He manfully held in his wince. He hated sushi. “Your choice,” he said again.

“But you hate sushi.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because your eyes grimaced. Why would you agree to sushi if you hate it?”

He was starting to get a headache. “Because when I said your choice, I meant it. Are we going to argue about that too? And if so, can it wait until I get some food?”

“Sure. How about Thai?” she asked and studied his face carefully.

He gave her his best blank face. He wasn’t crazy about Thai either but now his eye was full-out twitching. “Thai it is,” he said. “You ready?”

She went hands on hips. “You don’t like Thai either? What’s wrong with you?”

“Many, many things,” he said, wondering when she’d come to be able to read him so damn clearly that he couldn’t hide a thing from her. “Can we go now?”

“Italian. Indian. Taco Bell.”

A laugh escaped him. “Yes.”

“Which?”

“Willa, if you get your sweet little ass on the move, I’ll take you to all of them.”

She bit her lower lip and stared at him, her eyes bright.

Not moving.

“Babe,” he said. “What?”

“I want to go somewhere you want to go,” she said. “Can we make it your choice?”

What he wanted was to go to her bed. Directly and without passing Go. He wanted to strip her out of every stitch of clothing and feast on her.

For a week.

Some of that must have shown on his face because she blushed to her roots. “Pizza,” she said quickly. “Pizza work for you?”

“Thank Christ, yes,” he said.

She nodded and then hesitated.

“What now?” he asked.

“You ever going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’m getting pizza and beer.” And you, he thought. “What could be wrong? Come on.” He reached for her hand, but she evaded with a low laugh.

“I can’t go like this,” she said. “I have to change first.”

“I like what you’re wearing.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “Throw on sweats and call it good.”

“Did you come through the pub?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because then people saw you. People like Spence and Archer. Maybe Elle too, if she was still there. And trust me, they watched you leave and saw that you weren’t leaving at all, that you came upstairs. They’re going to gossip about it, and then tomorrow I’ll be interrogated by the girls. Did I let you in? Did you stay? And what was I wearing? And I’ll be damned, Keane, if I tell them that I was wearing sweats.”

He blinked. He didn’t quite follow. In fact, he needed to buy a vowel but he nodded gamely, willing to agree to anything to get food. “Okay.”

“Okay.” She vanished into her bedroom.

 

 

Chapter 20

 

#WithASideOfCrazy

Willa ran into her bedroom and startled Petunia, who was sleeping on her bed. “Sorry, don’t mind me,” she said to the cat and yanked off her clothes. She pulled on a pair of jeans that weren’t comfortable but they gave her a good butt, and a soft green Christmas sweater that had a reindeer on the front, and fell to her thighs.

Which made the good-butt jeans unnecessary.

She peeled them off and tried a pair of black leggings instead.

Now she just looked a little lazy.

“Shit.” She stripped again and started over.

And then over again.

Ten minutes later she’d tried on everything in her closet—which was now in a pile on her bed in front of Petunia—and she was in her bra and panties and starting to panic.

Nothing worked.

She swore a bunch more and started pawing through everything she’d already discarded on her bed, telling herself it was silly to be hung up on this. Silly and ridiculous and asinine and stupid—

“Willa,” Keane called out, his voice shockingly close, like maybe he was heading down the hall toward her bedroom. “What are you doing, sewing a brand-new outfit?” His voice was right outside her door now.

With a squeak, she grabbed up her huge sweatshirt and held it in front of her. “Don’t rush me!”

He poked his head into the room, eyes half amused, half male frustration. There was at least a day of scruff on his jaw and it was sexy as hell, damn him.

A fact that only served to annoy her.

He rubbed his belly like it was hollow. And hell, with those ridged muscles and not an ounce of fat anywhere on him, it probably was hollow.

“I’ve been waiting for hours,” he said, petting Petunia when she meandered over to him for a scratch.

“It’s been ten minutes,” Willa said.

“Feels like hours.” Keane pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes like he was trying to hold them into the sockets. “You ready?”

She tore her gaze off his lifted arms and the way his biceps and broad shoulders and back muscles strained the material of his shirt. “Almost,” she said a little thickly.

Or not even close.

Reading her expression, he groaned and then looked around her room. “Did a bomb go off in here?”

She eyed the mess. “Maybe.”

“You’ve got a lot of clothes and”—his gaze locked and snagged on a lacy bra and undies—“stuff.” Then he saw the secondary pile on the club chair in the corner. “Holy shit,” he said. “How many clothes have you tried on?”

“All of them!” she said. Maybe yelled. And then glared at him to see if he so much as dared to crack a smile. “I’ve got nothing to wear.”

He once again took in the huge piles of clothing all over the place. “Okaaaaaay . . .”

She sighed.

He cut his eyes to hers, rubbing his jaw. The sound of his callused fingers against the scruff gave her a zing straight to her good parts.

And she’d had no idea she had so many.

“It’s just pizza,” he said.

“And here I’m scrambling to look hot enough to ruin you.”

He smiled at that. “Willa, I fantasize about you. A lot. And I’m good at it too. You should know that you and your daily hotness have already ruined me.”