Page 55 of The Law of Attraction
Not that any clothes would be able to fully mask his attractiveness. The man would probably look sexy in a garbage bag.
But not as sexy.
So that’s what she imagined on the wet walk to the lobby—Adam wearing a garbage bag instead of those stupidly hot sweatpants of his. It almost sort of helped a little.
There were a bunch of other motel guests gathered in the lobby, listening to a local news station on an old battery-operated radio like the one Olivia’s dad kept for hurricanes.
“Morning, you two!” Linda, the motel manager who’d checked them in last night, greeted them with a raised hand and a wiggle of her nicotine-stained fingers. Her smile grew wider, a hint of mischief bleeding into it as her gaze flicked from Adam to Olivia and back to Adam again. “You poor thing. Did you manage to get any sleep at all last night?”
“Yeah, some,” he mumbled, staring at the floor.
Was Olivia imagining it, or was he blushing?
Linda waved at the coffee bar where the promised continental breakfast had been set up. “I’m afraid the power outage has made for slim pickings today. There’s instant coffee and hot water—thank heaven for gas stoves. No pastry delivery today, but we’ve got cereal and yogurt and fruit. And bread and bagels, but of course the toaster doesn’t work.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said, already dumping a packet of instant Folgers into a styrofoam cup. “This is great.”
“What’s the word on the storm?” Adam asked, grabbing a couple yogurts and a banana.
“Highway’s still shut down and they’ve extended all the warnings until two,” Linda said. “Sounds like there’s another band headed our way.”
Adam set his food on an empty cafe table and looked at his phone. “Still no signal. What about you?” he asked Olivia.
She joined him with her coffee and a yogurt, and pulled her phone out of her purse. “Still just the one.”
“See if you can send Gavin a text to let him know what’s going on.”
While Adam went to make himself an instant coffee, Olivia composed a text to Gavin, updating him on their latest crisis. She hit send and offered a silent prayer to the gods of the cellular network as the progress bar slowly ticked across the screen.
“Well?” Adam asked, sliding onto the seat across from her.
She held up a finger. “Hold please.”
Only a little bit more to go. Come on, come on…
“Yes!” she announced with a fist pump when the text went through with a whooshing sound.
Adam’s jaw tensed as he swallowed a yawn. “Let’s hope the signal stays strong enough to receive any response he sends.”
Olivia gulped down her instant coffee and grimaced at the taste. “What’s he going to say? Swim there? It’s out of our hands.”
Adam’s eyebrows lifted as he licked yogurt off his spoon. “You seem uncharacteristically chill this morning, considering our current circumstances.”
She shrugged, concentrating on her own yogurt so she wouldn’t have to watch his tongue sexily caressing his plastic spoon in a way that was probably illegal in the Bible Belt. “It’s a new thing I’m trying, in order to keep from going completely insane.”
If she let herself think about it, she would seriously lose her shit, and she couldn’t afford to do that. Nature had conspired to put them in a temporary time-out, and there wasn’t a damned thing either of them could do about it. The only way to bear it was to ignore it.
They ate their yogurt and sipped their coffee while the local news radio station regaled them with tales of flooded roadways and washed-out bridges, and of the next band of storms expected to hit that afternoon.
Since it was their only available caffeine source, they stayed for a second cup of instant coffee before bidding Linda goodbye. She told them to come back at noon, when she’d have some sandwiches for lunch. At her urging, they took a few extra pieces of fruit and fun-size boxes of cereal to snack on later.
Back in Olivia’s room, the door closed behind them with an ominous thud.
They were alone again. Just the two of them, in a small motel room with a giant bed and nothing to do.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Adam announced, and disappeared into the bathroom with a bundle of clothes from his suitcase.
Thank god. He was changing out of those damned sweatpants. Hopefully that would alleviate some of Olivia’s distraction. And it gave her a few minutes alone to breathe without feeling like she was being watched—or having to worry about accidentally being caught watching him.
