Garrett’s voice was deceptively calm when she reached into her drawer again.
“Did you really think I’d look away, Kate?”
Kate’s stomach clenched, but she went about the task of selecting a T-shirt.
And now she could feel his eyes were definitely on her.
Boring holes into her bottom, actually.
And suddenly she really prayed that it was, indeed, a very nice bottom.
“Please don’t tell me you were looking,” she threatened, starting to panic. She broke out into a fresh sweat as the fever continued dropping after her bath.
As she grabbed a T-shirt with a Minnie Mouse image on the front and pulled it on, she heard a deep male groan.
“Freckles, I’m not made of stone you know.”
Garrett sounded grumpy, as if he was in danger of getting strep, too.
“Really? I thought you were.” Instead of being embarrassed, she was suddenly amused as she pulled the T-shirt as low as possible and turned around. But her smile froze on her face.
Garrett sat like a marble statue on the chair, his muscled arms crossed, his forearms corded with veins, his lips hard and completely unsmiling. His face was harsh with intensity, and his eyes were the blackest she’d ever seen them. There was such an unearthly sheen in them, Kate stopped breathing.
They stared at each other for a heart-stopping moment, and the atmosphere seemed to morph, becoming heavy and thick with something inexplicable. There was a deeper significance to their stare that she couldn’t quite pinpoint, but it felt like a delicate thread between them was pulling tight.
It hurt. This strange link. It felt threatening.
It hurt, and ached in all kinds of places inside her.
Garrett put his forehead in his hand for a moment, then sighed and ran a big, tanned hand down his face in pure frustration. “Look, Katie.”
“Look, Garrett, you need to stop this now.”
“Stop what?”
They stared once more, and the atmosphere in the room continued feeling heavy and odd. Kate’s nerves could barely handle it.
“I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work,” she finally said.
His eyes remained almost predatory in their intensity. Finally he raised one sleek black eyebrow. “My plot to save the world, to keep Kate in Texas, won’t work, even if I put in some good hours of doctoring time?”
“It won’t work.”
“So you didn’t mean it the night of my birthday when you said that we would talk about it later?”
“We’d both been drinking. Whatever we said that night was the alcohol talking.”
“All right, so today the strep is talking. When is Kate going to talk to me?”
“I’m talking to you now.”
His eyebrows fell low over his eyes. His shirt stretched over his square shoulders as he sat back, his muscled arms still crossed over his chest. “Then tell me if you’re leaving because of a man. First. And second, you’re going to tell me who.”
“Ha. This is my house. I run it. So I say who has firsts and seconds here, not you.”
She bent to put on some socks. A rivulet of water slid along her toned legs, and when she straightened, she saw his eyes had darkened even more. He continued to stare at her legs for a wildly erotic moment.
Her pulse jumped at the thought of him touching her—of him even wanting to touch her—and her hands trembled as she bent her head and slowly wrapped the discarded towel around her wet hair.
When she straightened, Garrett’s expression had turned bleak as a funeral, and he pushed to his feet, stalking over like a pissed-off predator. “What do you need so you can get back in the damned bed, Kate?”
“I don’t want to get into bed. I’ve been there all day. My fever is dropping and I’m sweating. I feel hot.”
“Then put something on, would you!” He signaled at her long legs, and a wash of feminine awareness swept through her when his eyes raked her up and down as if he couldn’t help himself.
She laughed nervously and glanced away so that he wouldn’t notice his effect on her; then she hopped into a comfortable pair of white cotton shorts she used for yoga sometimes.
Garrett seemed completely disturbed and grumpy...but more than that, he seemed alert. Did this mean she’d finally gotten past one of Garrett’s walls?
She almost laughed. She’d always tried many subtle ways to get his male attention. Who would have thought she just needed to do a little striptease?
It’s too late, Kate. You don’t want him anymore. You want a new start—without him.
Turning in sudden annoyance, she shoved at his chest so he stepped out of her personal space. “Just go home, Garrett. You don’t have to do this. Aren’t you working on that big deal all your brothers are talking about?”
He looked agitated and started pacing around, scowling down at the carpet. “There’s nothing I can do about it today. We’re ironing out the details.”
“Well, go iron them out somewhere else.”
“On the bed, Freckles! Unless you like your soup cold!”
With a complaining sound, Kate plopped down on the bed and crossed her legs under her body. He expelled a breath, as if finally appeased; he was just so handsome her heart ached. She propped her head back on the headboard as he brought back the tray, and she quietly studied him as he fed her.
Garrett Gage was one of the least emotionally accessible men Kate had ever met, and to see him do something so honestly sweet for her triggered a wealth of unreasonable emotions in her chest.
She didn’t want to feel giddy and protected and cared for. But she did. She felt safe. And fiercely achy for so much more. His dark espresso eyes wouldn’t stop watching her mouth as he guided the spoon inside, and out, and it made every time she wrapped her lips around the spoon unbearably...intimate.
Suddenly all she could hear was the sound of their breathing in the bedroom. Hers was not all that steady. His was inexplicably slow and deep, his chest extending slowly under his shirt as those dark, thick-lashed, half-mast eyes remained on her face.
“Poor Jules. I swear Molly doesn’t cook for anything,” Kate whispered, anxious to break the silence.
Now that she was able to taste the soup better, she definitely knew her little sister could use a little cooking advice from her.
Garrett chuckled. The sound was rich and male as he set down the spoon. “He’s in love with her, Katie. She can feed him cotton balls and he’ll be content.”