He must have dozed off, though, because the next thing he knew, he heard a door open, and then as if in a dream, Kat was walking toward him. He sat up with a start.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded; he could just make her out in the dim light of the living room. “Just couldn’t sleep. You too?”
He nodded.
She sat down next to him, and it took everything in him not to haul her into his lap and kiss her. This was going to be a very long night, he thought with an inner sigh.
Chapter Nine
As Kat lay in Gavin’s bed, staring up at the ceiling, she knew she wasn’t going to sleep tonight. For one, the sheets smelled like him, and she couldn’t help but inhale that scent and think of kissing him. Thoughts of kissing only made her more awake than ever, and so by one in the morning, she’d given up all hope of sleeping.
She debated whether or not she wanted to make herself a cup of tea. Would she wake up Gavin if she did? But something warm sounded too good to pass up, and besides, she’d gotten good at being quiet when Lillian had been alive. Kat had gotten up so many times in the middle of the night for one reason or another as her grandmother had declined, losing more and more of herself to the dementia taking hold of her mind.
Kat sighed. Getting up out of bed, she snagged her robe and her glasses. She tiptoed past Emma’s room and entered the living room to get to the small apartment kitchen. But when she saw a figure sitting up on the couch, she stifled a gasp. Gavin. It was just Gavin.
They stared at each other in the dark, although she could only make out the outline of him. After they’d ascertained that the both of them couldn’t sleep, she sat down next to him. He flipped on a dim lamp next to the couch, which suddenly made their surroundings almost too intimate. Gavin was rumpled, his hair sticking up, and Kat had to restrain herself from touching those silken strands. His beard had grown so much lately, though, that she almost expected him to carry around an ax like some kind of rogue lumberjack.
Kat wiped her hands against her pajama bottoms. This had been a bad idea. If she thought she couldn’t sleep in between Gavin’s sheets? There was no way she’d get sleepy sitting next to him like this. She could practically feel the heat of his body seeping into her own.
“I was going to make some tea,” she said as she hopped up again. “You want some?”
She didn’t wait for his answer. She needed a second to recalibrate, to figure out what the hell she was doing. That very stupid part of her wanted to kiss him and, hell, touch him and take whatever this was to a new level. The more prudent part of her told her that Gavin Danvers wasn’t remotely ready for a new relationship and Kat would just get hurt. But that prudent voice kept getting smaller and smaller, until she knew it’d vanish in a puff of smoke—especially if he touched her.
Finding the kettle, she almost dropped the stupid thing when she realized how badly she was shaking. Was it fear? Or desire? Probably both. She filled it with water and set it on the stove, staring at it without really seeing it as she weighed the pros and cons of this situation like the programmer she was.
Pro: Gavin was a great kisser, and he’d probably be a great lover.
Con: He’d just gotten divorced and seemed hung up on that still.
Pro: She’d get to have sex! She missed sex. It’d been too long.
Con: What happened after they had sex? They became friends with benefits? Or had a real relationship?
The kettle just started to whistle before Kat took it off, not wanting to make any more noise. She realized with an eye roll that she didn’t even know if Gavin had tea. Luckily, she found a box of chamomile in the back of a cabinet. She pilfered some for herself and for him.
All these pros and cons meant nothing, she knew, if Gavin didn’t want her. He’d kissed her—twice—but that didn’t mean he wanted more than that. In her experience with men, that wasn’t usually the case, but Gavin wasn’t the usual kind of man.
“Tea?” She handed him a mug as she sat down on the couch, making sure they weren’t close enough to touch.
He seemed nonplussed by the appearance of tea, and if the situation weren’t so strange, Kat would laugh.
“Thanks,” he replied gruffly. He sipped the brew before setting it on the coffee table in front of them. They sat in silence for a time until he asked, “Are you okay?”
She swallowed the hot tea. What a question! She’d been threatened multiple times over the past month, had kissed a man who seemed completely emotionally unavailable, and now she was in his apartment, wondering if sleeping with him was in her best interests.
She gripped her mug tighter. “I’m fine,” she said, because any other answer wasn’t something she could get out right now.
“If you’re scared about the threats, I’ll keep you safe,” he insisted. “I don’t want you to be afraid.”
Oddly enough, she wasn’t. Or rather, she was, but it was with the knowledge that she wasn’t alone in this. Gavin’s presence and assurances meant more to her than she’d even realized. Her heart warmed as much as the tea warmed her body as she sat there next to him.
“Thank you. I mean, you’ve gone out of your way to help me. I don’t know a lot of
