she said. “Not very well, apparently.”
“So you don’t regret it, then?”
She turned to look at him. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, but he faced her. For a long moment their eyes met and held.
Suddenly her head was full of images from that night.
His hands on her breasts.
His weight pressing her into the bed.
The hard planes of his chest and back, smooth and warm beneath her hands.
Sitting in the dark with him with the faint, sour taste of bile in her mouth, it all seemed like a lifetime ago. As though it had happened to another person. But it hadn’t, it had happened to her. To them. For one night she’d thrown all her inhibitions, self-doubt and beliefs about herself and the world out the window and simply allowed herself to feel.
And it had been good. It had been wonderful.
“No. I don’t regret it. Not the going-home bit, anyway.” Maybe she was crazy, but despite everything, she didn’t have it in her to regret the hours she’d spent in his bed.
She swept her hand in front of her in an all-encompassing gesture. “This bit—the bit where we’ve been forced into a relationship with each other for the rest of our lives because of a faulty piece of latex—I could do without.”
“It could have been worse, you know.”
She gave a small snort of disbelief.
“It’s true,” he insisted. “You could have been a psychotic bunny boiler without a single sensible thought in your head, and I could have been a slacker, stoner loser on unemployment with a killer marijuana habit.”
She shook her head. “No. There’s no way I would have gone home with that guy. Even if I was a bunny-boiling head case.”
“You wouldn’t have had a choice. I would have trapped you in my tractor beam, remember?”
“I don’t think slacker, stoner Rhys has a tractor beam.”
“No?”
“No. I think the tractor beam is all yours.”
“I wasn’t sure I liked the tractor-beam idea at first, but it’s growing on me. I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
She huffed out a little laugh.
“How’s the nausea?”
She did a swift body check. “Better.”
“Good.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the house. “We should probably head inside.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll be wondering what’s going on.”
“It’ll give them something to talk about. Besides, it’s nicer out here. Quieter.”
She peered at him in the darkness. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“Not. But we can go inside if you really want to.”
She gauged her own wants and needs against what she knew was the polite thing to do.
Rhys sighed theatrically and pushed to his feet. “Come on, then, if you insist on doing the right thing.” He offered her his hand. His fingers were firm around hers as he helped her to her feet.
“I hope I haven’t ruined your sisters’ birthday party,” she said.
Now that she was standing she could see through the kitchen window to where the Walkers were still gathered around the table.
“Are you kidding me? You made it a red-letter event. This will go down in the annals of Walker family history as the night Charlie nearly tossed her cookies on the table. You’re officially a legend, immortalized forever.”
She smiled, mostly because she knew she was meant to. Rhys wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“It’s not a big deal. Honestly.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” He looked at her, a warm light in his eyes.
Something tightened in her chest as she gazed into his handsome face. Not because he was good looking, but because he was so nice.
Nice—and funny and quick and smart. He smelled good, too, and the arm around her shoulder was hard with muscle. The rest of him was, too, she knew. His thighs and his belly and his chest…
She shrugged out from under his arm. “Better not keep them waiting.”
She didn’t look at him again as she headed for the back door.
IT WAS ONLY WHEN Charlie slipped out from under his arm that it hit Rhys that he had no right to touch her so familiarly. That they didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Yet all night he’d been fighting the need to touch her, to protect her, to literally shield her with his body.
Clearly, there was more than a little caveman blood running in his veins.
He was half a second behind Charlie as she reentered the kitchen, in time to witness his smart-ass family offering her a rousing round of applause.
For a long beat Charlie’s face was a study in shock then her mouth curved into a slow, appreciative smile. She