“’Tis the season, and warning means they’re not kidding. One’s been spotted in Elba, not far from here. Now get inside, get some clothes on, and meet me in the bathroom.” He pulled me back gently by my elbows until we were inside, and then shut the door.
“But we’re in the south, and not like…Tennessee south. Like Deep South.” I turned around, my hand brushing the skin of his chest…his bare chest, and damn, but he was warm, and cut, and smelled better than chocolate. His hair was sleep-mussed, but his face was still set in stern lines. Did he even relax when he slept?
“Yeah, and you live in a town where a tornado destroyed the high school and killed some of those teenagers a decade ago, so get your ass in the bathroom. The weather doesn’t care if we’re in Oklahoma or Oz.”
“Okay.” All thoughts of naked Grayson fled as I bolted up the stairs to my bedroom.
“And put on some clothes!” he called out.
I threw a sweatshirt over my head, unplugged my phone from its charger, grabbed my iPad, and skipped back down the stairs to the bathroom. “Grayson?”
“The little bathroom.”
I moved quickly down the hall to the powder room, where I found him pulling a shirt over his head. His sweatpants hung low enough on his hips to see that V of his muscles that was probably illegal in a dozen states…or should have been. Those hours he spent every day at the gym seriously carved the guy. “Being invited to the bathroom by a guy is definitely a first.”
He raised an eyebrow before he shook his head. “No windows in here, and it backs up to the kitchen, so it’s the safest place to wait it out.” His eyes glanced down at my very bare legs. “You and I have different definitions of clothes.”
“Not the time, Grayson.”
“Right. Stay here.” He left.
“So, we’ll hang out in the bathroom for”—I checked my phone—“another couple hours. Good call,” I muttered to myself. The siren stopped, but if it was like Kansas, on a timer, it would be back while we were still under warning. I set the iPad on the counter and cued up the weather app. We were entirely surrounded by red on the Doppler. The knot in my stomach tightened.
Grayson walked back in, his arms full of his comforter, a couple bottles of water, and my shoes. “Just in case,” he said, dropping them to the floor.
The bathroom wasn’t big to start with, but with Grayson closing the door behind him, well, it may as well have been a porta-potty for how small it felt. He sat on the floor and leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. Where was I supposed to sit? On the toilet? Because that wouldn’t have been awkward or anything. Grayson occupied almost every spare inch of space in the room.
“Get comfortable, Samantha. We’re going to be here for a while.”
How could he be so calm? Oh, right, because the man had zero emotions. Maybe if I was a robot like he was, I wouldn’t be on the verge of using the toilet to vomit in. But then I’d be left sitting on a vomit-splattered toilet. Ugh.
He cracked open his eyes and held out an arm. “Let’s go.”
I swallowed. Being that close to him felt more dangerous than anything going on outside. “Samantha, I’m not going to bite you.”
“Well, you don’t exactly like me.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t understand you. I like you just fine. Now sit down.”
If the distant way he’d treated me since I got to Alabama was him liking me, I’d hate to see how he treated someone he didn’t like.
I lowered myself slowly and slid into the space he left under his arm. He reached with his other arm and brought the comforter over us. God, it smelled like him. I physically restrained myself from burying my nose in the fabric. “So now we wait?”
“Yep.”
I swallowed and tried to ignore how easily I fit against him, but every sense was taken over by Grayson. The strength in his arms, how indestructible he felt next to me. Did he have to smell so good? For someone who spent that much time worshipping his body in the gym, shouldn’t he smell a touch…well…smelly?
Of course not. He had to torture me by smelling like the ocean, with a hint of cedar like the body wash I secretly sniffed when I showered. Don’t think about it. Think about anything else. Anything.
“So you’re headed back home tomorrow?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“You’re such a conversationalist.”
“It’s two in the morning, Samantha.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to sleep on the bathroom floor,” I pouted. Not that his warmth wasn’t relaxing me, because I hated to admit that it was, tornado warning and all.
He sighed. “Yes, I’m going home tomorrow.”
I’d shoved a car jack into the tiniest crack in his wall, and I twisted it a little. “Where are you from?”
“Nags Head, North Carolina.”
“The Outer Banks?”
“That’s the one.”
“Do you like it there?”
He sighed, but it was the short kind I was beginning to understand meant he was about to let me into his world a tiny bit. “I love it. My father builds sailboats, the racing kind, and he’s pretty certain I’ll come back to stay, but I just… Sometimes I need the space.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there. My mom spent a summer there in college and loved it. I was born right before she graduated UNC that spring after.” My stomach turned sour again thinking about her. “I still haven’t told her about Troy.”