Page 40 of Just One Look
Too late, because he leaped off on the other side as soon as she lunged, then galloped around the bed and out of the room like it was a game. She was running after him, then, banging into the door frame, shouting, “Drop it! Drop it! Give it to me!”
He stopped and looked back at her, and the tongue of pink lace disappeared as he gulped. And then he grinned at her and trotted out the dog door.
* * *
Why hadn’the got her number? A man who’d dated as many women as he had over as many years as he’d done it didn’t walk away without a woman’s number. Except that somehow, he had.
What was he going to do, though, ring her up and weep into her ear at her rejection? She clearly had issues, but they weren’t his. He needed to go inside, order the lamb rump and broccolini, and get on with his bloody evening.
He was just standing up to do it when he saw her. Running down the pavement again at her maximum speed, which wasn’t much, in her shorts and trainers, her dark hair flying around her face. She got to him and gasped, “I need your help.”
“What?” he asked in alarm. “What’s wrong?”
She wasn’t red-faced tonight, but she was flushed. Her chest was heaving, and her hair wasn’t in a ponytail anymore. It was thick, wavy, and shiny, and it was mussed from running, too. It was, in fact, the kind of hair that a woman would shove off her face with one arm while she sat on an unmade bed on her knees and looked back at you over her shoulder.
In your fantasies, obviously, because she’d made it clear that wasn’t happening.
She breathed some more, shoved her hair back, looked up at him out of those deep-sapphire, dark-lashed, almond-shaped eyes, and said, “My dog ate my panties.”
