“You’re getting riled right now.”
He wasn’t wrong, but he hopefully hadn’t guessed on how many levels he got her wound up. She was going to say something about being sensitive to him pushing her buttons, but she couldn’t figure out how to say it without the possibility of the conversation spinning into innuendo.
“So tell me something, Cait. Since we’re on the subject, why don’t you like me?”
“I don’t know you well enoughback seatlike you.”
“Okay.” He fiddled with his coffee mug, turning it in his hands. “I’ll put it another way. I’ve wondered why you react to me in a way that makes other people ask me what I did to piss you off.”
“They do not.” When he just stared at her, one eyebrow raised, she looked away first. “What did you say?”
“You mean what I tell them I did to piss you off? I breathed.”
Ouch.But that was why she’d invited him to breakfast in the first place—to apologize and talk through whatever their problem was. Whateverherproblem was. “I don’t know what it is about you that rubs me the wrong way.”
So much for keeping the conversation innuendo-free, she thought, barely stopping herself from slapping her palm over her face.
“Pent-up sexual tension between us?”
She laughed, because she knew he was joking. Or she was fairly sure he was, at least. “You’re cocky.”
“I’m confident.”
“Same thing.”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
She propped her chin on her hands. “Tell me the difference, then.”
“Confidence is believing the guys I’m with and I have enough training and skill to go into a burning building and get everybody back out again. Cockiness is running into a burning building without fear because, hey, nothing’s going to happen to me because I’m just that awesome.”
“So fear is the difference between confident and cocky?”
“Maybe. I don’t think I’d want to face a fire with somebody who doesn’t fear and respect it.” He shrugged. “That’s really it, I guess. The difference between confident and cocky is respect. For the situation. For the people you’re in that situation with.”
They paused while the server—who was about her mom’s age—set massive omelets in front of them. Her blond ponytail swung as she turned her head to Gavin and gave him a brilliant smile. “No onions for you, of course.”
He returned that smile with a high-wattage one of his own. “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it.”
When the server was out of earshot, Cait paused in the act of cutting her omelet to lean forward. “I hope she makes it back to the kitchen before her pants fall off.”
He laughed, and Cait wasn’t surprised when the other women in the room stopped eating to turn his way. She would have, too, if she didn’t have a front-row seat to the way he threw back his head a little and his eyes crinkled. “I think I’m probably a little young for her.”
“Calling herma’amprobably cued her in.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I call every womanma’am. I can’t help it and I blame my mom. Or rather, my dad, since he’s the one who cuffed me every time I forgot.”
She let that sink in for a moment. He called every womanma’am.And the day it had been her on the receiving end of it was the first day they’d met. She was a stranger and he used the term out of habit. Not because he regarded her as some possibly older woman he had no interest in dating.
Then he put a forkful of omelet in his mouth and made a long, low sound that vibrated through Cait’s body. Her mind offered up a dubbing of that sound over the fleeting memory of his naked body over hers from her dream, and she had to look down at her plate.
She had to admit that she’d found the Gavin who’d irked her sexy. And the intense, competent Gavin from yesterday was even sexier. This Gavin, relaxed and just being himself, was dangerously sexy, though. He was jacking up the attraction fromokay, he’s hottoI want this man in my bed now.
“So, your brother and Jeff Porter’s daughter are about the same age, huh?” he asked between bites, and she needed a second to wrap her head around his question. She wasn’t sure if it was her suddenly rampaging hormones or the abrupt subject change.
“Yeah, I guess. He doesn’t talk about his friends much, so I don’t know if they know each other.” She knew Jeff Porter was on Gavin’s crew, and she’d actually seen his daughter around a few times. “They must go to school together, I guess. Why?”
“Just wondering. This neighborhood’s a small town in a big city, so I just assume we must know some of the same people.”
