LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      IZZY STARED AT the broad, tan back just an inch from her nose and totally got why people would do the legendary walk of shame after a one-night stand. It was all well and good in the heat and hormones of the moment with a virtual stranger, but in the cold hard light of morning it was just plain …

       Awkward.

      Some time in the night she’d slipped from her exhausted slump across Harry’s chest down between him and the wall. That made it impossible to get out of her small bed without clambering over him, naked and undignified, and tumbling off the other side. And the ornate foot of the tiny bed made sliding out feet-first just as problematic.

      Entombed between plaster and hot male body.

      Radiating male body. The longer she lay here, the more like a sauna her bed was feeling. Who needed central heating with Harry around?

      She could wake him, but she wasn’t at all comfortable about him seeing her body—especially her least favourite bits—in the full light of morning. Not that the tiny boxroom window let in much light at all but it was certainly brighter than the steamy dark they’d shared last night.

      So then … what? Lie here, clenching her bladder until Prince Harry, there, deigned to wake?

      Screw that.

      Izzy arched off the bed and reached one hand beneath herself, grasping the edge of her pretty duvet—king-sized on account of her old bed—then she begged her abdominal muscles to cooperate and pushed up into a sitting position, dragging the covers up with her.

      Cool morning air rushed in behind her.

      Clambering over Harry’s legs wasn’t quite as confronting as his hips and she twisted left—taking great care to keep the duvet between them—and half crawled, half rolled over his calves, her eyes firmly closed as she robbed him of covers.

      She only opened them when the timber floor was beneath her feet and escape was in front of her.

      ‘Elegant,’ a sleep-thick voice rumbled from behind.

       Busted.

      ‘You sleep like the dead,’ she muttered back over her shoulder, tugging on the pyjama bottoms that had tumbled to the floor from under her pillow with all the on-bed activity.

      ‘I wasn’t asleep. And you didn’t even try to wake me.’

      ‘I’ve been lying there, legs crossed, for eternity. You could have let on you were awake.’

      It was clumsy but she managed to get her PJ top on, too, beneath the downy protection of her covers.

      ‘And miss the Cirque du Soleil dismount?’

      She had landed with quite a flourish. She threw back her duvet and only turned back when she felt certain it would have fluttered down onto Harry sufficient for everyone’s modesty.

      He tugged it back up around him for warmth. But the move looked too easy, as if he was settling in for a long stay. The rest of her squeezed up as tight as her bladder.

      ‘Do you want first run at the bathroom?’

      God, how polite was she?

      ‘I went earlier,’ he drawled, his accent more pronounced in the morning.

      That would explain when and how she’d slid off him into the cool embrace of the wall.

      ‘Bumped into duffel dude heading out before dawn. A friend of Poppy’s brother. I gather she wasn’t thrilled about him being here.’

      So … this morning wasn’t surreal enough. Now her boss was filling her in on her own flat’s gossip. Her pulse started to panic.

      ‘Hold that thought,’ she said, holding up a hand.

      The plethora of hanging things clattered against her door as she opened it and hurried into the bathroom.

      Relief only took moments but Izzy hung out in there, standing on the toilet mat to stop her feet from chilling on the stone tile floor, gnawing on the inside of her cheek and desperately trying to pluck reality from this weird fantasy she’d found herself in.

      What was the protocol here?

      Should she ask him to leave? Should she ask him to stay? Should she invite him with her flatmates to breakfast later? All equally terrifying concepts. They’d had a fantastic night of what Tori would call ‘monkey sex’ and overall she was very pleased with her first crack at a one-night stand.

      Possibly her last if this excruciating indecision was always waiting in the morning.

       Why couldn’t he have just tiptoed out like the coward he probably was ?

      Finger-combing her short hair and briefly checking her face for panda eyes, Izzy turned back for her bedroom and entered with the words already forming on her lips.

      ‘So—’

      But she needn’t have bothered. Harry had re-donned his suit in the time she’d been hovering like a coward in the bathroom. He was just tucking his tie into his jacket pocket. As he did he pulled her ID card back out of it. And held it out.

      ‘So, see you Monday?’

      She just blinked.

      ‘At the office?’

      It hit her then. What he thought their single night had meant. How deluded he was. And how exceptionally arrogant.

      She left his extended hand hanging. ‘I’m not coming back, Harry.’

      ‘Sure you are. We’ll get on fine now.’

      Was he joking? ‘Now that we’ve broken the ice with the exchange of bodily fluids?’

      Metaphorically. If not for the convenient condoms he’d produced.

      He shrugged. ‘We know each other a bit more now. Have each other’s measure.’

      Extremely intimate measure.

      ‘Are you suggesting that our bout of horizontal yoga has somehow increased your level of professional respect for me?’

      The

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