LITMIR.BIZ

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I would think you’d know better.”

      She looked around. “Who’s going to see me? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

      “That’s not the point.”

      Then what was the point? What man didn’t enjoy seeing his wife sunbathing topless?

      The kind who married his wife for business. One who found her so physically unattractive, the only place he cared to see her naked was in a dark bedroom, where he could pretend she was someone else.

      She felt sick all the way down to her soul. She pulled herself up from her chair, grabbed the towel she’d been lying on and wrapped it around herself. “I’m sorry that you find my body so offensive.”

      “Lexi, that isn’t what I—”

      “I’ll be sure to keep it appropriately covered from now on,” she assured him, nose in the air, giving him the cold and bitchy routine so he wouldn’t hear the hurt in her voice. She turned to walk away, but Mitch wrapped a hand around her upper arm to stop her.

      “I swear you’re the most insecure woman I’ve ever met,” he said. “And you’re making it really hard for me to do the right thing.”

      The right thing? What was that supposed to mean? She tried to tug her arm free. “Let go.”

      Instead, he yanked the towel from around her and scooped her up. She let out a shriek as he flung her like a sack of potatoes over one shoulder and carried her toward the sliding glass door that led to his bedroom.

      She wiggled, trying to get loose, but he only held on tighter. “What are you doing?”

      “I could tell you that you’re beautiful and desirable until I’m blue in the face, but you probably wouldn’t believe me.”

      Okay, so maybe he didn’t find her completely undesirable.

      She pounded on his back with her fists, which was about as effective as hitting a boulder with a feather. “So, you pull a caveman routine instead?”

      He slid the door open and carried her into his bedroom. Despite his brutish and uncivilized behavior, a shiver of excitement rippled through her. After all, it had been her plan to keep him in the bedroom as much as possible.

      He slid her off his shoulder onto her back on the mattress and knelt beside her, a look of pure mischief in his eyes. “You won’t listen to me,” he said. “So, I’m just going to have to show you.”

      Mitch spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon showing Lexi just how beautiful and desirable he thought she was. And boy, was he good at it. Every time she tried to climb out of bed, he would pull her back in and start convincing her all over again. When she finally insisted she had to put the lamb in the oven or it wouldn’t be ready in time for dinner, he reluctantly let her go. She wobbled into the kitchen on spaghetti legs, and every inch of her skin hummed with sexual satisfaction.

      At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before she could tell him about the baby.

      Following Tara’s instructions to the letter, Lexi seasoned the lamb shank and popped it in the oven. And though it took a minute of pushing buttons, the oven finally beeped and turned on. She peeled the potatoes and carrots next, then put them aside to add to the roasting pan forty minutes before the lamb was done. Until then, she didn’t have much to do, so she went looking for Mitch.

      She found him sacked out in a lounge chair by the pool, sleeping so deeply, he was snoring. It looked as though she’d worn the poor guy out. For a second, she considered all the creative ways she could wake him, most using her mouth, but he looked so peaceful, she didn’t have the heart.

      Instead, she stretched out in the chair beside him to get some sun, but her eyes felt heavy and in no time she drifted into a deep sleep, and had strange and erotic dreams about Mitch. Hazy, disjointed images of bare skin and feelings of intense sexual sensation flooded her. She could smell him, taste the flavor of his mouth and skin. She could feel the weight of his hands touching her, her hair tangled in his fingers, the flex of her muscles as she took him deep inside her body. The strum of sensation on her nerve endings.

      Not a strum so much as a loud hum. And the hum grew louder, the sound filling her head until it was more annoying than arousing. A sharp, piercing bleat.

      Her eyes flew open and she realized the sound wasn’t in her dream. It was coming from the house, through the open door that led to the kitchen…and was that smoke she was seeing?

      Wide awake now, she jumped from the chair, grabbed her cover-up and tugged it on as she dashed for the house. She was stunned by what she encountered in the kitchen.

      Acrid smoke hung in the air, the oven sat open and empty and the pan the roast had been in was sitting in the sink under a flow of water. She could only assume that the black lump was the charred remains of the lamb shank. Mitch stood in the middle of the room in his swim trunks, fanning the smoke detector with a broom.

      Oh, God, what had she done this time?

      Mitch finally looked over and saw her standing there, watching him. He flashed her a smile and said, “The lamb is done.”

      After the dishwasher fiasco this morning, there didn’t seem to be much point in trying to blame it on the oven. She had obviously screwed up again. Only this time, instead of flooding the house, it looked as though she’d nearly burned it down.

      They had made some real progress today, and now she’d ruined it. She couldn’t even imagine what he must be thinking, and she wondered how long it would be before she and the baby were out on the street.

      Mitch swung the broom around and, using the handle end, gave the smoke detector a solid whack. It gave one final bleat, then fell silent. Which was even worse than the deafening screech.

      She opened her mouth to say something, apologize maybe, but words escaped her.

      Mitch walked over to the sink and turned off the tap, looking down at the soggy remains of dinner. “We should probably open a few windows to let the smoke out.”

      “I’ll get the family room,” she said, eager to skulk away in shame. This could go one of two ways. He would be completely exasperated with her and make her feel like a total dope, or he would be understanding and sweet, all the while thinking that she was a lost cause.

      She honestly wasn’t sure which would be more humiliating.

      When every window on the main floor was open, she walked back to the kitchen where Mitch was closing the oven and shutting it off. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, or just resigned to the fact that he’d married a domestic disaster.

      She gestured to the sink, taking a feeble stab at humor. “Was the lamb thirsty, or is this your way of telling me it’s too dry for your taste?”

      “I couldn’t find the lid or fire extinguisher, so this was the only way to douse the flames.”

      Flames? It had actually been on fire?

      Just when she thought she couldn’t be more embarrassed, she discovered a whole new level of humiliation. “I don’t suppose you would believe me if I said the lamb was supposed to catch on fire.”

      He cracked a smile.

      “So, what did I do wrong this time?” she asked, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She couldn’t imagine he would ever let her near the kitchen again, much less cook something.

      “The oven was on broil instead of bake.”

      Which meant what, exactly? She thought meat was supposed to broil. Her confusion must have been obvious because he added, “Bake warms the entire oven uniformly and allows food to cook slower. Broil is a direct flame right over the pan and cooks things much faster. Obviously.”

      Something she would have known if she’d ever used an oven before.

      “I’m sorry I murdered dinner,” she said.

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