Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

her hands. “Give me that and stop being a chickenshit.”
    “Easy for you to say. You weren’t attacked when you were sound asleep.”
    “I didn’t attack you.” He flicked off the light, plunging the room into darkness. The insensitive jerk had even turned off the bathroom light.
    She heard the whoosh of sliding denim as he pulled off his jeans. She went up on her knees. “You’re not sleeping here.”
    “It’s my room, and this is the only bed with sheets.”
    “A bed I’m already occupying.”
    “And now you have company.” He crawled in.
    She took a deep breath and reminded herself he had too big an ego to attack her. If she scrambled around in the dark for another place to sleep, she’d look like a wuss. Show no weakness. “You stay on your side,” she warned him, “or you won’t like the consequences.”
    “Going to hit me with your tuffet, Miss Muffet?”
    She had no idea what he was talking about.
    The smell of toothpaste, skin, and the leather upholstery of a very expensive car drifted toward her. He should have smelled like liquor. A grief-stricken man coming home at two o’clock in the morning should be drunk. His bare leg brushed her thigh. She stiffened.
    “Why do you have your jeans on?” he said.
    “Because my luggage was in your car.”
    “Yeah, right. You kept them on because you were afraid the boogeyman would get you. What a chickenshit.”
    “Sticks and stones.”
    “That’s mature.”
    “Like you’re not all about seventh grade,” she retorted.
    “At least I don’t have to sleep with the lights on.”
    “You might have second thoughts about that when the bats start flying out of the chimney.”
    “Bats?” He grew still.
    “A colony.”
    “You’re a bat expert?”
    “I heard them rustling around. Making bat noises.”
    “I don’t believe you.” He was a crossways bed sleeper, and his knee poked her calf. Unaccountably, she’d begun to relax.
    “I might as well sleep with a damn mummy,” he grumbled.
    “They’re staying on.”
    “Don’t think I couldn’t get them off you if I put my mind to it. Thirty seconds max, and they’d be gone. Unfortunately for you, I’m off my game tonight.”
    He shouldn’t be thinking about sex when his mother was dying. Her opinion of him plummeted. “Shut up and go to sleep.”
    “Your loss.”
    The wind picked up outside. A friendly branch tapped at the window. As his breathing grew deep and regular, slivers of moonlight crept across the old wooden floors, and the chimney gave a contented sigh. He stayed on his side of the bed. She stayed on hers.
    For a while…
     
     
     
    In a house with almost no doors, a door banged. Blue’s eyes inched open, disturbing the most delicious, erotic dream. Threads of gray light had crept into the room, and she let her eyes slip shut again, trying to reclaim the feeling of long fingers curling around her breast…a hand nuzzling inside her jeans….
    Another door banged. Something hard pressed against her hip. Her eyes sprang open. A gravely voice near her ear muttered an obscenity, a hand that didn’t belong to her cupped her breast, and another pressed inside her jeans. A rush of alarm brought her fully awake. This was no dream.
    “The carpenters are here,” a woman said from not all that far away. “If you don’t want company, you’d better get up.”
    Blue shoved at Dean’s arm, but he took his time extricating himself from her clothes. “What time is it?”
    “Seven,” April replied.
    Blue yanked her shirt down and buried her face in the pillow. This hadn’t been part of her plan to stay ahead of him.
    “It’s the middle of the night,” he protested.
    “Not for a construction crew,” April replied. “Good morning, Blue. Coffee and doughnuts downstairs.” Blue rolled over and gave a weak wave. April waved back and disappeared.
    “This sucks,” he muttered. And then he yawned. Blue didn’t like that. The least he could do was express a little sexual