Chapter Eighteen

Lexi woke to the sound of knocking on the front door. On instinct, she attempted to climb out of bed, but Matt’s arm was hooked around her and the second she moved he pulled her into the warmest, squishiest embrace. Well, squishy enough, considering the man’s entire physique had been carved from stone.

“Door,” she murmured.

“Leave it,” he said, dragging her even closer, his fingers threading her hair as his mouth closed against her neck, all hot and warm and—

Bam. Bam. Bam.

“I don’t think we should ignore that,” she said, right about the time Waffles responded with a hearty series of woofs of his own.

“Fine.” Matt didn’t sound like he meant it, and a lowered glance suggested he wasn’t in any state to greet anyone, but he pulled on a pair of sweat pants and headed toward the door, leaving Lexi to steal one of his shirts and a pair of boxers before joining him.

She entered the front room in time to hear Keith, her contractor, say, “Good news.” Then he caught sight of Lexi, and stopped on the cusp of whatever amazing thing he wanted to say, his gaze sliding from Matt, shirtless, to Lexi, in a shirt that swallowed her and boxers that one could safely assume didn’t belong to her, either. Self-conscious, she dragged her hand through her hair, hitting tangles, and realizing at that point that she probably looked like she’d just stepped off the set of an old Bon Jovi video.

Not helping matters, both Matt and Keith were now eyeing her. Keith’s expression held bemusement. Matt looked like he wanted to haul her right back to bed. Instead he tore his heated gaze away and fixed on Keith. “What’s the good news?”

Addressing Lexi, he said, “Your house is ready. Just got the final inspection approved late yesterday, so you can go home any time.” He glanced from her to Matt and back again and grinned. “If that’s still the plan.”

“That is…great.” Lexi said brightly. “You finished early.” A solid week early.

“And under budget,” he added with a wink.

Yep. Great contractor. So why was her heart sliding slowly, gracelessly to the floor?

“It’s all you asked for,” he continued, “so you won’t find any surprises, but I think it came together nicely. Come check it out when you’re ready.”

“Will do,” Lexi said. “Thanks.”

They said their goodbyes, then Matt shut the door with a resounding click.

“So, that was fast,” Lexi said. “Ahead of schedule and under budget. Maybe it won’t pass inspection.” She laughed weakly at her joke.

“It already did,” Matt said. He walked away from the door then, and her. She watched his back as he moved, lost herself in the fluid movement of muscle working under skin, and felt like she’d left those marks there a thousand years ago.

But no, it had been hours, at most. Five minutes ago, he’d wanted to keep her in his bed. And now, he seemed to be avoiding her eyes as he went to the kitchen, started his coffee, and looked at anything else.

She couldn’t stare after him forever, so she mumbled, “I guess I should get dressed.” She waited for a moment, for him to suggest that no, she was far too dressed, and that maybe they should go to bed, but he just stood there, back to her, something beyond the window infinitely more interesting than what was left of the two of them.

He said he’d do anything to make this real.

Well, in the bright light of day, reality was a bitch.

Her eyes grew hot, tears threatening, but she’d already given him everything else. She wasn’t going to give him that. So she stepped out of the boxers, stripped off the T-shirt, and tossed them on the sofa. It was one of the two places he typically left laundry, the other being the floor beside his bed. “Right where you like it,” she said, her voice sounding weak and off and bitter, but she didn’t stay to try to save face. Instead, she walked naked to her room and pulled everything from the drawers. She dressed, tossed the rest in the suitcase she’d brought over from home, and stared at the door she’d left open a crack.

She didn’t leave. Not yet.

She instead dropped to the mattress, the sheets still softly rumpled from the night before. His words came back to her. He said he wanted this between them, and she’d believed him. She still did. But he also said he knew it wouldn’t work.

The same thing he’d said at the fire station.

Things change—those were his words—but maybe not everything. Maybe not the important things. The fact that he wanted her when they were close, that his gaze grew heated and made her soul take flight, should have meant something, but it didn’t. Because when they stepped back, when he wasn’t tracing filthy words against her heated skin, when the haze lifted and they found themselves back in the real world, that was when he didn’t want her.

At least not enough.

Maybe they’d been right to fight it. Maybe they’d been right to fall in. None of it mattered now, because he’d made it clear there was nothing left to say, so she grabbed her suitcase and walked back to her house and her beautiful new kitchen and her own bed.

He didn’t even say goodbye.