Kyler gave me his most charming smile. A dimple appeared in his left cheek, and my heart skipped a beat. “Want to join me?”
Waving the e-reader, I made a face. “Do I look like I want to go running with you?”
He leaned in, placing his hands on either side of my legs, which made him way, way close. Even if I weren’t nursing an undying lust for him, I wouldn’t be immune to his proximity. Any female with ovaries would be affected. Kyler oozed sex appeal, a dangerous mix of looks and intelligence wrapped in an air of unpredictability.
I inhaled—oh wow did he smell good. Not like he’d drunk a trough full of alcohol last night and then had wild monkey sex for hours. Oh no, he smelled like man and a fine cologne I couldn’t place.
Man, I couldn’t believe I was smelling him like some kind of creeper extraordinaire.
Leaning back, I looked away.
“You’ll have fun. I promise. Come on.” He tugged on my pigtail again.
I shook my head. “There’s snow and ice everywhere. I’ll break my neck. Actually, you might break your neck. One day of not running isn’t going to kill you.”
“Yes, it will.”
Keeping my gaze focused on the photo stuck to the front of the fridge, I clasped my hands together. It was a picture of us together, in elementary school, dressed in our Halloween costumes. He’d been a werewolf and I’d been Little Red Riding Hood. It had been my mom’s idea. “I can’t believe you even want to go running after all you drank last night.”
He laughed, and his breath was warm against my cheek. “I can handle it. Don’t forget, you’re drinking with the big kids.”
I rolled my eyes at that.
Closing the space between us, he kissed my cheek. “Go sit someplace more comfortable. I won’t be that long.”
When I didn’t move, he made a disgruntled sound deep in his throat, and then placed his hands on my hips. Without any effort, he lifted me off the counter and set me on my feet. He gave me a little smack on the ass, which sent me scurrying out of the kitchen.
I plopped down on the couch, glaring at him. “Happy?”
Kyler cocked his head to the side and looked like he was about to say something, but then he just grinned. “I’m going to teach you to snowboard this week. You know that, right?”
Laughing, I leaned back against the overstuffed cushion. “Good luck with that.”
“You have such little faith in me. I have skills.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said dryly, staring at the narrow Christmas tree in front of his window.
A laugh burst out of Kyler, a nice, deep laugh, and my muscles tightened. “Wouldn’t you love to know the full extent of my talents?”
“If I did, it would be easy to find out. I could ask about ninety percent of the girls living on my dorm floor.”
Grinning shamelessly, he backed out of the room, heading toward his bedroom. “Actually, it would be more like eight-nine percent. I didn’t sleep with the girl at the end of the hall. She just gave me—”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Sound jealous, don’t you?”
“Not likely,” I replied, turning my e-reader back on.
“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. One of these days you’re going to admit that you’re madly, deeply in love with me. It’s my boyish charm—hard to resist.”
“If you’d gone with your body being irresistible, it would’ve been more believable.”
He laughed again as he turned. I watched him disappear from the room with a sinking, weird feeling in my tummy. It was the painfully embarrassing truth that Kyler never knew. He might joke with me and tease me, but he was clueless when it came to how I felt about him, and it had to stay that way.
I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, groaning softly.
Girls were like flavors to him and I wasn’t one he wanted to taste. He’d been like that since high school, and I’d accepted it as the way it was. It had to stay that way, because I knew that, if Kyler discovered how I truly felt, our friendship would be over in a heartbeat.