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She didn’t stop at the door to put on her shoes. The giant truck had somehow managed to spray gravel onto her driveway, and it bit into the soles of her feet, which made her even angrier. Her driveway was not supposed to have gravel on it. Or a giant truck. And those men were not supposed to be trampling her lawn, and—
“So help me God, if they cut down that tulip tree, I am going to kill you, Caleb. You stop them. You stop them right this second.” She stomped her foot, and a big, sharp rock stabbed her in the heel so hard she yelped and picked her foot up off the ground by instinct, holding it in both hands as she hopped around. “Ohhh, mother of all that is holy, that hurt. That really fucking hurt!”
Caleb reached out to steady her.
“No! Don’t touch me. Don’t even think about it.” She took one hand off her foot and pointed down the drive. “Tree. Deal with the tree. I planted that tree myself, and if those men cut it down I will sue the pants off you.”
“I thought you were going to kill me.”
“I’ll do that, too.”
“I’m harder to kill than you might think.”
“I’ll do it when you’re sleeping.”
Caleb’s lips twitched, amused by her threat or her fury. She wanted to squeeze his neck until his head exploded.
When he said, “That sounds like fun” and Anonymous Hard-Hat Man chuckled, she lost all semblance of control over the stream of invective coming out of her mouth.
She called Caleb every bad name she could think of, and then she did a 180 so she could call Hard Hat some names, too, but he’d wisely moved off to stop a third guy with a chainsaw from attacking her tulip tree. So she ended up spinning in a circle with her jabbing finger out, ready to poke at Caleb some more. He caught her wrist and lowered it, and for some reason she let him.
“Ellen,” he said, very quietly.
She wasn’t going to answer him. It seemed she’d run out of swear words to call him, so now she’d go the other way. She wasn’t speaking to Caleb. She was breathing at him through her nostrils like a pissed-off bull, but she was not speaking to him. He’d promised not to play her, and then he’d turned right around and played her, and she was sick of it. Sick of being messed around with by men, sick of being treated as if her opinion didn’t matter. This was her house. It was the only thing she had. He was ruining her whole front yard, and he hadn’t even asked for permission so she could tell him N-O, no.
“Ellen, honey, I’m sorry. It’s really important.” Caleb trapped her with his eyes, which were humble and very unhappy. Also, kind of bruised and tired-looking, because he’d never gone to bed.
He was still the handsomest thing she’d ever seen. And she didn’t give a damn.
“It’s really important that I have the world’s ugliest fence put up around my house at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning?” So much for not talking to him. She had things she needed to say.
“Yes.”
“Because there are, what, seven cars out there by the road, with people in them who might want to take Jamie’s picture?”
“They’re coming,” he said. “Your brother snuck back into town in a way that’s gonna make a fantastic story for the press as soon as they figure out what happened. Which they will any time now. A whole lot more of them are coming. And the fence is only temporary.”
She met his eyes. He really did look sorry. But the thing was, it didn’t matter if more of them were coming, or if it was all Jamie’s fault. That was not the issue. The issue was between her and Caleb. “You promised me.” To her horror, her voice broke as she said it.
“Whatever they ruin, I’ll fix it later. This is just temporary—one fence around your property and Carly’s both, to help me keep them out. I have to do this to protect you.”
He reached for her face, and she batted his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Ellen. Come on. This is my job.”
What did he want her to do, forgive him? Say, Oh, well if it’s your job, I absolve you? Not going to happen. He’d pretended to care what she wanted. All that negotiation crap over the security lights, and all that negotiation crap in the bedroom. But he didn’t have any real interest in what she wanted, any more than Richard ever had. He’d told her brother he was her boyfriend even when she’d said flat-out she didn’t want a relationship, and now he’d invited a bunch of bristly-jawed jackasses onto her property to cut down her trees and surround her beautiful house with something ugly.
Caleb was supposed to be fun. Having an affair with him was supposed to be something she was doing for herself. This was not remotely fun.
“You can’t have it both ways, Clark. Protect me from the ravening hordes if you want to, but don’t expect me to like it. Don’t expect me to thank you for it, either.”
She turned her back on him and stomped toward the house as best she could in bare feet. More of a hobbling mince than a stomp, unfortunately, because her feet felt all chewed up. Her everything felt all chewed up.
Caleb Clark. For Christ’s sake. Not an hour had gone by since she met him that he’d failed to put her through the wringer. What had possessed her to sleep with him?
Multiple orgasms.
Yeah, there was that. But she could live without those. She’d managed to live thirty years without them, after all.
