I try to hold in my own grin, but I don’t do so well.
“Well, how’s the service around here?” I joke, crossing my arms and popping my hip. “Will there be a complimentary breakfast waiting for me when I get up?”
He straightens his back, raises his chin importantly, and says sophisticatedly, “Oh, absolutely. I’m quite the cook, too, I should warn you in advance.”
“Really?” I smirk playfully. “Why do I need to be warned?” He smiles with confidence. “Because once you eat one of my dishes, you’ll never want to leave.”
I kind of already never want to leave …
“So what’ll it be?” he says. “A hotel crammed full of tourists, a bagel and a tiny carton of orange juice as a complimentary breakfast, and six months’ worth of rent just to pay for the hotel? Or a free room steps away from a quiet beach owned by a guy who can make a tire taste good, and not to mention”—his grin deepens and he sweeps his hands from his chest downward—“who looks like this?”
I burst out laughing.
Luke is trying not to, but like me, he doesn’t do so well.
I think on it a little longer, looking at the nicely made bed and, yes, the guy standing in front of me who is as sweet as he is gorgeous.
“All right.” I finally give in, and his face lights up. “I’ll stay here—but no funny stuff!”
He surrenders again, his smile the broadest I’ve seen it in hours. “Nope. I’m a total gentleman.” The smirk that follows sends a tickling sensation up the back of my neck.
We share a quiet and serious moment together, Luke looking across the room at me now that I’ve found my way to his bed, sitting down on the edge with my feet barely touching the floor. Slowly he walks over and crouches down in front of me. He looks up into my eyes, and I feel like I’m falling deeper and deeper into them the longer he’s there. His lips are wordless, yet an unmistakable array of words flutter within his eyes. Words that I wish more than anything I could hear and understand so that I can once and for all unravel the mystery that is Luke Everett.
He reaches up a hand and touches the side of my face lightly with his fingertips. It’s such an intimate gesture that it confuses me slightly, but I want it there and I can’t bring myself to do or say anything that would make him pull away.
“Thank you for staying,” he says softly and then his hand slowly falls away.
“Thank you for letting me stay.”
Luke smiles and pushes himself to his feet.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he says. “Do whatever you want. Eat and drink what you want. Watch TV. Play the stereo. Just make yourself at home.”
He leaves me sitting on the edge of his bed with my thoughts as he disappears around the corner. I don’t know why, but I don’t want him to go and I fight my instinct to pull him back.
What is happening to me?
EIGHTEEN
Luke
I spend nearly an hour in the shower, letting the hot water beat down on my skin until it begins to run cool. I always do most of my thinking in the shower, and I always have things figured out by the time the water is cold. But not this time. I have more questions now than I did when I stepped in, and the only answers I have to any of them are the kind you can’t be sure are the right ones, or just the ones you want to believe are.
I’ve never been this drawn to a woman before. I’ve never met a woman who I want to open myself up to in every way, and who I know—I think I know—deep down would accept everything about me no matter how deeply flawed. And I’ve never met anyone, no one, who has ever made me feel this … content, just hanging out and doing the simplest of things together. She makes me want to spill my guts, to get everything out in the open so she can make it all better. But I can’t. And I can’t let her. She tried. The attempt didn’t go unnoticed, or fall on deaf ears, but it did fall on a bitter heart that isn’t ready to heal and may never be ready. When I lost my brother, I lost a part of myself. Sienna … she scares the hell out of me, and despite that, I feel like I’m only growing closer to her instead of trying to push her away. I should push her away—for so many reasons—but I can’t. I want to ignore my conscience and see where this goes. Already I feel like … I need her. Just being around her, she makes me forget. Sometimes that’s what I want to do: forget. Sienna is the only person I’ve met since China turned my life upside down who makes me see light at the end of this long, dark tunnel I’ve been walking through for eight months, while hiding from everyone around me. So I don’t have to talk about it. So I don’t have to relive it.
It’s going to be shitty when Sienna’s vacation is over and she has to go back to San Diego. I don’t want to think about it. I’d rather think about that kiss out on the lanai.
We stay up way past two a.m. watching movies in the living room until she passes out close to me on the sofa, her soft dark auburn hair like a wave tumbling over the arm of the sofa as her head lies pressed against it. Her perfect little feet with brightly painted toenails are pressed against my leg as she lies curled up with her legs on the cushion. I had hoped she’d fall asleep against me instead of the sofa arm, but close is better than nothing. And I had hoped that when I quietly got up and tried to fit my hands underneath her so I could lift her into my arms and carry her to my room she wouldn’t wake up, but she did, and she stretched and yawned and walked herself in there after telling me good night in the sweetest half-asleep voice I think I’ve ever heard.