Page 96 of Really Truly Yours
Yes, he looks it. “Well, lucky you. You can go home and get some sleep.”
His eyebrows briefly pulse up at my snippiness. But he rubs his jaw, the sound scratchier than earlier in the day. “Not so sure what I’m going to walk into when I get there.”
I forgot for a moment. Avery was beside herself, and Tripp? I have no idea how to take Donny’s eldest. I steady myself using the doorframe badly in need of weather stripping. “Will they fight? Does Tripp lose his temper?”
Gray’s steady gaze measures me. “Hard to say. I’ve never seen them argue.”
My held breath releases.
“On the other hand, today was not exactly a normal day. Tripp’s not normal.”
There goes my air again.
He stares at me for a torturous moment. “Easy, Sydnee. I’ve found my brother to be a model of self-control. Trust me, if I thought otherwise for a single second, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Oh. Well…good.” Do I sound sufficiently detached?
Probably not, given the searching, the knowing, in Grayson’s eyes. I turn toward the glow of the table lamp I left burning.
“Not more than one hour ago you were going to kiss me, Sydnee Carson.”
I whip around. “Was not.”
He’s hooked a finger through a beltloop and fixed a lingering study on me.
I swipe some hair from my face. “What? I wasn’t, you know. I was…” Going to let you kiss me. Big difference.
He clicks his tongue. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
His throat makes a noncommittal sound. “You wanna know what else?”
I burrow my hands into my sleeves. “What?”
“You’re about to kiss me now, too.”
My body embarks on a new kind of tremble. “Am not.”
He kicks off the post, one step bringing him almost into my personal space. “Sure you are.”
“Gray.”
Half a step, and he’s in my bubble. “Hmm?”
The doorframe digs into my spine. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“I like it.”
My heart does wind sprints in my chest. His warm breath. His smell…
His fingers skim my wrist, burning a trail. “But…I won’t kiss you unless you ask me to.”
The tips of our noses nearly do the kissing for us. The scent of man and soap and cologne consumes me. How must it be in his arms?
He drifts.
Gray has brightened my world to an unfamiliar glow. My eyes flutter shut.