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It was the principle of the thing. Having decisions made for her, being told she needed Caleb, she needed anybody, messed with her head.
It was Richard.
Richard had manipulated her, controlled her, used her to feel better about himself. He’d always been telling her what she meant and what she thought, what she ought to think. Patronizing her. Pitying her. Pushing her around with words and helpful suggestions and veiled put-downs.
She didn’t want her house tampered with—didn’t want her life tampered with. Not when it had taken her this long to get it all just the way she liked it. She’d had to fight so hard for her independence, she barely remembered how to yield, and she didn’t want to have to learn all over again.
Caleb folded his arms over his chest. It hadn’t gotten any less broad since she last looked at it. His biceps hadn’t gotten any smaller, either. At some point after he left her house, he’d ditched the jeans and T-shirt for dark slacks and a pale gray dress shirt with white pinstripes. The sleeves were rolled up in deference to the heat, which gave her a rather delectable view of his forearms, ropy with muscle and sprinkled with dark hair.
She was a pervert. Only a pervert would get turned on by forearms at a time like this.
“This is a special situation,” he said. “There are enough strangers in town to fill all the rooms at the Camelot Inn, and most of them have press cards and deadlines and an insatiable curiosity about your brother. A curiosity that might extend to you and your son if they get desperate enough for a story.”
He had a point, but she was in no mood to hear it. Or she hadn’t been, until a minute ago.
Perhaps he sensed her weakening, because he said, “Let’s negotiate.”
That snapped her out of the forearm trance and brought her eyes to his face. “You’re in no position to negotiate. You have nothing I want.”
The smirk returned. “Nothing?”
Oh, you cocky bastard. “Nothing.”
“I had something you wanted last night.”
“Says who?”
He steppe
d closer. Close enough for her to see his mid-afternoon stubble and to wonder how he’d broken his nose. Whether he’d played football for Mount Pleasant High or gotten into a fight defending some woman’s honor in a barroom on the other side of the world. Some Chiclet.
Not a hearth-and-home guy, Ellen reminded herself. Carly had told her Caleb was a player. He certainly had the charm for it. The confidence that was almost arrogance.
“You wanted me to kiss you,” he murmured.
“In your dreams.”
His eyes were black and daring. Daring her to do what, exactly? There were four men watching them from the bottom of her driveway, and anyway, Caleb wasn’t attracted to her. She was cheesecake. Better if I don’t.
“I think you still want it.” He had a bedroom voice, a low rumble designed for exchanging dirty secrets in close quarters. It made her go all shivery.
She did want it. She really, really did. But she didn’t want to want it, and he’d turned her down, and it was just plain mean of him to be changing the rules now. “You’re an insensitive, pig-headed jerk,” she said. The statement came out kind of breathy and needy.
“You’re gorgeous.”
She blinked. Opened her mouth. Looked down. Henry was ignoring them, pounding chalk into dust on the driveway. Her khaki shorts were smudged and five pounds too tight in the ass. Her pink T-shirt boasted of her visit to see the Butter Cow at the Ohio State Fair. There was a disposable chopstick holding her hair in a bun at the base of her neck.
Her brother was gorgeous. She was a hausfrau who would require a shower, a new wardrobe, and a haircut before she could pass for pretty.
“Quit trying to manipulate me, Clark. I don’t want an alarm system. Even if I had one, I wouldn’t set it. I’d forget to turn it on. I’d lose the stupid code. Jamie’s got one at his place, and I despise it.”
He stepped closer again, until they were almost touching. Not quite. But almost. He picked up a strand of hair that had escaped from her bun and rubbed it between his fingers. “You smell fantastic,” he said. “And I like it when your hair’s all falling down.”
This was not her. Men did not reduce her to puddles of lust in her driveway. This was happening to somebody else. “You’re not attracted to me,” she insisted in a fierce whisper.
“When did I say that?” He narrowed his eyes as if perplexed. “That doesn’t sound like me. I am most definitely attracted to you.”
“Last night …”
