She smiled, a beautiful smile, and moved her head closer to kiss him.
“Well, if that’s how you thank me for compliments,” he said a breathless minute later, “I’ll be sure to hand them out like candy.”
She laughed and touched his nose with her fingertip. “Don’t ruin it.”
She cupped his cheek and kissed him again. Then she rolled back a little and sighed.
He knew what she was thinking: time to get back to work.
She was right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “I wish that shower was bigger,” he remarked, holding off the inevitable moment.
“You take one first. I’ll go make some more coffee. I think we’re going to need it.”
“Someday I’d like to get off the hyped-up-on-caffeine train. Just for a few days.”
She laughed again and rolled out of bed, stretching before she reached for her clothes. He could have watched her do that forever. “Do you really think,” she asked, “that you’d be happy sitting on a beach with nothing to do?”
“Hell, yeah, for a few days.”
But she was right and he knew it. He watched her pull on her robe, jam her feet into slippers and head for the kitchen. They were both action junkies. It would make for an interesting relationship.
If they had one.
Because there was one little thing about DeeJay that had begun to niggle at him. No matter how close they got, he felt as if she were maintaining a distance. This close and no closer. He’d left her alone the past few days, much as he wanted her, because he hoped she’d open up in some way. But she hadn’t approached him. Hadn’t asked him.
DeeJay, he realized, was keeping all her walls up, and she hadn’t really begun to lower the drawbridge. He was beginning to feel like a handy roll in the hay.
Chapter 11
Night had settled over the world with an almost surreal quietness. If anyone was out and about, the snow effectively muffled any sounds they might have made. DeeJay made coffee and hunted up the coffee cake Cade had bought before the storm and put it out. If they were going to be up for a while, they needed some energy.
Not that they seemed to have lacked any in bed. She smiled to herself as she puttered, realizing that she had liked the way they had rushed. It had been exciting to be so unconstrained, to just give in to the most basic needs. She felt amazingly relaxed and sated now. Maybe it would get her through a few more hours of dealing with this case before she got tightly wound again.
But now that she knew for certain that Cade still wanted her, she felt she had something to look forward to, instead of just dreading what might happen next.
When he entered the kitchen to join her, he was wearing jeans, socks and a green flannel shirt that hung open. He brought his own coffee to the table and sat facing her.
She was already beginning to work with her tablet, but he startled her by reaching out and running his fingertip over the back of her hand. She looked up.
“Before we take the plunge again, I wanted to tell you how wonderful that was.”
She felt her cheeks heat faintly and returned his smile. “It was every bit of that.”