“There’s my girl.”
And wasn’t that exactly how he thought of her? she thought with a slippery mix of temper and disappointment. Just one of his girls.
“Go, sleep off your buzz, and no more sneaking around.”
“Where are you going?” he asked as she walked away.
“Where I please.”
She usually did, he mused, and it was one of the most appealing things about her. Unless you considered how her ass looked in short red boxers.
Which he wasn’t. Exactly. He was just making sure she was steady on her feet. And on her really excellent legs.
Deliberately, he turned away and walked up the stairs to the third floor. He turned toward Parker’s wing, and opened the door to the room that had been his as a child, a boy, a young man.
It wasn’t the same. He didn’t expect it to be or want it to be. If things didn’t change, they became stagnant and stale. The walls, a soft, foggy green now, displayed clever paintings in simple frames rather than the sports posters of his youth. The bed, a gorgeous old four-poster, had been his grandmother’s. Continuity, he thought, wasn’t the same as stagnation.
He pulled change and keys out of his pocket to toss them on the dish set on the bureau, then caught sight of himself in the mirror.
His shirt was ripped at the shoulder, his hair disordered, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he could see the faint mark where Laurel’s knuckles had connected with his cheekbone.
She’d always been tough, he thought as he toed off his shoes. Tough, strong, and damn near fearless. Most women would’ve screamed, wouldn’t they? But not Laurel—she fought. Push her, she pushed back. Harder.