Free Flirting With Disaster by Ruthie Knox Page A

hired me, but you won’t trust me. Do I just go home, or do you expect me and Sean to follow you to Lexington tomorrow and wait for you to change your mind?”
    Judah shrugged. “I guess you do whatever you want.”
    Katie wanted an explanation. She wanted Judah’s trust.
    Neither of those was hers for the taking, and she’d been around enough drunks to recognize that the glimmer of connection she’d felt to him wasn’t likely to return as he worked his way through the rest of the bottle.
    It was late, and she was tipsy. She felt tired, sad, and pawed-over. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, to see her brother and her desk at the office and resume her ordinary, unexciting life.
    She wanted to get this satiny underwear out of the crack of her ass, put on her favorite yoga pants, and be schlubby.
    It was time to go home.
    “Right. Then I’m leaving.”
    Judah dropped his head back, exposing his stubbled throat, and closed his eyes. “Is it still Friday?” he asked.
    Katie glanced at the clock by the bed. “No. It’s after twelve. Why?”
    “Shouldn’t start a trip on a Friday. Bad luck.”
    “We both drove here today,” she pointed out. “It was your idea.”
    Judah swept his hand out, a loose gesture at the evening they’d just spent together. “See what I mean? Bad luck.”
    Katie walked to the door. “Give me a call when you’re ready to talk.”
    “That’s probably not going to happen.”
    “In that case, it was nice meeting you.”
    “Good night, Katie,” he said when she opened the door.
    “Goodbye, Judah.”

Chapter Eight
    The door opened with so much force, it banged into the wall.
    A muted click, and the room flooded with light. Katie stood by the switch, high heels dangling from her free hand. Her hair was all mussed, her lips swollen and feet bare.
    She looked exactly the way he’d been afraid she’d look when she came back, which was why he’d forced himself to turn off the light and close his eyes and go to sleep.
    Not that it had worked, but he’d been trying. It was either go to sleep or get shit-faced, and he refused to be that weak. Not about Katie. Not about anything.
    He refused.
    She bent over the dresser and started opening and closing drawers. Sean glanced at the clock. Twelve thirty.
    Her flannel pajama pants landed on the bed, followed by the blob of her T-shirt. A moment later, socks and what was probably a pair of panties, though he looked away too quickly to be sure.
    “Sorry if I woke you up,” she said without looking in his direction. She tipped her head to the right and took out an earring, then tipped it to the left and removed the other. “I had a bunch of tequila, and if I tried to do this in the dark, I’d probably break something.”
    She scooped her clothes off the bed and entered the bathroom without another word, and Sean stared at the space where she’d been while the shower started up.
    He didn’t know how to feel. Jealous. Ticked off. Surprised. Turned on. Tired.
    Pleased?
    Maybe. She hadn’t spent the night with Judah. She wasn’t in his bed, flat on her back, moaning with pleasure.
    She was naked in the shower, twenty feet away from him, preparing to put on flannel pajama pants and go to sleep.
    It wasn’t much, but it was something.
    He listened to the noises she made, the muffled thuds of bottles of shampoo and conditioner against the shower tile, the water cutting out after a while. Silence as she toweled off.The faucet running as she brushed her teeth. The loud white noise of a hair dryer.
    Familiar sounds, though it had been a while since Sean had heard them. More than a year since he’d spent the night with a woman and even longer since he’d lived with one. What was it now, two years since Sarah had moved out? Three?
    He wondered where she’d ended up. She’d been so disappointed when she realized he wasn’t half as serious about the relationship as she was, so angry by the end at the way he’d failed to live up to her