Postcards From…Verses Brides Babies And Billionaires. Rebecca Winters

nothing. She could hear the splash of water on the other side of the door. She knew from experience how noisy Max’s stall could be with water pounding on the tiles and the plastic shower curtain.

      She eased the door open, very aware of Charlotte waiting. Maddy hoped she wasn’t about to embarrass herself and Max by barging in on him. There was a shower curtain, after all. And since the shower was still going, there was no chance she’d catch Max drying off. So this wasn’t a total invasion of privacy.

      She felt faintly stupid even worrying about catching him naked, given she’d just spent the past three hours posing in the buff for him. There was nothing he had that she hadn’t seen before, after all.

      “Max,” she said as the door swung open.

      The rest of what she’d been going to say got stuck somewhere between her lungs and her mouth as she saw that the shower curtain wasn’t fully pulled across and that she had a perfect view of Max standing under the water, erection in hand, a look of pleasurable pain on his face as he stroked himself toward fulfillment.

      He was totally oblivious to everything except the matter in hand and she literally didn’t know what to do. Breathe. Retreat. Say something. Die on the spot.

      She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Golden skin, covered in fine dark hair. A muscular body, bunched and flexed slightly forward as he neared his climax. Strong thighs. And a powerfullooking erection that jutted arrogantly from his body.

      He groaned, a low sound that snapped her into focus. Heat rushed up her body, sending prickling tendrils beneath her armpits and the back of her neck before filling her face with warmth. Eyes glued to Max, she took a step backward, her shaking hand reaching for the door handle as she pulled it shut behind her.

       Oh, boy.

      Her knees were weak. She felt hot, as though she’d been rehearsing for hours. She fanned herself, then suddenly remembered the phone call.

      The receiver was still in her left hand. She lifted it to her face.

      “He won’t be a minute.” Her voice came out as a croak. “He’s just getting out of the shower.”

      Then she counted to ten before knocking very, very loudly on the bathroom door. Opening it a crack, she hollered through the gap.

      “Max, your sister is on the phone. It sounds important,” she said.

      She left the phone on the kitchen table where he would be sure to find it and hightailed it toward the door.

      Once she was outside she walked up the street and around the corner before she felt safe enough to stop.

      She was shell-shocked. There was no other word for it. She’d caught Max touching himself, on the brink of having an orgasm, and she was blown away.

      She leaned against the wall of a building and closed her eyes. Instantly she was in the bathroom again with Max naked and aroused, his hand sweeping up and down his shaft, his head thrown back, his whole body tense with anticipation.

      God, he’d looked amazing. So…masculine. She huffed out a small, humorless laugh at how woefully inadequate her vocabulary was. Masculine didn’t even come close to describing how vital and overwhelmingly male he’d looked with his legs braced apart, his back against the wall, all that hardness in his hand.

       No wonder they called him Rex.

      The thought popped into her mind before she could censor it.

      “Oh, God,” she said, pressing her hands against her burning face.

      She should not be thinking about his generous schlong. Definitely she shouldn’t. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. He was her friend, her lovely, platonic friend who had danced with her, lived with her, laughed with her, cried with her.

      And now she knew with absolute clarity how he looked naked. And not just undressed naked, either. She knew how he looked fully aroused, ready-to-go, big-and-proud naked. And she didn’t know what to do with her new knowledge.

      “Max is my friend,” she said out loud.

      An old man braving the cold to walk his dog gave her a curious glance as he passed by.

      Great. She was a voyeur and a crazy, talking-to-herself-in-the-street person.

      She pushed her frozen hands into her coat pockets and turned toward the boulangerie. Her French was rusty, but she managed to greet the woman behind the counter and buy half a dozen croissants and a baguette. The baguette was fresh from the oven and the paper bag it was wrapped in grew warm in her hand as she walked the short distance to Max’s front door.

      She had no idea what to say to him. Or how she would look at him without breaking into a sweat.

      She should have knocked louder. And closed her eyes or looked the other way when she opened the door. Better yet, she should have let his answering machine take the call.

      She was going to have to simply pretend it had never happened. There was no other alternative. She certainly wasn’t about to tell Max what she’d seen—God forbid.

      She knocked, then swallowed a lump of acute discomfort as she heard footsteps moving toward the door. Just like yesterday, except this time she wasn’t imagining her old dancing buddy on the other side. No. Now she was imagining a naked, rampant man with a huge—

      “Hey. I was wondering what was taking you so long,” Max said as the door swung open.

      He was fully dressed. Thank heaven for small mercies.

      “There was a queue,” she fibbed.

      “I have to go to my sister’s. She’s had some problems with her latest babysitter. I’m going to go hold her hand for a while,” he said. “I might be a while.”

      “Okay.”

      For some reason, she was having a lot of trouble keeping her attention fixed on Max’s face. Her gaze kept wanting to slide down his chest to his crotch. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime.

      “I’ve left a spare key for you on the kitchen table. Feel free to use the phone, the Internet, whatever. And don’t wait for me if it gets to dinnertime and I’m not back.”

      “Sure. Don’t worry about me. Your sister sounded really worried.”

      He sighed. “Yeah. She gets worked up sometimes. Her husband travels a lot and she struggles with the kids on her own. I couldn’t help out as much as I wanted to when Père was still alive, but now it’s better.”

      He was worried, distracted. She bet he was a great brother, despite his own assessment. She knew how great he’d been with her. No doubt he moved mountains for his sister. Which was why it was wrong, twisted, just plain freaky that she kept getting flashbacks to the shower scene as she looked at him. One second Max was standing decently clothed in front of her, her old friend looking platonically handsome and solid and reliable in faded denim and a chunky-knit sweater, and the next he was naked, gorgeous, hard as a rock and about to lose it.

      “You’d better get going,” she said.

       Like, right now. Before my head explodes from all the illicit images bouncing around inside it.

      She stepped aside to clear the way to the door.

      “I’ve got my cell phone with me. Call if you need anything,” he said.

      He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder as he passed. She found herself staring at his butt as he walked away, mesmerized by the perfection of his rounded, hard ass. A dancer’s ass, even though he’d long since retired. Wonder Butt, indeed.

      She registered what she was doing and made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat as she shut the door behind him.

      One look. Ten seconds, maximum, and she felt as though nothing would ever be the same again. Which was crazy. She and Max had known each