I lost my breath. For a moment it was literally as if I had misplaced it. It just wouldn’t come up from my lungs. I am sure I looked like a guppy, standing there wet, mouth open, waiting for the air to start circulating again.
He was breathtaking. Obviously. Simply the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life.
While I stood there doing my guppy impression, his aquamarine gaze met mine before caressing me from head to toe. I might have imagined the momentary pause over my soaked t-shirt, except for my body’s reaction. My nipples truly believed there was a wet t-shirt win to be had and were doing their damnedest to make an impression.
Then he smiled. It was a perfect smile. No one could have teeth that white, that straight. But he did.
I’d regained my breath, so I was feeling more in control. But his smile sparked a shiver that trickled down my neck, across my back, and down the backs of my legs. It wasn’t a shiver of cold. It was a sensation of heat, like warm honey dripping the length of my body.
“You must be Miranda. Rachel told me she had a roommate. I’m Liam.”
No, no. I was wrong. The shiver wasn’t like warm honey. His voice was. Honey flavored with a British accent.
She’d never warned me about the British accent. It was my weakness, my Achilles heel, though it wasn’t my heel that tingled as his accent echoed in my head.
“Liam.” I was surprised my tongue managed his name. My brain was busy cataloging every detail about him, briefly insisting it was impossible for anyone to look so good, and then soaking a moment in the glow of him. Yeah, my brain was too busy for words. Then a little voice, suspiciously like my mother’s, reminded me I was being rude.
“Sorry. I’m being rude. Please, come in.”
I opened the door wider and took one small step aside. He moved past me into the apartment and I was enveloped in the scent of him. Fresh air, some woodsy cologne, and a unique masculine aroma that was all Mr. Liam Irresistible.
I had to resist touching him as he passed me. My fingers itched with the need to have tangible proof that he was real.
“Now see, this is lovely. Rachel always complains about the apartment, but this is perfect.”
He stood in the middle of our living room and grinned as his eyes lit on the antique furniture I’d finally been able rescue from storage when I rented the place. It struck me that none of what he saw reflected Rachel. She hadn’t had any furniture when she’d moved in with me and had only purchased the necessities for her own bedroom since doing so.
“This is fantastic.” He’d approached the old bookcase my grandparents had bequeathed to me. There was a wild story behind it, about a naughty maid in our family tree who’d been too friendly with her aristocratic employer and was given the bookcase and a drawer full of priceless silver to take herself and her bastard off to Cornwall. I could never quite picture my ancestress hauling the bulky carved bookcase and a baby across half of England and always thought it was just as likely Gram and Gramps had snagged it at one of the estate sales they frequented.
He ran his fingers over the dark, battered wood, tracing the gothic curves and arches carved into the sides. For such a big guy, his hands were surprisingly elegant and his touch gentle and reverent as he caressed my favorite piece of furniture.
“My grandparents said it was a family heirloom from England.”
“Are you English?”
He turned to me with a smile and a look of curiosity akin to how he’d gazed at the bookcase. Would he run his fingers gently over my curves too? I wanted to ask him to. Beg him to, if need be. I bit my tongue to stop myself.
“With that hair, I would have guessed Irish.”
He was staring at my hair now.
I reached up to touch a strand, self-consciously twisting it around my index finger. His gaze fixed on my finger and the strand of nearly dry hair wrapped around it. Then he lifted his gaze to my mouth. I was biting my lip, a nervous habit that my mother had failed to chastise out of me.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, then pressed his lips together again. It drew my focus there, to the neat bow of his upper lip and the slight fullness of his lower. He opened his mouth again, his voice low and raspy, as if the words stuck on his tongue.
“I’ve always had a weakness for redheads.”
I have a weakness for you. Rachel had pegged it. The man was irresistible.
He drew closer or maybe I leaned toward him. I can’t be sure, but the space between us diminished a bit. Not nearly enough.
Some gremlin in my brain took control of my tongue and the one word to kill the mood slipped out. “Rachel.”
