Читать книгу Lovers' Reunion - Anne Marie Winston - Страница 11

Three

The knock on the door of her apartment startled Sophie.

She was sitting on the floor of her extra bedroom with a year’s worth of photographs spread around her. She always had taken lots of photographs, too many, really, because then she felt compelled to organize them in albums. So she’d spent the evening sorting them into piles of family, friends and work photos, and she was just about to begin the unenviable task of sliding them into sleeves in the appropriate albums when a hard rap at her door had her jerking her head up and pressing a hand to her heart.

Hastily, she rose to her feet and tiptoed through the piles of pictures. It was eight o’clock at night. Who could it be?

She’d had Sunday lunch with her family after church and spent a pleasant hour with the members of her big clan that were present, but around two she’d made her excuses and slipped out, feeling the need for some breathing room.

Maybe she’d forgotten something, she thought, as she put her hand on the knob and pulled the door the small distance it would open with the chain on. Or more likely, Mama had dispatched someone to drop off more food. Like she hadn’t already sent enough—

“Hello, Sophie.”

Marco was standing on her doormat. He was smiling, a crooked grin that reminded her of a little boy who’d been caught red-handed in an act of orneriness. But this was no little boy. He wore a light blue jean shirt tucked into a darker pair of jeans. The shirt emphasized the width of his shoulders, and at its open neck, dark, silky hairs curled out of the vee where the buttons weren’t fastened.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach and landed with a jarring thud deep in her abdomen. Speech deserted her, and she simply stood there staring, trying desperately to keep her eyes on his face and not examine the rest of him the way she had longed to since she’d heard he was home.

“Are you going to invite me in?” His voice was low and amused, and she felt herself flush. He probably knew exactly the effect he had on her. He certainly had at one time.

That thought stiffened her spine, and she cleared her throat. She unbolted the door and pulled it open, but she didn’t move aside to invite him in. “Marco. What are you doing here?”

He smiled again, easily, dimples creasing his cheeks, and a tiny fanwork of lines crinkled the corners of his dark eyes. “Visiting you.”

“I don’t want a visitor,” she said, too shaken to be diplomatic. “Go away.”

But before she could close the door in his face, he’d wedged his broad shoulders against it and pushed inside.

Her pulse sped up and she told herself the only reason she was breathing faster was because she was annoyed. But that didn’t explain the heat building in her belly and radiating down to warm the apex of her thighs.

If only he didn’t look so good, she thought, he’d be easier to resist. The fabric of his shirt looked soft and often washed; it clung to his heavily muscled chest and arms as intimately as she once had. At his lean waist, the jeans were buttoned beneath a dark leather belt. They fit him through the hips, snug and molded to the contours of his body in a manner that reminded her he was all man, and she swallowed as she hastily averted her eyes.