Sugar on the Edge(24)

“Gavin?” I ask as I sit up straighter and rub my eyes.

“You fell asleep on the counter,” I hear him say, and awareness starts to filter in.

I finished cleaning but had miscalculated the timing of his laundry, still waiting on the last load to dry. I went ahead and fixed him a sandwich, put it in the fridge, and then sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island. I vaguely remember laying my arms on the counter, resting my head there for just a second. I intended to close my eyes for just a moment, hoping to get some relief from the blistering headache that had started about an hour before.

A huge yawn courses through me and I arch my back, stretching my arms skyward, and yup… my neck is sore from the position I was in. No clue how long I was out.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Gavin says. “Sleeping on the job. What’s a stern employer to do?”

“Sorry,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes again. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“No worries,” he says as he leans a hip against the corner beside where I’m sitting. Crossing his arms over his chest, he looks down at me. “No offense, though. You kind of look like crap. Rough night of sleep?”

“Try no sleep at all,” I tell him with another yawn. “I had a job for the newspaper over in Charlotte yesterday and when I got back in to town, I came straight here to clean your house.”

“What the fuck, Sweet?” I hear him growl, and I focus my weary gaze on him. He looks angry but for the first time, it doesn’t cause a frisson of unease to course through me. I think I’m too tired to be intimidated by him. “You didn’t have to come today. You could have just gone home and slept.”

Pushing myself up from the stool, I stand a little wobbly. “Well, yeah… sorry, but the poor have to work when they can so it wasn’t an option for me to ditch my job.”

“Go lie down on my couch and get some more sleep,” he commands me, and I don’t even bother looking at him. Instead, I head into the laundry room, where I can still hear the machine whirring. The timer says it has twenty more minutes.

Just great.

Walking back into the kitchen, Gavin appraises me while standing in the same position.

“I made you a sandwich. It’s in the fridge,” I tell him and sit back down on the stool again, resting my chin on my hand. “I still have twenty minutes before your last load of laundry is done, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Go lie down on the couch and sleep for twenty minutes then,” he demands of me again.

“No, thanks,” I say, refusing to look at him, even as my eyes start to droop.

“For fuck’s sake,” I hear him grumble. The next thing I know, one of his arms is sliding under my legs, the other behind my back, and he’s lifting me from the stool.

“Gavin,” I yelp in surprise as he carries me into the living room, I’m sure to deposit me on the couch. “I don’t need to sleep. I can do that when I get home.”

“Just shut up, Savannah. For once, your mouth isn’t so sweet,” he growls at me, and then bends over to lay me on the couch with surprising tenderness.

I start to sit up the minute his arms release me, but he does nothing more than put his large hand in the center of my chest and push me back down. Whereas ten seconds ago, I felt bone weary with exhaustion, the warmth of his hand through my T-shirt causes my pulse to speed up. I struggle for just a moment, attempting to continue my rise, but his brute force wins out and he pushes me all the way back down.

“If you don’t lie down, I’m going to lie down on top of you and pin you there. Now which do you want?”

“Fine,” I huff out just to get him to leave, because there’s nothing appealing about him laying his body over mine, right? “Just until the laundry is done. Now go eat your sandwich and get back to work. I’ll see you next week, okay?”

He stares at me a moment, his lips curved up in amusement. “Sure thing, Sweet. See you next week.”

Gavin turns away and heads back into the kitchen. I close my eyes, and I’m immediately out.





What the fuck are you doing, Cooke? I ask myself for about the hundredth time as I watch Savannah sleeping on my couch. The sun has gone down, and she’s been out for a solid nine hours. I’ve never seen anyone sleep that hard before. She hasn’t moved a muscle… at least not as far as I can tell.

After I deposited her on the couch, I ate my sandwich and went back to work, banging out another three thousand words before dinnertime. I came back downstairs, expecting to see the couch vacated, but she was still flat on her back, one arm resting over her stomach where her T-shirt had ridden up just enough to give me a tiny peek at the smooth flesh. Her long legs were bare as she was wearing a pair of denim shorts today because the weather is quite mild. My fucking fingers itched to touch her, but I shook my head to clear it of such ludicrous thoughts and went into the kitchen to heat the Mexican casserole she left me.