Worth It

There were tons of things a person could do in a bathroom, but none of them seemed like something one could do with a near stranger. A frown tugged at my brow. Well, crap. I kind of sucked as a hostess.



Knox laughed softly, and I jerked my attention to him.



His brown eyes twinkled with a warm humor that had me catching my breath in awe.



He shifted closer. “When I said you weren’t like them, I meant nice.” He waved a hand in my direction. “I meant you were nice, not some kind of weird misfit.”



My mouth fell open. The expression on my face must’ve alerted him to how strongly his words affected me.



Color lit his cheeks. He cleared his throat and glanced away. “I mean, you’re not...you know.” When he flailed out his hand, I frowned, totally confused.



He cleared his throat again. “You know that day my dad dragged us all here...”



I nodded, letting him know I remembered it well.



He nodded too. “Yeah, well... Everyone in your family looked at us as if we were trash. Your mom, your dad, both your brothers. But you...you’ve never looked down on me like that. Not then, and not now.”



My lips parted. It was such a profound compliment; I didn’t know how to respond with as much flattery as he had delivered. So I mumbled, “Well, I really can’t...you know, look down on you. You’re way too tall for that.”



When he chuckled, my chest flooded with pleasure. I’d said the right thing.



“You’re funny.” Reaching out, he caught a piece of my hair and rubbed it between his fingers.



I think he liked my hair. That made me feel...warm...all over.



“Funny, pretty, and nice,” he murmured more to himself than to me. “I wasn’t expecting that.”



My mouth fell open. My head was so jumbled with crazy, crushy feelings I knew I shouldn’t be having, I had no idea how to reply.



“So, really,” he said, continuing on as if he hadn’t just flipped my world upside down. “What are we going to do to pass the time?” Strand by strand, he let my hair tumble from his fingertips before he gathered another lock and repeated the action.



When his gaze shifted to my mouth, I almost lost myself, sucked into his captivating charisma. But at the last second, I realized how crazy insane lifting up onto my toes and kissing him would be.



I had to stop this.



I was going to crack a comment about how obsessed he’d become with my hair to douse the moment, but then I realized I’d become just as obsessed with watching him play with it.



We were quite the entranced pair.



I licked my dry lips. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”



He shrugged, his attention slipping back to my hair as he began to wind it around his finger and force it to bob into a corkscrew as he pulled his finger free. “If you really need to shave your legs, don’t let me stop you.”



I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sorry, but I’ve already shaved them today.”



Which was odd. I’d shaved them yesterday too, and the day before that, along with every freaking day since I’d run into him in the woods.



Seriously, what was it about a cute boy that suddenly made a girl want to shave her legs every single day? There had to be something very wrong with that. Damn cute boys.



“But feel free to shave yours.” I motioned my hand toward the bathtub, and he laughed again.



Ugh. What was it about damn cute boys who laughed at a girl’s corny jokes that made her heart beat harder?



“I’ll pass, thanks.”



I loved that I could hear the smile in his voice. My soul sang.



Blowing out a loud, dramatic sigh, I flipped my bangs out of my eyes, only to accidentally brush my hands against his where he was still fiddling with my hair.



Stomach beginning to cramp from all the sensual heat in there, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and rambled out nervous words.



“I guess we could do each other’s hair, paint our toenails and gossip about cute boys, like a regular ol’ slumber party.”



The humor in his eyes made them a darker chocolate brown. “I thought you girls only had pillow fights in your underwear at slumber parties.”



I huffed out a disgusted breath. “Not even close. That’s just what you guys assume we do. The fact of the matter is we pig out until we’re disgustingly bloated, and then we try to burp our bad garlic breath on each other.”



Knox gaped at me as if I’d kicked him in the shin. “You just shattered every dream I ever had about slumber parties,” he said in the most serious voice I’d ever heard him use.