soon as she dropped her hand to her side, and he was out the door, leaving her alone with his lingering scent: soap and a hint of sweat, a contradiction.
She inhaled, savoring the smell and thrill of touching him for the first time in seven years. Then she moved on.
Climbing the stairs didn’t erase the lingering high skin-to-skin contact with him had provided, but it filled her with something else – curiosity.
Were the rooms upstairs as unchanged as the rest of the house? She was almost afraid to look, just in case they weren’t. But she had to know.
She skipped the first two doors and went immediately to the second one on the right, closing chilled fingers around a glass doorknob that was probably old enough to be considered antique.
She held her breath as the door swung inward. When it was open, she toed the line between the hallway’s wooden flooring and the room’s silver-grey carpet.
Nothing had changed. At least, nothing significant. The wallpaper she loved was still there, as was the four-poster bed. The dresser was gone – maybe her mother had moved it to her house. The thought sent a splinter of bitterness through her chest, but a sense of wonder suppressed it as she entered the room.
The house was a time capsule – an enormous brick portal to the past, complete with gingerbread trim. For the first time that day, feeling like she’d gone back in time wasn’t such a bad thing. The room had always been a happy place, an escape – the only safe harbor in a storm, sometimes. She’d spent many a night there as a teenager, after her mother had married her step-father.
And it was still being enjoyed, apparently. Some sort of large pack rested between the bed and one wall, olive drab and utilitarian, clearly military. A cell phone charger had also been plugged into the outlet beside it. Had Donovan taken over her old room?
The thought made her heart race for reasons she didn’t completely understand.
She left the room, not wanting to soak the carpet. There was a bathroom across the hall, and she retreated to it, drawing a bath in the old-fashioned claw-footed tub she’d always loved. It had been forever since she’d taken a bath – her apartment in New York had only had a narrow shower stall, and she’d shared the place with two other women. Showers had been nothing more than quick scrub-downs before work, and she’d usually styled her hair at the kitchenette table, twisting her brunette locks up into a chignon or brushing them straight in front of a hand-held mirror.
Stripping off her wet clothes was bliss, and sinking into the tub full of hot water was sheer heaven. A bottle of hyper-masculine body wash sitting on the little shelf above the tub was the only soap. She’d poured some into the falling water, creating a thin layer of bubbles. The scent was called “cool”, whatever that meant.
It was the same soapy scent she’d detected on Donovan’s skin. Now, the entire bathroom was filled with it, air and water alike permeated by the smell. It made her head spin as she leaned back against the tub, letting her head tip over the lip.
She drifted in a haze of heat and memory, until the sound of the door closing sent noise and vibrations all the way to the second floor. A little water sloshed over the edge of the tub as she sat up, her skin prickling with awareness of Donovan’s presence. “I’m in the bath,” she called when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
“I’ll leave your suitcase outside the door.” The sound of his voice made the water seem a few degrees hotter.
Beneath the thin cover of bubbles, her nipples pebbled again.
What was wrong with her?
Maybe nothing – maybe she was just a victim of biology. Even after seven years, it was only natural that her body would respond to the familiar cues, to the sight and sound of the man who’d been the center of her universe for several formative years. She couldn’t keep herself from remembering – or from noticing how