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Saturday Morning. Mark
Well, that was a mistake.
Mark Herman had known it the minute they’d gone upstairs last night, yet he went with her anyway.
He stared at the unfamiliar ceiling and tried to work up the nerve to exit gracefully. Somehow.
Genova Murphie grunted softly and rolled toward him. Her violet eyes were open, studying him. “You’re thinking too loud, Detective.”
“You shouldn’t have let me in your door.”
He looked over the curves of her body hiding beneath the sheet, remembering the feel of her just a couple hours earlier. If she’d been another woman, last night would have been perfect.
She pouted a little. “You weren’t thinking with your brain last night.”
He snorted, his mind going back to the day before, on an airplane from Costa Rica, when Darby had dropped a figurative bomb on him—and admitted to lying to him for the last two years. The admission had sent him looking for a way to drown the pain.
He turned toward her. “We’d better not mention this to Darby.”
“For your sake? Or hers?”
Mark thought over the long couple years he’d spent trying to make romantic advances with his partner. He honestly didn’t know.
Genova brushed his arm. “I’ll make breakfast.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She smiled tightly. “And flirting with me the last couple years was?”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
She sighed. “Maybe you should just go home. I’m pretty sure you’re confused. And for that matter, I am too. I don’t make a habit of taking my friends’ men to bed.”
There was a touch of rebuke in her tone.
“Darby doesn’t think of us as a couple.”
“She treats you as though you are,” Genova observed. “Why else would you think of her when you’re in bed with me?”
Mark scraped his hands down his face and rolled to a sitting position. His head throbbed a little. He’d had too many adult beverages on the corporate jet yesterday, then between him and Genova, they’d downed nearly two bottles of Riesling.
If Darby found out about last night, how would she...?
No. She lost the right to have a say when she admitted lying to you, Mark.
“I have to go.”
She sat up, pulling the sheet around her. “I think that’s for the best.”
He began to put his clothes on, refusing to look at her. If he did, there was little doubt in his mind that he’d end up back in bed for another round with her. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“This time...so am I.”
This got him to turn. She stared down at the sheets, tracing a design on the surface, regret written all over her face.
He didn’t know what to say as he buttoned his shirt.
She filled the silence. “We’re both pretty awful people, aren’t we?”
He sat down again, careful to keep distance between them. “I don’t know.” He stared down at his hands, feeling a little sick to his stomach. “I don’t think I’d say awful. Flawed, most definitely.”
She looked up at him through lashes thick with yesterday’s mascara. “That sounds exactly like something Darby would say.”