Spence gave Elle a look.
Elle tossed up her hands. “Hey, who knew that she couldn’t hold her liquor? She only had three drinks.”
“How big were they?”
Colbie tried to roll her eyes and got dizzy. “Dammit,” she said and dropped her forehead to Spence’s chest.
He pulled her in and kissed her on top of her head. “Come on, I’ll get you home.”
“Okay, but only because I can’t feel my feet. And don’t talk to me. I’m very mad at you, you know.”
“You can tell me all about it on the ride home.”
“I mean it,” she said, knowing he was just humoring her. “I’m not that pathetic that I need you to force your friends to pretend to be my friends.”
She felt him look down at her, but whether that was in guilt or surprise, she didn’t know and told herself she didn’t care.
He opened the truck door for her. He buckled her in before going around the hood to get in himself. He aimed the heater vents at her. And the next thing she knew, she was in it, just the two of them. She felt the engine start. It was dark and the motor rumbled, and that was it. She felt safe and cozy, two things that had been in short supply for the past hour—not to mention her entire life—and she closed her eyes.
Just for a minute, she promised herself . . . and that was the last thing she remembered.
Chapter 26
#JiminyCricket
Colbie woke up to what felt like a guy in her head jackhammering at her brain. Given how much daylight was stabbing at her eyelids, it was late in the morning. Bracing herself, she managed to squint open one eye and groaned.
A pale, weak sun crept through the window. But it wasn’t her window. And she wasn’t in her bed.
She was in Spence’s. With Cinder.
“Meow.” The sleepy-looking cat was perched on the next pillow over.
Spence’s bedside clock said twelve p.m. “What the ever-loving . . .?” she started but quickly stopped because even a whisper was too loud for her hurting head. She’d never slept past eight o’clock in her entire life and it was noon. She took in that fact and then froze before slowly lifting the edge of the covers to look down at herself.
She wore the thigh-high lace stockings and . . . absolutely nothing else. “What the ever-loving . . .?”
“Already said that.” This from Spence, who stood in the doorway, propping up the doorjamb with a broad shoulder.
Not naked.
“You,” she said and then winced, her hands going to her head to hold it onto her shoulders. The sheet started to slip and she snatched at it, yanking it back up to her chin.
This got a small smile out of Spence. “I’ve seen it all before,” he said in his morning voice, which had a deliciously sexy growly morning edge to it. Not that she was noticing.
“Not when I’m mad at you!” she said. “I don’t recall giving anyone an all-access pass to my parts, especially you.”
Spence set a couple of aspirin and a glass of water on the nightstand, and she gratefully took them even as she pointed at him. “Stay back.” She didn’t trust herself with him looking far too sexy for her own mental health.
“Bossy,” he said. “I like it.”
“You’re a sick man.”
“True story,” he said without an ounce of shame.
“How did Cinder get here?”
“I didn’t want to leave her alone all night, so I went and got her.”
Okay, so that was sweet. “And why am I naked?”
“You said your clothes were still wet and that you liked to be naked in my bed anyway, and then you executed a pretty great strip show, in which you only fell over twice.”
“I what?”
“Yeah, you asked for music,” he said, “and while I was trying to talk you out of it, you went on without me.” He smiled. “Or the music.”
“Son of a motherless heifer.”
He burst out laughing, sat on the bed with her, and pulled her into him. “I especially liked the dance moves you executed on my coffee table,” he said. “You worked around all the drone parts, which was pretty impressive, actually.”
She covered her face and groaned.
“I think your bra is still hanging off the TV.”
“Stop. Don’t tell me any more.”
At what was undoubtedly a look of horror on her face, his smile faded, replaced by a whisper of surprise. “You don’t remember,” he said flatly.
“Reason number 523,002 not to drink ever again,” she muttered.
“What do you remember?”
She pushed away from him to think, letting images flit and play in her head. She remembered being excited about being invited to girls’ night out. She remembered the cool club. The drinks. Jiminy Cricket! And then the fire alarm and sprinklers. Staggering outside—
She gasped. “We were arrested!”
“Only hauled in for questioning,” Spence said. “Archer pulled some strings.”
“You guys came and got us.” She narrowed her eyes, remembering the rest. He’d asked Elle and the others to be her friend, like she was some loser. Also, he’d let her think they were each other’s muse when in fact he wasn’t able to work when she was around. She was so mad at him.
Mad and embarrassed.
And for the first time since arriving in San Francisco, she wanted to go home. She dropped her head to her bent knees.
She felt him shift. Then something dropped over her head. His T-shirt, soft and warm from his body. It fell around her, bringing his scent with it.
It smelled delicious.
“You’re having trouble with work?” she asked, her voice muffled against her knees, her eyes squeezed shut as he stroked a hand down her back.
“Someone’s got a big mouth,” he said evenly.
“If you didn’t have the time to spend with me, why would you do it?”
His hand kept up its slow up-and-down on her back, the heat of him warming her. Which she both loved and resented, because it was hard to hold on to a good mad with his hand on her.
“Because I couldn’t help myself,” he finally said. “I thought I was all work and no play, but with you, it’s different. Probably because I knew going in that there was our expiration date.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze. “Our Christmas Eve expiration date.”
His eyes were full of the same conflicting emotions she knew were all over her face. “Yes.”
“I get it,” she admitted. After all, she’d thought the same thing. The very same thing. That this was for only a few weeks, the end.
Because who could’ve guessed that she could lose her heart that fast?
Since all she was wearing was his T-shirt, she did her best to gracefully slide out of his bed with his top sheet also wrapped around her.
Instead she did the opposite of graceful and took a header, hitting the floor.
Spence was at her side in an instant, crouched low. “You okay?”
“Everything but my pride,” she said and sat up. She tried to get to her feet, but his foot was on the sheet, which meant she could either start a tug-of-war or lose it.
Luckily, his shirt was long enough to hit her midthigh as she stood and headed toward the bathroom, tugging it down over her bare butt for good measure.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get decent enough to get out of your hair.”
“Colbie—”
Ignoring him, she turned on the light and tried to squelch her involuntary scream at the sight of herself.
Thanks to not removing her mascara, she looked like a raccoon. A haggard one. And then there was her hair, which had rioted at some point during the night and now resembled the kind of hair clot one removed from one’s vacuum cleaner after not having done so for six months or more.
She nearly screamed again when she realized Spence stood in the doorway.
“So . . . it gets a little worse,” he said.
She looked at him, which was a huge mistake because he was shirtless thanks to her, and his jeans were sitting dangerously low on his hips, lovingly cupping some of his very best parts. “How much worse can it possibly get?” she asked, refusing to acknowledge that having him this close was making her mouth water. “You bribed your friends into pretending to be my friends. Then we got almost arrested. And after that, I apparently went all Fifty Shades on your ass.”