Brendan and I dress quickly and swing out the door hand in hand, finding our way to the second-floor bar overlooking the main fireplace, where a man in a bowler hat is playing the piano, and candles flicker on the hand-carved tables. We snag a romantic booth for two with a view of the sun setting behind the mountains and order two racks of ribs, a large basket of truffle fries, and an arugula salad as a small nod to healthiness.

The entire time we feast, the conversation flows as easily as the water we down at a pace that keeps our server bustling back and forth with his metal pitcher.

Who knew sex could be so dehydrating?

Or multi-orgasmic?

Or achingly sweet and completely filthy at the same time?

Before Brendan, I’d thought I’d had some fairly excellent sex in my day. But now it’s clear that all that was adolescent, amateur fumbling in the dark compared to the naked, sexy, fun times to be had with this man. He drives me out of my mind, stripping away my inhibitions, driving me wild, yet somehow he makes me feel so safe at the same time.

“I think it’s the dad thing,” I say, pointing a truffle fry at his face.

He lifts a brow. “What’s the dad thing?”

“Nothing. I should have waited to take my pain pill. My inside thoughts are becoming outside thoughts.”

He smiles, his eyes glittering with mischief. “Good. I like it when your inside thoughts become outside thoughts. Remember that time at Babchuk’s retirement party when you told him he was drop-dead sexy even though he looked like a scary Russian Muppet?”

“Oh God, don’t remind me.” I slap my hand to my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed. “One of the many stories that confirm I should never drink. I’d only had three beers, too.”

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed. Babchuk thought it was funny, and it’s not like he’s never had a few too many. He was so wasted on a flight home during my rookie season he spent the entire trip drawing faces on a bunch of bananas and rocking them like babies.”

“He’s out of his mind,” I say with a laugh. “But I always liked him.”

Brendan nods, smirking over the rim of his beer. “He liked you, too. He wasn’t happy when Justin told him you had a raging case of chlamydia and some nasty-ass crabs.”

My eyes fly wide. “What? He didn’t!”

“Oh, he absolutely did. He also hinted there was something undiagnosed going on, and that the last guy you’d slept with had watched his dick turn green moments after the main event.”

“What? What a jerk!” I make a fist on the table. “I mean, I didn’t want to sleep with Babchuk—I was just trying to make him feel better about his divorce. But I might have wanted to sleep with someone else who was hearing this nonsense. Present company, for example.”

Brendan’s answering smolder sends heat flooding from my cheeks down to pool in my belly. “Present company knew better than to believe stories like that. Though, maybe now it’s becoming clear why I thought Justin had a thing for you?”

“He’s just protective,” I say with a shrug. “And distrustful of the male of the species.”

“As he should be. The male of the species isn’t the most well-behaved group of mammals. Makes it stressful to be raising a daughter.”

My smile fades. “Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day when this dick on the train ‘accidentally’ grabbed my ass for the third time. My mom has stories about the same thing happening to her when she worked in the city and commuted every day. The way things are going, I can’t see that it will be different for Chloe. And that pisses me off. Things should be changing, you know? They should be getting better. I should be able to look to the future and see a day when Chloe will have it better, but I don’t.” I take a deep breath, shaking my head. “And you know, sometimes I think about being homeless, and how much harder it is for the women who are homeless, and how much more they have to be scared of than men who are homeless. And that’s it. Right there! That’s all the evidence people should need that equality hasn’t happened yet. It hasn’t, no matter what people want to believe, Brendan.”

“I agree, Laura.” The amusement and affection mixing in his voice make me grin, and blush, and wish I’d taken my pain pill after I ate six ribs and not before, when my stomach was still painfully empty.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m talking too much.”

“No, you’re not. I like hearing your unfiltered thoughts. Makes me feel special.”

“It’s the pain pill talking,” I confess. “I’m a lightweight with medication, too, I guess.”

“So, I’m not special?” He arches a teasing brow.

I roll my eyes as I cup my suddenly empty-again water glass in both hands. “I think I made your special-ness pretty clear this afternoon, Mr. Daniels.”

“You did,” he says, grinning. “So, what do you want to do after dinner, Miss Collins? We could get in our swimsuits and head out to the Jacuzzi, or sit by the fire and read, or track down a checkers board.”

“Hmmmm, let me think.” I purse my lips and wrinkle my brow, pretending to ponder the possibilities as I tap my chin with my finger. “So many tempting options. There’s also shuffleboard in the common room, I think, where they have the big television and rows of chairs set up.”

He hums thoughtfully. “They have coloring pages and crayons in there, too. I remember seeing something about it on the website and thinking I should grab some for Chloe before we leave. Though there’s no reason we can’t color, too. I’m not too grown up to color.”

“Fuck, no,” I say, nodding seriously. “Me, either.”

He grins as he reaches across the table, wrapping his hands around mine, engulfing my fingers and the glass. “So, coloring it is, then? Just you, me, and a couple of hours of quality time with crayons and paper?”

“That does sound tempting,” I say, returning his smile. “It would be funny to see how tiny a crayon looks in your hand. And if the coloring area has a child-size table, that could be good times, too. Large people sitting in small chairs amuse me, Brendan, even when I’m not high on pain meds.”

“Large people sitting in small chairs is funny stuff,” he agrees.

“Exactly.” I incline my head. “So tonight that would probably be a recipe for big-time belly laughs, but I can’t help but think…”

“Can’t help but think?” His hands slide up to my wrists, circling them lightly with his fingers, sending a vivid sense memory of being beneath him with my hands pinned to the mattress shimmying through my head.

My lips, and more intimate areas, tingle as I lean in to answer in a dramatic whisper, “I can’t help but think it would be more fun to go get naked again.”

His eyes widen. “Oh, yeah. There is that.”

I nod seriously. “Yes, there is. And even though we’re really good at sexy times already, there’s always room to grow.”

“You’re right.”

“Because I believe in pursuing excellence in all things,” I say, biting my lip as his grip on my wrists tightens. “Or at least all the things that matter.”

“That’s one of the sexiest things about you. Right after your beautiful, bitable breasts, and your fucking adorable pussy.”

I dig my teeth deeper into my lip before answering in a conspiring tone, “If I were sober, I wouldn’t say this, but I want us to be honest with each other, Brendan. So I’m going to admit that I agree with you—my pussy is pretty dang adorable.”

“She really is,” he says, clearly fighting a smile.

“I know.” I sit up straighter, lifting my nose primly into the air. “I could tell a friend of mine was worried about whether all her girl parts were shipshape down there, which led me to fetch a mirror and do some consulting of my own. Because phobias like that tend to be catching, you know. But I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, I know a lot of people don’t find pussies much to look at, but they can be kind of cute. Sort of like two hugging newborn baby mole rats, but without the creepy claws. Or teeth. Or eyes. Or a tail.”

Brendan laughs loud enough to draw the attention of a couple at a nearby table, who arch brows in our direction. “That’s disgusting, Laura. Absolutely fucking disgusting.”

Before I can argue that baby mole rats are not disgusting—they’re babies, and all babies have a certain inalienable cuteness to them—Brendan leans across the table and presses a kiss to my lips. He kisses me for a long, sweet, sexy moment, ensuring that by the time he sits down, rodents are the last things on my mind.

“Did you get enough to eat?” he asks.

I nod. “Yes. I’m ready to go.”

“Me, too.” He signals for the check. “But I think we should hit the Jacuzzi instead of the bedroom.”

“Why?” I ask, brow knitting. “Are you that easily grossed out?”

“No, I’m not that easily grossed out. I don’t want to take advantage of you while you’re not completely in your right mind.”

“I’m in my right mind. I say weird things when I’m not on pain pills, too. All the time, actually.” I narrow my eyes as I point a French fry I don’t remember picking up his way. “You just haven’t seen that side of me because at first I was trying to be professional so you would play nice for PR events, and then I was trying to play it cool like I didn’t have a big ugly crush on you.”

He smiles. “I like that you have a big ugly crush on me.”

“Then you should take me back to the room and take advantage of my adorable pussy,” I say sweetly, “with your big, wonderful, generous, sexy, delicious cock.”

He bites his lip, eyes narrowing, his resolve clearly weakening in the face of all the nice compliments I’m giving the man downstairs. All he needs is a little push and we’ll both be naked before I can figure out where the French fry in my hand went and why I’m now holding a leaf of arugula, which I’m wagging back and forth like I’m trying to hypnotize Brendan with lettuce.

“It really is the only gentlemanly thing to do.” I let my bottom lip push out in a pout. “My pussy will be terribly lonely if she doesn’t get to say good night.”

“All right.” He pauses to hand the waiter his credit card before turning back to me with a stern expression. “But if you start seeing elephants dancing on the ceiling, all deals are off, Collins.”

I clap my hands softly, wondering where my lettuce got off to. I seem to be misplacing food at an alarming rate, but I know better than to mention this to Brendan, as he would no doubt take it as a sign of my compromised mental state. “Though I do need to pee before I pounce you because we probably drank a gallon of water, right? Maybe two gallons?”

His lips curve as he shakes his head. “You remind me of Chloe. That girl can’t go to the bathroom without announcing it to the entire house first.”

“We’re just trying to keep you informed and share our lives with you, Brendan. Sharing is caring, you know. You could stand to share a little more.”

“Yes, ma’am. As soon as we get back to the room, I’ll show you how good I can be at sharing.” His voice is so smoky and sexy it’s all I can do not to crawl over the table, right into his lap.

“But that would probably hurt my injured knee,” I say softly, eyes going wide as I realize I did it again. But thankfully Brendan is distracted by the waiter returning with the check and doesn’t seem to have noticed my inside-thought–outside-voice problems.

He signs the receipt and we slip out of our booth. He offers me his arm in a chivalrous, old-fashioned way that makes my insides go gooey, and we start across the bar. I’m halfway to the doorway that opens onto the stairs leading up to our room when I realize that I’ve brought my fork along in my free hand and that a visit to the ladies’ room isn’t something that can wait.

The “gotta-go” feeling hits hard, sending a sharp cramp through my painfully full bladder. I stop dead, pointing a finger to the bathroom sign thankfully only a few feet away. “Ladies. Now. Be right back.”

“Okay, I’ll wait for you by the stairs,” Brendan says.

I wave in acknowledgment as I hurry into the bathroom. Or at least I feel like I’m hurrying. I’m making a major effort to move things along here, but my steps remain sluggish. I shuffle through the bathroom door and aim myself toward the stalls, but it’s like I’m fighting my way through molasses. Or salt caramel candy, the kind my grandma used to make that went from sticky to hard as a rock in less than twenty minutes.

But, man, were those a long twenty minutes, sitting there with Gram, waiting for the candy to be ready so we could have the first piece together.

Mmm…candy. I could so go for a caramel right now.

I stick the fork in my hand in my mouth. It feels kind of strange, to be peeing and sucking on a fork at the same time—but what else am I supposed to do with a fork while using the bathroom, I ask you? Setting it down on any of the available surfaces would be unsanitary.

And I believe in keeping things sanitary.

And clean.

And organized.

I close my eyes, making a mental note to ask Brendan to let me mate his socks for him—when he tossed them into his bag this morning, not a single sock was joined to its twin, which is no way to treat your socks or behave as a civilized creature who walks upright and can operate complex machinery. If you can drive a car, you can mate your socks the way God intended.

“Mate those socks,” I mutter as I continue to pee and pee. By the time I start counting how many seconds are ticking by, I’ve already been peeing for forever, but the rush of water just goes on and on.

And on and on…

Longer and longer until I start to wonder if there’s something seriously wrong with me.

I should probably open my eyes and check to see what’s happening down there, but my eyelids are so heavy, and I’m still so tired, and the bed is so soft that I just want to…

The bed…

What the…

“Wha happn?” My eyes creak open, only to immediately narrow to slits as they’re attacked by a beam of harsh morning light. It takes my fogged brain a second to realize where I am, and that the rushing water sound is coming from the bathroom on the other side of the suite. But when I do, several things become clear all at once.

One—I have no idea how I ended up in this bed.

Two—I have no memory of last night after stumbling into the ladies’ room.

And three—I have no clue what I might have said or done that could have potentially ruined this thing between Brendan and me before it’s had a chance to take the ice.

There is a reason that I don’t have more than one or two drinks very often. I tend to black out, which means my conscious mind goes night-night while my body continues to walk around saying and doing dumb things without my permission. I had no idea a pain pill on an empty stomach was capable of sending me to Blackoutville—this is the first time I’ve ever had an injury serious enough to have painkillers prescribed—but that might not matter to Brendan.

Once he’s realized how crazy I’m capable of becoming, he’ll probably want nothing more to do with me.

“Bad call,” I mumble, tugging the sheet up over my face until only my eyes are peeking out over the top. “Bad, bad, bad.”

The water shuts off in the bathroom, and a moment later Brendan appears in the doorway, wearing jeans, a blue sweater I’ve never seen before that does pretty things for his eyes, and a smile. “Hey, there, Sleeping Beauty. You finally awake?”

I nod but keep the covers pulled up, the better to hide my shame. “I don’t remember how I got here, Brendan.”

His smile softens, almost like he finds it adorable that I have no memory of what the hell I did last night. “That’s because you fell asleep on the toilet, Miss Collins.”

My eyes go wide. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.” He sits on the edge of the bed, making the mattress dip and my feet slide toward him. “You fell asleep on the toilet with a fork in your mouth, and I had to rescue you and carry you back to our room and tuck you into bed.”

“Oh God,” I moan, my eyelids slowly sliding closed as I fill in the blanks. And realize he must have pulled up my panties and jeans at some point and then taken my shoes and jeans back off again as I’m currently asleep in the sweater I was wearing last night and my underwear.

“But don’t worry. I saved the fork, in case you were attached to it.”

This time I groan, a long, mournful sound that rumbles through my chest. “I’m so embarrassed.”

He chuckles. “Don’t be. You were cute. You snuggled against my shoulder while I was carrying you and told me that I was the nicest grizzly bear you’d ever met and that you loved honey, too. And caramel. And that you would share your candy stash with me as soon as we found it. All in all, it was a pretty sweet way to end a date.”

My cheeks go hot as my eyes slit open to see him still grinning at me with warmth and not even a little bit of judgment in his eyes. “I didn’t know that a pain pill on an empty stomach would affect me that way.”

“I figured. But it’s really no big deal. I tucked you in, we spooned and slept, and I had a dream about a forest of forks. I call that a good night.”

I draw the sheet down beneath my chin. “So, you don’t hate me?”

“No, I don’t hate you,” he says, leaning down to kiss my forehead. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ll carry you to bed anytime.”

He makes a move for my lips, but I stop him with a hand over his mouth as I pull my sheet barrier back into place.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth,” I squeak.

“I don’t care,” he says, squeezing my hip through the covers.

“Well, I do. I really, really do.” I squirm to the left, wiggling away under the quilt and off the other side of the bed. I wince as I put weight on my knee—looks like Brendan removed my brace, too—but the pain isn’t that bad. Certainly not bad enough to even consider taking another pain pill. I’m never taking one of those suckers again.

In fact…

On the way to the bathroom, I grab the pill bottle, twist off the top, and empty the evil white pellets into the toilet.

“So, the pain isn’t bad this morning?” Brendan asks, leaning against the bathroom door as I flush the Blackout drops away.

“No, not that bad. Nothing an ibuprofen won’t take care of. Or, you know, having slightly less vigorous sex until I’ve had a chance to ice regularly.”

He winces. “I felt guilty about that last night. I should have been more careful with you. Then maybe you wouldn’t have needed to take pain meds.”

I meet his eyes in the bathroom mirror, a warm feeling spreading behind my ribs. “You shouldn’t have felt guilty. It’s my knee. I’m the one who knew when it was starting to twinge and ignored it because I was having too much fun.”

“Yesterday was fun.” He watches me brush my teeth with an intensity that lends the moment an eroticism I’ve ever experienced while practicing good oral hygiene. “I can’t believe we have another whole day and another whole night. I won’t know what to do with myself when I get back to Portland and can’t find a babysitter to save my life. Let alone one willing to stay overnight.”

I spit and dab a bit of toothpaste froth from the corner of my mouth. “I might be able to help you out with that, as long as you don’t mind driving twenty minutes to drop Chloe off. My mom and dad are both retired, and they have a soft spot for mouthy redheads.”

He grins as I resume brushing. “I look forward to meeting them. I assume I get to meet them, too. Not just Chloe. Since I’m your sexy boyfriend now.”

I snort and nod in response, continuing to brush.

“Why are you laughing? I am your sexy boyfriend. You told me last night. You said I was the sexiest boyfriend you’ve ever had and you couldn’t wait to ride me like a pony.”

I groan again and spit with considerably more vigor. “Okay, that’s it,” I say, flipping on the water to rinse. “We’re going to breakfast, and you’re going to tell me every crazy thing I said last night. We’ll get it over all at once, like a shot. No dragging it out so you can drop embarrassment bombs on me all day.”

“All day?” His brow arches. “Try all year, Collins. You’re very mouthy when you’re drugged and semi-lucid.” His gaze drops as I bend over to wipe my mouth. “And you’re very sexy when you’re wearing nothing but panties and a sweater.”

I spin to face him, leaning back against the sink as I point a warning finger at his chest. “I intend to shower before we go to breakfast, and I intend to have answers about last night before I get in bed with you again.”

His lips turn down hard as he nods. “All right. I’m fine with taking another shower.” He reaches for the bottom of his sweater, pulling it up and over his head, revealing his excessively lickable chest.

My lips part to protest, but he stops me by leaning in close, his body pressing against mine as he reaches behind me to turn on the shower. “You said no getting into bed until you have answers. You didn’t say anything about the shower.”

“Semantics,” I whisper, but when he pulls my sweater over my head, I don’t put up a fight. I put my arms around his neck and my body happily into his keeping as he lifts me into his arms and carries me into the warm spray.

And sometime between those long steamy minutes as he makes love to me against the shower wall, whispering that he can’t remember the last time he was this happy, and the afternoon spent in the hot tub, reading books and sipping hot chocolate and watching the snow fall on the mountains like something out of a fairytale, I stop worrying about what I said last night.

We have another romantic dinner, with one glass of wine for me and two for him, and he takes me back to our room, where we make memories I’m never going to forget.

Even years from now, when I’m old and gray and wishing I’d taken more fish oil pills so I could remember that trip to Italy with my girlfriends after college, I will remember every single second of this magical weekend.