The Player - By Rhonda Nelson Page 0,44
he’d abandoned and broken every bachelor rule. He and Audrey had had more than three unofficial dates. She’d eaten off his plate. And, he thought, as his gaze traced the beautiful lines of her slumbering face, he’d spent the night with her.
In her bed, no less.
Strangely enough, no clap of thunder rent the heavens and the first rays of dawn peeking above the horizon didn’t appear any different from any other he’d witnessed in his thirty-some-odd years on this earth.
And yet everything had changed.
Not in the world around him, Jamie thought. No, she’d changed his world from within. The world he lived in might not have changed, but the one inside him no longer remotely resembled the one he’d been a part of before.
Somehow, someway, when he hadn’t been paying attention, he’d fallen in love with her. He wouldn’t have knowingly done it—he was too much of a coward—but he couldn’t deny that it had happened nonetheless. And never had that been more startlingly clear than when he’d pushed into her and looked into those calm clear blue eyes. She’d been so perfect that he’d felt the back of his lids burn with some unnamed emotion he hadn’t had the courage to claim in years.
No doubt, he’d become the butt of his friends’ jokes—oh, how the mighty have fallen, they’d tease—and Garrett would most likely make good on his threat, but this morning, in this very instant, frankly he just didn’t give a damn.
So long as he was with her, the rest of the world could simply go to hell.
He wasn’t going to worry about Garrett or what he would say. He wasn’t going to worry about his role in meddling in her private business. He wasn’t going to worry about falling in love and the resulting powerlessness that would no doubt bring. He just wanted to be with her.
Audrey’s head was on his shoulder, her sweet hand curled palm down against his chest—his heart, specifically—and he could feel her plump breast resting against his side. Moses lay sprawled at the foot of the bed—on his feet, thank you very much—and from his vantage point beside the window, Jamie could see a couple of squirrels leaping from tree to tree. Their antics drew a smile. He felt Audrey stir and turned to watch her wake.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded with the last vestiges of sleep. She caught him watching her, smiled sleepily, then stretched like a cat. “Goodmorning,” she murmured groggily.
“Morning, beautiful,” Jamie told her.
“I’m glad you stayed. I’d pegged you for the leaving type.”
In another life, with any other woman—but not with her. His gaze tangled with hers. “You’re worth waking up with.”
She smiled at the compliment and a stain of pink washed over her cheeks. Amazing, Jamie thought. He’d taken her six ways to Sunday last night—on the massage table, in her shower, against the hall wall and in her bed…and yet she couldn’t take a compliment from him without blushing. Odd that he should find that endearing.
“So are you.” She reached up and tousled his hair. “Your curls are all mussed.”
“So are yours.”
She grimaced. “But yours are sexy, whereas mine look like they’ve been hit with a weed-whacker and styled with a garden rake.”
“Not true,” Jamie told her, fingering one long curl. He wrapped it around his index finger and tugged her toward him for a sweet kiss. “I love your hair. It makes me hot.”
Another one of those nervous smiles. Intrigued, Jamie sat up on one elbow and stared at her. “Are you not accustomed to compliments, or do they just make you uncomfortable?”
“Both,” Audrey told him.
He traced a finger down the achingly familiar slope of her cheek. “We’ll have to work on that.”
“You could stand a little work yourself,” she told him, her gaze searching his.
Since he knew she was referring to his inability to open up, Jamie decided a subject change was in order. “We could stand to work on breakfast,” he improvised. “Are you hungry?”
Though she clearly wrestled with pursuing the line of conversation she’d started, to Jamie’s immense relief Audrey let it drop. Not permanently, he knew, but at least he’d gotten a reprieve. She nodded. “Yeah. Let me take Moses out, then I’ll fix us something.”
“Let me,” Jamie offered. He pushed up and planted his feet on the floor. “You cooked last night.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “You don’t know your way around my kitchen.”
Jamie chuckled. “I think I can manage,” he drawled, shooting her a wicked grin. For