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She gasped with outrage. Teasing cheat. “You bastard! You’re kidding! You can’t do this to me!”
He licked sweat off her shoulder. “I’ll suffer right at your side,” he offered. “And my suffering is visible to the naked eye.” He gestured at his engorged penis. “Everybody will know how desperate I am.”
“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you? Get out!” She shoved him out the bathroom door. “You dog! Go!”
She finally managed to shove his big body out the door and shut it. She locked it, too, on principle. She was weak in the knees, wound up like a spring. That bastard. How could he. Whipping her up into a state…and just leaving her there. Shaking with lust. Argh.
She showered, shampooed, and stomped out to rummage for the jeans, T-shirt and sneakers she’d packed into her suitcase. She pulled them on, without looking at Nick. Evil.
“I assume you’ll be getting dressed at the lodge.” She knew him well enough now to hear the steel underlying his quiet tone. “Because that’s where we’re going. Are you ready?”
There was no point fighting it, she thought. It was silly, resisting for resistance’s sake. God knows, she had nothing better to do. And she felt a hundred times safer with Nick. Even when he drove her crazy.
“As I’ll ever be,” Becca said, resigned.
A quick stop at a breakfast drive-thru, and they were on the road, speeding down the highway in Nick’s big predator pickup, on the way to Three Creeks Lodge. Becca stared out the window at the highway speeding by as she nibbled her ham and egg bagel. She was dazed by the unexpected U-turn her life had taken. She fished her telephone out of her bag, thinking about Carrie and Josh with a stab of uneasy guilt.
But what could she say? That she’d been fired from her job? That she was running away with a tall, dark stranger? They would just panic and get on her case, the nosy little stinkers. She’d never had much luck at teaching the two of them manners or boundaries. She’d always been a cream puff when it came to discipline. Hell, no one was perfect.
She couldn’t face them yet. She would call them both tonight.
Nick drove the truck the way he did everything, balls out. Which left her nothing to do except think about her problems. She had her choice of things to stress about. Being poor again? Career shot to hell? Carrie and Josh taking you-want-fries-with-that jobs? An ugly death at the hands of a mafiya thug?
And if that wasn’t enough, there was always the niggling little matter of exactly how long it had been since her last period.
She needed a distraction, fast. She looked over at Nick. “Um, do you ever talk?” she asked him. “You know…converse?”
“I talk all the time with you,” he said guardedly. “I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much in my life. My throat hurts from talking so much.”
“Oh, really? Then why is it that I know so little about you?”
He slanted her a narrow look. “I decline to answer that question.”
“Oh, really? And why is that?”
“It’s a trap,” he said. “I know a trap when I see one. Ask me straight questions, if you’re curious. I’ll answer them. If I can, that is.”
“Oh, of course,” she muttered. “Mr. Control Freak has got to cover his ass, at all costs.”
“Stop snarking, and ask your fucking questions, already.”
Now that he was actually willing to answer her, she was caught unprepared.
“Um, where did you grow up?” she ventured. Lame, but it would do.
“Waylon, Wyoming. Otherwise known as the ass end of nowhere.”
“Good start,” she said, cautiously approving. “And your parents?”
“Dead,” he said.
She waited. “Oh,” she said delicately. “I don’t suppose you could elaborate on that? Do I get to know anything other than the fact that they’re dead?”
His face in profile looked clouded and sulky. “Like what?”
Becca sighed. Maybe stressing about her problems would be more restful. “Your mother, for instance,” she said patiently. “How old were you when she—”
“Twelve,” he said. “Breast cancer.”
