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“I’m dramatic?” He put a hand on the front of his jacket. “You’re crazy as a bunny boiler.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She laughed and turned toward the kitchen. “Relax. I would never boil a bunny, and I never said you were a rapist.”
“If you tell people you were coerced and forced against your will, that’s rape.”
“I never told anyone that.” On closer inspection, the thing in her arms was indeed a dog. A hairless dog, and she set it on the floor by her feet. “I guess they just assumed it from that picture.” A black tongue snaked out and licked the pink tutu around its naked body.
“Do you know who took the photo?” If he hadn’t been preoccupied, he would have noticed the flash.
“Not a clue.” She opened a stainless-steel refrigerator and pulled out two beers. “I never knew it was you, the real you, in the photo until a few hours ago.” The door shut behind her and she looked downward. “Watch out, Yum Yum precious baby.”
Yum Yum precious baby? He might have taken a moment to swallow back some vomit if he wasn’t so pissed. “Then who made up that coercion bullshit?”
“Not me!” She shrugged one shoulder and reached into a drawer for a bottle opener. “People just filled in the blanks.” She popped the tops and handed him a beer without asking if he needed one. “I didn’t correct them.”
Obviously.
“Kind of like when I thought your last name was Brown and you didn’t correct me.” She clinked her bottleneck against his. “Cheers.”
“I’m not feeling the cheer.”
She chuckled and raised the beer to her lips.
“And I’m not laughing.”
“No?” Her deep blue eyes watched him over the brown bottle as she drank. She lowered the Molson and bent down to pick up her ugly dog. “But I bet you had a real good laugh in Sandspit when I thought you were a super secret spy like Perry.”
From Phineas and Ferb? “I never told you I was a spy.”
“I never told anyone to shove a hockey stick up your ass, either.” She looked down at her dog and said, “I never would have slept with you if I’d known you’re a hockey player.”
“But sleeping with Perry the spy is okay with you?” Were they really talking about a cartoon platypus? She nodded as she took a drink, and it was his turn to laugh. “I was there that night. You can’t lie to me or yourself. When you had your legs around my waist, you wouldn’t have cared if I was a serial killer.”
She lowered the bottle and said, “I never lied to you.”
“I didn’t lie to you, either.”
“Maybe not outright.” She shrugged one shoulder and looked down at her dog. “A lie by omission is still a lie.”
“Exactly.”
With her dog cradled against her big breasts, she walked from the kitchen. “You knew who I was the moment we met. I didn’t keep it a secret.”
“Princess, it was obvious the moment Jimmy shoved you into his seaplane.” He pointed his bottle at her. “No way you could keep that a secret.”
“KO is right about you. You are a jackass.”
“Then why am I here?” He took a long drink, irritated with people calling him a jackass. Irritated by his inability to control his gaze from wandering from the swing of her ponytail, down her back, to the curve of her waist and nice round butt. Irritated by the pure lust pouring through his stomach and sloshing around in the bottom of his gut. Mostly, irritated by the chaos she created below his waist, specifically, and his life in general. “If you want to pick up where we left off in Sandspit, we need to get busy. I have a four a.m. flight to Arizona,” he said, not bothering to keep the irritation from his voice.
“Don’t flatter yourself. It wasn’t that memorable.”
He could remind her that he’d made her scream from pleasure, but he wasn’t that big a jackass. Instead he smiled and walked across the room. “Who’s lying now, sweetheart?” He took a seat on a purple velvet sofa, cluttered with fussy pillows.
She set her beer on a glass coffee table, sat down, then pulled one bare foot beneath her thigh. Her fingers ran through a patch of long hair on her dog’s head, her red cheeks the only indication she’d heard him. “Why didn’t you tell me you play for the Chinooks?”
If she wanted to change the subject away from that night, fine with him. “It never came up.”
She finally looked up at him. “That’s a deke, not an answer, but you’re good at it.” Her ugly dog jumped up on the top of the couch and shook out its tutu. “Much better at it than your wrister.”
