05

« Plenty of extra rooms. » Donovan pulled off his boots and walked past her, all traces of song and humor gone from his voice. « No reason why you can’t stay in one. »

She stiffened inside her wet clothing, her thoughts drifting automatically to the second room on the right upstairs, the one with the grey and cream fleur-de-lis wallpaper. « Surely I won’t need to stay that late. I’ll just wait out the rain. »

Donovan paused at the foot of the stairs, turning. « Like you said, it’s flooding. » He cocked his head toward the nearest window. « But yeah, you’re welcome to wait it out. However long that takes. »

Judging by the tone of his voice, he had a very different idea of how much time she’d need to spend there than she did. It was hard to argue convincingly when she no longer had a drivable car. But it didn’t matter, at the moment. She could ask him for a ride across town when the weather cleared, probably in a few hours.

He retreated up the staircase, leaving her to continue dripping on the floor. When he returned maybe two minutes later, he was dressed in dry jeans and a t-shirt.

Unfortunately.

« Here. » He tossed her a towel.

She caught it and clung to it, wrapping it around her shoulders. It was half-soaked within seconds.

« You should take off those wet clothes, » Donovan said.

Something flashed in his eyes, and it wasn’t clear whether he was teasing or giving her another safety lecture, like he had with the tires.

« I would if I had something else to put on. » No way was she going to lounge around in Donovan’s presence in nothing but a towel, even if the idea did have her entire body tingling. Especially because the idea had her entire body tingling. God knew that after the afternoon she’d had so far, she needed to hold on to whatever vestiges of dignity she had left. « I should’ve gotten my suitcase out of the trunk of my car. »

She couldn’t have pulled it behind herself, not through the floodwater. She could have retrieved it when Donovan had driven her back to her vehicle, but she’d been too distracted then to think of it.

« I’ll go get it. » He was halfway to the door before she could protest. « You stay here. Take a shower or something. Just get out of those clothes. »

« Be careful, » she said after hesitating. The roads were bad, but he had that big four wheel drive truck, and she longed for a dry pair of jeans, a fresh sweater.

Silent, he held out a hand.

« What ? Oh. » She reached into her purse and pulled out her key ring.

Her fingertips brushed his palm as she surrendered her keys. Like a flash of lightning, heat swept through her, sudden and striking. She would’ve sworn the hair on the back of her neck stood up, warning her that something life-altering was imminent.

The feeling was gone as soon as she dropped her hand to her side, and he was out the door, leaving her alone with his lingering scent : soap and a hint of sweat, a contradiction.

She inhaled, savoring the smell and thrill of touching him for the first time in seven years. Then she moved on.

Climbing the stairs didn’t erase the lingering high skin-to-skin contact with him had provided, but it filled her with something else – curiosity.

Were the rooms upstairs as unchanged as the rest of the house ? She was almost afraid to look, just in case they weren’t. But she had to know.

She skipped the first two doors and went immediately to the second one on the right, closing chilled fingers around a glass doorknob that was probably old enough to be considered antique.

She held her breath as the door swung inward. When it was open, she toed the line between the hallway’s wooden flooring and the room’s silver-grey carpet.

Nothing had changed. At least, nothing significant. The wallpaper she loved was still there, as was the four-poster bed. The dresser was gone – maybe her mother had moved it to her house. The thought sent a splinter of bitterness through her chest, but a sense of wonder suppressed it as she entered the room.

The house was a time capsule – an enormous brick portal to the past, complete with gingerbread trim. For the first time that day, feeling like she’d gone back in time wasn’t such a bad thing. The room had always been a happy place, an escape – the only safe harbor in a storm, sometimes. She’d spent many a night there as a teenager, after her mother had married her step-father.

And it was still being enjoyed, apparently. Some sort of large pack rested between the bed and one wall, olive drab and utilitarian, clearly military. A cell phone charger had also been plugged into the outlet beside it. Had Donovan taken over her old room ?

The thought made her heart race for reasons she didn’t completely understand.

She left the room, not wanting to soak the carpet. There was a bathroom across the hall, and she retreated to it, drawing a bath in the old-fashioned claw-footed tub she’d always loved. It had been forever since she’d taken a bath – her apartment in New York had only had a narrow shower stall, and she’d shared the place with two other women. Showers had been nothing more than quick scrub-downs before work, and she’d usually styled her hair at the kitchenette table, twisting her brunette locks up into a chignon or brushing them straight in front of a hand-held mirror.

Stripping off her wet clothes was bliss, and sinking into the tub full of hot water was sheer heaven. A bottle of hyper-masculine body wash sitting on the little shelf above the tub was the only soap. She’d poured some into the falling water, creating a thin layer of bubbles. The scent was called « cool », whatever that meant.

It was the same soapy scent she’d detected on Donovan’s skin. Now, the entire bathroom was filled with it, air and water alike permeated by the smell. It made her head spin as she leaned back against the tub, letting her head tip over the lip.

She drifted in a haze of heat and memory, until the sound of the door closing sent noise and vibrations all the way to the second floor. A little water sloshed over the edge of the tub as she sat up, her skin prickling with awareness of Donovan’s presence. « I’m in the bath, » she called when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

« I’ll leave your suitcase outside the door. » The sound of his voice made the water seem a few degrees hotter.

Beneath the thin cover of bubbles, her nipples pebbled again.

What was wrong with her ?

Maybe nothing – maybe she was just a victim of biology. Even after seven years, it was only natural that her body would respond to the familiar cues, to the sight and sound of the man who’d been the center of her universe for several formative years. She couldn’t keep herself from remembering – or from noticing how incredibly hot he was – but she could keep from making an ass of herself, if she tried.

Because it wasn’t like they were teens anymore. She was a graduate about to enter the professional world in her own right ; he was a business owner, a veteran. Everything had changed, even if that fact didn’t register with her body. And he probably wasn’t tingling and tightening every time he looked at her. How could he possibly harbor any trace of desire after what she’d done – what she’d had to do ?

Seven years had passed since then, but she knew he wasn’t the type to forgive, just like he wasn’t the type to lie. Or forget.

As she stepped out of the tub, she tried to pretend that that fact didn’t hurt. Rain was still pouring against the bathroom window, but maybe it would let up soon. Then she could ask for a ride across town – get out of his hair. Being inside her grandmother’s house – his house – wasn’t as natural as it felt. The first step to shaking the teen-again feeling was probably to do the adult thing and admit that she had no place in the house she’d once considered a home.