Reading His Mind (10 page)

He nodded. “Are you finished?”

I shrugged, worn out from my mini tirade. “Time’ll tell.”

“I don’t know why I said her name.”

“Well, that just about clears everything up for me, but if you’re still confused, you can probably ask anybody in the other room, and they can tell you.”

“I knew I was kissing you. I was enjoying kissing you, and you are the one I wanted to be kissing.”

A bitter laugh bubbled up in my throat. “Your lips said otherwise, Jace.” I went back to flinging clothes over my shoulder. Where the hell were my pajamas?

“Lyric.”

“That’s good, Jace. Keep practicing.” I rolled my eyes. “Maybe next time you’ll get it right.”

“Good to know.” A glimmer of smug Jace stared at me.

I should have ignored him, but curiosity won out. “What’s good to know?”

“That there’ll be a next time.”

My breath whistled as I sucked it in through clenched teeth. “No.”

He chuckled. “Ah, but your lips said otherwise.”

I’d had enough—absolutely, positively enough of him for one day. Rising to my feet, I jabbed his chest. “I’m so glad you think this is funny. I told you I didn’t want to be your substitute Melody. You said I wasn’t.” I shook my head. “I know you can’t help being in love with the wonderfully perfect Melody. Everybody is, but please go be in love with her away from me because”—I waved my arms around the room—“as you can see, I have enough of my own crap to get through. I’m not a freaking counselor who’s going to help you get over her. The one piece of advice I can offer you is: you lost her, so suck it up. Move on.” I continued looking for my clothes, which stayed well buried. By the looks of the room, I needed a twelve-step program to cure a clothing addiction.

Strong arms encircled me from behind and, for one split second, it felt so good I almost melted into him. “Lyric, maybe you’re right.”

“I usually am.” I wanted to be wrong this time.
Damn it anyway
.

He chuckled. “Is being friends too much to ask for?”

I rolled my neck and shrugged alternate shoulders like a prizefighter preparing for battle. “We can be friends.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Well, as your friend, I am offering the second bed in my room at the hotel for you to sleep in.” I started to protest, but his voice boomed over mine. “As your friend. Nothing more.”

I considered it and balked at trying to resist temptation—not one of my stronger skills. “Jace, as your friend, I gotta tell you, it’s a bad idea for us to stay in the same room together.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, and I moved as far away as humanly possible, to the opposite side of my room. “Why is that?”

“Because, after what we did in here, it will be awkward staying there together.”

“Are you afraid you won’t be able to resist me?”

I used indignity to hide my lie. “Of course not. I am afraid you won’t be able to resist me.” I spied my pajamas—the kind with built-in feet—and snatched them up then held them high enough for him to inspect. “Especially in my sexiest lingerie.”

“Those are attractive.” He believed otherwise.

“I sacrifice sexy for warmth.”

“I doubt you will be any less sexy in those than in anything else you can dig out of this rubble.”

Being his friend could work if he shrank a foot in height, grew eighty pounds heavier, and sported a couple of facial warts. However, even though my apartment looked like a hurricane had swept through, I smiled, suspecting my lighter mood had less to do with his handsome face and more to do with who he was. “Are you insulting my decor?”

“Not at all. I am insulting your cleanliness.”

“Nice.” Resting the jammies across my shoulder like a gym towel, I continued hunting. I still needed underwear and an outfit for at least the next day.

“Now what are you looking for?”

“Undergarments. Wanna give me a hand? They are red and lacy and—”

All the color left his face.

“In the name of friendship?”

“I think being your friend might be a challenge,” he said with a smile.

“That’s what I hear.” Then added, “More often than you’d think.”

The bathroom had some sort of marble tub in which I would have died a happy woman had I drowned there. The bed linens boasted a three million thread count, and the blackout curtains plunged me into a darkness so deep my eyes failed to adjust. This would have allowed me a peaceful slumber had I not been so damn aware of Jace laid out on the other bed, breathing the serene breath of untortured sleep. I wanted to yell a resounding
bullshit
, but instead, I lay there listening to him. He didn’t snore. Didn’t talk in his sleep. Didn’t even have a dream to entertain me. He just kept breathing in and out, not giving a single thought to amuse me.

Even knowing he wanted Mel did nothing to quell the lust I thought we had dispensed with in the elevator after his unfortunate faux pas with her name. Lust, an evil, devious bitch of an emotion, worked with brutal determination to ruin my Las Vegas luxury hotel experience.

I flopped onto my side then flipped back. I flailed around like a fish out of water in the most comfortable bed I’d ever tried to sleep on.

“Tell me something about you, Lyric.” His voice, soft and deep, shattered the quiet. “Something I don’t know.”

I jumped. “You don’t know anything about me.” Much quieter, I added, “Not anymore.”

“I know.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m trying to fix that. A little cooperation might be handy.”

“Okay. Fine.” I searched the details of my somewhat boring life for something that didn’t make me sound pathetic. “I usually hate big hotel chains. I stay away from them whenever I can. Although, after seeing this room, I might have to reconsider my position.”

“So, you rent an apartment in every town you work in?”

I laughed. “Sometimes it would be cheaper, but no. I try to find those cute little bed and breakfasts where they cook for you and clean your room.”

“That’s boring. I meant something that says a little bit about who you are.” He sounded let down. Guilt ate at me.

“Well, if you let me finish, I might give you some of that amazing insight.”

“Sorry.”

Because the dark surrounded me, robbing Jace of the opportunity to see my embarrassment, my mind switched into true-confessions mode. “Sometimes, if the place is just right, I pretend it’s home and the people are my family—the one I always wished I had.” I chuckled. “Tragic enough for you?” Because he’d gone silent and I really wanted to know why, I closed my eyes, listening to the thoughts inside him. He wanted to wrap his arms around me, kiss away the sounds of the sadness he believed he’d heard in my voice. “I didn’t tell you that to make you feel sorry for me.” His pity fired me up with anger. “I have a good life. Well, except the shoe thing tonight. But, ordinarily, I love my life. I travel, meet a lot of people and, until tonight, it has been years since I felt like a freak. So don’t lie over there feeling bad for me because there’s no reason. I love my life.”

“You said that already.” Even the know-it-all tone of his voice did nothing to diminish how much I enjoyed hearing it.

“Well, I really do.” The words sounded hollow even to me.

“Don’t you ever get lonely? Traveling all the time?”

I didn’t answer, afraid the lie I had prepared would betray my hidden truth.

“I do. I mean, I literally have a job where I get to play all day, but I don’t have anyone to come home to. It’s lonely.”

“I have George.”

“George has room 318 at the Bellagio. Don’t you want someone to be excited when you walk in, to just be thankful you chose them? Of all the people in the world, they are the one you chose to come back to?”

I laughed. “You obviously have never seen him when I get to town.”

I’d said it with a hint of play in my voice, but I knew what he meant and could feel his frustration. I just wouldn’t admit what we both knew to be true.

“Fine. You have George. That’s super. I’m glad for you. Good night, Lyric.”

The guilt got the better of me. “I am lonely, Jace. Every day.”

“Me, too. I think that’s why I’ve been hanging on so hard to your sister. At least when I was with her, when I was fighting to keep her, I had someone else to focus on.” His sadness called out to me. I threw off my blankets and moved to stand at the side of his bed.

“Move over.”

“I am not interested in sympathy sex.”

“Such a liar.” I ignored the thoughts in our heads, concentrated on the ceiling tiles, as I waited to see how we worked this out. The time had come for me to make the choice. “Two things. First, I don’t feel any sorrier for you than I do for me, so it offsets.” He didn’t speak, so I felt compelled to fill in his silence. “You know. Like in football, when both teams get a penalty on the same play and they cancel each other out?”

“I’m familiar with the concept of offsetting.”

“Well, you’re a baseball guy, so I wasn’t sure if you knew about football.” At least the pitch-blackness of the room hid the flush of my cheeks.

“Second?”

“Uh, second, we are not having sex. Not sympathy sex or any other kind of sex. There will be absolutely no sex in this room tonight.” Lowering myself to the bed, I snuggled into the crook of his arm, wishing I didn’t have such a vivid imagination and I hadn’t just said the word sex twenty times. Pretty pictures of all the things we’d done the night before horizontal mamboed through my mind.

Hyperaware of the smooth contours of his chest rising and falling with each semi-stilted breath he took, I imagined how he’d looked when he came out of the bathroom after his shower. His hair had been damp and pushed straight back, the ringlet ends brushing the nape of his neck. His flannel, plaid sleep pants rode low on his hips as he’d barefooted his way across the plush carpeting to his side of the room. The main attraction of the eye-candy extravaganza was the six-pack ab muscles forming a mouth-watering pattern across his stomach.

Good Lord
. The mercury in the room climbed to hell hot. I blew my bangs out of my face.

“So, this is just two friends getting cozy in a completely nonsexual kind of way?”

“Right,” I squeaked then cleared my throat and tried again. “Right. Friends. Nonsexual.” Repeating the high points of his statement, I hoped my hormones would get with the program. That, however, was the exact moment Jace took the program in a very different direction.

He sat up, sliding his arm out from under my head. His other hand crept up my stomach until he had the tab to my zipper sliding down. “So, if one friend accidentally unzipped the other friend, there’s no harm because it’s a completely innocent action designed to help the first friend.”

My tone reached a high-pitched squeal, instigating visions of shattering glass. “Help?”

He snuck his hand inside the fabric of my jammies, and his index finger rubbed small circles on my stomach, each touch a feather against my skin. The temperature climbed another few degrees. “Your breathing was a little intense. I wanted to make sure your clothes aren’t too snug.”

“Oh.” Then, “Oh,” again in surprise when his lips touched the sensation-heightened skin of my abdomen. “Jace?”

Coming to my senses took a while, but when I did, I snatched the zipper upward in a panic.

“Uh, Lyric?”

His head hovered very near my left breast, and I, though no longer exposed, felt my pulse quicken. “Mm-hmm?” I concentrated on breathing in and out.

“My hair is caught in your zipper.”

That
wasn’t something a girl heard every day. “What?”

“My hair is caught in your zipper.” He said it as though I needed extra time to process each word.

“Well, pull it out.”

“No. It’s still attached to my head. I’d like to keep it that way.”

I lay there wondering exactly how much karma could punish me in one day.

“Can you reach the light?”

I tried, but it sat a few inches beyond my reach. “No. Not unless we scoot toward the edge a little.”

“Okay.” His shoulder pushed into my ribs.

I scooted toward the side of the bed. When I’d moved close enough to the table, I flipped the switch then squinted hard against the brightness. I gazed down at him. His hair was tangled in the teeth of my zipper almost to his scalp. I bit my lip. “Maybe I could cut it out. Do you have a pair of scissors here?”

“Yea. In my travel sewing kit in the closet.” He bit the smart words out. “Of course, I don’t have a pair of scissors. Who do I look like, Martha Stewart?”

“No, wise guy. You look like you were doing something you shouldn’t have been doing, and you got caught.” I couldn’t hide my smile. “Literally.”

“So funny.”

I shrugged in dramatic fashion, which pulled his head forward.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.” I considered our situation. “Maybe we could try to lower the zipper. See if we can work your hair free.”

“Okay.”

As I reached for the tab, he stopped me.

“Slow. This isn’t a Band-Aid we need to rip off. It’s my hair.”

“Right. Slow.” I inched my hand down lower and lower, closer to his head. Unfortunately, the hair entangled underneath and over the zipper. “This isn’t going to work.”

“I know. You’re killing me.” He sighed. “This is totally your fault, by the way.”

“My fault?” I’d been lying there, minding my own business. He was the one with his hand, and then his head, inside my clothes.

“Your fault.” He blew out a breath that tickled my throat. “If you had just let me be a friend.” His smile said he didn’t find this situation all that bad.

“A friend? That’s what you call it?”

He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Serves you right for trying to take advantage of my hormones.” I shook my head, realizing what I had admitted. “Unfortunately, as much as you deserve this, we can’t have you walking around attached to my chest until your hair falls out. We can argue over blame later.”

He relaxed his head. “I could stay like this forever.” He ran a finger down across my jaw down to my chin.

“Yeah, like I want you looking up my nose for the rest of my life. Could you please focus here?”