“I’m sure it’ll be delicious.” He thought she might tell him it was too early to go to bed. But she didn’t. She seemed willing enough to let him carry her, too.
“Where are you going to sleep tonight?” she asked.
“In the barn, where I’m supposed to be sleeping.”
“No, stay inside, okay?”
He was beginning to want things he hadn’t wanted for a long time, so he wasn’t sure that would be a smart move. “It’s probably better if I don’t, Callie.”
She’d closed her eyes and turned her face into his chest. “Better in what way?”
He wasn’t about to explain it to her if she hadn’t already guessed. “Fine. I’ll stay in.”
“Thanks.”
After depositing her on the bed, he covered her and returned to the living room. He was in a hurry to have his dinner before it got cold and he’d have to reheat it, but he noticed something that stopped him before he could go very far. One of her shopping bags had a very distinctive color and logo.
Pink. Victoria’s Secret.
What had she bought there?
Maybe it was just a bra or panties for everyday use, but he couldn’t help checking. Pushing the tissue aside, he pulled out a sheer white number with a lace-up front and a matching pair of barely there panties.
“Holy hell,” he muttered as his body reacted.
A sound from behind him told Levi she’d followed him out. Embarrassed to be caught handling her lingerie, he turned to find her watching him.
At first she didn’t speak. They stared at each other for a moment. Then she cleared her throat and said, “I was just coming to get my stuff.”
That was his cue to shove the sexy scraps of fabric back into the bag and walk away. But he couldn’t pretend that what he’d found didn’t affect him.
“Pretty,” he said.
“I don’t know why I bought that.” She went bright red. “It was just...something I’d want to buy if...”
“If?” he prompted.
“If I had a reason.”
He couldn’t give her that reason. Tossing the bag onto the couch, he pivoted toward the kitchen. Food. He needed to concentrate on something else, because he knew that if he looked into those big blue eyes any longer, he’d carry her into the bedroom and break his promise to Behrukh.
10
Standing with her back to the closed door of the bedroom, Callie covered her mouth. Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! she screamed, but only inside her head. She’d remembered that Victoria’s Secret purchase just as she was about to fall asleep and forced herself to get up so she could retrieve the bag. She’d wanted to hide the contents before Levi could stumble across it, but she’d ended up surprising him instead—and creating a terribly awkward moment for both of them.
He’d had no right to snoop. But she could understand why he might be interested. She shouldn’t have bought such a thing to begin with. Why had she wasted the money?
Actually, she knew the answer to that. No doubt Levi did, too. But there was more to it than merely wanting to be with a man. When she looked at that bustier, she didn’t think about dying, she thought about living. About loving. About passion and beauty. At thirty-two, there were so many things she had yet to do and see and feel. She didn’t want to die without ever experiencing a night of real passion.
She couldn’t forget Gail describing how it had been the first time she’d made love with Simon. Just thinking about her friend’s happiness made Callie smile, especially since Gail and Simon were now married and having a family, and that happiness was lasting.
Rifle had been lying on the rug by the bed. She normally left her door open and let him roam through the house at will, but she didn’t want to leave him alone with Levi for too long too soon. When she didn’t continue into the room, he cocked his head and whined as if asking what was wrong.
“With all the odds stacked against me, I’ll never have the luck Gail had,” she told him. Gail had married a movie star.
But an out-of-this-world encounter with the tall, handsome man who’d walked into her life three days ago didn’t seem like too much to ask.
Even if sleeping with Levi wasn’t everything she imagined, it wouldn’t be too difficult to surpass what she’d known so far. Kyle was by far the best of the few lovers she’d had, but physical fulfillment wasn’t necessarily emotional fulfillment. Before she died, she wanted to see what it was like to drown in desire and thought maybe the attractive, mysterious Levi could provide that experience—if he was still capable of having sex. It was possible that what he’d been through had robbed him of that ability.
She remembered feeling a certain solid object pressing into her backside at various moments last night. That suggested he could perform. And yet he’d made no attempt to act on his arousal. It was only because she’d been sick that he’d gotten in bed with her. So even if the problem wasn’t physiological, there was some avoidance there. Maybe it was a mental or emotional problem.
Either way, she’d been stupid to buy such expensive lingerie.
Planning to take her purchases back to the store after Levi left, she shoved them in a drawer and picked up her cell phone. Lately, she’d been too afraid her friends would notice her failing health to hang out with them as often as she used to; she was always traipsing back and forth to the transplant center, anyway. She hadn’t been diligent about returning their calls.
But now that she’d had a chance to acclimate, as much as one could acclimate to the possibility of dying, she missed them.
Baxter answered on the first ring. Callie wasn’t sure why she hadn’t chosen to contact one of her female friends first. Gail or Eve or Cheyenne would’ve been a more natural choice. Even the married Sophia. But if her suspicions about Baxter were true, he was also unlucky in love. Given that she believed he was as g*y as her first boyfriend and in love with Noah, who was also part of their group, she thought he’d be the most likely to understand how conflicted she was feeling.
“Hey, don’t tell me this is Callie—Callie who was too busy to visit me in San Francisco and have lunch last week.”
She couldn’t have gone to the city. She’d had too many doctors’ appointments in Sacramento—appointments she didn’t dare cancel. She was fighting for her life, hoping against hope that the people who ran the national donor list would be able to come up with a liver in time.