“You know, the only thing that makes this appear slightly suspicious is how shifty you look,” he pointed out.

Jamie buckled herself, wiggling in her seat. “I am not shifty.”

“You are intensely shifty.”

She frowned. “I didn’t know that I was submitting to be teased.”

“You don’t want to be teased?”

“Can’t you just feed me toast and tell me I’m pretty?” She said that lightly, but in point of fact, she would really like it if he would feed her toast and tell her she was pretty.

She blinked. He was chuckling softly, clearly amused by the joke, but she was too busy grappling with that marked change inside herself. She cared if Gabe thought she was pretty. She really cared. She wanted him to think that she was beautiful. She didn’t want to just win the battle over who got him in their bed for now with Crystal the beautiful blonde.

She wanted to be prettier than she was.

And Jamie didn’t think there was a world in which she was, or could ever hope to be.

She really, really wanted Gabe to think she was pretty.

She had always been disdainful of things like that. Beauty, to her mind, was found in a mountaintop, and anything else was unnecessary. Was high-maintenance, temporary and insubstantial.

She wanted to be that. Just for a little bit. Just to him.

Something precious and special and...well, just pretty. She kept coming back to pretty.

“It bodes well for me that you like toast. Because that is about the extent of my culinary skill.”

“There’s nothing to dislike about toast.”

“I share that opinion.”

“Well, there you go. We have some things in common. Which will make the long hours of tonight go by much quicker.”

Hours. That was the thing. They had hours together.

She swallowed hard, her heart beginning to thunder faster, and faster still. What kinds of things could two people do naked together for...hours?

She had no idea.

She hoped that he wouldn’t pick up on that.

It didn’t take long for them to get to his house, and he didn’t act like he noticed if she took a little bit longer to get unbuckled and get out of the truck than he did. But he did wait by the door for her.

His smile went wicked as they approached the door. “I’d say race you to the shower, but there’s really no point. I don’t mind sharing.”

Sharing the shower. That seemed way above her skill level.

It seemed like you should have to compete in a few rounds before you went pro in an event like sex. A shower seemed like professional-grade activities.

In fact, if sex were barrel racing, she would basically need a Shetland pony, a lead rope and one water glass to go around in a circle. She was not ready for the real deal.

But she wasn’t going to say that.

So instead, she simply followed him to the shower. And once they were in the bathroom, he turned the water on, then grabbed her and pulled her to him.