Accounting for Cole (Natural Beauty) by Holley Trent

you’re insane. You could have any girl. Any woman out in that courtyard would throw herself at you.”
    “What’s wrong with the one I’m holding?” He squeezed me tighter, and rubbed his chin across the top of my head.
    I let out a little pleasurable whimper I hoped he didn’t hear, and then sighed. “I’m thirty. Boring. Plain. Frumpy.”
    “Add insane to that list. Maybe you need a new mirror and a long weekend of self-reflection. The pretty is just a bonus.”
    “Whatever.” I whispered it, but really—hearing him suggest that I was pretty made me feel pretty…at least for the moment.
    “Bradley has been trying to introduce me to his English composition instructor, but we’ve really only exchanged emails. She goes to all of his performances and brags on him. I’m worried she might be some sort of cougar.” He chuckled, but instead of laughing, I ground my teeth, feeling instantly murderous. Odd sensation, that.
    “Maybe Bradley needs a new hobby,” I said.
    Cole chuckled. “He worries about his old man. Thinks he needs an anchor somewhere.”
    “Well, does he?”
    He gave my little ponytail a tug and let it go. “I think…maybe he does.”
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    I was sleeping soundly—the kind of sleep that’s so deep and good that you could pee yourself and think it was part of the dream—when I figured out that the banging I was hearing wasn’t a part of my dreamland Nirvana.
    In my dream, I was in a magical place where there was not guilt about taking a day off from consultations, computers, and numbers. I lounged on the beach—no doors to be found to knock on. That’s why I opened my eyes, and when I did, the room was dark except for the glow of the muted television. I shifted my gaze at the bed’s movement to find Cole tipping himself off the edge.
    I ogled, slack-jawed.
    At some point in the hour or so I’d been asleep, he’d stripped down to his boxer briefs and had been laying on top of the bedclothes under one flimsy blanket from the armoire.
    I ogled his muscular back and firm rear as he padded to the door and paused in front of it. He wore his years really damn well, and that tree-climbing thought came to mind again. He was all smooth, lean muscle. Gorgeously fit without all the bulk.
    He pressed his hands against the door and squinted through the peephole. “Shit.” With a grunt of frustration, he pulled the knob, opening the door just a crack.
    Trying to preserve my modesty, I guess. I could see the door, so it made sense that whoever was on the other side of it could see me, too, if they looked in.
    “What’s up, Dom?” Cole leaned against the doorframe, thereby obstructing Dom’s view into the room.
    A familiar giggle in the hallway made me sit up straighter. “Shit,” I whispered.
    “He’s hot !” the feminine voice said between little girly laughs.
    I cringed. Just my luck, I’d get caught.
    “That’s the same guy from your group?” she asked.
    Dom cleared his throat and said in what was supposed to be a whisper, “You got any condoms? You know, big ones?”
    Beth giggled again and I slumped, easing beneath the covers and pulling them over my head. God.
    “Why would I have condoms?” Cole asked.
    “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re a monk.” Dom cackled and Beth joined in.
    I stole a look over the blanket edge and saw Cole casting Dom a dirty glower. I could see just a sliver of Dom from where I lay, and saw that he’d pushed the top of his spandex dress down so his chest was nude. The rest of his dress rode his narrow hips like some sort of odd, sparkly kilt. “Come on, give them up. I know you keep an emergency supply kit for the rest of us hussies.”
    Cole backed a bit away from the door, intending to push it closed, but Dom jutted his foot into the crack before it could close all the way. Cole trekked to his overstuffed duffel, ferreted out a leather toiletry case, and as he unzipped it Dom poked his head into the door crack.
    He scanned the dark room, and