“Why?”

“Because you were sleepin’ over there and you hit me in the chest twice and kicked me in the shin three times.”

Oopsie.

I’d heard that before.

“I’m kind of an active sleeper.”

“No kidding.”

I thought about my options.

There was the floor, which apparently was not an option for me.

There was the Command Center, which I probably couldn’t breach and likely didn’t have a couch or bed considering in my imagination it was filled with supercomputers that had a direct link to the Pentagon.

My cobwebby mind chugged along for minute, registering somewhere deep down how warm and cozy I currently was.

Rosie was a little guy, at least three inches shorter than me and wiry. Rosie was also kind of asexual, never had a girlfriend, his life was coffee, pot and rock ‘n’ roll.

Lee on the other hand was not asexual. He might think of me as his little sister and could calmly sleep next to me without his ni**les getting hard (or anything else getting hard for that matter) but I was pretty certain I could not do the same.

Lee had one of those big, deep-seated couches, the better to sit on and watch Monday Night Football.

Maybe both Rosie and I would fit on the couch.

“I’ll go sleep with Rosie.”

The reply was instantaneous.

“The hell you will.”

Hmm, all sleepy-husky gone from his voice.

Lee was now all business and using that “brook no argument” tone.

I was stuck.

See, I was too afraid to go against Badass Lee Nightingale and I was too tired to try to get comfortable with Rosie.

Actually, bottom line, I was just too comfortable even to contemplate moving.

So, I went back to sleep.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

* * * * *

I woke up again hours later in an entirely different position. Lee was on his back and I was sprawled half-on him, half-off him.

Yikes.

I blinked at the clock on the bedside table. It was seven after six.

I might be a party girl but I’d never been able to sleep late. Even when I fell into bed at four a.m., I woke up before seven.

This caused me, over the years, to perfect the art of the mid-day Disco Nap.

Today was going to be a Disco Nap Day, I could feel it.

There was no way I was getting back to sleep and no way I was gonna remain sprawled all over Lee.

I moved to get up and the arm he had wrapped around my lower back tightened and his fingers dug into my hip.

“Jesus, what is it with you?” he grumbled.

“It’s morning.”

He opened an eye and glanced at the clock.

Then he closed it.

“Barely.”

“I’m gonna make coffee.”

This was apparently an acceptable reason to move as his arm fell away.

“Do you have an extra toothbrush?”

“Probably.”

That was a stupid question. Lee may not still be the dawg he was in high school, but that didn’t mean he didn’t nail his fair share of anatomically impossible babes. He probably had a box full of extra toothbrushes.

“Do you have two?”

The eye opened again and focused on me.

Yikes part deux.

I jumped out of bed, grabbed my clothes and ran to the bathroom. I located one extra toothbrush still in its packaging and went to town on my teeth.

I took care of my teeth, I made a promise to myself that I’d die with my original set and that’s what I intended to do.

I opened the door to the bedroom. “Do you have floss?” I called.

“For Christ’s sake.”

Obviously, Lee didn’t care that much about his teeth.

That’s okay, Lee seemed to be doing a very good job at taking care of other parts of his body.

I pulled on my jeans and struggled into my bra under the wife beater (because I’d decided to steal the wife beater if I could get away with it, to keep as a little memento) and padded into the kitchen trying to be quiet for Rosie.

Rosie had a big day today and he needed his beauty rest.

The living room, dining room and kitchen were open plan in an L shape. The condo was on a corner, the entirety of it had a balcony wrapped around. French doors from the dining room which was across from the kitchen, French doors from the living room which was an extension of the dining room and French doors in the bedrooms. Big money for this kind of location, the huge, airy rooms and the view afforded.

The kitchen was state-of-the-art and mostly hidden from the living room behind the wall that made up the bathroom and extra bedroom.

Still, I had to be quiet.

Normally, I’d have the coffee ready to roll the night before so I could just flip a switch after I’d stumbled out of bed and down the stairs.

Normally, my coffeemaker had a cup under the spout rather than a pot so I could just stand there and wait until it was done filling the cup and then switch it over to the pot so I didn’t have to wait until the pot was full.

Normally, I didn’t function properly until cup number two.

Caffeine was my drug of choice.

It took me awhile to find all the coffee paraphernalia. I lucked out because obviously Lee liked his coffee and he had a high quality bag of java.

I made it strong and did the cup thing. It was pretty clear from his Mr. Grouch impersonation that Lee wasn’t getting up anytime soon and there was not a sound from the couch so I could be greedy and selfish with the coffee.

I was concentrating on the stream of life-affirming joe filling the cup so I was a little surprised when hands settled on the counter on either side of me and I felt the warmth of a body against my back.

They weren’t Rosie’s hands.

I looked over my shoulder.

Lee had fenced me in.

His dark hair was wild in a very sexy way and his eyes were soft as were his features. His chest was bare. I knew this because I could see his shoulders.

I didn’t dare look down.

After ten years of practice, I was able (barely) to put the wild, sexy hair out of my mind and to ignore (barely) the fact he was bare-chested. However, it was kind of hard to ignore his proximity.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He glanced over my shoulder.

“You makin’ coffee for everyone, or just you?”

There were certain times when honesty was the best policy. In my life, those times didn’t come very often but if there was the possibility that you might not get the first cup of coffee, and brutal honesty would get it for you, you had to be brutally honest.

“Just me, for now.”

I turned back to the coffee, deciding I didn’t want an answer to my question about what he was doing. Something was going on and I was three quarts low on caffeine, not to mention sleep. I could hardly think past the next second, much less figure out what game Lee was playing. Likely he was still pissed at me for bringing trouble to his doorstep and decided to make my life miserable as repayment. I could understand that, I’d probably do the same.