Free While She Was Sleeping... by Isabel Sharpe Page A

or experience fully what—“Milk?”
    Oh, help, she was still staring. He’d asked her something else, too.
    “I…don’t really…I should get going…Florida.” She shook her head at the milk, completely disgusted. Could she not even come up with a complete sentence?
    “Stay another day. I don’t think I’ve convinced you I’m a good guy yet.” He took the milk jug back. “I’ll take you both out to dinner tonight.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “Sawyer, that is so sweet.” Melanie reached across the counter and squeezed his forearm, then rubbed up and down before she let go. “We accept.”
    “Um, I guess one more day.” If Alana could survive the next twenty-four hours remembering the touch of this man’slips while watching her sister fling herself at him. If Sawyer was everything Melanie said, and if Alana could be convinced he wasn’t also a player, he really would be great for Melanie. Better than anyone Alana could have imagined her sister ending up with.
    She’d just stay in Florida the rest of her life.
    “Gah, what time is it?” Melanie peered at the digital clock on the microwave. “Yikes. I’m meeting Edgar downtown in half an hour. Gotta go shower.”
    She crammed peanut butter and toast into her mouth and grabbed her coffee to take upstairs, her legs flashing strong and muscular under the pink T-shirt.
    Alana put her sister’s plate in the dishwasher, then went back to her Raisin Bran, eating quickly so she could also go upstairs and not be alone with this guy she didn’t know how to feel about anymore.
    “How are you doing today, Alana?”
    “Oh, I’m fine. Thanks.” She swallowed a mouthful. “Melanie’s been telling me about you.”
    His eyes turned wary. “Good things?”
    “Yes.” She frowned. “Why, is there something bad?”
    Sawyer laughed and shook his head. “You don’t let down your guard, do you?”
    “Sorry. I’m still not over that first, um, encounter.”
    “Mmm.” He held up a hand, put down his coffee. “I talked to my brother again this morning. Police are involved. My drink had been laced with…ready for this?”
    “I think so.”
    “Benzodiazepine. Also known as the date-rape drug.”
    “Who would want to date rape you?”
    He jerked his gaze to hers. “Is that an insult?”
    “No! I was just—” She rolled her eyes when she realized he was kidding. He had her off-balance all the time. The feeling was unfamiliar and vulnerable. And challenging. And a little exciting. “Go on.”
    “The culprit was the jealous ex-boyfriend of a woman, Debbie, who I was, uh, talking to.”
    She shot him a glance. “You mean, trying to hook up with.”
    “Me?” He put his hand solemnly to his heart, looking so innocent she had to smile. “The upshot is, when I climbed into bed with you, Alana, I had no idea what I was doing.”
    A snort of laughter came to her lips before she could suppress it. As far as she was concerned, he knew what he was doing better than any man she’d ever been with.
    “Something’s funny?”
    “No, nothing.”
    “Come on, something.”
    “Sawyer…”
    He nudged her shoulder with his. “Tell me.”
    “Fine. The part where you said you had no idea what you were doing…” Blush, blush, mumble, mumble, why did she have to be either dorky or hysterical around this man?
    “My God, was that a compliment? From you?”
    “Don’t let it go to your head.” She blushed harder when his eyebrow quirked. “And no puns on that one, either.”
    He grinned, and she found herself smiling back, which felt suddenly natural and uncomplicated, a first where they were concerned.
    Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he had been all along. “Apparently I owe you an apology.”
    “Yeah?”
    “For assuming you were like all the other guys Melanie has brought into her life. Since she was about fourteen.”
    “Sounds like enough of a record that you felt comfortable making snap judgments.”
    “They’d always worked