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And looking up at a most interesting view.
2
LOOKING DOWN AT the incredibly gorgeous, hot, sexy, shirtless man lying at her feet, Mimi at first thought she’d had one too many glasses of wine and was seeing things. But considering she’d only had one, she doubted she was intoxicated.
Her second thought was that she was about to be attacked.
She grabbed a vase off her dresser. It was a heavy, leaded crystal thing, that would probably crack the pervert’s skull open. She came close—so incredibly close—to dropping it on his head, when a voice whispered in her mind, He’s Mr. Hot. He was at the party. Anna knows him.
It seemed crazy to suppose that before attacking, a sexual predator ditched his clothes and socialized at parties in his victims’ backyards. So who was he?
“Who are you and what were you doing in my closet?” she asked, still not letting go of the vase.
“Your closet …?” he mumbled, rising to his hands and knees. On all fours, he turned his head from side to side, looking around the room, and added, “I’m in the wrong apartment.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Now who are you?”
He lifted his head to look up at her. And his big brown eyes—gorgeous, beautiful, velvety-brown eyes that were ringed by the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man—got even wider.
That was when she remembered she was naked but for her bra. And that he was kneeling at her feet. About eye level with.
“Oh, my God,” she groaned, lunging for her dresser. She plopped the vase on it, grabbed her robe and thrust her arms inside, quickly wrapping it around her body.
She couldn’t stop shaking. Adrenaline had put her on high alert. Now humiliation and embarrassment were doing their darnedest to make her quiver into a ball of mush.
Had she really just flashed her goodies to a complete stranger? And, for the briefest, most wicked second, had she not been tantalized by the image of that incredibly hot, sexy stranger moving a few inches closer for a more intimate look?
She’d been in here planning to seduce a nice man she’d been dating and was about as aroused as a stick of wood. But playing a Sharon Stone-type game of peek-a-crotch with a gorgeous mystery man got her all warm and melty down there?
She clenched her thighs together. Yeah. Warm and melty. Like chocolate left in the sun.
Just waiting to be tasted.
She winced and clenched harder. What on earth was wrong with her? “This can’t be happening,” she said with a moan.
“Tell me about it.”
The stranger, all slick-skinned, broad-chested and rippling muscles, slowly rose to his feet. He continued to look around the room, shaking his head slowly, as if in a daze.
Up close, he was more attractive—not to mention at least twenty degrees hotter—than he had been from across the party. His jaw was so square, his face so lean and masculine. Such masculinity shouldn’t have looked right with the accompanying long lashes and the downright full lips, but managed to come across as perfect.
“This really isn’t my bedroom.” He still sounded thoroughly confused.
“I think we’ve established that. It’s my bedroom. Did you not happen to notice the pink sheets and lingerie?”
Of course he noticed the lingerie, idiot.
Feeling her face flame, and the rest of her get a little warmer, too, she tightened her arms around her waist, conscious of how silky and thin the robe was. Could he see the pucker of her nipples against the cloth? Was there any way he could tell that her thighs were quivering and she badly wanted to lean against the edge of the bed for support?
“I noticed,” he admitted, his eyes darkening.
She licked her lips, reminded herself to breathe. “How did you get in here?” It made no sense. Hadn’t he been outside at the party when she’d entered the screen porch? And while she’d left the door unlocked on the way out earlier, she’d flipped the lock when coming back in.
He lifted his hand, showing her a small key.
She gaped. “Where did you get that?”
“From Anna. I locked myself out of my apartment.”
All the breath left her lungs as she suddenly realized who he was. Not some random, lost party guest. Not a drunk who might forget this night ever happened. Not a handsome stranger she would never have to see again. No. She’d just come face-to-coochie with her new next-door neighbor.
“You’re 1B,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?”
“The new tenant across the hall in 1B.”
He slowly nodded. “Yeah. I moved in today. And, uh, am I to understand that you’re 1A?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated a long moment.
“Well, uh … nice to meet you?”
The guy had just been kneeling face-level with her—fortunately neatly trimmed—va-jay-jay and all he could manage was nice to meet you? Where the hell was the sorry I was creeping in your closet and spying on you naked?
“Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?”
A slow, lazy grin tugged at his lips and he glanced down at her robe-covered body. “Uh, really nice to meet you?”
She reached for the vase again.
He held a hand up, palm out. “Sorry. But, I mean, you gotta admit, that first meeting is going to be hard to top.” He glanced at her thong, still lying on the floor between them. His stare grew a little more heated. “Not to mention bottom.”
She growled. Literally. “Just how long were you watching?”
“Long enough to wonder if you’re dating a eunuch.”
“What?”
“Hey, only a guy with no balls wouldn’t like the way you looked in that thong.”
Her face reddened and she was torn between thanking him or kicking him. Not only had he seen her—lots of her—but he’d obviously heard her talking to herself. Hopefully he hadn’t arrived in time to hear her ask the pretend Dimitri in the mirror if he was into anything naughty and kinky.
Hmm. Wonder if 1B is?
She swallowed the lump in her throat, wishing her brain would stop tossing out these sexy curveballs. She was on the straight-and-narrow, nice-guy-and-a-future path, please-her-father-and-show-him-she-could-do-his-job path. She didn’t need any distractions, physically or mentally.
“What were you doing, anyway? Going through your underwear wardrobe, trying to figure out what to wear to entice him?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He ignored her. “Because, honey, just saying yes would be enough enticement for any heterosexual guy on the planet.”
Pleasure curled in her when she noted his sincerity. But she crushed it out, remembering she didn’t like this man who’d spied on her and gotten two eyes full of her private parts. Not to mention she’d sworn off hot men and this one was so on fire he should have a smoke detector strapped around his chest.
Offering her a sheepish grin, he added, “Look, I’m really sorry I spied on you. I wasn’t there for more than a minute. To be honest, I was caught off guard. I just didn’t know what to do.”
“Going back out the way you came in would have been good.”
“I thought this was my apartment. But I was going to leave anyway. Then I, uh, opened my eyes and saw you drop your pants.”
He’d closed his eyes? Cute.
Well, cute until she thought about what he’d opened them to see. She glanced down at her thong, lying there between them, a small green circle that looked like a Go sign. Grabbing at the flimsy material with her toes, she yanked back the thong, hiding it beneath the folds of her robe.
His lips twitched.
“And instead of leaving, you decided to introduce yourself?” she snapped, more flustered than before.
“Instinct. I just wanted to stop you.”
“From doing what? Changing my underwear?”
“I thought you were in my bedroom, remember?”
“Okay, still, what was the big emergency? Were you afraid I was going to leap on your bed and roll around naked, and you wanted to make sure I didn’t dirty your sheets?”
That image hit both of them, her words hanging there in the empty air. She suddenly pictured rolling around in the sheets with this man, getting hot, sweaty, dirty. Doing all kinds of wild things that had never even crossed her mind when she’d begun planning a seduction for tonight. Because, deep down, when she’d voiced that pretty/sexy/kinky question to the invisible Dimitri, she’d already known the answer—pretty. Soft, sweet and romantic, that was Dimitri’s style. He was a missionary guy all the way, she’d bet her last dollar on it.
One B? Well, he looked like he’d be up for about anything.
It all came back to that camel-in-the-desert question—was she looking for a canteen or an oasis?
She breathed deeper, willing her heart to slow down. It wasn’t as if she could lie down and drink from the delicious waters of this particular oasis—she didn’t even know this guy!
He, meanwhile, lifted a hand and rubbed his lightly grizzled jaw. She heard the faint rasp of it and suddenly had the image of those unshaven cheeks brushing against her skin. His eyes gleamed as he glanced at her bed—prettily rumpled, the comforter turned down, the pink sheets soft and inviting. She trembled, remembering that ten minutes ago she’d been imagining asking Dimitri to share that bed. Right now, though, she was practically thinking, Dimitri? Who’s Dimitri?
“I wasn’t really thinking,” he finally admitted. “I guess I just didn’t want to be the kind of guy who’d watch something like that and then skulk away like some kind of pervert.”
“So you lunge out and terrify me instead?”
“You didn’t look that terrified, and I didn’t lunge.”
“I was scared to death, and that was some serious lunging.”
“I had my hands up to try to block the view.”
“You should have watched where you were going, then maybe you wouldn’t have tripped and landed at my feet.”
Those lips quirked into a grin. “My intentions were good.”
“The results weren’t.”
“Says you.” He shrugged. “Hey, there are only so many things I can apologize for, and landing at the feet of a beautiful, nearly naked woman ain’t one of them.”
He was staring again. Not at the bed this time, but at her. His dark eyes traveled from her bare throat, down to the V in her robe, then farther. As if he liked what he’d seen, and wanted to see a whole lot more.
She reached out and grabbed the edge of her dresser, willing her legs to stop shaking.
“Did I really terrify you?” he asked, his voice lowering to a thick whisper. “I am sorry about that.”
“My heart’s still racing,” she admitted.
He didn’t ask her to evaluate whether that thumping in her chest was caused by fear … or something else. She didn’t ask herself to, either.
“Well, you came across as anything but frightened,” he told her, eyeing the vase. “I thought you were going to brain me.”
“It was a close call.”
“What stopped you?”
“Your bare chest.”
Oh, crap, had she really said that?
Laughter burst from him. “So you can notice I’m not wearing a shirt, but I’m not allowed to notice your lack of underpants?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I think you have to agree that pantsless woman trumps shirtless man in terms of intimate exposure.”
“I’ll give you that.”
How magnanimous. “And I meant,” she clarified, “I saw you outside with Anna. You were hard to miss, with no shirt and no shoes. You two looked friendly, so I figured you must know her.”
“Gotcha,” he said. Then he turned to face the closet. “I obviously misheard our landlady’s directions. I could have sworn she told me to come through the screen porch and take the door on the left.” He frowned. “Actually, at first, I thought I heard her say the right one, then she definitely said left. So maybe she was the confused one.”
Or maybe not. Mimi considered the prophetic statement Anna had made a little while ago about a half-naked man tripping at her feet. It was as if she’d known this jeans-wearing three-alarm fire in human form would emerge into her bedroom, trip and land on the floor before her. It couldn’t have worked out better if Anna had been there to stick her foot in his path to make him fall.
Aside from being a landlady, Anna also sometimes did some fortune-telling. She read tarot cards and tea leaves, operating out of a local mystic’s shop, doing readings under the name Madame Titania. Mimi had always considered it just good fun, nothing really “woo-woo” about it. Now, though. Well, it was interesting, to say the least.
Whether she’d seen something in Mimi’s future or not, Anna was probably doing some matchmaking, and had intentionally given 1B the wrong directions. She just hadn’t realized that her new tenant wouldn’t be the only one half-naked. Though, to be honest, Mimi had been more than half. She’d been three quarters of the way there.
Maybe seven eighths.
She took some small comfort in the fact that she’d still been wearing a bra when he’d seen her. She just wished that if she’d only been allowed to have on one piece of clothing when he’d stumbled in on her, it would have been the damn robe.
“Anna might have gotten a little turned around,” she said, not wanting to speculate to this stranger about their landlady’s motives. That would open up other questions—like why Anna felt the need to matchmake for her when Mimi had a date standing out in the backyard, probably wondering what on earth had happened to her. A date she was planning to have sex with tonight.
