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“Did you check on your dad today?”
Oops.
“This morning, yeah.”
“How’s he doing? Is he all right with the snow?”
“I shoveled and salted the walk, filled the bird feeders, and made him some breakfast.”
It wasn’t like Carson to evade a direct question. “So is he all right?”
Carson leaned a hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “He’s alive. He spent the whole visit criticizing my shoveling technique and the way I scramble eggs. I’d say he’s fine.”
As long as she’d known them, the two men had never gotten along. Glory used to say Martin was a perfectionist, and his idea of the perfect son was a son who did everything exactly like him. And the fact was, Carson had a lot in common with his dad. They’d both rather do something than talk about it, and they wanted to do everything right, turning their math-teacher and engineer brains on every situation as if the world succumbed to logic.
All those similarities, but he never matched up to his father’s ideal, so at some point he’d stopped trying and started making a point of being different. Which meant that the way Martin saw it, he’d taught Carson everything he knew, and Carson had spit in his face.
Theirs wasn’t a relationship that could be repaired in a short visit, and short visits were all Carson could endure.
Thinking of how sad it would have made Glory to see them like this, Julie slipped up and said something stupid. “You could invite him over here for dinner.”
Carson’s eyes flashed. “Wouldn’t that be cozy?”
“What’s wrong with dinner?”
“Nothing. Only it’s just what he wants, isn’t it? The two of us playing house, and him to play the honored elder?”
“Does he?”
“He practically pushed me out the door to stay at your place. He wants us shacking up. Making babies by Christmas.”
“Don’t be crass.”
“I’m just telling you how it is, not what’s going to happen. I’m not interested, and even if I were, I understand you’re taken.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Bruce said you’re going out with Leo Potter. Congratulations.”
“On what?”
“On landing the richest guy in town. I bet he can pay for a lot of repairs on this place. That is, if you even end up keeping it. With a guy like Leo, you might be too busy doing trophy-wife stuff.” He picked a strand of her hair up to rub between his fingers. His lip curled into a sneer. “Getting your hair done and lunching with the ladies. I didn’t realize you wanted a ticket back to all that, but I guess it makes sense, with your background.”
“Why are you being a dick?”
But she knew. She knew why. He’d moved closer when he grabbed her hair, and now there was all this crazy heat moving between them, this full-body magnet insanity that made her want to strip off all her clothes and press up against him.
He was being a dick because that was how they got the lit match into the puddle of gasoline. That was how they short-circuited civility and jumped straight to sex.
And, God, she was letting him. His pigheaded, jealous taunts had her pulse hammering in her wrists, and her eyes jumped from his mouth to his dilating pupils to the base of his throat, the breadth of his chest. Soaking him up.
“Are you really going out with Leo?”
“Now and then.”
Really, more then than now. It had been a few months since she’d been on a date with Leo, and she understood that he was seeing a woman in Albany who owned her own restaurant. But Julie would be damned if she told Carson that.
He glowered down at her. When had he gotten so close? If she rose on her toes, she’d be kissing him. She didn’t want to kiss him.
