in days. Then I got to thinking that, you know, what goes in…”
“Right, right,” Kirby said, already on the same page.
“I could hit a drug store, or something, but thought I’d ask first.”
“I’m sure we can figure something out. Temporarily,” she added with a gauging look at his face. “Right?”
“Right. Of course. I figured I’d let her settle down some from her scare, then start making some calls tomorrow.” He propped his hands on his hips. His very lean, narrow hips. At least he’d pulled on another T-shirt. Bright blue this time. Made his green eyes look almost electric.
She kinda preferred the black one. The black flashed her back to the leather and the motorcycle and all those visuals she really didn’t need to recall. Especially when combined with the naked ones. Most especially. She realized he was waiting for her to respond and cleared her throat. “Good plan,” she said, sounding like she’d been out in the desert too long with no water. At some point she was not going to be an idiot around this man. If, perhaps, he stayed long enough.
A few weeks might do it. Or kill her.
“Glad you agree.” He folded his arms over his chest and smiled.
Okay, so kill her it was.
“Could you give me some names, places to start?”
“Sure. Let me go down and see what I can find for a litter box.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“No, no bother.” She motioned to the stairs, making him aware he was going to have to move if he didn’t want her plastered up against him as she made her way past him.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, backing up against his door. “Hey, Ms. Farrell?” he said after she’d made it safely to the top step without making any actual physical contact.
Great, she thought. She was fantasizing about him scooping her up in those strong arms, holding her against that ridiculously gorgeous chest, and carrying her in to the very delicious bed that she knew lay just beyond that door. And he was Miz Farrelling her. Lovely. She supposed it could have been worse. At least he hadn’t ma’am’d her. “Yes? And please, you saved my life. It’s Kirby.”
“Kirby,” he added with another brief smile.
He was both sex on a stick and cutely adorable all at the same time. There should be a law. She tried not to swoon.
“If you tell me where the stuff is, I’ll get it.” His smile flashed to a grin for a brief moment. “I figure you’ve done about enough for the little beast for one day.” He nodded in the general direction of her body. Very general, very vague nodding…but that didn’t stop some very specific points of her body from responding. Two, in particular.
Her long-sleeve tee was a bit on the thin side, so she folded her arms in front of her, just in case. It was only midafternoon, and yet it felt like an enormously long day.
“Some of those scratches looked pretty nasty. You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, a bit mortified that not only had he seen her naked stomach in all of its not-twenty-five-anymore glory…he’d also gotten an additional eyeful of ugly, bloody scratches for the trouble. Yeah, that was the visual she wanted him to have. Definite fantasy material right there. If you were Stephen King. “They don’t feel as bad as they look,” she lied.
“If you say so.” He paused for a moment, and she’d have sworn he looked a little uncertain about what to say next, but he wasn’t ducking back into his room, either. Clearly wishful thinking on her part. Or he was trying to find the words to tell her something she didn’t want to hear.
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
“Uh, no. No, that’s all. I’d—follow you down, but maybe I should go check on the beast. Make sure she hasn’t shredded something irreplaceable.”
“I’ll be back up in a few minutes with a cardboard box and whatever I can dig up.”
“Okay.” But he lingered a moment longer, so she paused, but then he finally turned back to his door. “Thanks again.”
“Sure,” she said, then headed back down the stairs once his door was shut behind him again. So, had that just been her? Or had things suddenly gotten awkward there at the end? Awkward in that way where you weren’t ready to end a conversation, but weren’t sure how to prolong it without seeming dorky.
Except the dork in that situation had clearly been her. And yet, he’d been the one to prolong the moment past its natural comfort zone. You’re really stretching if you think he was somehow flirting, or wanting to keep your company.
Besides, who knew why he was there, or how long he’d been on the road. Maybe he was just starved for any human interaction. He certainly had been nothing if not polite, not coming onto her in any discernible way. And he’d saved her life, or at the very least saved her an extended hospital stay. So…maybe it was just that. Not knowing what to say to someone you’d kept from breaking her own fool neck.
Didn’t keep her from thinking about what it would mean if he really was coming onto her. Except a guy who looked like him, and was confident enough to spring into action and play white knight like he had…probably had very few awkward moments with members of the opposite sex. As polite and gentlemanly as he’d been since his arrival, she didn’t doubt that if he wanted to spend more time with her, he wouldn’t have been at all awkward about making her aware of it.
She went about gathering whatever she could find to make a decent litter box for the wee beast, making a mental note to give Pete a call later. She’d given her guest a hard time about finding a home for the critter, but she’d been bloody and a little annoyed at that moment. She actually thought it was pretty sweet that he’d cared one way or the other what happened to the kitten. Which, so did she, or she wouldn’t have climbed, literally, out on a limb to save its sorry little fuzzy butt.
But she also knew Pete was a softy who’d have kept it at the animal control compound until he found a home for it; so turning the kitten over to him wasn’t the heartless action it had come off as, either. She layered a stack of newspapers on top of the stuff she’d already put in the empty cardboard box and headed back up the stairs.
She knocked on his door with her elbow. “Room service.”
He opened the door an instant later and essentially tugged her into the room by her elbow, then shut the door immediately behind her. Startled by the action, and thinking she normally didn’t go for brutish kind of guys, but that he could manhandle her all he wanted…she stutter-stepped to a stop when he immediately let her go as soon as the door was shut behind her. Still staggering a little, she watched as he turned and dropped to his hands and knees to look under the wide opening beneath the sleigh bed.
Yeah, not exactly the next part she’d pictured in her fantasy scenario, right there. Although it did give her a great excuse to stare at his mighty fine backside once again. Which she did. Openly. It was like she’d reverted to some primordial version of herself that was merely a slave to her inner, baser instincts.
“Come on,” he was crooning. “You really don’t want to make a bed out of…” He trailed off on a sigh and then levered himself back up to stand. “Sorry for yanking you in there like that, but she’s been tearing around the room like some kind of Tasmanian devil and I didn’t want her ripping out the door.”
“We could still call Pete, you know,” Kirby said.
The quelling look he gave her was rather comical when you thought about it.
“She just needs some time to calm down. I just sort of wish she hadn’t picked my sweater to do that in,” he said, glancing back toward the area under the bed. “But…there are other sweaters.”
He wore sweaters. He struck her as a faded, beat-up-sweat-shirt kind of guy. Well, the guy who’d rolled in