“Not here.” She wanted to make her position on this matter very clear. “Not with me.”

He smiled. “Understood.”

She took a minute to study him. Those long legs and broad shoulders. The way his pants balanced on his hips. The way he moved, all confident and in control.

The McHottiePants title fit. When he smiled, she got a little winded. When he frowned at her, she wanted to kiss it away . . . and that was a problem. They weren’t dating. She wasn’t convinced they even liked each other. But the sparks, the unexpected connection that made her want to cling to him when she hadn’t wrapped her life around anyone else’s for years, threw her off balance.

When she focused on him again, she realized he’d stopped fidgeting and cleaning up. They stared at each other across the open sofa bed.

Mattress. Sheets. A confined space. Misplaced adrenaline shooting all over the place. This was going to be a long and confusing night.

“I should shower.” The sound of her own voice broke the power of the strange pull between them.

He blinked a few times. “What?”

“It’s the ritual some folks do before bed.” Naked. Okay, yeah, that was also a problem. They’d be in the same small cabin, only a door apart.

She needed the energy arcing between them to stop. He was just a guy and she was a woman with dangerous loads of baggage. This couldn’t happen no matter how sexy she found his smile and that ass.

He shook his head as he finally broke eye contact. “Uh, right.”

“Are you afraid I’ll use all of the hot water?” The joke fell flat but at least the need to sprint across the mattress and crawl all over him had died down. A little.

She needed to get a handle on the adrenaline coursing through her before she did something really stupid. She had been so careful and dateless for so long that temptation rode her hard. The what-ifs ran through her mind until she struggled to catch her breath.

He exhaled in a way that sounded haggard and a bit out of control. “I didn’t really think through the whole living together thing.”

She needed to stop his thinking on that topic right now. “We’re not.”

“Of course not.”

Uh-huh. Her voice didn’t sound as sure and clear as she needed it to be, so she tried again. “It’s one night. Don’t make this weird.”

He held up both hands as if in mock surrender. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

“You’re kind of . . .” Hot. Perfect. Tempting.

Tall, dark, and smoking.

She could go on for a very long time before she’d reach the not-so-great stuff near the bottom of the list, like his bossiness.

His eyes narrowed. “What?”