Page 19 of Stay with Me
I sat there for ten minutes before deciding to just put his mail in his mailbox. Peeking out the window, I found his driveway empty and smiled. Good, he wasn’t home, so now was the best time. I slipped on a pair of thong sandals and eased out my front door, damn near threw his mail in his mailbox and almost fell off the porch when his door swung open.
Shit, shit, shit!
I stood there like a deer in headlights as he stepped out of his apartment. At least he had on clothes this time, and he wasn’t aroused as far as I could tell, but he was still…him. He was still beautiful, and I still wanted him.
“Hey,” he softly said.
“Uh…your mail,” was all I managed to say.
He frowned. “What about my mail?”
“Some of it was in my box. I put it in yours.”
“Oh, you were just gonna leave it without saying hello?”
Warmth invaded my cheeks. “Your car…I thought you were gone.”
“There was a car in my driveway when I got home. I parked on the street.”
I turned my head and there it was, right on the street. “Oh, I bet that was my sister’s car. Sorry about that. I guess she thought she’d be gone before you got home.”
“It’s all right. Hey, I feel like I owe you for the whole loud music thing the other night. I ordered a huge pizza. Wanna share it with me?”
I wanted to share more than a pizza. Way more. But I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
I turned to leave and had barely taken a step when he said, “Thanks for bringing my mail over, Angela.”
I spun around at the sound of my name coming from his mouth. It wasn’t that I minded us being on a first name basis, it was the way he said it, the way it floated on that accent of his. And when I looked at him, his eyes made me feel naked.
I dropped my gaze. “You’re welcome.”
“You sure you don’t want some pizza?”
I wasn’t sure of a damn thing. So I just stood there.
“It’s meat lovers, deep dish.” He tilted his head and grinned. “You know you want some.”
Heat swarmed my core as I stared at those delicious-looking lips. Oh, I wanted some. I really, really wanted some. “Yeah, I’ll join you,” rushed from my mouth, and I wondered where those words had come from and how they’d managed to escape from my mouth without my permission.
I followed him inside the familiar living room, where a pizza box sat on his huge marble-topped coffee table. Dropping into an overstuffed leather easy chair, I let my eyes roam the room while he ducked into the kitchen to grab a couple of plates. Clean, but not obsessively neat. Nice, expensive-looking furniture, an open laptop sitting on the sofa, his cell phone lying face down on the table next to the pizza box. The walls were bare, and it smelled of a combination of the pizza and his cologne. I closed my eyes and tried to will the ever-present image of him in his underwear away. When I opened them, I asked myself what I was doing there. It’d literally been years since I was with a man intimately, and sitting there was dangerous. He was attracted to me. I’d felt his attraction before, and I was definitely attracted to him. I needed to leave before my needy body overcame what little common sense I was managing to hold on to. Just as I stood, he walked back in with the plates and a couple of bottles of water.
“Uh, maybe I should go,” I said.
He stopped in his tracks. “Why? I thought you wanted pizza.”
Unable to find a response, I reclaimed my seat in silence. You keep acting like a nut, you won’t have to worry about him wanting to sleep with you. “Uh…is this your furniture? I mean, did you bring it with you from…”
“Houston.”
“Right. Houston?”
“No, it’s leased, just like my vehicle.”
“Oh…you still have a place back there?”
“Yeah.”