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And that’s a problem...why? some snide voice in her head kept asking.
Sure, she wanted him. Desperately. But since a corner of her heart had always belonged to him, she feared this new development could have devastating consequences when the time came to return to their regular lives. And the time would come. She’d witnessed Dempsey’s parting gifts to his exes enough times to know that relationships came with an expiration date for him. Still, she simmered with thwarted desire. While she finished her meal, she tormented herself with fantasies about touching him. Agreeing to his offer of sensual benefits. Bringing this heat to the boiling point. Even now she wanted to cross over to his chair and take a seat on his lap just to see what would happen.
From her vantage point, his thighs appeared plenty strong enough to bear her weight. Those workouts of his seemed to keep him in optimal shape.
Was she really ready for him to relegate her to friendship for life when she had this opportunity of living with him for the next few weeks? When he’d admitted he couldn’t stop thinking about her? She’d nearly melted in her shoes when he’d confessed it at the fabric warehouse.
“Remember when you stole a crawfish for me and I was too afraid to eat it?” she asked, deliberately putting off the more serious conversation he’d promised over dinner.
She wasn’t ready to help him brainstorm solutions to their dilemma. And right now she wanted a happy memory to remind her why she put up with him and all that driven, relentless ambition, which kept him from getting too close to anyone. She blamed that and his need to prove himself to his family for his unwillingness to take a risk with the relationship.
Although maybe she just needed to tell herself that to protect her heart from the more obvious explanation—that he saw any attraction as a fleeting response doomed not to last.
“I didn’t steal it.” He sounded as incensed about it now as he’d been when he was twelve years old. “If a crawfish happened to walk over to me, it was exercising its free will.”
Laughing, she set aside the jambalaya that had made her think of that day. They’d walked to a nearby crawfish festival. When one of the restaurants selling food at the event refilled its tank of crawfish, a few escapees had headed toward Dempsey and Adelaide, who’d been drooling over the food from a spot on the pavement nearby.
“I don’t know what made you think I would eat a raw mudbug.” She shivered. “Sometimes I still can’t believe I eat them when they’re cooked.”
“A hungry kid doesn’t turn his nose up at much,” he observed. “And I figured it was only polite to offer them to you before I helped myself.”
Adelaide had never gone hungry the way Dempsey sometimes had. His mother could be kind when she was drug-free, but even then the woman had never had any extra money thanks to her habit. When she’d been using more, she’d even forgotten about Dempsey for days on end.
“You were very good to me.” When Adelaide looked back on those days, she could almost forget about how much he’d shut her out of his personal life since then.
He stared into the flames dancing in the fire pit.
“I still try to be good to you, Addy.”
She bit back the sharp retort that came to mind, purposely focusing on the friendship they used to have so as not to bad-mouth the turn things had taken over the past five years.
“I take it you don’t agree?” he asked.
“We’ve had a strict work-only relationship for years.” She traced patterns in the condensation on her iced tea glass. “You convinced me to take this job that furthered your career while delaying mine. You’ve ignored our friendship for years at a time, going so far as referring to me as a ‘tool for greater productivity.’” She wanted to stop there. But now that the brakes were off, she found it difficult to put them back on. “Or maybe you think it’s kind of you to toy with the chemistry between us, pretending to feel the same heat that I do and using it to your own ends to convince me to stay?”
She knew she’d admitted too much, but sitting in the dark under the bayou stars seemed to coax the truth from her. Besides, if she didn’t put herself on the line with him now when he’d admitted to being “distracted” by her, she might never have another chance to find out where all that simmering attraction could lead.
“Damn, Addy.” He whistled low and sat up straighter in his chair, his elbows on his knees. Firelight cast stark shadows on his face. “You must think I’m some kind of arrogant, selfish ass. Do you really think that’s how I perceive things? That I created a position for you just to benefit me?”
