her guest. When he heard them go back upstairs to her apartment, he made it a double.
“I REALLY APPRECIATE you coming by and going over these show ideas with me, Brian. And thanks for dinner.”
Kelsey sat on the floor of her apartment, leaning on her coffee table to write on a yellow legal tablet. She absently picked up her cold-cuts sub and took a bite.
“No problem,” he replied. “I wasn’t doing anything tonight, anyway. Chuck’s working a double so I would have been sitting around at home.”
“So, what’s my excuse for having nothing to do and nowhere to go on a Saturday night?”
“Oh, make me laugh. Half the guys at the station would ask you out in a second if you gave the slightest indication you were interested,” Brian argued as he glanced at his notebook.
“But would it be me they were asking out, or Lady Love?”
“If Lady Love were interested, you’d have half the guys in Baltimore at your door. But from that moony look you get on your face whenever you start talking about this guy who lives downstairs, I guess Lady Love’s not available.”
Kelsey grimaced and wiped her sticky fingers on a napkin.
“I’m not moony,” she said. She hadn’t realized her feelings for Mitch had been so obvious. Of course, Brian was very perceptive.
“No, of course you’re not, sweetie,” Brian said with a grin, as if humoring her mood.
Her mood stank. After Mitch’s rejection earlier that afternoon, she hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. She’d done a little of both, then sat quietly and calmly and thought about her relationship with Mitch.
It was done. Whatever fantasies she had about him were finished, and good riddance to them. Well, she had to admit, maybe her fantasies themselves weren’t done. After that kiss, that embrace, that flash of absolute electricity they’d shared, she imagined her fantasies were going to get a lot more intense! But her slight belief that maybe something would come of those fantasies…that was gone. Mitch had rejected her for the last time. Right now, he was probably feeling so embarrassed he wouldn’t come near her again. And that suited her just fine.
M ITCH WASN’T THINKING totally clearly, but he knocked on her door anyway, muttering, “I owe you one, Kelsey Logan. You’ve got this coming.”
He shivered slightly as a draft swept up from downstairs, blowing under the towel he wore around his hips. Curling his toes on the cool wood floor, he wished she’dhurry up and answer. Every second she delayed made him think about heading back downstairs. But his reflexes were perhaps the tiniest bit slower because of his mood…and, possibly, the scotch. Before he had time to forget the whole stupid idea, Kelsey’s apartment door opened.
Kelsey had really expected Celia to be standing in her doorway with a plateful of cookies. Instead, a six-foot-tall, nearly naked, rock-hard, golden, lean man stood there.
“Hello, Kelsey,” Mitch said with a slow smile as he sauntered into her apartment. “Gee, seems I’m all out of soap. Got some I could borrow?”
Kelsey stared as Mitch moved past her. He was naked. Well, not entirely, she supposed. He wore a white towel around his waist, but otherwise, nothing. His dark hair was mussed, damp, as if he had just jumped in the shower, then jumped back out. A drop of water fell from one lock of hair and landed on his sculpted bronzed shoulder, slowly gliding a glistening path down the crisp, dark hair on his chest. She followed the droplet’s descent, and then allowed her eyes to travel farther down his body. A quivering sigh was the only sound she could manage.
Kelsey had a pretty good idea what men were supposed to look like. She’d been raised with two brothers, after all, and had enjoyed her fair share of male attention. But Mitch, well, she’d never seen a man who made her forget to breathe.
He was beautiful. His body was hard but not bulky. Lean, toned, with sinewy muscles that rippled along his
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