“Wait. You invited Gary and Gemma last night?”
“Yeah. Course. They’re friends.”
“And you got them to steal my… Is it my fucking blue T-shirt, the one I thought I’d…?”
“There may have been some preparatory, uh, arrangements made, yes. Possibly.”
“And when did this happen?”
“A few days ago. Not that I had anything to do with it.” Steven cleared his throat again.
“All Gary’s idea. Honest.”
“But you just said you got him to—”
“All right, all right, it was my idea. Sue me.”
“Wait a minute—that means you knew all along I’d be here?”
He shrugged. And at long last opened his eyes to look at me. “Hoped you would be.”
“And you hoped I’d stay over too, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“So you made…you fucking put me through all that…made me say that…stuff.”
“About llamas? Yeah. I’m such a bastard. Cup of coffee? Croissants? I’m hungry all of a sudden. Lovely morning, isn’t it—”
“Where are they?”
“Gary and Gemma? Back at your place, I guess.”
“No. My shirts. More than one went missing. I assumed Gary had been thieving in my wardrobe again.”
“They’re…” He pointed to his own wardrobe. “Hanging up. Freshly laundered. I even ironed them.”
“You?”
“I wouldn’t let Tiff do it, would I? Have you seen the shit she wears? She wouldn’t know an iron if it smashed her in the clit-ring.”
“Tiff’s got a clit—? Look, I don’t wanna know.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed, braced myself and headed for the other side of the room.
Steven sat up in bed and watched me, bleary-eyed, sheepish and, I suspected, trying not to laugh.
“You stole my favourite shirts.” Three of them, hanging in Steven’s wardrobe. “You sneaky bas—”
“No, see, I merely re-located them. For your convenience.”
I clicked the wardrobe shut and stood for a moment with my hand on its door, before returning to stand by the bed, hands on my hips.
Steven’s gaze dropped to the one part of me that definitely wasn’t still half-asleep.
“Shame to waste it,” he murmured. “Sorry. Anyway. You, uh…shower, is it?” He ran a hand through his hair and awaited my verdict. “Or…?”
I threw myself down onto the mattress, laughing even harder at the look of pale-faced relief on Steven’s face. “Actually I quite fancy a lie-in if that’s all right with you?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” he said before pulling me against him.
Nope. I definitely didn’t need to get dressed and go home.
I was naked, and already there.
Coming Soon from Total-E-Bound Publishing:
Temporary PositionScarlett Parrish
Released 31st October 2011
Excerpt
Chapter One
Three months ago I attended a staff dinner dance too far from home to make for a comfortable, quick drive back. Besides which, I wanted to have a drink, so I opted to book a hotel room for the night. That way I could taxi back and fall into bed within minutes of leaving my work colleagues if I fancied.
I hadn’t had too much to drink—only a few glasses of wine, and white, at that. Even one glass of red was enough to send me loopy. I’d thought I was playing it safe. Cue a casual conversation with Sebastian, a suggestion that, as he and Tyler were carpooling, they could drive me back to wherever I was staying…
Before I knew it, I was in a car with the two best-looking Pearson’s employees in the region, desperately chanting to myself, Don’t say anything stupid, Jess. Don’t say anything stupid.
Turned out Tyler—the Manager of his store no less—was the one to take that step. And he was the designated driver, stone cold sober.
After pulling up outside my hotel, he looked over his shoulder and smirked. “Here we are.”
“Yeah.” His smile was infectious—I couldn’t help returning it. “Here we are.” I’d not yet laid my hand on the door handle. It would have seemed rude to just hop out and go upstairs, but by the same token I had no idea how to wrap up the conversation.
“Would you think I was pulling rank if I mentioned a goodnight kiss?”
I knew I hadn’t had that much to drink, and alcohol always seemed to affect my balance and speech first of all, anyway. Not my hearing. Three glasses of white spread over the whole evening, with a meal and soft drinks, too… I definitely wasn’t tipsy enough for my ears to have stopped working. “I…what?”
“Jesus, Ty.” Sebastian, who worked in the same store as Tyler, as his menswear manager, play-punched him on the arm. “You’d take advantage of a drunk woman?”
“I’m not drunk.”
“See?” Tyler held up both his palms in a perfectly-executed gesture of innocence.
“She’s not drunk.”
“Yes, because that’s exactly what a sober person would say.”
“Are you accusing me of…?” I began, but the look on Sebastian’s face halted me in my tracks. God damn it—I’d been talking to him all night and never seen him in that light before.
The half- light as it was, from some nearby lampposts and the neon sign of my hotel.
He was leaner than Tyler, but in no way less of a presence. There was a quiet intensity to him that I’d noticed during our conversation that evening, an ability to make me feel like the only woman in the room. It wasn’t that he’d stared at me while we conversed—that would have been too aggressive. But he’d paid attention and made me feel witty, urbane, like the sort of woman who stood a chance. I’d not had much to do with him up until now—we worked in different branches of Pearson’s—but this evening had thrown us together, almost like it was meant to happen.
Like it was planned.
A shaft of artificial light caught the contours of Sebastian’s face as his mouth widened into a teasing grin. I paid enough attention to him to see the silhouette of his eyelashes as he searched Tyler’s face for some reaction or other.
“Well, if it’s a goodnight kiss you’re after…”
Tyler’s head whipped around and he eyed me as I sat in the back seat, sitting erect but not moving. Not leaning any nearer to him.
“…don’t let me stop you two guys.”
“You what?”
“Well, you seem
