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She fought her embarrassment to present him a neutral, even blasé, expression. “You are the hired help, right?”
“So you don’t deny it?”
“Don’t feel too flattered. I also stop to appreciate the guy who mows the lawn.”
“But you’ve never invited him to bed.”
“I’ve never invited you to bed, either.”
“Because you’re afraid.” He pushed himself up off the floor and began rummaging through his toolbox.
“Afraid? Right.” Why did it feel like he was reading her mind? “I’m afraid of being horribly disappointed. Most guys with a tool like yours are so impressed with themselves they never bother learning what to do with it.”
He peered over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow quirked. “A tool like mine?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You never would have stood in my kitchen buck naked from the waist down if you didn’t think you were well-hung.”
A smile played on his lips, and if she weren’t mistaken, she’d swear he was fighting back laughter. “Nice act, but I’m not fooled.”
“What?”
“You’re just afraid of being wrong.”
Jane felt all the blood that had been pulsing between her legs race straight to her temples. She wasn’t afraid of being wrong, was she? Didn’t she care most about the truth, about understanding it and helping other people understand? Was she battling her sexual feelings just to support her relationship theories, or because she really believed they were true?
Suddenly, nothing made sense.
She’d written a book that made people angry enough to deface it and break into her car to give it back to her. Was that because it told the unpopular truth or because it was flawed? Or just because she happened to have one seriously unbalanced reader? She felt her knees wobbling, and she unlocked them to keep from passing out. For the first time, she wondered if maybe it was possible…maybe she really was wrong.
“What do you think would happen if we slept together?” she heard herself ask, unsure how the question had even formed in her mind, let alone on her lips.
He turned to face her and gave her an odd look. “Babe, if you don’t know that, you’re not much of a relationship expert.”
“No, I mean, the aftereffects. Do you think it would somehow leave us happier, healthier people? Do you think our relationship would be improved somehow—what?”
Luke slid his gaze down the length of her, heating her body from top to bottom. “All of the above.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Jane felt her conscience tugging at her. She knew she was being led down a slippery slope, but she somehow couldn’t resist following at the moment. She wanted to feel herself sliding, falling, tumbling head over heels…But into what?
“I’m not, but I’m willing to take a chance. The only way I’ve ever gotten anything worth having in life is by taking risks.”
“Taking risks in your sex life is never a good idea.”
“You drive a car, right? And I’ll bet you wear a seat belt?”
Jane nodded, trying not to roll her eyes at the surely strained metaphor to come.
“Every time you get into a car, you take a risk, but you put on the seat belt to minimize the risk. Sex is no different. You could walk everywhere you go to avoid risks, but you’d never get very far, and you’d miss out on a lot of great trips.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Had she really been missing out on lots of great trips all these years? Had her avoidance of risks kept her walking around the same boring neighborhood over and over? Would having sex with Luke take her somewhere she’d never gone before?
Suddenly all her wiseass comebacks disappeared from her head. She probably could have argued with his logic, but…
She didn’t want to.
Instead, she wanted to forget about being Jane Langston, author of The Sex Factor, the book that had made half the men in America hate her. She wanted to do something crazy, something that would make her forget for a little while why Luke was installing a new security system in her house. She wanted to take a wild ride in a fast car without knowing the destination.
She blinked slowly as her mind grasped exactly what she was about to do, and out of her mouth came a statement she could barely recognize as her own. “Let’s do it.”
“Do it?” He gave her a look that let her know he wasn’t interested in playing games.
“You’ve convinced me, okay? I’m willing to take a risk, see what happens.”
“You sure you mean that? Maybe you’re just talking crazy because of the incident earlier.”
