Free One Night With Her Best Friend by Noelle Adams Page B

correspondence and making
arrangements. She liked being the gatekeeper and maintaining the office. She
was good at it—so good that she’d had a number of other job offers in the last
few years. To keep her from moving on, her boss kept offering her more money.
    She
had absolutely no complaints about her career. Or her boyfriend, whose date she
was now running late for.
    When
she glanced back up at Aaron, who was still lurking above her and eyeing her in
concern, she noticed something. “You’ve got another hole.”
    He
frowned, obviously not following her words. When she nodded toward the sleeve
of his old shirt, he set down his beer on the corner of her desk so he could
peer at it.
    There
was a hole in the fabric at his right elbow.
    “Damn,”
he muttered. “How did that happen?”
    She
wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed. When he was wrapped up in grading or
research, he didn’t notice trivial details like attire. Or eating. Or answering
his phone.
    She
stood up to inspect the damage. “It happened because this shirt is ancient and
should have been thrown away years ago.”
    “Don’t
start again. I’m not going to throw it away.”
    In
their senior year of college, the professor Aaron was working for had given him
the opportunity to teach one day in an introductory anthropology class. Aaron
had tried to play it cool, but Kate had known how pleased he was with himself
for being given the opportunity few undergraduates had. At that point, he had
already known what career he wanted to pursue. Kate had given him the green
dress shirt in congratulations, joking about it being his “professor shirt.”
    All
these years later, he still hadn’t given the shirt up, even though it was on
its last legs. A couple of years ago, at Kate’s insistence, he’d at least
retired it from his work-clothes rotation.
    “Can
you fix it?”
    Kate
shook her head and studied the sleeve more carefully, so close to him she could
smell the soap he used.  “I don’t know. You really just need to dump the old
thing.”
    “I’m
not going to throw it away. If you can’t fix it, I’ll wear it with the hole.”
    She
sighed, giving up since she knew he was more stubborn than she was—at least on
this subject. “I can probably put a patch on it. Take it off.”
    Aaron
blinked.
    “Take
it off,” she repeated. “The shirt.”
    She
laughed at his evident surprise. “I’m not asking you to strip for my
delectation. Just take off the shirt and leave it here. I’ll work on it
tomorrow.”
    “You
should be so lucky as to have me strip for you.” Despite his dry tone, he’d
started to unbutton the shirt. He wore a t-shirt underneath.
    She
laughed even more at the imagined visual of Aaron as an exotic dancer as she
accepted the shirt he handed her. It was still warm from his body, and she
checked out the hole again, making sure it wasn’t too far gone to mend.
    “Is
it all right?” he asked.
    When
her eyes returned to his face, she saw the amusement had left his expression
and he now looked genuinely concerned.
    Aaron
was never sentimental and rarely made a big deal about anything—but his
attachment to this old shirt was really very sweet.
    “Yeah.
I can fix it.” Then she gave in to the surge of affection and stretched up to
kiss him on the jaw. His skin was bristly under her lips from a day’s worth of
beard. He felt and smelled so Aaron-like that she followed the kiss with a hug.
    For
just a second, he stood perfectly still. Then he wrapped his arms around her
and tightened them almost painfully.
    She
sighed in pleasure, feeling warm and safe and known in his arms.
    “What
was that for?” he asked when they pulled apart.
    She
shrugged. “Just because.” For no good reason, she felt a little awkward about
her spontaneous gesture, so she sat back down at her desk to complete her
email. “Did you finish grading your papers?”
    Aaron
had gone to high school and college here in Chicago with her, but then he’d
gotten