quite awake. Sleep mussed and warm. The silky pajamas she’d been wearing shaping over her nipples and riding high toward her ribs.
Small wonder she’d been on his mind the past eleven hours.
She’d be dressed by now. Probably all neat and tidy. Still, he couldn’t quite kick the salacious happenings taking place in the not-so-far-back of his mind. Silky, sleep-mussed happenings wrapped up in a welcome-home, I’ve-been-aching-for-you-all-day kind of kiss.
Yeah, fat chance.
Closing the door behind him, he called down the hall with a facetious “Honey, I’m home.”
The silence echoed back to him as he dropped his keys on the glass-topped table and kept walking toward the stairs. The second floor was dark and empty, with only a single dim bulb illuminated at the top of the flight. The third floor too. His brow furrowed as he checked his phone for messages. None.
It wasn’t as if returning to an empty house was a new experience for him, but with Megan living there, he’d expected...something different.
Not that he was disappointed. He’d wanted an independent woman who wouldn’t make him feel guilty about the schedule he kept or as if her life was tied to his.
Wish granted!
Only walking through the empty house that had never felt lonely to him before, he had to concede a week into their marriage that he hadn’t anticipated getting his wish would suck quite this way.
Midway down the darkened hall, Connor paused, just outside Megan’s office door. A sliver of light leaked through the seam, and from within came the quiet yet distinct sound of keys tapping.
She was here.
Turning the knob, Connor opened the door to Megan’s sanctuary...and discovered his silk-clad morning fantasy staring hard at the monitor as her fingers assaulted the keyboard in front of her.
The sexiness of her sleep-rumpled look had gone mildly stale throughout the day, and yet Connor couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was intense, focused. And bobbing her lovely head ever so slightly to the beat of whatever she had pumping into her ears through those hot-pink little earbuds.
Never in a million years would he have expected to come home to a scene like this if he’d married Caro. She’d have been polished and primped. Attentive in the distant way he’d become so familiar with. Making small talk, much as they did with strangers through a cocktail party.
And he’d never have really known—in all honesty, would never have really cared—where her head was at.
Not like this, he thought with a bemused smile. Right now, he knew exactly where Megan’s head was. Deep in her work. The project she’d been waiting on must finally have come in.
Standing unnoticed in the doorway, he considered his alternatives.
He could walk across the room and take advantage of her distraction. Pull her blond mess to the side and start with her neck, close his mouth over the spectacularly sensitive spot behind her ear and work his way forward from there...
Or he could go order some dinner—because based on what he was seeing, he’d bet food hadn’t even crossed her mind. And when he took his kiss...he wanted Megan paying attention.
Running a hand over the back of his neck, he turned away.
“Connor?”
Her voice was overloud and she was staring at him, looking adorably confused.
He tapped his ear and she pulled the bud from her own.
“Hey, gorgeous. How was your day?”
He’d meant the compliment, but Megan seemed to have taken it tongue in cheek—her face blanching as her hands went to her hair and then those silky pajamas that told more secrets than they kept.
Only, then the most interesting thing happened. That flash of embarrassment faded and something that looked a lot like challenge took its place. “I get caught up in my work...I lose track. It can be irritating for some people.”
Ah, more with the disclosures. Whatever it took.
“You near a good stopping point if I call in Chinese?” he asked, sensing the time to wrap things up would put her in a better place to break for the night. It was how it would be with him.
“You wouldn’t mind?” Her eyes shot back to his, infinitely softer than they’d been only seconds before.
“I better not—tables’ll be turned soon enough.” No question. “I’ll order and grab a quick shower. Meet me downstairs when you’re ready.”
At her slight frown, Connor stopped. “Something wrong?”
“You don’t want your kiss?”
“Oh, I want it,” he assured, giving in to the grin hovering around his lips. “But not until I’ve got your undivided attention. So wrap it up.”
* * *
The door closed and Megan stared at her computer, relieved by Connor’s easy acceptance of her distraction and yet unable to shake the doubts. The sense that if it wasn’t this that opened Connor’s eyes to a future he didn’t want, then it would be something else. Eventually.
She didn’t want to think that way. There was so much right between them, and yet, a part of her couldn’t buy in. A part of her saw the calm mask Connor wore when she showed him something he, by all rights, ought to dislike—and wondered what lay hidden beneath.
Sure, getting tied up with work this evening wasn’t such a big deal. But it didn’t seem to matter what she said or did. As if no bad habit or personal shortcoming even registered. As if maybe Connor was so determined to prove how perfectly suited for this marriage they were that he’d turn a blind eye to anything that didn’t fit.... Until one day he wouldn’t be able to do it anymore.
What happened then?
God, she wanted to believe. But with so much at stake, she needed Connor to acknowledge more than some illusion of perfection. She needed to know he was really seeing her.
“SHE MADE YOU WHAT?” Jeff choked through the line.
Connor shook his head at Megan’s latest attempt to confront him with a reality she expected him to reject. Her latest failed attempt.
“Creamed tuna on mashed potatoes. With peas.” Canned, boxed and frozen. He knew because she’d left the containers in plain view on the counter. “Apparently it’s one of those old family favorites she just has to have once in a while.”
“No. Way.”
The last time he’d heard that kind of awe in Jeff’s voice, the man had just watched a supermodel bungee off the Verzasca Dam in Ticino, Switzerland, tossing him a wink and blown kiss before taking air.
“Damn, she’s serious about shaking you.”
Connor bristled, reining in the growl currently threatening his cool. “If she’s so serious she ought to come up with something more substantial than dinner. Like I’m going to bolt because she served me less than five-star cuisine. Come on.”
It was an insult to both of them.
“You ate it?”
“Of course I ate it,” he scoffed, surprised Jeff would even ask. “She made it for me.”
And he’d finished every bite, as if it was manna from heaven.
Then giving in to a reluctant chuckle, he added, “But I have to admit that gelatinous puddle—which even Megan didn’t eat, by the way—was without question the worst thing I’ve ever shoveled into my mouth.”
“Dude.”
Half