Page 20 of Sweet Passions at Bayside
DEAN’S COTTAGE WAS dark save for the light thrown from the television. Emery stepped inside quietly, and Dean looked up from where he was sprawled on the couch wearing a pair of gym shorts and a tight tank top, his feet propped up on the coffee table. Did the man own anything that wasn’t tight across all those muscles?
“Hey, doll.” He pushed to his feet.
“Hi.” She tossed her keys on the counter, and that tingling feeling she got when a good-looking guy approached shot through her. She bent down to take off her heels—and to regain control of her overactive hormones. Clearly her body was confused, getting turned on by Dean when she’d sworn off messing around with friends.Going months without a man’s touch will do that to a girl.
“I figured you’d be back much later.” He put a hand on her hip to steady her as she wrestled with her second heel.
He smelled woodsy and rugged, so much nicer than the acrid citrus cologne Dave had worn.
“Me too,” she admitted. “Dave turned out to be a dud.” She took her phone from the hidden compartment in her heel and set it on the counter and then set her heels on the floor. Without them she was a good head and a half shorter than Dean, and stared directly at his chest. She tipped her face up and caught him grinning. “Why do you look so pleased?”
“Just glad you’re home. Now I have someone to watch movies with.”
Home.There was that word again. She had felt comfortable there from the moment she’d walked in yesterday afternoon. Maybe Desiree was right—home was more about the people they were with than the place they happened to be.
She walked into her bedroom and rifled through her clothes until she found a pair of sweats, pulling them on beneath her dress as she called out to him, “Would you believe after doing nothing but talking about himself all night, he had the gall to ask me to go back to his place?” She grabbed a tank top from her bag and laid it out before her, then gathered her hair over her shoulder and said, “Can you please unzip me?”
“What did you expect him to do?” Dean asked as he came over and unzipped her dress. “You picked him up in a bar.”
With her back to Dean, she whipped her dress over her head. For a sliver of a second before she pulled her tank top over her head, she felt the heat of his stare.
“Whoa, girl.”
“What? My back was to you,” she said, as if she’d felt nothing, and then circled back to his question. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe that he would talk to me about anything other than himself. Take an interest in me? Not that I’m needy, but honestly, a girl needs alittlesomething.” She twined her hair into a messy bun and rifled one-handed through her toiletries bag, searching for her hair clip.
Dean reached around her, grabbed a clip and handed it to her.
“Thanks. Would you ever treat a girl that way?” she asked as she secured her hair and headed out of the bedroom.
“No, but I don’t pick up girls in bars, either.”
“Really? Then where do you meet women?”
He shrugged. “At my friends’ Christmas parties.”
“Good one.” She pulled open the fridge and spied a plate of ribs. “Oh, yum! I guess you had a good cookout?” She grabbed a rib from the plate and caught Dean looking at her chest. “Dean! Eyes up here.”
“What do you expect when you flaunt those eye magnets?” He chuckled.
She sighed. “At least you’re honest, and not a jerk.” She offered him a rib, and when he shook his head, she bit into the tender meat. Sweet deliciousness burst over her tongue. “Mm. This is amazing.”
“Thanks.”
She took another bite. “Sure you don’t want some?”
The corners of his lips curved up in a wicked smile, and he stepped closer. The small kitchen suddenly seemed even tighter as heat climbed up her torso.Uh-oh.She needed to cure herself of the disease she was suffering from—lackanookie—before she jumped her roommate. Maybe she should visit the girls’ pleasure shop and take care of things herself.
“That’s not really what I’m hungry for.” He reached up and wiped something from the edge of her mouth with his thumb.
Shivers raced through her with the intimate touch, knocking her a little off-kilter. She wasdefinitelyvisiting the girls’ shop—and she wasnevertalking to Violet again, because she had obviously planted ideas in her head about Dean.
Before she could misconstrue anything else, she said, “I know just what you need.”
She pulled open the freezer, and exactly as she’d thought, it was stocked with nearly every flavor of Dean’s favorite ice cream, Halo Top. He ate it by the pint, and she teased him relentlessly about it because he gave her such a hard time for eating Ben and Jerry’s. But sometimes a girl had to indulge in Karamel Sutra.That core. Mercy!She reached inside and grabbed a pint of Halo Top Chocolate Almond Crunch, and beneath it, she found a pint of Karamel Sutra.
“What is this?” She plucked it from the freezer and held it up. “You’re secretly indulging in Ben and Jerry’s?”
“Hardly. You were supposed to arrive next week, remember?”
