by Janice Lynn
When she tiptoed back into her room, closing and locking the adjoining bathroom door, she came to a halt.
“You’re not in my bed,” she accused, frowning at where he’d made a pallet of sorts on the floor with a fuzzy blanket he’d pulled from the foot of her bed. He had one of her old throw pillows tucked beneath his head. It wasn’t much of a pallet and there wasn’t an extra blanket for him to cover up with unless he took the comforter.
“You take the bed.”
“Ryder,” she began, feeling guilty that he was at her feet.
“There is no way I’m sleeping in your bed and making you take the floor.”
McKenzie eyed where he lay on the floor, then her full-size bed, and came to a quick decision. “Fine. We’ll both sleep in the bed.”
She’d keep her fantasies and her hands to herself.
His eyes danced. “You must have liked our kiss better than I thought.”
Cheeks heating, McKenzie tossed a throw pillow at him. “For that I should leave you on the floor.”
Sitting up to catch the pillow, he chuckled. “You definitely should.”
Something in the way he said his words, or maybe it was the way he was looking at her, shot a burst of feminine awareness through McKenzie.
“I’m not sure I’d trust myself if I was in that bed with you.”
Her breath caught. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
She knew he wouldn’t. Not even for a second did she believe otherwise.
“Never, but I’m a healthy man with normal sexual urges and you’re a beautiful woman.” His grin was a bit lopsided, but then his face took on a more serious expression. “Trust me, it’s better if I stay on the floor.”
McKenzie’s heart raced at his words, at what he was saying. If they both slept in the bed he thought they might have sex. She didn’t sleep around. But, the way her body was reacting to the thought of having sex with Ryder, she knew he was right.
“It’s not as if I wouldn’t stop you if you were doing something I didn’t want you to be doing.” Good grief. She’d practically just told him that she wasn’t opposed to their having sex.
Staring at him on the floor, she wondered what it would be like to have sex with Ryder. To kiss him with abandon? To be kissed by him, her lips, her neck, her breasts? To press her body next to his, skin to skin, nothing between them as they moved in pleasure?
Tingles ran up and down her spine. Tingles all over her.
Any moment she was going to throw back the covers and invite him to join her there.
“True, but you’re very tempting.”
“Are you saying you want me?” How she found the nerve to ask, she wasn’t sure, just that the question spilled from her lips. Her gaze remained locked with his as she waited for his answer.
Looking way too sexy for a man sitting on a makeshift bed on the floor, he hesitated only a moment. “I’m not saying I don’t. But I won’t have sex with you this weekend, McKenzie. You’re just out of a long relationship, this is pretend and neither of us want it to be real.”
He’s wrong, she thought. She did want it to be real. Real enough that he climbed into her bed and... McKenzie’s cheeks heated.
Or maybe it was the visions that danced through her head at his “normal sexual urges.”
Goodness, he must give off some major pheromones because she so didn’t think like this. This looking at a man and wanting him to give in to his “normal sexual urges” and touch her.
Especially a man she barely knew.
And worked with.
And who always made her jumpy.
Maybe because he was a sexy beast and she just hadn’t added up that it was the sexual vibes he gave off that made her uneasy. Sex was good, but not something she’d ever dwelt upon.
The heat in Ryder’s eyes said he didn’t feel the same.
Sex mattered in Ryder’s world.
Looking at him, sex mattered in McKenzie’s world, too.
Realizing he was probably giving up a highly sexed weekend to accompany her, McKenzie made a mental note to buy him a bottle of his favorite wine when they got back to Seattle.
Because as flustered as he had her hormones and mind, he was right. They shouldn’t have sex.
But she wanted to.
And that knowledge blew her mind.
Trying to clear her head, she stared at him, wondering how she could have ever been around him and not registered how charming his grin was.
“You’re right. Neither of us want a real relationship and won’t be having sex this weekend.” She climbed into her bed, pulled the comforter free, and tossed it on the floor, leaving only the sheet to cover herself. With as heated as she currently felt, that should be plenty. “Now you have something to cuddle with.”
From the floor, he chuckled, the sound of which continued to warm her insides all toasty in ways she really didn’t like. Pretend boyfriends were not supposed to make their pretend girlfriends feel toasty.
“Night, McKenzie.”
Lying in her bed from her teenaged years with Ryder lying on her floor seemed surreal, but no more so than the fact he’d kissed her on the plane. Or that she’d looked at him and had a visual flash of having sex with him.
“Goodnight,” she whispered, closing her eyes and thinking her mind might be racing too much to sleep.
And that if sleep did come, she prayed it wouldn’t be filled with dreams of the man on the floor next to her bed.
“Sweet dreams.”
“Stop that,” she ordered without opening her eyes.
“What?” he asked, all innocent, as if he hadn’t just read her thoughts again.
“Talking when I’m trying to sleep.”
He laughed and McKenzie’s mouth curved upward as sleep took hold with the sweetest dreams filling her mind.
* * *
Someone was in the shower, singing.
The thought hit McKenzie as she rolled over in bed and let her arm flop over the side.
When her hand came into contact with warm flesh, her eyes flew open at the same time as she jerked her hand away.
Where she was, who she was with, whose warm flesh that had been, registered instantly.
“Good morning to you, too.” The man she’d just hit chuckled from the floor.
Glancing at Ryder over the edge of the bed, she wrinkled her nose. “Morning.”
“Sounds as if someone’s having a good morning,” he mused, stretching his arms up over his head, pulling his T-shirt tight over his chest and abs.
McKenzie squeezed her eyes shut and fell back against her bed. This was a new day and she wasn’t letting her mind go to where it had been as she’d drifted off to sleep.
Ha. She was pretty sure her mind had been in an orgasmic sexual dreamworld with Ryder all night.
“Sounds like my cousin Jeff.” If anything could get her mind off sex it was thoughts of her cousin Jeff.
“You have a big family?”
“Big enough.” Which really wasn’t much of an answer, she realized. “My dad and mother both had a sister apiece, so I’ve a few cousins and extended family. Most live around here, but a few of us have escaped.”
“You seemed happy to see your mother.”
“I was. I am,” she corrected. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been home. I guess you figured that out last night.”
“Because you don’t like flying?”
“Among other things.”
“I want to ask...”
“But you’re not going to because you know I’m not going to answer,” she cut in, sitting up on the side of the bed. “Is it really morning? Because I just want to sleep a few more hours.”
“Makes sense since we’re in a different time zone.”
“Quit being all logical.”
“Fine.” H
e grinned. “I’ll be illogical.”
“Ha. I think you covered that when you agreed to come with me this weekend.”
He shrugged. “It’s not been bad so far.”
“Besides the near panic attack and having to sleep on the floor,” she teased, appreciating his comment that it hadn’t been bad more than she should.
“Besides those things,” he agreed, still grinning as he let his gaze run over her.
Self-conscious of her first-thing-in-the-morning appearance when he looked so amazing with his sleep-tousled hair and quick smile, McKenzie frowned. “What?”
“Just taking in the real McKenzie.”
“As opposed to the fake McKenzie you normally see?” Normally he didn’t spend much time looking at her, period.
“Not fake,” he said with way more consideration than the early morning warranted. “Just always well put together.”
She half-smiled at her current state of morning hair, no makeup, and morning-after-travel eyes. “Ha. That’s definitely not how anyone would describe me this morning.”
“If you’re fishing for a compliment, I’ll take the bait. You’re beautiful.”
She hadn’t been, but his compliment pleased her.
“Thank you.” And then she didn’t know what to say as the silence stretched between them, so she got out of bed. “It’s possible Jeff will use all the hot water while he gives his full rendition of the greatest eighties,” she warned. “I’m going to make some coffee. You want a cup?”
He shook his head. “Never touch the stuff.”
Halfway to the door, McKenzie paused to look at him in horror. “Say what?”
He laughed. “That stuff you guzzle by the gallon,” he wrinkled his nose, “I never drink it.”
He’d noticed she drank coffee?
“I knew there had to be something wrong with you,” she mused.
His lips twitched. “If my distaste of coffee is the worst thing you discover about me this weekend then we did good.”
“Are there worse things to discover than not liking coffee? Is that even possible?”
He shrugged. “That depends on how much you like coffee.”
“Let’s just say it flows freely through my veins.”
From the bathroom, they heard the connecting door to the other bedroom open and close.
“He’s out! I’m headed in there before someone else does!” And with that she scooped up her shower bag and the clothes she’d set out the night before and disappeared into the bathroom.
* * *
Ryder stared at the cup of coffee Roberta had put in front of him and wondered if he’d have to down the stuff to keep from offending her. He really didn’t like coffee, but apparently McKenzie’s family drank it like their lives depended on it.
“So, tell me about your relationship with my daughter.”
Roberta clearly wasn’t one to waste time. She leaned back in the chair next to his and sipped on her coffee.
“I imagine it’s much as McKenzie has told you. We work together, have been seeing each other a few weeks, and she invited me to come with her this weekend.”
“She’s never brought anyone home before,” Roberta pointed out.
“I wouldn’t read too much into that as she told me it has been several years since she’s been able to come home.”
Roberta snorted. “Since she’s chosen to come home.”
“Flying with her, I’d say it’s more than a choice that’s kept her away. She told me about her father,” he defended. Although he didn’t fully understand McKenzie’s reasons for staying away, he suspected her fear of flying topped the list.
Roberta looked surprised. “She told you about Phillip?”
Nodding, Ryder picked up the coffee to have something to do with his hands while facing her scrutiny.
“I can’t believe she told you about Phillip,” she continued. “She never talks about her father. I sent her to several therapists and she still wouldn’t talk about what had happened. Why did she tell you?”
Probably because she’d been on the verge of hyperventilating and he’d been in the next seat over.
“Mom, stop grilling Ryder.”
“Afraid he can’t take it?” a slightly balding man asked as he came into the room, two kids on his heels.
“Jeff!” McKenzie threw her arms around the man who picked her up and spun her around.
When he put her down, McKenzie was laughing.
“Good to see you, cuz. ’Bout time you came to your senses and came home.”
“Just for the weekend. No way am I staying long enough for you to be a pain in my butt the way you were most of my life.”
“Nothing you didn’t deserve,” he assured her. “Nashville has babies with bad hearts, too, you know?”
“I know.” Her voice was low and held a sad tone when she answered, but then she stooped down to the little girl literally hanging onto her cousin’s leg. “Speaking of babies, you sure have grown since I saw you last,” she told the child who just stared at her with big eyes. “How old are you now? Twenty?”
Grinning a bit shyly, the girl shook her head and held up three fingers.
“Three?” McKenzie looked impressed. “That’s getting big way too fast, if you ask me.”
The little boy who was a spitting image of his father only with a thick shock of blond hair stepped forward and held up a handful of fingers. “I’m four.”
“Closest thing I’ve got to grandchildren,” Roberta complained in a half whisper meant to be heard by all. “I don’t think this girl here is ever going to give me a grandchild of my own. Although,” her mother’s gaze ran up and down Ryder, “I may be closer than I’d thought to some beautiful grandbabies.”
Her face going pink, McKenzie shook her head. “I’ve no rush to procreate. Besides, I’m sure that brother of mine is giving his best efforts to produce a grandchild.”
“If you ask me, he should forget marriage and keep playing the field as long as he can,” Jeff interjected, giving Ryder a nudge on the shoulder. “Right, buddy?”
Ryder was one hundred percent sure he’d been led down a rabbit hole where there were no safe answers. The women eyeing him warned he’d best not agree, and his man card was in serious jeopardy with McKenzie’s cousin if he didn’t at least make a manly grunt.
McKenzie rescued him by noticing what he was holding. “Hey! I thought you said you didn’t like coffee.”
Everyone in the room glanced at his still-full cup.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “But I’ve never had Tennessee coffee, so who knows?”
* * *
McKenzie’s mother’s house was apparently the wedding meeting place headquarters. Ryder was introduced to family members of various ages.
“He’s a hunk,” Julianna, her cousin Jeff’s wife, told McKenzie in a whisper not meant to be overheard, but that Ryder had. “No wonder you preferred him over the computer guy.”
“There was nothing wrong with Paul,” McKenzie defended, obviously not wanting her family to think poorly of the man she’d spent two years in a relationship with.
“Then why isn’t he here with you?”
“Things just...” She glanced toward Ryder, saw he was watching her with interest, then blushing, looked back toward her friend. “We just didn’t work out.”
“And now you’re dating a hottie coworker and brought him to Tennessee to meet your family?”
“That sums it up,” McKenzie agreed with a smile Ryder could tell was fake. “I’m dating my hottie coworker and brought him home to meet all of you. Whatever was I thinking?”
Julianna laughed, then shot another glance toward Ryder who pretended as if he had no clue what they were discussing.
“Well, if you ask me,” she said, waggling her brows, “this one’s a keeper.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe.” McKenzie sent another apologetic look toward Ryder. “It’s too early in our relationship to be having this conversation as we’ve just begun to date, right, Ryder?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he teased, not paying heed to her look of warning. “I’ve always believed that when you meet the right person time doesn’t really matter so much.”
Several gazes zeroed in on him. “Is McKenzie the right person?”
There was a chemistry between them he’d immediately felt, but she wasn’t the woman for him. He knew better. But he’d promised to impress her family with pretending to be crazy about her, so pretend he would.
“Only thing I can find wrong with her is her predilection for coffee more than me, but other than that, she feels right.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SORRY ABOUT THAT,” McKenzie apologized the moment she was alone with Ryder. Awkward didn’t begin to cover how she’d felt about her family putting him on the spot, or herself for that matter. “My family can’t fathom that I’m happy without being married.”
Not that she didn’t want to marry someday, but she really was happy.
“I take it your brother is still single, too?”
“Not for lack of trying. He’s been married twice. His job is hard on relationships.”
“I still can’t believe he’s a pilot.”
She nodded. “I can’t stand the thought of him going up in those planes, but he loves it. As much as Dad did or maybe even more. Mama doesn’t say much, but it has to bother her, too.”
“But not as much as it bothers you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s why you don’t live here. Because you can’t stand knowing when he’s in the air.”
McKenzie didn’t answer. She hadn’t really thought about Mark’s flying playing into her reasons for not living in Nashville.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Ryder reached for her hand and gave a gentle squeeze. “What do I know? I’ve not even met your brother.”
“You’re right. You haven’t.” But he’d seen through her better than she’d seen through herself, because she acknowledged that he was partially right. She hadn’t liked being home and knowing when Mark was in the air. Her brother swore he only felt alive in the air. McKenzie felt terrified at just the thought.