Hot Under His Collar - Andie J. Christopher Page 0,39
and temporary and messy. And he would ruin both their lives.
In that moment, he knew he would throw it all away for her. But he had nothing, and there was no reason that she would want him. She flirted with everyone; he was no different. She’d hugged him for completely platonic reasons. They’d become friends in planning this thing, after all. That was all there was to it, and it had to be.
They couldn’t be anything else.
Knowing that didn’t stop him from saying, “Do you want a drink?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
SASHA LOOKED AROUND TO make sure they were alone. Had she heard him right? In another context, it would seem that he’d just asked her on a date. Of course that wasn’t what was happening. He was a priest. They were just friends. This was just a friendly drink. He didn’t—couldn’t—know how attracted to him she was. It would look weird if she turned him down.
Totally weird. She had to say yes.
“Of course.” The smile he gave her almost set her panties on fire, but he obviously had no idea of that. Luckily, he probably missed her full-body flush, because he turned around and led her out of the empty courtyard to the small building at the back of the church—the rectory—where she presumed that he lived.
He opened the door for her, and she didn’t brush up against him. In fact, she was as far away from him as she could get. And she didn’t look up to see how he was looking at her.
Even though they’d been alone before, they’d never been alone at night. The part of her that wanted to do bad things thrilled at the intimacy of the situation. They were going to be totally alone. And drinking.
“You’ll have to be quiet,” Patrick said, and his whispered tone thrilled her to her bones. “Sister Cortona gets all het up when I disturb her beauty sleep.”
Sasha very much doubted that the nun spent a lot of worry on anything quite as frivolous as beauty; she’d never met a more practical person in her entire life. She couldn’t stop the giggle that came out of her mouth, but she made it quiet.
Patrick led her into a utilitarian kitchen that smelled of the same industrial cleaner they used in the church, without the incense over it. He pulled out a chair for her and she sat down, which gave her the opportunity—which she took—to ogle his very fine rear end as he moved to a cabinet next to the refrigerator.
“Do you like scotch?” He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. It was almost shockingly rakish, and she felt as though she might disintegrate into a puddle beneath her chair if he didn’t stop it immediately. She managed to nod and smile and make some sort of affirmative noise that got him to turn around and pour them both drinks.
She’d always wanted things she couldn’t have and had fought against her baser impulses for literal decades, but that didn’t completely explain her reaction to Patrick. Never in her life had she felt like she was on fire around another person. No one elicited the reactions that Patrick did. Nor did she understand why someone as vital and—well, virile—as Patrick would sign his life away when he was barely twenty-five.
Maybe if she understood more about him, she could demystify him in her own head and they could move on as just friends.
When he sat down, she’d resolved to ask more questions and find out more about him. “Why did you become a priest?”
He sat back in his chair, as though her question had blown him away. “Getting right down to the heart of things, are we?”
It didn’t help her lady parts situation that he winked at her. That wouldn’t do at all. “I just want to know more about you. I mean, we know each other, but like—I don’t know anything about you.”
“I guess I like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I like people telling me things.” He looked down into his glass, and she felt like she might have made a mistake. If anything, having him on the precipice of revealing himself to her made him even sexier. “And it’s hard for me to tell people about myself.”
She really shouldn’t have asked. “You don’t have to—”
But he cut her off. “It was about a girl.”
“Want me to kill her?” Any woman that could prompt this man to give up sex and romance with the degree of emphasis that he had deserved to die.