She slipped her hand into his. It was ice cold. He looked down at her face. He’d seen it a thousand times, but never before had she looked so beautifully fragile.
“Then let’s run,” he said. “You and me.”
Chapter Twelve
Eva
Eva raced about Jack’s bedroom in a flurry, hunting for just the right outfit.
Jack had told her nothing other than “throw on something comfortable.” If Eva had been in her own apartment that would’ve been no problem, since she practically lived in sweats and jeans. But because she’d known she would be living with Jack, she’d packed only business clothes and a few sexy dresses. Lately she hadn’t seen Jack in anything other than slacks and a button-down shirt, and had planned to pretend she was equally professional at all times.
Now that decision was biting her in the butt. After rummaging through her bag, she grabbed her one pair of leggings and threw them on with a baby T-shirt she’d intended to wear to bed.
He emerged from the bathroom wearing jeans and a Red Sox T-Shirt that stretched nicely across his broad chest. And the jeans…holy cow. They defined all the right areas.
To keep from drooling, she pointed at his chest and said, “You are going to get us killed, wearing that.”
“Nah. They’ll take pity on me. The Sox suck this year.”
She arched a brow. “You overestimate us New York fans.”
His jaw dropped. “No! You? Antonio was a Sox fan.”
“Last I checked,” she said dryly, “I’m not Antonio.”
He pressed his lips together. “Traitor.”
She shrugged, then realized his eyes were captivated by something under her chin. She looked down. Without a bra, her nipples were obvious beneath the flimsy T-shirt. It would only be worse in the cold air. She crossed her arms.
He opened an ornate chest of drawers and handed her a sweatshirt. “Here.”
She shook it out and sighed. Red Sox again, of course. “Funny.”
He took it back from her. “All right. If you don’t mind everyone seeing”—he gestured vaguely to her chest—“all of that, then feel free to leave the shirt here. But don’t be surprised if I try to have my way with you every ten minutes.”
Grinning, she said, “Is that a threat or a promise?” She snatched the sweatshirt away from him and pulled it over her head. The fabric tumbled past her thighs. She pushed up the sleeves.
“Beautiful,” Jack murmured, the look in his eyes making her blood run hotter.
She smiled. “You have a thing for baggy sweatshirts?”
“I have a thing for you,” he said, taking her hand and making her foolish heart do stupid fluttery things in her chest. But she didn’t have the energy left to tell it to stop fluttering. Instead, she held tighter to Jack’s hand, taking comfort from his strength as he led her out into the rapidly cooling afternoon.
A few minutes later, they hopped the Q train, headed toward Brooklyn. Eva peered out the window as unfamiliar stops rolled past them. “Where are we going, again?”
He smiled. “I didn’t tel
l you.”
Right. She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, a shiver of excitement finding its way under Jack’s big sweatshirt and traveling down her spine. The sweatshirt smelled as delicious as he did, not of any cologne, just of the manly, wonderful scent that was uniquely him. She had to fight the urge to bury her nose in it.
At the Park Slope stop, he nudged her off the train. As they walked through the trendy neighborhood, she said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been here. Not in my whole life.”
He dug his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace. She wasn’t sure if she was constantly trailing behind him because he walked too fast, or because she couldn’t get enough of the sight of his sculpted ass in those jeans. “So you’re one of those?”
“One of…?”
“Those snobs who refuse to cross the East River. You’ve lived your entire life in the city, Eva, and you’ve never even gone to Brooklyn?”