“Be more specific.”
“What I told you on the flight back.”
“You’re not having sex with me.”
“That’s right. So you should just say good night and leave.”
“You really want me to go?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“My car is locked inside your garage.”
Chagrined, she tipped her head forward and let several moments elapse. Then, “Follow me.”
She led him into the kitchen, where she unlocked the door that opened into the garage. Reaching around the jamb, she hit the button on the wall, and the motor for the overhead door engaged.
When it was up, she turned back to him. “There. You’re free to go.” But he didn’t move. He waited her out until she stopped glancing about at anything and everything else before finally garnering the courage to look him in the eye. “We’ve already talked about this, Dent.”
“We didn’t finish the talk.”
“I did.”
“Without giving me a chance to counter.”
“You don’t get to counter, because it’s not an argument. I told you from the start that you and I… that it wasn’t going to happen. Ever.”
“Using Susan as your excuse.”
“Susan wasn’t an excuse, she—”
“Was a slut. And out of some backward sense of obligation or balance or whatever, you’re denying your own sexual inclinations.”
She placed her hands on her hips. “And you believe that my inclinations will just naturally lead me to you.”
“They did last night.”
She dropped her arms back to her sides. “That was—”
“I know what it was, and it was too wet to have been faked.”
She wished her blush wouldn’t give away her embarrassment. But she didn’t mind revealing her anger. “Are you waiting to be thanked? Congratulated? What? Is your ego—”
“Don’t turn this around and make it about me,” he said, raising his voice to match hers. “My ego’s fine.”
“How well I know. I’m sure your other women—”
“This isn’t about them, either. This is about you. About why you have this sad and lonely thing going when—”
“I?” she exclaimed. “I’m sad and lonely? Have you looked at your life lately? You have one friend. One,” she emphasized, holding up her index finger. “You sleep with women whose names you don’t know. You live in a shabby rathole. And you dare to describe my life as sad and lonely?”
His head went back as though she’d struck him. “Oh, that’s good. Play that card.”
“Card?”
“That Lyston card. That rich-people card. That you’re-shit-on-my-shoes card. Maybe I should’ve driven around to the delivery entrance of your mansion.”
She pushed him out of her way as she stormed past. “I’ll close the garage door later. Right now, I’m going upstairs. I want you out of here by the time I come back down.”
She made it as far as the staircase before he overtook her and planted himself between her and the first step. He said, “Nice try, but it’s not going to work.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do. You’re trying to piss me off so I’ll go away mad and we won’t continue talking about what we need to talk about.”
“We don’t need to talk about anything. We’re not going to talk about anything. Will you please just go?”
“Uh-uh. No soap. The subject is still you and your hang-ups.”
“You don’t care about my hang-ups. You just want a warm body to sleep with tonight.”
“Okay. I admit it. I want to sleep with your warm body. But whether or not you go to bed with me, this still needs to be said.”
She folded her arms across her middle. “All right, what? The abridged version, please, so you can get out of here.” She hoped her stance, her tone, would either discourage or anger him enough to leave.
Instead he stayed, moved a step closer in fact, and spoke softly. “Take it from a man who’s touched you inside and out, there’s nothing wrong with you, except that you won’t believe there isn’t.”
She swallowed, but said nothing.
“I don’t know what went on the mind of the twelve-year-old Bellamy Lyston, but you, the woman, need to scrub all that crap about not following the same path to destruction that Susan took.
“If your marriage was boring and the sex needed CPR, your unimaginative husband has to bear at least fifty percent of the responsibility, because if he’d got you to respond the way you responded to me last night, he wouldn’t have been bored. Because it was a turn-on just to watch. To feel. And, frankly, I think he’s an asshole for allowing you to assume all the blame for the failure of the marriage.”
She found enough voice to speak. “He didn’t know that I did.”
“Don’t kid yourself. He knew. And in his mind, you’re also to blame for his affair.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t think, I know. And the reason I know is because I’m a guy. And when we go out and do whatever we damn well please with our dick, we justify it by telling ourselves and anybody else who’ll listen that ‘She has only herself to blame. If only she’d done this, if only she’d done that. But she didn’t, so she left me with no choice except to get my jollies between another pair of thighs.’ A lot of women buy into that. Don’t. Because it’s total horseshit. But that’s getting us off the track.”
“There is no track.”
“There’s a track. And it’s this: You buttoned yourself up at the age of twelve, and that’s a shame. Because the fact is that you’re beautiful, talented, and so damn smart it’s scary sometimes. You are also sexy as all get-out.”
“Thank you for the outpouring of compliments, but I’m still not sleeping with you.” She turned her back on him. Or tried to. He kept her where she was by placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“You’re sexy, mostly because you’re unaware of it. That thing you do with your teeth and lower lip?”
“I don’t do anything—”
“You do it all the time. You bite it. Right here.” He placed the pad of his thumb in the center of her lower lip, and it caused a tingle down low.
“Oh, yeah, A.k.a. Sexy as hell. You never see it, but your ass turns heads. In those jeans, it’s practically given me whiplash. Don’t even get me started on your freckles.”
“You can’t see them. I use concealer.”
“And I like you.”
The wooing didn’t surprise her. This was Dent Carter, after all. But that declaration stunned her, and, seeing her reaction, he laughed lightly.
“Shocks the hell out of me, too. I didn’t expect to like you, because you’re a Lyston. But…” He paused as his gaze roved over her face, taking in the features of her face one at a time. “You’re okay,” he said in a low, throaty voice.
For only a moment, she was susceptible to those eyes, his words, his face, which was never far from her mind and hadn’t been for years. Then she drew herself together and remembered why they were engaged in this conversation.
“You’re just talking pretty to get me into bed.”
“Well, sure.” He flashed his dirtiest grin, then sobered. “But I also happen to mean everything I said. I’m saying it more for your good than mine, and I rarely do anything unselfishly.”
Maybe it was that admission that kept her there, still and expectant, when she should have moved away. But she didn’t. So he put his arms around her and drew her close, and, oh my God, it felt good.
It felt even better when he slid his hands down over her bottom and applied enough pressure to mold her to him. The way their bodies meshed made her knees weak.