“How about”—he turned his head and returned the kiss—“while I make coffee, you get ready so we can go to breakfast?”
His hand was on her hip, his thumb drawing figure eights on her hip bone, and his eyes were locked on hers. Between all of that, she was powerless to say no to anything he asked.
After breakfast at Drew’s favorite diner, they stumbled back into his apartment and collapsed on the couch.
“Good Lord, why have you never taken me to that place before?” Alexa asked him. “I’ve never had pancakes that good.”
He laughed.
“I knew you’d like the pancakes, even though the biscuits are my favorite.”
He pulled out her ponytail so he could run his fingers through her hair, and she sighed and rested her head against his shoulder.
“Monroe?”
She turned and smiled at him, but she looked anxious again, like she had the night before.
Maybe she needed to get work done? Yeah, that was probably it. She always needed to get work done.
“I was maybe going to go for a run. Did you . . . is that cool? You’ll be okay here for a while, right?”
She turned away from him and sat up.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I can get some work done while you’re gone.”
Yeah, he’d figured. He kissed her again as he stood up to go change into his running clothes. When he came back into the living room, her laptop was on her lap and she had that worried look on her face again. Still.
“Everything okay?”
She jumped at the sound of his face and looked up.
“Oh . . . yeah, fine. Just checking my email.”
He didn’t quite believe that. He wanted to sit down next to her and ask more questions, find out what was really upsetting her. Or was it that she would rather email with her buddy Theo than talk to him? But her eyes were back on her screen, not him. He’d been dismissed.
“Okay. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Okay.” She didn’t look up as he shut the door.
Had he wanted her to go running with him? And had he changed his mind once he looked at her? Did he want to say that they should both go running after eating all that food but decided that would hurt her feelings? Why had she been so filled with hope when he said “Monroe?” like that? What did she think he was going to say?
Was she going to drive herself insane asking herself questions like this all weekend? Signs point to yes.
She took a shower to clear her head, pulled on a tank top and yoga pants, and got back on the couch to check her email for real.
Forty-five minutes later, he burst through the front door, his face pink, his shirt sticking to his chest, and holy shit, she wanted to pull his clothes off immediately.
“How was your run?” she asked him.
He tugged his shirt off and wiped his face with it. Now she really couldn’t stop staring at him.
“You changed.” His chest was glistening, and his dark brown chest hairs stuck to his body. And those shorts . . . Did he have anything on under those shorts? She put her laptop on the coffee table.
“Mmmhmm, I took a shower.”
He kicked his shoes into the corner of the room and took a step toward her.
“If you keep looking at me that way, I’m going to pull you into the shower with me in about thirty seconds flat.”
With him closer to her now, her head was just about even with his waist.
“Ten seconds.”