Drunk on Love(10)

She opened her eyes all the way and saw Luke smiling at her. He looked very disheveled, very relaxed, and very attractive. He looked like he’d spent all night having a whole lot of sex. She smiled back at him.

“I thought I’d dreamed you,” he said.

She laughed out loud.

“I’m at least five years too old for that line to work on me,” she said, “but that’s adorable that you tried it.”

He grinned sheepishly at her.

“Thank you. I think,” he said.

He lifted himself up on one elbow and looked at her. She forced herself not to move, turn over, or cover her body with a sheet. She was nervous for him to really look at her in the daylight, now that it was morning and she was no longer drunk on his kisses and his touch and his gaze. She liked her body fine, most of the time, but now she was in bed with a guy who was probably used to perky boobs and small waists and no stretch marks. But she didn’t let herself flinch, and instead smiled up at him. That ship had already sailed, hadn’t it?

He gazed down at her and then moved his hand up to her breast.

“Mmm, I feel lucky to be here right now,” he said.

Good God, she liked the way he did that.

“Oh, you should feel very lucky,” she said.

He laughed, and bent down to kiss her.

Afterward, when she could breathe again, she suddenly remembered something.

“Yesterday was Sunday,” she said when he got back in bed from going to the bathroom. “That means today is Monday. What time is it?” Her phone was in her jacket pocket, which was wherever she’d abandoned it after he’d pushed it off her.

He pulled himself out of bed again and found his jeans on the floor.

“Seven thirty,” he said.

She sighed in relief. This had been fantastic, but if this interlude had caused her to be late to work this morning, she’d be pissed at herself.

“Oh good,” she said. “I have plenty of time.” She swung her legs out of the bed and looked around for her bra. He picked it up from the foot of the bed and handed it to her, and she put it on, then pulled her dress back on.

“Didn’t you just say you had plenty of time?” he asked her. “Why are you rushing to get dressed?”

She grabbed her underwear from the bed.

“I meant I have plenty of time if I leave now. I still have to walk home, and once I get back, I have to get ready for work.”

He shook his head and pulled his jeans on.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”

She hadn’t expected him to offer that—he knew she lived nearby. Or maybe he didn’t remember?

“I can walk,” she said. “I’m only six blocks away.”

He grabbed his shirt off the floor and put it on.

“I know,” he said. “But my car’s right downstairs. I can drive you, it’s no problem. If too many people around here know you for you to kiss me outside a bar after dark, how much worse will it be for you to do the walk of shame at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday morning?”

She laughed. She hadn’t heard that phrase in a long time. And the man had a point.

He stopped, midway through buckling his belt.

“Unless you don’t want me to drive you?”

He was far more thoughtful than she would have assumed at first glance. Both offering to drive her, and then pulling back when she’d hesitated, showed a lot more perception than she would have given him credit for.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’d love a ride home.”

He nodded.

“Great. I’ll be ready in a second.”

It was kind of funny, how polite and almost formal they were with each other, after last night . . . and this morning. Both of them making carefully worded requests and acceptances that made them sound like the strangers to each other they really were, even when they did make reference to the reason she was here right now, and not in her house, six blocks away. It made sense, after all. They barely knew each other. She didn’t even know his last name. They’d spent, what, three hours talking before they’d tumbled into bed together?

She grinned to herself. It had turned out pretty well, though.

She retrieved her jacket and bag from the front hallway and then went into the bathroom to wash her face and do something to her hair so it didn’t look like she’d been having sex all night. She found a few bobby pins in the crevices of her bag and managed to twist her hair up into a more or less presentable topknot.

When she came out of the bathroom, Luke looked at her with just a hint of that admiration from the night before.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded, and slid her feet into the shoes she’d kicked off by the door.

His car was right downstairs, parked in a prime spot outside of his building. She grinned when she saw it.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked her.

She shook her head.

“Oh, just that if I’d seen this car last night, I wouldn’t have needed to look at your clothes to know you were new in town.”

He opened the passenger-side door for her.

“People don’t have cars like this in Napa? I know that’s not true.”

She pursed her lips as she got in, and waited for him to join her before she answered.