He was the odd man out here. He was the one who didn’t belong. In the house where he’d grown up. With his grandfather. This woman…his “wife,” had neatly carved Hunter out of the equation entirely.
Or, had he done that himself?
It had been a hellish day, and all Hunter wanted at the moment was a little peace and quiet. Interrupting the two people completely ignoring him, he said, “You know what? I’m beat. Think I’ll head up to bed.”
“That’s a good idea,” Simon agreed, shifting his attention to his grandson. “Why don’t both of you go on up to your room? Get some rest?”
Silence.
Several seconds ticked past before one of them managed to finally speak.
“Our room?” Margie whispered.
Hunter glared at his grandfather.
Simon smiled.
Four
“I’m not sleeping on the floor,” Hunter told Margie.
“Well,” Margie said from inside the closet, where she was changing into her nightgown, “you’re not sleeping with me.”
Good heavens, how could she possibly share a bed with the man who’d kissed her senseless only hours ago? If he kissed her again, she might just give into the fiery feelings he engendered in her and then where would she be?
“Don’t flatter yourself, babe,” he said, loud enough to carry through the heavy wooden door separating them. “It’s not your body I’m after. It’s the mattress. Damned if I’m sleeping on the floor in my own damn room.”
She frowned at the closed door and the man beyond it. Apparently, she didn’t have anything to worry about. He had clearly not felt anything that she had during that kiss. Was she insulted? Or pleased? “Fine. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Help yourself,” he countered.
Margie stopped in the process of tugging her nightgown over her head. “You’d let me, wouldn’t you? You’d let me sleep on the floor rather than do it yourself like a gentleman.”
“Never said I was a gentleman,” he told her.
“Well, I’m not sleeping on the floor.” This was her room now. Had been for over a year. Why should she be the one to be uncomfortable? And if he wasn’t interested in her sexually, she should be perfectly safe. Right?
“Up to you.”
“Just don’t you try anything,” she warned, telling herself to pay attention.
He actually laughed. “Trust me when I say you’re safe.”
Bastard. How easily he dismissed her. That kiss he’d given her clearly hadn’t touched him at all. Even though her own lips were still humming with remnants of sensation. Of course it hadn’t meant anything to him. Why would it? She’d known most of her life that she simply wasn’t the kind of woman men like him noticed.
She was too short, too…round. He probably went for the six-foot-tall, ninety-pound type who thought a single M &M was a party. His kind of woman never had the last cookie in the box; she didn’t buy cookies. His kind of woman didn’t wear T-shirts; she wore silk. And her clothes hung on her as if she were a coat hanger. No bulges, no curves, no lines. His kind of woman didn’t have to marry a man by proxy; she had men lining up at her door. And his kind of woman wouldn’t have melted at a simple kiss.
“Oh God, how did I get myself into this?”
Being married to Hunter when he wasn’t there had been so easy. So perfect. She’d made him into the ideal husband. Thoughtful, caring, loving. How was she supposed to have known that the real man was lightyears away from the image in her mind?
And yet, this Hunter stirred something inside her that made her yearn for things to be different. Which was just a one-way ticket to misery and she knew it. The only way she would ever have a husband like Hunter was this way. A lie.
Still grumbling to herself, she stepped out of the closet to find her “husband” already ensconced in the bed. On her side.
“Move over,” she commanded, waving one hand for emphasis.
“It’s a king-size bed,” he reminded her. “Plenty of room for both of us.”
Oh, she thought, there probably wouldn’t be enough room for her to lie down comfortably beside him if the bed were the size of the county. But she wouldn’t let him know that she was feeling decidedly uneasy about this situation. Besides, she was going to have enough trouble falling asleep tonight, let alone having to sleep on the wrong side of the bed.
“You’re on my side.”
He looked around, then shrugged broad, bare shoulders. “Since I’m the only one lying on it, I figure it’s my side.”
His eyes shone with amusement in the pale wash of light from the bedside lamp. His bare chest gleamed like old gold, and when he shifted higher onto the pillows, the quilt covering him dipped, pooling at his hips.
Margie sucked in a gulp of air but couldn’t quite stop herself from admiring the view. The soft, dark hair on his chest narrowed into a strip that snaked across his abdomen, then disappeared beneath the quilt.
He was naked.
Oh, God. She was never going to get to sleep tonight. Her stomach did a slow roll and pitch, and her mouth went dry. “Don’t you have pajamas?”
He chuckled and she couldn’t help noticing the dimple in his left cheek. Why did he have to have a dimple?
“No,” he said, “I don’t.” Then his gaze swept over her, taking in her knee-length, long-sleeved cotton gown decorated with pale blue flowers. His eyes widened as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Don’t you have something less…”
Margie felt his disapproval plainly, plopped both hands on her h*ps and dared him to finish that sentence. “Less what?”
“Less…Little House on the Prairie?”
She smoothed one hand over her comfy nightgown. Didn’t she feel pretty? He couldn’t make it any clearer that he wasn’t experiencing the slightest bit of attraction for her. “There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing. It’s very cute.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “If you say so.”
“And comfortable.”
“Okay.”
Margie huffed out a breath, finished doing up the buttons on the front of her perfectly sweet nightgown, then glared at him again. No doubt he was used to going to bed with women who were either na**d or wearing bits of lace and silk. “Are you going to move over or not?”
“Not.”
“You are the most insensitive, arrogant-”