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“Yeah? Why not?”
From his tone of voice he might as well have been asking her why she didn’t want pizza for supper. That definitely punched her buttons, making her feel as if he were looking for nothing more than a sexual tissue, to be used and discarded. She scowled at him. “I have a better question: Why? I’m not into recreational sex, period, and it isn’t as if we’re dating.”
He cocked one knee up and rested his forearm on it, coffee cup in hand, giving her a long, considering look. “We could have been. Damn it, I asked you out twice. So now let me ask you a question: Are you attracted to me, or not? I’ve made it as plain as I can that I’m attracted to you, so now tell me straight out how you feel.”
Angie felt her face getting hot. She could lie—that is, if she hadn’t kissed him back the way she had, hanging on to him and meeting him tongue to tongue. He was asking a loaded question, one to which he already knew the answer. “That isn’t the point,” she muttered, shifting uncomfortably.
“That’s exactly the damn point. The least you can do is be as up-front with me as I’ve been with you.” He didn’t take his gaze from her face, studying every minute change of her expression. Such intense scrutiny made her feel emotionally naked, but then she’d given him that power by telling him all about her wedding, how much she doubted herself because of her own actions. He could figure out now what made her tick, how to get to her, and that was by making himself appear as vulnerable as she felt. The problem with that was she doubted this man had ever felt vulnerable in his entire life, even when shrapnel had sliced his throat. Some people just had that innate self-confidence that spilled over into every facet of their lives. She wasn’t one of them. Her self-confidence seemed to be confined to very specific areas, and didn’t bleed over into the others.
“It isn’t that I don’t find you attractive,” she snapped, resenting being cornered this way.
“Then why did you turn me down, twice?”
He sounded really grumpy about that; surprised out of her resentment, Angie blinked at him. She couldn’t believe it mattered so much to him. Not that he sounded hurt or uncertain; he just sounded grumpy. “The first time, I wanted to go,” she blurted.
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t. I was taking a hunting party out the next day, and I was running flat out getting everything ready and stocking up on supplies because I’d just gotten back from another hunt. I said I couldn’t, and you stomped off,” she charged, indignation growing. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you why. What was I supposed to do, yell it at your back?”
“Maybe. Guys don’t know what the hell to do.” He scowled at her. “If we’re persistent, we’re stalkers. If we don’t push, then we aren’t interested enough. You tell me what else I could have done. I did ask you out again.”
“That was different,” she grumbled. “It was months later. By that time, you’d already siphoned off so much of my business that I saw red every time I heard your name.”
He shoved his hand through his hair. “Look, I can’t do anything about that. I didn’t deliberately hurt your business, but I didn’t turn down anyone who contacted me. What would you have wanted me to do? What would you have done?”
That was a million-dollar question, because there was no easy, cut-and-dried answer. He hadn’t done anything illegal, or even unethical. He had as much right to make a living as she did. He hadn’t undercut her prices; if anything, he charged more for his services than she did for hers. She’d lost business simply because he was there, and was who he was, with different experiences and strengths that some of her clients had wanted more than they’d wanted hers.
It still pissed her off.
“I’m not saying you should have done anything,” she forced herself to admit. “Things are what they are. Regardless of whether or not we’re attracted to each other, the reality is that I’m going to be moving away and I’m really not interested in a temporary fling.”
He drank some more coffee, eyeing her above the rim of the cup. “Flings can be a lot of fun.”
Angie snorted. It wasn’t the most elegant sound but it expressed exactly how she felt. Goaded, she said, “Yeah, right. For a man, maybe.”
His head snapped back a little. He lowered the cup, his eyebrows peaking in surprise as he studied her. “You don’t like sex?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s okay.”
Shit! Why had she said that? She knew better. She might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished like hell she could have taken them back. Men seemed to take it as a personal affront if a woman didn’t think sex was the greatest thing since sliced bread, then of course they wanted to show her how wrong she was, that—
He set the coffee down with a thunk that made the contents slosh dangerously close to the rim. “If it’s just ‘okay,’ then obviously you haven’t been with anyone who knew his ass from a hole in the ground.”
And … bingo! It took a great effort, but Angie didn’t roll her eyes. Not completely, anyway. She did cast them upward, as if asking for divine aid. Her common sense began shouting at her to just let it drop, to change the subject or even fake choking to death, but sex had been a source of dissatisfaction for her from the beginning, and she was tired of faking anything, even choking.
“Look,” she said impatiently, “it feels okay, but I don’t see what the great song and dance is about it. A man gets his rocks off doing it. A woman gets her rocks off by hand—or mouth, if the guy’s feeling generous. I prefer to cut out the middleman, so to speak. No fuss, no muss. It’s a lot less effort, and the payoff is guaranteed.”
He looked like a thundercloud, all dark intent rolling toward her as he leaned down so close their noses were almost bumping, just as he’d done during their argument in the parking lot. “I repeat: You haven’t been with anyone who knows what he’s doing.”
She suspected a lot of people would have found him intimidating—she once had, but not now. Too much water, literally, had gone under that bridge. She just lowered her own brows and met him glare for glare. Her common sense escalated from shouting to all but howling Abort! Abort! and still she couldn’t stop her mouth. “I suppose you think you have the magic dick that can make everything wonderful, right?”
“You bet your sweet ass,” he said flatly. “It isn’t rocket science. What you know about making coffee, I know about fucking.”
She fell over laughing. Literally. Howls of laughter burst from her throat and he grabbed her coffee cup, rescuing it as she toppled onto her side, clutching her middle. “You … you mean you get the total volume and d-divide—” It was so ridiculous she couldn’t continue.
Very deliberately he set both cups of coffee on the floor, then rolled over on top of her. She stopped laughing, the sound abruptly cut off when his heavy weight, all that heat and hardness, bore down on her. If she’d been immune to him, his action would have made her angry, but she wasn’t; she never had been. Neither was she afraid of him, at least not physically. She had no intention of trusting him with her emotions, but her body, her physical safety? Oh, yeah, without hesitation.
“Not quite that way,” he said in his rough, hoarse voice, the tone going so low she could almost feel the vibration against her skin. His gaze roamed over her face, settled on her mouth. “Let’s make a deal.”
