Once is Never Enough. Mira Kelly Lyn

with.

      One dark brow cocked in amusement. “I think she’d have been laughing too hard to hit ‘send.’ But for you, she’d have tried.”

      Nichole felt her lips twitching at the thought, along with relief flooding through her at hearing Garrett too believed Maeve would have a good sense of humor about this. “You could be right.”

      Garrett sat at the foot of the bed—not close enough to touch, but not a total snub either. Just maintaining the distance between them.

      Snaking a leg out from beneath the blanket’s overlap, she stretched, trying to reach the panties lying three feet from the bed without actually leaving it.

      There was something significantly different about being naked in front of Garrett now that she knew who he was. What he was.

      At risk of severe cramp, she strained further, extending her leg until finally she was able to snare the little heap of lace-edged cotton with her toes. Only just as she had them Garrett turned, one arm braced on the bed, muscles bunched thick from the weight of his torso, and cocked a curious brow at her. “What are you doing?”

      “Panties.”

      His brow drew down as his gaze flickered over the length of her barely concealed form, making her pull and pluck at the corners of the blanket to try and hide further beneath it.

      “You really didn’t know who I was?” he asked, pushing to his feet.

      “I would have run the other way. No offense,” she offered belatedly, wondering whether it was possible not to take offense.

      But apparently he hadn’t. “No, that’s good.”

      “Why?”

      “I just didn’t like the idea of what happened tonight being some kind of conquest thing.”

      She sat up straighter. “This from The Panty Whisperer?”

      Garrett froze where he was, jeans pulled over his hips but the fly left open. Bare feet, bare chest, the short dark waves of his hair a tousled mess … It would have been a calendar-hot snapshot in time if not for the hard set of his jaw and narrowed eyes. “You did not just call me that.”

      “Well, I mean …”

      He paced the room and back. Coming to stop in front of her.

      “What?” he demanded, thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans—a position that pushed them down just that extra inch in front, showing off a nearly scandalous stretch of skin. “You’re not suggesting I ‘whispered’ you