Coming Home(59)

He lied to her?

Leah shook her head quickly. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He didn’t want her, and they weren’t anything to each other. She was just going to make sure he was comfortable, and then she was going to get the hell out of there.

With renewed purpose, she undid the belt buckle, followed by the button on his slacks. Leah gripped the zipper with the ends of her nails, trying to avoid any contact as she slid it down. His hand rode a bit further up her thigh, his thumb beginning to make soft, sensuous passes over the thin material of her pants, and as Leah moved from the bed, his hand slipped from her leg and slapped down onto the mattress. She stood beside him and leaned over, hooking her fingers in the waistband of his pants.

“I lied to you about lunch,” he mumbled.

Before she could even decide if she would play into this or not, he went on. “I wasn’t meeting a friend.”

Leah pursed her lips as her stomach churned. She didn’t want to hear the rest. Instead, she gripped the top of his pants and yanked somewhat forcefully. They jerked over his hips, and she immediately pressed her lips into a hard line as she closed her eyes.

Boxer briefs. Tight, gray boxer briefs.

She exhaled slowly and opened her eyes, tugging his pants the rest of the way down and removing the belt before she folded them and draped them over a nearby chair. She came back to the bed and climbed on, dutifully keeping her eyes above his waist as she started undoing the buttons of his shirt.

His hands came up and grasped hers, stilling her movements as his eyes fluttered partially open.

“I wasn’t meeting a friend. I wasn’t meeting anyone. I lied because I wanted to see you.”

The breath left her body in a soft rush. She had not been expecting that.

“Oh,” she managed softly, but her voice was so quiet, she doubted he heard her.

He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands as his eyes fell closed again. “It was stupid, you know? I didn’t even know you,” he mumbled groggily. “But I kept thinking about you. I saw you at Gram’s, and I kept thinking about you, and I didn’t even f*cking know you.”

Leah gently slid her hands out of his grasp as she tried to refocus on undoing his buttons, but she could feel her heartbeat kick up in her chest.

“I had no right to ask you out,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “So I bullshitted you. I bullshitted myself, and I pretended we were just meeting so you could get your bracelet. And then I saw you, and I didn’t want you to leave.”

He was ranting, the words spilling from his mouth like an avalanche, and part of her wanted to stop him. She didn’t want to hear this. Because if what he was saying was true, why did he leave her the way he did last weekend? Why had he spent the past week pretending she didn’t exist?

His hand slid up her thigh again, and Leah ignored it, focusing all her attention on undoing the buttons.

“So I made you have lunch with me,” he muttered. “And you know what? I was kind of hoping I’d hate you. It would have been so much easier if you were a bitch, or an idiot, or someone who annoyed the shit out of me. ‘Cause then I could have just put this shit to bed.”

His hand left her thigh as he brought it up to his face, rubbing his eyes roughly before he let it fall back to the bed with a slap.

“But of course you weren’t any of those things,” he said with another humorless laugh. “You were smart, and sweet…and f*cking beautiful,” he added, clasping both of her hands in his again.

She slipped them out of his grasp. “Danny, don’t.”