Page 38 of Austin
“When did you decide this?”
“Last night in bed.” After she’d woken up hot and bothered, more than aware that adventure was only a few feet away from her.
“Sometimes adventures have a way of getting out of hand.” He spoke as if he were very familiar with adventures getting out of hand. “Tell me what you think about this…we keep things on the straight and narrow until I get you back to Marietta? Then we can re-evaluate.”
Kristen pressed her lips together. Of course, she had no choice but to say yes, so it surprised her when she said, “My counter offer is that we keep an open mind and see how things play out.”
His eyebrows drew together. “We’re only here for a couple more days.”
“Then time is on your side.”
She liked the way he looked at her if his perception of her was crumbling, piece by tiny piece. She knew the feeling. She was adjusting her own self-perception, discovering that she could do things that usually froze her up. Not easily, but she was starting to hold her own.
He looked her straight in the eye, frowning a little as he said, “I’m not sleeping with you, Kris. Not under these circumstances.”
And now she was dealing with not one rejection, but two.
“Does sex ruin your knees?” She couldn’t keep the snarky edge out of her voice.
“No. Bull riding hurts my knees and sex exacerbates the injury.”
She was losing.
He reached across the table to cover her hands with his and, surprisingly, instead of tensing her up, the warm contact made Kristen’s tight muscles give a little. Maybe because shehadlost and needed to accept failure. His gaze dropped to her lips and held just long enough to make her breath catch. “I’m trying not to do anything either of us will regret.”
Kristen gave a slight nod. Hard to argue with that. “What do we do now?”
“We’ll follow our ground rules, observe the boundaries. Be friends. Be honest.”
“You’re sure you’re down for the honesty part?”
He smiled a little. “It was my rule, so I guess I have to be.”
“Then I’m probably still going to think about you naked, and you can think about me any way you’d like.”
*
The privacy signwas on the door when Kristen got back to hotel later that afternoon, leaving her in a bit of a conundrum. Was he sleeping? Showering? Had he forgotten to take the sign off before leaving the room? She gave a small tap on the door.
“Yeah?”
Okay. Not sleeping. She cracked the door open, but didn’t look inside. “Are you decent?” After a long day spent pretending to sight-see while mulling things over in her head—i.e. reverting to form and overthinking—she’d concluded that her best course of action was to save face. Act as if the rejections didn’t matter. In fact, they should be celebrated because she’d hung herself out there. Taken a chance and, best of all, survived. She couldn’t say that her dignity was intact, but she was still breathing.
And now she was facing her first what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger challenge.
“Define decent.” He sounded like he was exerting himself as he spoke.
“Wearing pants.” Unlike this morning when she’d gotten that inspiring eyeful.
“You’re safe.” She started through the door. “Kind of.”
Her heart jumped, but she continued around the partition. Austin was sitting in the hardback office chair, gripping the foot he held on his muscular thigh and pulling it toward his crotch with both hands. And hewaswearing pants. Kind of. The spandex bike shorts left little to the imagination.
“Yoga?” Kristen asked as she casually walked by to drop her purse on her bed.
“Nope. Physical therapy stretches.” He pulled his foot higher up his thigh as he spoke, gritting his teeth as he did so. “Working on my hip flexors.”
“I see.”
