The veins in his huge neck stood out.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” He was hot, but maybe a touch psycho?
“Jagger or Josh? Which one brought you home with them?”
My eyebrows puckered. “Both, I guess?” Something was way off.
“You’re sleeping with both of them?” His voice echoed off the tile and ricocheted through my heart.
My head snapped back like he’d struck me. “What the hell gave you that idea?” I hugged the coffee to my chest in case the word whore had been tattooed across my boobs or something.
“You’re barely dressed in my kitchen at seven in the morning.” My kitchen, the eyes…this had to be Grayson. Holy hell, couldn’t Josh have any ugly friends? My skin tingled where his eyes raked over my flesh, but he squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “You could at least put on some clothes. People live here.”
Blood heated my face. Thank God my complexion didn’t show the blush easily. “Yeah. People like me!” My chest tightened.
“What—”
“Why do you jump to the conclusion that I’m sleeping with them? Because I’m a girl in your kitchen on a Sunday morning? Let me tell you something, I don’t care how hot you think you are—” I shook my finger and let go of the cabinet in the process, taking another step away from him. “You don’t get to make assumptions about me!”
“Hey, Grayson—” Jagger called out, and I turned to look as he walked into the kitchen.
I squawked as my foot slipped in a puddle of water and I pitched forward. My knee slammed into the granite, and my balance shifted over the side of the counter…and into Grayson. He caught me without complaint, rolling me into his chest with one arm tucked securely under my knees and the other behind my back. We locked eyes, and something in me shifted from hot and angry to hot and…not so angry. No. Don’t you dare.
He arched one dark, perfect eyebrow.
“What?” I fired out of self-preservation. “I’m not going to say thank you, if that’s what you’re waiting for. Not when you all but called me a whore.”
“I did not use that word!” His mouth dropped open. Yep. I was right. Those lips were full, soft, and way too close to mine.
Jagger laughed. “Well, I’m glad you two are getting acquainted.”
“What are you talking about?” Grayson fired back, his voice vibrating through my body.
“He’d like to know what the hell I’m doing in your house and which one of you I’m sleeping with,” I growled.
Jagger bit into an apple and swallowed, then let out an impossibly impish grin. “Sleeping with? Holy shit. No. Grayson, meet Sam, our new roommate.”
Thank God my feet were ready, because Grayson all but dropped me.
“Sam is a guy,” he said slowly.
“I most certainly am not.” He steadied me, his hands on my hips, and then nearly ran behind the breakfast table like he needed to fend me off with a chair. What. The. Hell.
“Obviously,” he replied, those silver eyes huge like I’d scared him.
“Why are you so surprised?” I blew an errant curl out of my eyes. Oh God. What if he didn’t want me here? Would Jagger let me stay?
“You never said Sam was a girl,” he accused Jagger.
Jagger chewed another bite. “Dude, Sam has always been a girl. You said you were cool with this.”
Grayson flipped out his phone and flicked through screens. “No. Let me read these. ‘Hey man, is it cool if our friend Sam takes the other bedroom? We’re old friends from Colorado, and Josh is cool with it.’”
I took my prized K-cups to the machine. If I was putting up with this bullshit, I was sure as hell going to need coffee. “Yep, I’m Sam, short for Samantha, a.k.a. the friend from Colorado.”
“And you’re a girl.”
I tilted my head and smirked. “Apparently.”
“You’re not sleeping with either of them.”
“Nope.”
“And I just…” He squeezed those amazing eyes shut and took a breath before opening them again. “Samantha, I’m incredibly sorry for what I implied.”
Oh, look, he can apolo—
“But if you could put some clothes on, that’d be great.”
So much for him removing the stick from his ass. He nodded his head, pursed those beautiful lips, and retreated toward the front door, muttering something about the gym.
“What the hell is his deal?”
Jagger’s grin was a step past shit-eating to downright comical. “No clue, but that’s the most worked up I’ve ever seen the guy, and I’ve lived with him for almost a year. Way to go, Sam.”
“That’s not a compliment.” I spooned sugar into my steaming cup of coffee. “I really need to pick up honey, and please tell me you have creamer.”
“Ember lives here every other weekend,” he replied, moving past me to the fridge, then handed me a bottle of Amaretto creamer.
“Thank God for little things.”
“Sweet and blonde,” he commented with a wink. “Just like I like my women. Oh, a letter came for you yesterday. I left it on the entry table. Make yourself at home, and welcome to Alabama, Sam.”
He patted me on the back and left me sipping my coffee as I headed toward the front door. Sure enough, a letter addressed to Samantha Fitzgerald from Troy University sat on the polished wood.