he said. Then he turned to face the closet. “I obviously misheard our landlady’s directions. I could have sworn she told me to come through the screen porch and take the door on the left.” He frowned. “Actually, at first, I thought I heard her say the right one, then she definitely said left. So maybe she was the confused one.”
Or maybe not. Mimi considered the prophetic statement Anna had made a little while ago about a half-naked man tripping at her feet. It was as if she’d known this jeans-wearing three-alarm fire in human form would emerge into her bedroom, trip and land on the floor before her. It couldn’t have worked out better if Anna had been there to stick her foot in his path to make him fall.
Aside from being a landlady, Anna also sometimes did some fortune-telling. She read tarot cards and tea leaves, operating out of a local mystic’s shop, doing readings under the name Madame Titania. Mimi had always considered it just good fun, nothing really “woo-woo” about it. Now, though. Well, it was interesting, to say the least.
Whether she’d seen something in Mimi’s future or not, Anna was probably doing some matchmaking, and had intentionally given 1B the wrong directions. She just hadn’t realized that her new tenant wouldn’t be the only one half-naked. Though, to be honest, Mimi had been more than half. She’d been three quarters of the way there.
Maybe seven eighths.
She took some small comfort in the fact that she’d still been wearing a bra when he’d seen her. She just wished that if she’d only been allowed to have on one piece of clothing when he’d stumbled in on her, it would have been the damn robe.
“Anna might have gotten a little turned around,” she said, not wanting to speculate to this stranger about their landlady’s motives. That would open up other questions—like why Anna felt the need to matchmake for her when Mimi had a date standing out in the backyard, probably wondering what on earth had happened to her. A date she was planning to have sex with tonight.
Wasn’t she?
“Hey, I just remembered, we haven’t been introduced,” he said, sticking out his hand. “I’m Xander McKinley.”
Not introduced. Right. He’d seen her bare, uh, everything, and she’d almost crushed his skull with a vase. But they hadn’t exchanged names.
She stared at his hand for a moment, struck by its strength, which matched the strong, bare arm. And the strong, bare shoulders. And the strong, bare chest. Below which was a rippled, bare stomach, covered with a light sprinkling of dark hair that wound down into the waistband of his low-slung jeans.
The man must have lived a previous life and known Webster, because he’d surely provided the definition of sexy. Hottie, Anna had called him? What a ridiculous word. He was a flaming inferno.
And wrong. Wrong guy. Wrong time. Wrong situation. Good grief, he’d practically face-planted himself into her naked crotch and wasn’t the least bit repentant about it.
He’s flirtatious. He’s charming. He’s a bad boy. He’s your next-door neighbor. He’s freaking off-limits.
Keeping that in mind, she thrust her hand out, stiff and businesslike. “Mimi Burdette.”
She took his hand in hers, noting its calloused, masculine strength. Dimitri was well-built, but his body was the working-rich-man-goes-to-the-gym-four-times-a-week variety. He worked in an office and lifted nothing more than a pen most of the time. He had staff to cut his lawn and a shop to fix his car and hands that proved it.
She shivered. Literally shivered at the thought of this stranger brushing that rough palm and those fingers over all the parts of her he’d already touched with his eyes.
She yanked her hand away. Somebody else was supposed to be touching her tonight. Somebody right. Somebody well-suited for her life and her job and her family. And her.
This guy wasn’t him.
“I really need to get back to the party,” she said.
He eyed her for a moment, saying nothing, as if he, too, had experienced something strange the moment their fingers had touched. Heck, what hadn’t been strange about them so far? This whole encounter was already beginning to feel surreal and she wondered if, someday in the future, she’d believe it had been some weird dream.
Not if he’s living right under your nose from now on. She was going to be reminded of his hotness and her nakedness every time she bumped into him while getting the mail or carrying in the groceries. Fun times ahead. Only, not.
“The dude … the one who’s brainless enough not to like your thong. Is he outside right now?”
She bit her bottom lip, then slowly nodded.
“You’re not sleeping with him, though.”
“Do we have to repeat that it’s-none-of-your-business part of this conversation?”
One corner of his mouth lifted and a twinkle appeared in those deep, dark eyes. “Hey, I feel like I know you intimately already.”
True. He knew her almost as intimately as her gynecologist.
“It’s not very gentlemanly of you to remind me of that.”
He ignored her. “So you and this guy … it’s not serious, right? Anna told me you weren’t involved with anyone.”
Her jaw fell. “You discussed my love life with Anna?”
His turn to flush a little. He looked away, as if wishing he hadn’t revealed that much. “Just in passing.”
Interesting. Had he asked about her, noticed her outside, the way she’d noticed him?
It doesn’t matter.
Still, something made her admit, “It’s not serious. Yet.”
“But tonight’s his lucky night, huh?”
She swallowed, suddenly unsure of that. Unsure of everything.
One B—Xander, his name is Xander, and how sexy is that?—stepped closer. “Can I just say, if you’ve got to work so hard at it, maybe it’s just not supposed to happen?”
Her mouth went dry as the warmth of his body washed over her. She could smell his skin—a mix of soap and sweat and male—and breathed a little deeper. “Work at it?” she whispered.
He lifted a hand, tracing his fingertip down her cheek, until it rested on the corner of her mouth. “If he wants you badly enough, you could be wearing a nun’s habit and he’d still have refused to let you walk into the house without coming after you to try to get you alone.”
Ooh. That was so much like what she’d thought earlier, she wondered if he’d read her mind.
“If it were me, I wouldn’t have let you out of my sight.”
She swallowed hard, heat slamming into her, both at his words and the serious, almost dangerous way he’d said them.
“I would have had to stay right beside you throughout the party, just to reassure myself you weren’t going to disappear. To make sure no other man even dared to look at you, and to remind myself that I could wait, because, by the time the night was over, you’d be mine.”
“Good Lord,” she whispered, her eyes falling closed. Her feet shifted; she edged a tiny bit closer, feeling almost mesmerized by his throaty voice. Not to mention by the faint brush of his hand on her mouth. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. That hand moved, until he was cupping her head, his fingers tangling in her loose hair. She arched her face into his palm, unable to resist, turning to him the way a flower turned to the morning sun. “If I had been crazy enough to let you go inside without me, I would have been watching your door, counting down the seconds until you got back. And you can bet your last dollar I would have done something about it if some strange, shirtless dude walked through it after