“Well, good thing this bed is enormous. What the hell are you so afraid of?” Rhiannon challenged as she thew a pillow at her and lifted the covers.
The pillow gave Carmela an idea. She grabbed the extra pillows in the closet and made a wall down the middle of the bed before slipping under the covers herself.
“Are you kidding me?” Rhiannon complained. “You’re making me feel like some kind of creep.”
“It’s not about you,” she promised. “I’m just used to sleeping alone and taking up the entire bed. As a deep sleeper, I don’t want to roll over on you or kick you or something,” she explained through a dry mouth and metric ton of embarrassment. “It’s a thousand percent about me and not you.”
Rhiannon yawned as she turned her back to Carmela and got more comfortable. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Within minutes, Rhiannon was already breathing in a slow, rhythmic pattern.
Who the hell falls asleep so fast with a stranger in their bed?
Carmela thought as she gripped the sheets, finding it impossible to relax with Rhiannon only inches away.
Using a technique she’d learned years before, Carmela tried to tire out her mind by counting backward from a
hundred while also picturing the number in her mind. It was supposed to exhaust her brain so quickly that she conked out. It usually worked, but she couldn’t get three numbers in a row before images of Rhiannon crashed through her thoughts like a sledgehammer through glass. When she couldn’t stop them, she gave into them, and the flutter in her heart that followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DISTANT BIRDS CRIED and waves strolled up to the rocky edge before retreating back to the ocean. As the beach cottage filled with the first streams of morning light, Rhiannon realized they’d forgotten to close any of the blinds. Now they were paying the price with soft pink light. It wasn’t the brightness that gently prodded her awake.
The second thing she realized was that Carmela’s arms were wrapped around her torso, making her the little spoon.
The sensation of Carmela’s palm splayed against her belly and holding her close was at once exhilarating and shocking.
Experiencing something so intense with such minor contact was so unexpected it stunned her into inaction.
Rhiannon had no way of knowing how long she lay there with Carmela nestled against her back, her warm breath falling in a regular rhythm against her neck. Each long exhale from Carmela made Rhiannon’s own inhale shallower. Despite the numbness in her side and the sti ness in her neck, she remained motionless. Indulging in the closeness.
It wasn’t that Rhiannon intended to ignore the flashing, red signs from Carmela that she wasn’t ready for a relationship . . . or at least wasn’t ready for one with her, but
she couldn’t stop her own growing infatuation. All she could do was keep herself from acting on it.
In her gut she knew Carmela was struggling against herself. It was obvious in the way she pulled her in and in the same moment pushed her away. All she had to do was wait and hope that Carmela would see that all the roadblocks she put up between them were of her own making and unnecessary.
Age didn’t matter to Rhiannon. Not only was Carmela stunning, but other than the occasional pop culture references Rhiannon missed, the di erence between them was immaterial. They wanted the same things, didn’t they?
To build a career they were proud of. To find a love worth keeping. Who could understand each other better than them?
Too selfish to break the embrace, Rhiannon indulged in the sensation and tried her best not to fall asleep. As she wondered about the Jackie creature who broke Carmela so badly, spite cropped up in her being.
How could she have had someone like her and thrown it all away?
Rhiannon hadn’t ever been cheated on, or if she had, never found out. She couldn’t imagine how a betrayal like that could change a person. How it might crush their sense of self-worth. Their self-esteem. Without conscious thought, Rhiannon shifted backward and closer to Carmela as if she could protect her with her body. As if she could act as a human shield and keep anyone else from hurting her.
When Carmela finally stirred behind her, Rhiannon swallowed her disappointment. A split second later, Carmela released her as if she were radioactive.
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Carmela cried, voice husky and barely intelligible.
Rhiannon turned to see a disheveled woman, more beautiful than anytime she’d ever seen her, kneeling on the
bed, staring at the pillows on the floor with wide eyes.
“Don’t worry—”
Carmela interrupted her, as frantic as if she’d just walked into her high school graduation wearing nothing but a smile.