might not get them back.”
“They look better on you anyway.”
She giggled and moved into the kitchen to investigate what I had going on. “Smells good.”
“How do you feel? Are you up for breakfast?”
She nodded vigorously. “Oh, hell yes.”
That was all I needed to hear. I poured us coffee and put down four slices of bread in the toaster. Minutes later, we were both sitting out on the porch, plates balanced on our thighs, coffees sitting at our feet, pigging out.
“This is delicious,” Katie said appreciatively. “The perfect cure to a hangover.”
I watched her eat and became transfixed by the way her throat moved when she swallowed and how she closed her eyes to appreciate each bite. She was a slow, patient eater, and she took small bites—a little bit of toast with a