A sound made them both freeze.
He blinked. “What was that?”
And then they heard it again. A door closing. Followed by footsteps. And then a voice. “Hello?”
“You have to be kidding me,” Colton growled.
Her fucking parents were home.
And this was the problem with getting naked with Colton Wheeler. If kisses scrambled her senses, letting him touch her boobs made her lose her entire goddamn mind. She’d been one pant leg away from having sex with him in her childhood bedroom.
Colton uttered a quiet Fuck as he reached for his shirt where it was draped off the end of the mattress, nearly invisible amid the disheveled pink frothiness of the comforter. He lost his balance, though, and tumbled to the floor, barely missing a collision with the corner of the end table. He dropped three more consecutive F-bombs and scrambled onto all fours.
Gretchen threw him his shirt and sat up, hands over her breasts. “Where’s my bra?”
He pulled the shirt over his head. “I don’t know.”
“You took it off me! Where’d you put it?”
“I don’t know. I was a little distracted by your boobs.” He winked suddenly. “Which are spectacular, by the way.”
Growling, Gretchen scanned the area around the bed.
“Here it is,” Colton said. He crawled to where both her shirt and bra were snagged on a branch of the Christmas tree.
Outside, her parents’ voices grew louder as they entered the living area.
“I don’t know whose car that is,” her father snapped.
“Should we call the police?” her mother asked.
“It’s a Porsche, Diane.”
As if that automatically ruled out any criminality. Even when they thought they were being robbed, her parents managed to be snobs.
“Got it,” Colton whispered, crawling back. Gretchen grabbed her clothes from him as he rose on his knees to zip his jeans. He winced as it dragged over his still-massive erection.
Gretchen shimmied into her bra and swore under her breath as her fingers slipped from the clasp. It took two tries before it finally caught. The footsteps approached the hallway leading to her bedroom just as Gretchen began rebuttoning her shirt. Shit. Shit.
Colton stood quickly, running his hands through his hair to smooth it back down. Gretchen pointed at his crotch, eyes wide. He looked down, swore again, and started breathing slowly in and out.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Picturing the lunch lady at my high school. It’s not working.”
“Oh my God,” Gretchen groaned. “This is my nightmare.”
Her mother’s voice rang out, just feet from her bedroom door. “Hello? Evan, is that you? Did you get a new car?”
Gretchen hopped up from the bed, ran her fingers through her hair, and cleared her throat to answer her mother. But before she could, her mom rounded the corner from the hallway just then and stopped short in the open doorway of her bedroom. “Oh. Gretchen, my goodness. What a surprise.”
Gretchen waved. “Hi, Mom.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Her mom’s eyes glanced to Colton and then back to Gretchen again, seeing everything and missing nothing.
Perfect.
Of all the times for her mother to finally pay attention.
Her father appeared then and stopped the same way her mother did. His eyes darted from Gretchen to Colton to the state of her bed. Each movement of his eyes brought a new level of understanding of what had apparently been going on before they walked in, followed by confusion over why it had been happening.
“Mom. Dad,” Gretchen said. More like gulped. “Hey. This is, um—”
“I know who he is,” her father said.
Colton stepped forward, all swagger and aw-shucks smiles. He extended his hand to her father first. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Winthrop.”
Colton then turned his superstar attention to her mother and offered a handshake to her as well. “You have a gorgeous house, ma’am,” he said, laying the drawl on extra heavy and sealing it with his signature wink.
“Thank you.” Her mother preened.
“Might I also say that if Gretchen hadn’t told me you were her mother, I’d swear you two were sisters.”
Gretchen mentally gagged. Especially when her mother blushed and began to fiddle with her necklace. The surefire fastest way to her mother’s heart was to tell her that all the money spent on facials and luxury skincare was working. Her mother approached aging like a toddler fighting a nap—kicking and screaming and crying that she wasn’t ready yet.