Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(65)

She didn’t know how to dance or flirt or make men feel strong and steady. She wasn’t soft or comforting. Whatever women like Lara had, Elise had gotten none of it. She had confidence and control and a hell of a fake on the basketball court, but her best efforts at being feminine were shaving her legs and wearing mascara. Those two ploys had been enough to fool Evan into dating her, but not enough to coax a man into truly wanting her. Certainly not a man like Noah.

But maybe that was for the best. Love was too fleeting and delicate and easily lost. Even the kind that was supposed to be permanent…like a father’s love. That left too, because there was no way to hold on to it, even if you tightened both your hands until the nails dug in hard enough to make your palms bleed. Even then, your dad still died, and his love left right along with him.

Elise bent slowly forward, watching the bloblike outline of her reflection grow larger. She pressed her forehead to the cool, wet glass and closed her eyes. She didn’t cry. It had been ten months; she was all cried out. But the cold felt good and she held herself there for a long moment.

She still had her uncles. She still had her job. And maybe someday she’d build a bigger life with a good man who didn’t mind that she wasn’t cozy and warm and comforting.

“Forget it,” she muttered, so tired that the words were more a whisper than a curse. Apparently tequila made her feel maudlin and hopeless. Next time she’d stick to beer. And she’d find a table that didn’t come equipped with the hot guy she’d mauled two years before.

Elise pushed herself off the glass and flicked the switch that started the fan. She brushed her teeth and combed out her hair. As she dried it, her ghost self became solid in the mirror, and eventually, it was just her. Looking clean and exhausted and typically grumpy.

But when she switched off the hairdryer, the high-pitched whine faded away to expose a new sound. Banging. Frowning, Elise switched off the fan as well, and then there was no question about the source of the sound. Elise met her own wary eyes in the mirror and considered who could be knocking.

It’s not Noah, she told her galloping heart. And you’re a fool to be excited by the thought.

Angry in the face of that hope, Elise wrapped a towel around her body and stalked out of the bathroom. A tiny shiver coursed through her at the change in temperature, but she refused to feel vulnerable as she put her eye to the peephole and squinted.

It’s not Noah, her brain was still repeating. But it was. And her heart slipped so quickly into a downward lurch that Elise only got angrier.

She yanked open the door and glared.

“WHAT THE HELL do you want?”

The voice sounded like Elise Watson. The words fit her perfectly. But the woman standing in front of him did not complete the puzzle. Elise Watson did not have hair that cascaded in dark, shiny waves down bare shoulders. She didn’t have cheeks that glowed with pink innocence. And she didn’t have so much skin, surely.

“Uh,” Noah managed.

“Get over it,” she snapped. “I don’t sleep in business suits, regardless of what you might think.”

Actually, she’d never worn a business suit to bed in any of his unwanted fantasies about her. He stared at the dewy skin just above the confines of the towel. She’d wrapped the towel firmly around her. It looked perfectly secure. It also squeezed her br**sts so tightly that they mounded above the fluffy cotton. She looked so…warm. The scent of her soap wound around him.

Elise shifted, her hand touching the edge of the towel as if to be sure it hadn’t moved. “Did you come to apologize?”

Right. That was why he’d banged on her door for the past two minutes. Noah forced himself to snap from the daze of nearby nudity. “Yeah. I didn’t—”

“Apology accepted,” she growled and started to push the door closed.

Without any signal from the conscious part of his brain, Noah’s hand rose to stop the door from shutting him out. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. Can I apologize and blame the tequila at the same time?”

“You can do anything you want.” She glanced down at his hand. “Just not in my room.”

The sentence got all mixed up in Noah’s brain, even as he shook his head against it. Not here, she’d whispered two years before. My room. And now: You can do anything you want. But that hadn’t been what she’d said. It wasn’t what she meant.

His eyes swept down her body to the fascinating amount of thigh that showed beneath the hem of the towel. She tensed and those thighs turned from softness to muscle, and Noah’s body responded in full.

Mistake or not, she’d kissed him two years before. She’d felt it too, the aching need that arced between them. The tension that made them snap at each other whenever they were in close proximity.

But Noah didn’t feel like snapping now. He felt like touching. And kissing. And tumbling into bed with her.

Elise crossed one arm over her chest and pulled the towel tighter. “I’m not decent,” she said, vulnerability rounding the edge of outrage in her words. “We’ll talk later.”

“We never have time to talk. You’re too busy bossing me around.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s my job. Screw you if you don’t like it.”

He cocked his head. “Who said I didn’t like it?”

That surprised her so much that she took a step back. Noah stepped forward, sliding his body through the space she’d opened in the doorway. But he stopped, half in, half out, and waited for her to regroup. Shocking her was fun. Scaring her wouldn’t be.