you for a second.” She tugged Brian’s arm as she moved toward the door.
“Only for a second?” he asked, grinning as he followed with Evan and Kelsey.
“Well, when that’s all you’re capable of…” Ghost said, earning himself a middle-finger salute as Brian went out. Macy laughed, but it sounded strained, and she looked after the four of them as if she wanted to bolt out the door with them.
But she didn’t.
Bless all their scheming little black hearts. As soon as the others were gone, Ghost stepped over and shut the door. Macy’s eyebrows were practically in her hairline when he turned back to her.
“Hi,” she said simply.
He could only stare at her for a moment, then blew out a breath and shook his head. “Damn, girl.”
“What?”
“What, she asks.”
“Well…what? I mean really. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know… I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” She blew out a breath, her gaze on the floor in the vicinity of his boots. She pulled that luscious bottom lip between her little white teeth. Jesus help him, he wanted to do the same thing with it.
He waited until her eyes flickered back up to him. “You seemed to know what the hell you were doing the other night. And I liked that.”
“That part’s easy. It’s this part I don’t like. You know we’re going to have to be around each other sometimes—our best friends live together. I don’t want it to be awkward for everyone. Including us.”
“Okay, so let’s deal with it. Here and now. Do you want to keep seeing me? Don’t worry about hurting my feelings or any shit like that. I’m a big boy; I can take it. But I’m not down for games at all. I let you have a few days’ cooling off time, and I’ve been thinking too.”
“Oh? What are you thinking?”
“Come on, Mace. You’re beautiful, and you’re accomplished, and any time a girl like you wants to hang out with a guy like me, you’d better believe I realize what a fucking idiot I’d be to pass that up.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to want me just because I’m…those things.”
“All right, I didn’t word that so well.” He was opening his mouth to go on, but she held up a hand.
“Listen, Seth…I think we’ve done this all backwards.”
“Backwards?”
She crossed her arms, her gaze startlingly direct under her cap. “Backwards for me. Typically, I get to know a guy before I land in the sack with him. That didn’t happen here. In the beginning, that was okay. I didn’t count on wanting anything more with you. I thought it would just be fun, like we said.”
“So you’re saying…you do want more?”
“All I’m saying at this moment is that I don’t really know you…but I would like to.”
Hell, if she got to know him, really know him, she might run screaming. This was a good thing, though. She hadn’t run yet. He thought about all the nights he could spend slowly exploring her beautiful body without rushing to memorize it all before she booted his ass out of her bed and her life. All the hours he could spend inhaling the vanilla sweetness of her skin, her hair. Oh yeah, he wanted to get to know her better.
“Maybe we should cool off?” she asked.
All his sensuous fantasies ground to a halt. Cool off? That did not compute. “What?”
Macy cleared her throat, for the first time glancing away and absently studying the drawings on the board. “You could, I don’t know, ask me on a date? A regular date?”
Do things the way she was used to having them done. Give her her comfort zone. He could handle that. But not without a little teasing. She might as well know that about him right away, if she didn’t already. “Fine. I didn’t want to have sex with you again anyway.”
God, he loved her smile. Even more when it was accompanied by her laugh. She graced him with both at that moment. “Gee, thank you. I feel much better about this whole thing.”
“You? I’m the one who was just informed about the whole cooling-off thing.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to sleep with you again. Honestly? I want to drag you home right now. It’s all I’ve thought about. But…” She sighed and shook her head. “I have thought about it, and I don’t want to get caught up in something like that. It’s not for me. I don’t want a revolving-door relationship. I don’t need someone