Then I whispered, “Okay.”

Brock had no response. He just held tight. He did this for a long time. Long enough for me to relax in his arms. Long enough for my fingers to uncurl and then settle flat on his warm, hard chest. Long enough for me to realize that cosmopolitans on a back deck at a really bad baby shower with girls who were good to the core and wanted the best for me didn’t shed even a little light on what I had on that couch in that moment. The only people who knew what was happening there were Brock and me.

And after that time went by, he pushed up, grabbed his beer then settled with his back to the couch, his head to my toss pillows at the armrest, me mostly on his body, his beer in his hand resting on his chest and when I lifted my head to look at him, I saw his quicksilver eyes on me.

Then he muttered, “All right, babe, now tell me about Kentucky.”

I bit my lip.

Brock grinned.

I quit biting my lip and grinned back.

Then I whispered, “I have to take my contacts out and get my glasses.”

His eyes went warm and his mouth got soft as his arm around me loosened and he whispered back, “All right, darlin’, I’ll be right here.”

That made me grin again.

Then I jumped up to take out my contacts and get my glasses.

Chapter Six

Drawback Cancelled

“Fuck,” I heard muttered and my eyes drifted open to see Brock’s tee-covered chest.

We were still tangled together on the couch. Apparently we fell asleep there because early morning sun was shining through the blinds.

I also knew that it was morning because I could hear Fiona Apple singing “Fast as You Can” coming from my bedroom and I knew my alarm had gone off.

“Damn,” I mumbled, shifting and preparing to push up, getting a knee underneath me and a hand in the cushion when suddenly two strong arms locked around me, I found my soft body colliding with Brock’s hard one, his hand slid up into my hair and it guided my mouth to his.

Then he kissed me, long, sweet, deep and wet.

My toes curled, my belly got warm and my body melted into his as one of my hands slid up his neck into his hair curling around the back and holding on.

When he broke the kiss, my head lifted away an inch, my eyes lazily opened and I heard Fiona Apple was getting way louder (and I didn’t care).

“You passed out before we got to the fun stuff, babe,” Brock informed me in a deep, sexy, sleepy, rough whisper.

“I did?” I asked.

“Yeah,” I watched his mouth grin, “right in the middle of talkin’ you just faded away.”

Crap.

How embarrassing.

I stared in his sexy, sleepy eyes and bit my lip.

Brock’s eyes dropped to my mouth.

Then I found myself on my back in the couch, Brock on top and he was kissing me again, longer, sweeter, deeper, wetter and he added some pretty freaking great hand action.

Mm. It felt nice waking up this way.

Fiona quit singing “Fast as You Can” and “Get Gone” started sounding loud from my adamant alarm clock that was a fancy one where you could shove in an MP3 and it woke you soft and nice with music you liked but the longer you let it play, the louder it got.

And we’d let it play for a long time and Fiona’s changing tempo in “Get Gone” from sweet and melodious to pissed off and pounding was filling the house so much even Brock’s fantastic kisses couldn’t block it out.

Clearly mine couldn’t block it out for Brock either since his mouth broke from mine and he muttered, “Fuck, babe, sorry but I gotta turn that shit off.”

“Fiona Apple isn’t shit,” I told him, he gave me a look then knifed off me and prowled to my bedroom.

I watched his ass as he went thinking it would not be good if that look meant he didn’t like Fiona because I loved Fiona. It wasn’t like I played her twenty-four, seven but she got a lot of airtime in Tess O’Hara’s house.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. I was thinking about Brock and Fiona Apple but mostly I was thinking about how great his ass looked in his faded jeans.

Once I quit thinking of this (around about the time he disappeared), I looked around for my glasses, saw Brock had taken them off and put them on the table at the side of the sofa, I nabbed them, slipped them on my nose, got up and walked to the kitchen.

I was at the sink filling the coffeepot with water when he made it into the kitchen.

It took a bit of effort but I didn’t drop the glass pot into my ceramic sink when I saw a smokin’ hot, clothes disheveled, usually sexy, unruly-haired now sexier, unrulier-haired (due to sleep and my hands running through it), heavy-eyed Brock Lucas saunter into my kitchen.

Whoa.

I’d never woken up with Brock but just looking at him in the morning was nearly as good as one of his kisses.

Nearly.

I turned off the water and moved to the coffeemaker covering this reaction by asking, “Do you not like Fiona Apple?”

His response was, “Is this a deal breaker for you?”

I’d flipped up the top of the coffeemaker and turned to him while I poured the water in seeing he was preparing to open the fridge.

That was when I said, “I’ll take that as a no.”

He stood, fingers curled around the fridge’s door handle and his eyes leveled on me.

“Babe, I listen to Credence, the Eagles, Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Thorogood, shit like that and pretty much anything country if a chick ain’t singin’ it. Does that sound like a man who’d like Fiona Apple?”

“No,” I replied. “It sounds like a man in dire need of a crash course in three decades of music. The boys are back from Vietnam, Brock, follow me into the new millennium.”

He grinned at me and muttered, “Smartass,” before he opened the fridge door and stuck his head into it.

I was feeling warm gushiness in my belly due to his grin and seeing his head stuck in my fridge when I heard my cell ring.

I shoved the coffeepot under the coffeemaker and moved to my purse on the kitchen counter wondering who was calling me at that ungodly hour and why. Then I pulled out my phone, looked at the display and saw it was Martha.

Damn.

I hit the button on the screen to take the call and put it to my ear.

“Hey, honey,” I greeted. “What’s up?”

“His filthy, rusted, beat up, in desperate need of a trade up truck is still in front of your house, that’s what’s up,” was Martha’s greeting and my eyes moved out the kitchen doorframe toward the front window which was still covered by closed blinds.