The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance by Katherine Logan (comprehension books .TXT) 📗

the room to pick up her T-shirt and slipped it on. “Don’t get me wrong. My preference is to stay right here with you. But Remy is such a fabulous cook, and my mouth is already watering.”

“It’s not watering in anticipation of eating me up?”

“It’s hard to tell the difference right now—you or steak. My salivary glands are in overdrive.”

Austin unbuckled his belt, unzipped his trousers, and pushed the khakis down over his hips. She licked her lips and just kept licking, waiting for the black boxer briefs to hit the floor. But he surprised her by wearing them to the bathroom.

“If you want to see more, you have to come in here with me.”

She followed him but stopped at the door. “We’d save time if we showered together. Right?”

He turned on the water and dropped his briefs. “We could try.”

She slapped her hand over her eyes. “I can’t unsee that. How am I going to sit still through dinner now?”

He stepped into the stream of water, whistling, but paused long enough to say, “The same way I will. Uncomfortably.”

He was in and out in ten minutes, but her turn took much longer.

Thirty minutes later, Ensley was wearing her new black fit-and-flare sundress and strappy four-inch sandals, her hair falling halfway down her back. She left the bathroom feeling like the brooch gods had—this time—dropped her into the middle of paradise.

And, man, she was thrilled to be here.

Austin was sitting at the desk, scrolling through his phone. He cocked his head and gazed at her. “Wow! You look gorgeous, rested, and happy.”

She glided toward him, doing her best runway sashay. “We’re late for dinner.”

His sun-kissed hair was still damp, and he’d cropped his beard stubble close. Sexy in a way she couldn’t ignore and didn’t want to. And although they didn’t have time, she delighted in teasing him and watching his pupils dilate.

He put his phone away. “I sent Remy a text and told him we’d be there in ten minutes and not to overcook our steaks.”

She stopped and did a pivot turn, her full skirt swinging around her legs. “So we have a few extra minutes.”

“Shit!” he said under his breath. “Ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten years—still not enough time to do what I want to do.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, and his gaze traveled the length of her body. “With those killer sandals, you’ve got legs up the wazoo!”

She struck a practiced pose that accentuated the legs he kept ogling.

“Come closer.”

She did but stayed out of reach and twirled again. This time, the dress swung higher.

“Man! When I saw you in the locker room without anything on, it blew my mind, and that mental picture has fueled my fantasies. But the way you look when you twirl and your dress teases your upper thighs, and your hair swirls around you, makes me want to use your hair in ways nature didn’t intend.”

“So you’re saying you want to replace a mental image of a naked me with one that only hints at possibilities?”

He ducked his head and then shot her a shy look. “My mind does continue to play the naked picture.”

“It does, huh?”

“Yep! On a continuous loop.”

“Well… I’m not sure what to say about that.”

He reached out, put his hands on her hips, and pulled her close enough to stand between his legs. “You’ve got an amazing body, and right now you look like a MacKlenna woman, all hot and sexy and loving”—he moved his hands to span her belly—“and I can easily see you pregnant.”

She cupped the sides of his face. “Is that good or bad?”

“For me, it’s good, but I don’t know how you feel about kids.”

She fingered the longer hair on the front of his head, sweeping it off his forehead. “I grew up as an only child with only a few cousins I saw once a year. I always said that when I married, I’d have four or five kids. How about you?”

“Five. I’d want a full team.”

“Shouldn’t you have substitute players?”

“They’ll have to depend on a cousin or two.”

“We haven’t had sex, you haven’t proposed, and we’re talking about how many kids we’re going to have. Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse?”

“This was all foreordained by the brooches.”

“Don’t we get a say?”

“I don’t think so. Do you want one?”

“One what? A say or a proposal?”

“Either one.”

“Well, then. I want a proposal, but not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want a real one. A down-on-your-knee proposal. One that you have to think about, and find the perfect words for, and write them down, and scratch through them, and write them again and again until they say just what’s in your heart. And I don’t think you know that yet.”

“Okay. But I won’t let you edit it.”

“Well, I hope not. Ask Jack Mallory. He planned and executed the perfect proposal on the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium.”

Austin smiled. “You want me to propose at Yankee Stadium?”

“No. I want it to happen at a place that’s special to us. And we don’t know where that is yet. I think we’re doing this all ass-backward and inside out.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think there are any rules written in stone. How about we continue this conversation between our lovemaking sessions later tonight?”

“Why?”

“Because we’re getting close to using up our extra ten minutes?”

“You won’t forget?”

“Excuse me? Forget? I’m like an elephant. I never forget anything. I can tell you how many points I scored in the last game of my senior year in high school.”

“I can tell you how long my last bull ride was. Some things are too memorable to forget. Now let’s go to dinner. We’ll be sociable, and when we can’t stand it another minute, we can rush back up here and figure out how to make this work.”

He kissed the top of her head, and she wrapped her arms around him, around his steel-cut muscles. He smelled masculine and familiar and sexy, and being with him was