Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
A hat trick would no longer give Robbie the ultimate high ever again. Nope. This was it now. Skylar looking up at him like he was Superman. Someday maybe their kids would look up at him the same way. Like he could do anything. And suddenly, he could. This was another facet of being in love. It put a man in permanent beast mode.
“I can’t wait to tell Mailer,” he said to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
They were almost to the house when she reached up to brush her fingers against his jawline. “Thank God you came back.”
His stomach bottomed out and he had to stop walking for a full ten seconds.
What if he hadn’t come back?
“Sorry, I . . . maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” His arms were shaking around Skylar and she had the audacity to seem surprised about that. “I think maybe we both need that hot shower.”
“Mm” was all he could manage.
This time, when she wiggled in his arms, he had no choice but to let her stand.
They walked up the front steps in a huddle.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Skylar had been shaken up like a martini at the Gilded Garden and dumped into a transparent glass, her feelings on full display. No hiding. No stiff upper lip. Was it residual fear or the immensity of her relief—or possibly a combination of the two—causing the giddy desperation that coursed through her body while Robbie worked the faucets of the shower, holding out his hand to test the water temperature?
She didn’t know, but the need to touch him was so fierce, she put her hands behind her back. When had he become this . . . this rock? Her rock?
Over the course of the week, she’d started to depend on him. Of course she had. This was her teammate in the Page Stakes, not to mention her partner in a romantic deception in which they no longer seemed to be participating. Right? And Skylar had always been her own rock and in a lot of ways that would never, ever change, but God . . . Robbie’s every action since he’d shown up this morning had been heroic. Decisive. Mature.
Scary.
This Robbie was scary.
In the sense that she was now experiencing a deep need to be touched by him. To feel his presence as closely as possible. His heat, his strength, his Robbie-ness that seemed to correspond to her emotional highs and lows intuitively. Was it possible she was romanticizing him because he’d quite possibly saved her from a watery death?
Did she love Robbie and not Madden?
Or was she just shaken up? Confused?
Was she letting her attraction to this man increasingly cloud her judgment?
Finally, Robbie nodded with satisfaction over the water temperature and made a no-nonsense gesture. “In you go, Rocket. Please.”
She nodded and dropped the towel, immediately wrapping her arms around herself to combat the lack of warmth. Robbie made a gruff sound and ushered her into the steamy shower stall, releasing an exhale of clear relief when she stepped beneath the spray and moaned. After taking a few seconds to revel in the heat permeating her bones, she looked toward the still-open glass door to find Robbie watching her with his forearms propped high on the top of the shower frame, his chest dipping and rising slowly.
“You warm yet, Skylar? You feeling better?”
“Yes. I promise.”
His eyes closed briefly and he let out a slow breath, relief softening his gaze when he looked at her again. “That bathing suit is so you.”
“It’s scientifically proven to add speed,” she murmured into the shower spray.
His lips jumped. “Thanks for making my point for me.”
Skylar turned a little in a shameless attempt to draw his attention to her butt—and it worked, his eyes going smoky, a muscle leaping in his jaw. “I have a cuter one I wear when I’m not trying to crush my competition and accidentally drowning instead.”
He winced, paled slightly. “Could you stop bringing that up?”
“Sorry.”
Robbie clenched his eyes closed and shook his head hard, as if trying to banish the last half hour from his mind. “What does this other bathing suit look like . . . and did you pack it?”
“I did pack it, actually. It’s turquoise with white hibiscus flowers on it.”
Robbie hummed in his throat. “I can’t picture it. Going to need to see it in person, I’m afraid.”
His gravelly tone caused a tautness in Skylar’s lower body. A pull. “Maybe.”
He simply made eye contact. The kind that made her sound breathless when she said, “I thought we decided you needed to warm up, too.”
“I can’t get in there with you.”
“Why not?”
“It’d be a tight squeeze, for one.” The muscles of his abdomen flexed and held, his gaze tracking up and down her thighs. “Two, I don’t know what’s going to happen if I touch you, but I doubt I’d be able to stop. And as bad as I want to get my hands on you, I’ve got an inconvenient need to know where we stand. Let’s label this relationship, girl—”