“let’s head back inside. I’ll make you my world-famous hot chocolate.”
As soon as she got to the shore, she put her glasses back on, then started running again, this time up the steep steps. He’d been laughing as he’d chased her all the way down, and now he was laughing again as he chased her back up.
No woman had ever grated on him the way Zara had for the past year. But that suddenly seemed a small price to pay for all the laughter.
It was amazing how natural it felt to walk naked into his house together, both of them holding their clothes, rather than putting them back on over wet skin. If Zara lived here with him, they could do this every day—jump into the water whenever the spirit took them.
His brain caught up several seconds later. If Zara lived here with him?
The odds that she would ever agree to give up her own space had to be nil. Then again…she’d agreed to more than one night, hadn’t she, when he’d assumed such a thing would be an impossibility.
She tossed him a towel from the bathroom, the thick cotton smacking him in the face and yanking him out of his surprising musings.
“It doesn’t count, you know.”
He briskly rubbed his hair to dry it before moving on to his face, shoulders, and chest. “What doesn’t?”
“The sex.”
Maybe the water had been colder than he thought, because he didn’t follow her. “The sex doesn’t count for what?”
She rolled her eyes as though the answer was obvious. “For our long-term couple compatibility. We are still a terrible fit, and by Saturday both of us will be dying to cut each other loose.”
He almost laughed out loud at the irony of the fact that while he’d just been wondering about the odds of convincing her to live with him, she was doing her level best to add to her list of all the reasons they shouldn’t be together.
Of course, he couldn’t just agree with her and be done with it. Not because taking opposite sides on most topics was an integral part of their interactions, but because he wasn’t sure he agreed that the sex they’d been having was just a feel-good way to pass a few hours.
“Sex might not be the be-all and end-all of a relationship,” he said, “but it definitely counts. Especially when it’s this good.” Case in point: They’d had each other twice today, and he was already raring for more.
She wrapped her towel even more firmly around herself as though to lay that idea to rest. “I knew you’d end up thinking sex means more than it really does.”
He was pretty sure it was the guy in a relationship who normally said that. It figured that the two of them would end up flipping things upside down. After all, their entire relationship to this point had been completely backward, given that they’d begun as enemies before becoming allies. “What do you think sex means?”
“It’s fun. It’s a good way to get some exercise. And, with the right person, I suppose it can also help bring you closer.”
“So you do agree with me. What we’re doing here—” He gestured between their naked bodies. “—counts.”
“No.” She shook her head, hard enough for little droplets of water to fly from the tips of her hair. “I said with the right person it counts.”
Rory loved having sex with Zara. He’d need to have his head checked if he didn’t. But the way she kept deliberately pointing out how sure she was that they could never have anything more than that pushed all his buttons.
He didn’t expect her to turn into a big, emotional ball of mush after they made love. He wouldn’t mind, however, if she could at least pretend to be a little more starry-eyed over what they’d just shared—especially given how many stars he kept seeing.
She’d seemed so emotional during their lovemaking. But was he seeing only what he wanted to see?
Ironic, wasn’t it, that he now longed for the very thing he’d been so averse to in his past relationships. All of his previous girlfriends had been so starry-eyed around him that their emotional states had become stained by desperation.
Zara would never be desperate. Not in a million years.
Maybe he should have left it. But everything inside of him felt churned up. All because of the breathtaking, infuriating, brilliant, and frustratingly unavailable woman who might as well be six miles away, rather than six feet.
So instead of letting her comment