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She took a deep breath, only a little comforted that his own breathing was harder and faster than usual. “No, I think this is as far as we should go,” she said. “Thank you. Asshole.”
He levered himself to the side but remained propped on his elbow, leaning over her. His expression took on a slight smugness. “Feeling a little tempted, huh?” he asked, lightly tracing her lips with one fingertip.
Denying it would only make her a liar. “Enjoying kissing you doesn’t make the issues go away.”
“Exactly what issues are we talking about? Everything looks pretty cut and dried to me. You either like me or you don’t—on the evidence, I’d say you do—and you either want to stay here or you don’t.”
“You’d be my boss,” she pointed out.
“I don’t think that would stop you from telling me off if you thought I needed it.” His tone was wry. Then his gaze sharpened. “Are you saying you think I’d use that to pressure you into sleeping with me?”
“No, I’m thinking more what it would say about me if I slept with the boss.” She scowled up at him. “And that would mean I’d decided to sleep with you, which I haven’t, so you can see why I need to think this out.”
He fell over onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “God save me from a woman’s way of thinking. What the hell kind of logic is that? One has nothing to do with the other.”
“Maybe not to you, but let’s face it, you’re plankton, and I’m a higher life form. Details matter to me.”
His lips quirked and, without turning his head, he cut his gaze to her. Sounding a tad disgruntled, he said, “Plankton?”
“Maybe algae.”
“How about a fucking amoeba?”
“Amoebas don’t fuck, they just divide.”
“Hummph.” He made a growly noise and lay there looking annoyed. “That would be me, then, because evidently I don’t fuck, either.”
Angie turned onto her side facing him, smiling. Lying here like this with him was way, way too intimate, but in a completely unexpected way just talking with him was even more enticing. He was funny and sexy, grumpy and profane, and she didn’t think she’d ever get bored listening to him. “Not right now, anyway. So, ruling out getting naked, what are we going to do all day? Did you bring any books with you? Cards? You weren’t planning to sit up here for a week with nothing to entertain yourself, I hope?”
“I have books and cards, and my iPod. You just said I was algae. What makes you think you’re going to get your hands on either one?”
“Your sense of fair play.”
“You’re way fucking off-base there. I play to win.”
“Wouldn’t that be ‘fay wucking’?”
“Never heard of her.”
He made her beg for the books, but he wasn’t serious so she didn’t mind. Then he pulled the books from his saddlebags and she could have hit him, because if she’d known what they were beforehand she definitely wouldn’t have begged. One was an extremely dry and technical book on custom-loading your own shells, and the other was a geological study of the earth’s tectonic plates. She gave him an appalled look. “Couldn’t you at least have some popular fiction?”
“I do, but it’s at home. I figure the only way I’ll read this shit is if I don’t have anything else to read, so this was the perfect time.”
She laughed and put the books aside, picked up the deck of cards. “What do you want to play? Blackjack, Texas Hold ’em, rummy?”
“Not rummy. That’s a sissy-ass game.”
“Ah ha. That means you’re afraid I’ll kick your ass at rummy, so you don’t want to play it.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You think?” He moved so he was sitting cross-legged on the mattress, facing her. “Game on, Powell.”
She should have remembered his years in the military. He played rummy as ruthlessly as if it were war, but she was pretty good herself, if she did say so, and once she realized how good he was she buckled down, concentrated, and won two
out of four. He wanted to go for a tie-breaker, of course, but she refused. “What good is that? If you beat me, you’ll crow about it, and that would lower my opinion of you. If I win, you’ll pout, and that’ll lower my opinion of you. Trust me, you won’t come out looking good no matter what happens.”
He chuckled as he shuffled and dealt. “You hate losing, don’t you?”
“Like poison.”
