Blazing Midsummer Nights

“What were you doing, anyway? Going through your underwear wardrobe, trying to figure out what to wear to entice him?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He ignored her. “Because, honey, just saying yes would be enough enticement for any heterosexual guy on the planet.”

Pleasure curled in her when she noted his sincerity. But she crushed it out, remembering she didn’t like this man who’d spied on her and gotten two eyes full of her private parts. Not to mention she’d sworn off hot men and this one was so on fire he should have a smoke detector strapped around his chest.

Offering her a sheepish grin, he added, “Look, I’m really sorry I spied on you. I wasn’t there for more than a minute. To be honest, I was caught off guard. I just didn’t know what to do.”

“Going back out the way you came in would have been good.”

“I thought this was my apartment. But I was going to leave anyway. Then I, uh, opened my eyes and saw you drop your pants.”

He’d closed his eyes? Cute.

Well, cute until she thought about what he’d opened them to see. She glanced down at her thong, lying there between them, a small green circle that looked like a Go sign. Grabbing at the flimsy material with her toes, she yanked back the thong, hiding it beneath the folds of her robe.

His lips twitched.

“And instead of leaving, you decided to introduce yourself?” she snapped, more flustered than before.

“Instinct. I just wanted to stop you.”

“From doing what? Changing my underwear?”

“I thought you were in my bedroom, remember?”

“Okay, still, what was the big emergency? Were you afraid I was going to leap on your bed and roll around naked, and you wanted to make sure I didn’t dirty your sheets?”

That image hit both of them, her words hanging there in the empty air. She suddenly pictured rolling around in the sheets with this man, getting hot, sweaty, dirty. Doing all kinds of wild things that had never even crossed her mind when she’d begun planning a seduction for tonight. Because, deep down, when she’d voiced that pretty/sexy/kinky question to the invisible Dimitri, she’d already known the answer—pretty. Soft, sweet and romantic, that was Dimitri’s style. He was a missionary guy all the way, she’d bet her last dollar on it.

One B? Well, he looked like he’d be up for about anything.

It all came back to that camel-in-the-desert question—was she looking for a canteen or an oasis?

She breathed deeper, willing her heart to slow down. It wasn’t as if she could lie down and drink from the delicious waters of this particular oasis—she didn’t even know this guy!

He, meanwhile, lifted a hand and rubbed his lightly grizzled jaw. She heard the faint rasp of it and suddenly had the image of those unshaven cheeks brushing against her skin. His eyes gleamed as he glanced at her bed—prettily rumpled, the comforter turned down, the pink sheets soft and inviting. She trembled, remembering that ten minutes ago she’d been imagining asking Dimitri to share that bed. Right now, though, she was practically thinking, Dimitri? Who’s Dimitri?

“I wasn’t really thinking,” he finally admitted. “I guess I just didn’t want to be the kind of guy who’d watch something like that and then skulk away like some kind of pervert.”

“So you lunge out and terrify me instead?”

“You didn’t look that terrified, and I didn’t lunge.”

“I was scared to death, and that was some serious lunging.”

“I had my hands up to try to block the view.”

“You should have watched where you were going, then maybe you wouldn’t have tripped and landed at my feet.”

Those lips quirked into a grin. “My intentions were good.”

“The results weren’t.”

“Says you.” He shrugged. “Hey, there are only so many things I can apologize for, and landing at the feet of a beautiful, nearly naked woman ain’t one of them.”

He was staring again. Not at the bed this time, but at her. His dark eyes traveled from her bare throat, down to the V in her robe, then farther. As if he liked what he’d seen, and wanted to see a whole lot more.

She reached out and grabbed the edge of her dresser, willing her legs to stop shaking.

“Did I really terrify you?” he asked, his voice lowering to a thick whisper. “I am sorry about that.”

“My heart’s still racing,” she admitted.

He didn’t ask her to evaluate whether that thumping in her chest was caused by fear … or something else. She didn’t ask herself to, either.

“Well, you came across as anything but frightened,” he told her, eyeing the vase. “I thought you were going to brain me.”

“It was a close call.”

“What stopped you?”

“Your bare chest.”

Oh, crap, had she really said that?

Laughter burst from him. “So you can notice I’m not wearing a shirt, but I’m not allowed to notice your lack of underpants?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I think you have to agree that pantsless woman trumps shirtless man in terms of intimate exposure.”

“I’ll give you that.”

How magnanimous. “And I meant,” she clarified, “I saw you outside with Anna. You were hard to miss, with no shirt and no shoes. You two looked friendly, so I figured you must know her.”

“Gotcha,” 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.