Quiet as a mouse, I padded down the stairs and into the living room. Sure enough, Nick was back in the hot tub. Leaning back. Eyes closed. Wet hair dripping down his neck. As a precaution, he was wearing some sort of black swim trunks, but at this point, it hardly made a difference. The man looked like sex. Nothing he could do about that now.
“Back in the hot tub, then?”
His eyes shot open, and he gazed up at me with a steamy smile.
“I’ve grown ridiculously attached to it. I’m thinking of getting one for every room.”
I giggled and shook my head. That sounded like Nick.
“You could start a trend...”
His grin faded slightly as he looked me up and down.
“I didn’t wake you, did I? Sorry—I tried to be really quiet.”
“No, no—I was up,” I reassured him, perching on the edge. “I have no idea why. That is hands down the greatest bed I’ve ever slept in...I just can’t turn off my brain.”
He glanced up at me, as if he was well familiar with the problem, then cocked his head invitingly toward the water. “Care to join me? It’ll help you relax.”
Somehow, I sincerely doubted that. I stared for a second at the gorgeous, dripping man in front of me, then glanced down self-consciously.
“I don’t have a bathing suit...”
He reached down beneath the waves, and the next second, his dripping black swim trunks were in a puddle on the floor. “There. Neither do I.”
My breath caught in my chest, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d turned on the foaming jets before I’d come down. Otherwise, there would be no way I could string together a coherent thought. Let alone force it into a sentence.
I opened my mouth to automatically refuse, prepared to go back upstairs and plant myself firmly on the right side of the line the two of us kept blurring. So it was as much of a surprise to me as to anyone when I heard myself saying, “Okay.”
Well aware that his eyes were watching every move, I slipped the silk bathrobe off my shoulders. Then the tiny nightgown beneath. Without a single stitch of clothing on my body, I slowly reached up and let loose my hair. It tumbled in dark waves down my shoulders as I stepped into the tub. At once, my face steamed up and I flashed him a grin.
“It’s hotter than I thought.”
He nodded slowly, but didn’t respond. His eyes had dilated almost completely black during my little strip tease, and he seemed no more capable of speech now, than I was when I’d first come down and seen him.
Finally, when he could manage, he patted the seat beside him with a little smile. I waded slowly into the water, but took a seat on the far side instead. Somewhere just slightly out of the man’s reach. Somewhere that I could look at him to my heart’s content.
He followed every movement, tracing my hair’s spiraling journey down my chest before looking back up with a twinkle in his eye.
“So...what’s the verdict?”
“We’ll buy ten of them in the morning,” I announced. “Then another for the plane.”
He chuckled softly, and nodded his head.
“Yes ma’am.”
The chuckle made me smile. Then I remembered that look on his face.
“Nick?” I asked softly.
He looked up swiftly, picking up on the change in my tone.
“Yeah?”
“Is everything...” I paused, wondering how to phrase it. It’s not like I could admit that I’d been spying on him from the balcony. “Are you...upset about something?”
“Upset?” he repeated in surprise. It was an admirable performance. If I hadn’t been there for the first one, I might have believed it myself. “No—why would I be upset?”