“Anything for your sister.”
“Thanks.”
I held up my phone and he angled his body toward me. “How’s this? Debonair enough?”
Instead of just smiling and maybe waving like a regular person would have done, Griffin was . . . posing. His face—he was smoldering at my phone. Seriously. I thought it was going to melt in my hand. Like this was a professional photo shoot for some designer brand and he had modeling experience. Which, for all I knew, he might have. His expression was so sexy it took me a full four seconds before I finally remembered to click the button to take the picture.
“There we go!” My voice was weird and high pitched. “Alice will love this.” Saying that reminded me of the photo I’d sent her earlier. “By the way, I still have your scarf.”
While he probably didn’t understand my subject leap, he didn’t question it. “I wish I’d realized that earlier. I would have saved myself quite a bit of dignity if I’d remembered. It would have been a convenient excuse.”
If my Burberry scarf had been borrowed, I would have not forgotten it and not rested until it was returned to me. It amazed me that anybody could own so much stuff that they didn’t know when something was missing.
“It would have been much better than just tracking me down.” I said it lightly because honestly? I was nothing but flattered. “It’s in my room. I’ll go grab it.”
Most of the men I’d ever dated would have taken my words as an invitation and followed me into my bedroom. But not Griffin. He stayed put and I realized that my Things Men Should Do bar was so low that I was impressed by this small gesture.
I reminded myself of all the reasons that getting involved with him was a bad idea. That there were layers of variables that currently existed in my life, all of them lying on top of one another and tainted with the scary risk of the Crawfords discovering my true identity. Dating Griffin would just end up being a ticking-time-bomb relationship lasagna. Possibly tasty but, as he had said himself, dangerous.
But when I came back into the hallway, it was like I forgot all of my good intentions because somehow I kept forgetting just how attractive he was. He didn’t say anything, but I saw the way his eyes lit up when he saw me, the smile that hovered on his lips, and I swallowed. Hard.
The man had needed to come over to clarify my meaning about “friends” because I had been sending out all kinds of mixed signals and here I was, doing it again. I should have handed him the scarf, thanked him for coming by, and sent him on his way.
Only I didn’t do that.
Instead I held the scarf out to him and he grabbed the end closest to him. The rational thing would have been to let go.
But nobody had ever accused me of being rational.
CHAPTER NINE
Instead of asking what was wrong with me, Griffin’s eyes darkened and he tugged on the scarf, first with one hand and then the other, pulling me closer and closer to him, so close that I was practically on top of him. I didn’t resist. I couldn’t have even if I wanted to. The space between us was arcing with electricity, heating me up and making me shiver all at the same time.
I thought about trying to move away, but I didn’t. I was frozen in this spot, holding my breath. His gaze flickered from my eyes down to my mouth and my heart came to a complete halt under my rib cage.
Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me. The words thundered in my head, but he didn’t seem to hear them. My body leaned toward his, like he was still pulling me to him, even though my feet weren’t moving.
I heard the husky intake of his breath when I canted toward him again, making our chests lightly graze one another. My head felt light, my stomach doing somersaults. It reminded me of when I was a kid playing on the playground merry-go-round and had been knocked loose, landing with a thud, not able to catch my breath but still feeling like I was twirling.
He released a breath against my cheek and my skin literally ached in response, needing his touch more than anything in the world. Wanting beat hard through my veins.
This had to stop. I had to be the one to stop it.
“Thanks for lending it to me,” I said in a soft voice. I wondered if he could hear what I was actually trying to say.
“Thanks for returning it.” His voice was low, and also full of unspoken want.
Of things that had to remain unsaid.
It felt as if his nose grazed mine, but the sensation was so fleeting that I couldn’t be sure. “Just friends, huh?” he asked.
“Just friends,” I whispered. It probably would have been a lot more convincing if I could have said it in my normal voice.
Another ten seconds of this and I was going to kiss him. Which, for reasons I couldn’t currently recall, wasn’t allowed. I tried to summon up a mental image of my sister to give me strength, but all I could think about was his shoulders and how strong and broad they were. What it would feel like to run my lips across the stubble on his jawline. Whether or not his hair was soft.
No! I couldn’t afford the distraction. Not even one this cute. Somehow I got my feet to move and then I was opening the door. “Thanks for coming by.”
I felt his hesitation, his confusion, as he stood next to me, but I didn’t make eye contact. I couldn’t.
“I’ll text you. Good night, Bunny.”
That nickname sent a spear of heat through me, but I somehow managed to stay upright.
He went through the door and not only did I manage to close it, but I locked it as well. I leaned against it and then finally gave in to my urge to slide into a pile on the floor.
I’d told my sister I wouldn’t accidentally run into him, but I had not counted on him doing it deliberately. Or him saying that he wanted us to hang out.
What did I do now?
While I did manage to do more work on Milo’s lesson plans, I spent many hours that night thinking about Griffin and what to do about the situation I found myself in. He intrigued me. I wanted to get to know him better and I wanted to spend time with him. I could acknowledge that to myself, at least. I was very physically attracted to him. Very. It was nice to discover that I could be interested in a man who didn’t seem determined to ruin my life.
I probably should have tried to go to bed, but with my brain buzzing like this, there was no way I would have slept. I’d been dealing with bouts of insomnia on and off my whole life. The one time Alice had convinced me to go to a shrink, he’d suggested that it might be related to guilt I was feeling over things I had done. It might have been true and so it would make sense that I’d be unable to sleep now. I felt a lot of guilt, even if I tried to suppress it most of the time.
That was the problem with spending time with Griffin. It would be like tugging a loose thread on a cheap sweater. It would be okay in the beginning, just one or two missing patches, but eventually everything would unravel around me. He would figure it all out, and there was no way to predict the fallout. But I’d seen enough schemes go bad to know that it would start with the relationship falling apart and then move on to destroying what I had with the Crawfords.
I was walking a tightrope here and I had to be careful. I had done my best to stay calm around them because if I was constantly stressing about my fears that Sheila would find out the truth, she would sense that something was off. I had to believe the lie to convince everyone else around me. I hated doing this because I liked the Crawfords so much, but what else could I do? It wasn’t like I could raise money by selling my kidney or something. I needed to give it to Alice.