“Hello to you, too, Dimples.”
They were playing nice, were they? “Oh, my. Where are my manners? Hello, Mark,” she said, sugar-sweet this time. “Whatever are you doing here?”
“It’s Marcus.” A muscle ticked below his eye and he regarded her with a scowl before leaning against the door frame, a mockingly casual pose. “I came to apologize.”
“Really? What for? Living? Breathing? Having a penis?”
“Do you respond this way to everyone who apologizes to you?”
A wave of guilt hit her. She was being rude, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“No. Now isn’t a good time.”
“Great. Thanks.” He barreled past the door and her. His shoulder brushed hers and she bit back a gasp at the electric sensation. At the live-wire jolt that zinged through her entire body.
She stood in place for several seconds, eyes narrowing, mouth opening in astonishment. In arousal. In anger. That man…Oh, that man! Fuming, she turned. “I have Mace,” she told his retreating back.
“I’m not surprised,” he replied over his shoulder, striding into her living room and disappearing from view.
“You’re not welcome here.” She remained where she was, holding the door open, determined to make him leave. She had to stay away from him and that freaky body chemistry playing Russian roulette with her common sense.
“You want to get rid of me,” he said, “you have to talk to me first.”
“Or I can call the police and report a break-in.”
He chuckled, the sound warm and rich and filled with challenge. “Tell Chief Higgins I said hi. I’ve been meaning to go see him, but haven’t had time.”
“You do not know the police chief,” she said, her back stiffening. What was Marcus doing in there? She could hear shuffling.
“I always make friends with the local law enforcement. Plus, he plays poker.” Heavy pause. “Is this picture of a naked baby on a bearskin rug you? I bet it is. Same blue eyes, same dimples. I’ll have to check your ass for the heart-shaped birthmark to be sure, though.” He sighed. “Oh, the things I do to assuage my curiosity.”
She saw red. “Put that photo album back!”
“But it’s so pretty.” Another pause, the swish of a page. “Ah, look at you in this one. Ten years old, is my guess, and you’re wearing rain boots, a leather duster and a cowboy hat. Not smiling, big surprise. I like the one beside it better. Still not smiling, but you have panty hose on your head, which I’m assuming is supposed to be braids. Liked to play dress up, did you?”
I will not respond. I will not respond.
He chuckled again, and this time the sound was filled with genuine amusement. “Well, now. These just get better and better as you get older.”
“I’ll count to three,” she said. Her jaw was clenched so tightly, her teeth throbbed. “You better be walking toward this door by the time I reach the end or you’ll regret it. One.”
“Your prom date looks constipated. What’d you say to him before Daddy snapped the picture?”
Bastard! “Two.”
“Three,” he said helpfully. “Please tell me you still own this…can something comprised solely of bows and ruffles be called a dress?”
Argh! Fists clenching, Jillian abandoned her post and stormed into the living room. She’d never killed anyone, but there was a first time for everything.
Four
There are two-hundred-and-sixty-five bones in the human body. How’d you like one more?
MARCUS HAD SETTLED on Jillian’s sofa and now glanced around her home with unabashed curiosity. Not what he’d expected. Everything was color-coordinated. From the tan couch that matched the beige walls to the bronze rug that matched the amber vases spilling with gold-sprayed plants. Also, everything was clean. Precise. Too precise.
Seemed Little Miss Sex Puppet Sunday School Teacher was a neat freak. The glass coffee table was speck-free. The floral portraits on the pristine walls were hung in perfect alignment. Not a hint of dirt or lint marred the glossy perfection of the wood floors.
Foolishly, the neatness aroused him. Didn’t take much today, it seemed. Still. He wanted to mess everything up. While having sex on it. Dirty sex. With sweat and body oil and handcuffs. Mind out of the gutter, Brody. You’re dealing with a sexual piranha. She’ll smell any hint of arousal and attack. He didn’t need to know the woman herself to know that for a fact—he just needed to know her type.
Female.
But damn it, he shouldn’t have looked through her photo album. She’d been a cute kid, a little sad—which made his chest ache—with a head full of curls and huge blue eyes that had dominated her face, and now he wanted to know if the birthmark on her butt had faded or gotten darker.
She stomped into the living room, a cloud of that let’s-go-to-bed fragrance accompanying her. He held his breath as long as he could. He didn’t want to smell her, didn’t want to be attracted to her anymore. He’d come here to smooth things over—not that he’d had any success, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it. That didn’t mean he had to be friends with her. Far from it.
Stopping in front of him, she grabbed the album from his lap—fingers brushing his thigh and making his penis stand at (higher) attention, which made him scowl. She tossed the book behind her. Oblivious to anything except her own anger—he hoped—she anchored her hands on her hips. “I told you that you aren’t welcome here.”
Happy as he was to be back in the me-man, you-woman game and out of his sexual slump, he folded his hands in his lap to cover his erection. It irked him that Jillian had been the one to bring back his desire, making him want to forget that all relationships, even those based solely on sex, were doomed.
“You also told me I needed to be gone by the time you counted to three. You lied then, too.”
Her blue eyes glittered and snapped. Steam might very well have curled from her nostrils. What a little fireball she was, which was sexy as hell. Damn it! He liked passive, take-whatever-he-dished-out women. Didn’t he? He definitely liked women who wanted to sleep with him. Right? Jillian was neither of those things, or so he told himself because he didn’t think he would be able to control himself if he knew she wanted him.
But he liked her more and more each time she opened her smart mouth. He could see her doing a thousand different things with that mouth and none of them involved talking.
Gutter, he reminded himself. Don’t go there. Not with her. But he liked her wit. If her insults hadn’t been directed at him, he would have thought they were funny.
“Get. Out,” she said.
“Just zip it and listen, Dimples. I told you I came to—” He ground his teeth together. God, this was difficult, saying it again when she’d probably reject it again. “Apologize.” He didn’t mean it this time, but he’d said it all the same.
“Apologize?” she said, incredulous, as if he hadn’t just apologized a few minutes ago.
“That’s right. Apologize. For your attitude,” he couldn’t resist adding under his breath.
“Hey.” She frowned. “I heard that.”
“Well, yeah.” He frowned right back. “That’s because I said it out loud.”
She stepped on his foot, hard, her spiked heel digging into his big toe. “You aren’t truly sorry. Admit it.”
Grimacing, he looked up at her and spread his arms wide. “So?” He didn’t comment on the toe. That’d give her a sense of power and right now he needed all the power he could get. “Does that matter?”
Her mouth opened and closed; a gurgling sound escaped her throat. At least she removed the heel. “Yes, it matters. You could have the decency to lie about meaning it.”
“Now wait just a second.” He frowned again. “You accused my apology of being a lie—something that obviously pissed you off since you tried to impale my favorite toe—and now you’re mad that I didn’t lie again.” His brows arched in sardonic amusement. “Typical.”
He had to admit he often had that effect on women. Not the innocence, the death threat. But those usually weren’t made until after he’d dated them. According to his mother, he was lucky someone hadn’t murdered him in his sleep. According to his father, who’d divorced his mom years ago, women didn’t really want to kill him, they wanted to reform him.
He didn’t need reforming. He liked himself just fine.
He’d rather be considered cold and emotionally unavailable than a sappy romantic who would tolerate anything for love. Morons. That’s what lovesick people were. They were also cheat-on-me targets. Something he would never be again. He’d done the whole marriage thing and it’d been nothing but a waste of his time.
“Beer will be fine,” he said graciously.
Jillian ran her pretty pink tongue over her pretty white teeth and stepped away from him, but she didn’t venture into the kitchen. She plopped into the chair across from him. “There’s beer at the convenience store down the street. You can show yourself out.”
Yep. If she’d said it to someone else, he would have laughed. “Despite what you might think, I didn’t come here to argue with you. We work for the same agency now. We need to get along.” Just not too well, he silently added. They needed to be able to tolerate each other while secretly cursing each other to everlasting hell and not ripping each other’s clothes off. Not that she looked willing to rip his clothes off. She did look perfectly willing to rip out his heart and eat it in front of him, though.
His erection, which had begun to behave and act like a mature adult, jumped to attention once more. He scowled. How the hell was the thought of her feasting on his organs—well, any organ except his favorite—exciting?
Jillian lifted her dainty shoulders in a shrug. “You’re right. I admit it. We need to get along. Feel free to leave now that we’ve established that.”
“So,” he said, because he was a bad, bad boy who had a gambling problem. Five dollars said she’d stab him in the thigh with this next jab, but he just couldn’t resist. “Your rudeness in the office obviously wasn’t an aberration of character.”
Her eyes narrowed to tiny slits. She was probably planning his death in her mind. But she didn’t stab him. He owed himself a five spot.
“I can totally tell you want to get along with me,” she said darkly.
He rested an ankle on his knee and regarded her intently. “Fine. You want the truth? We bring out the worst in each other.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“Finally,” he muttered. “Something you won’t argue about.”
Jillian’s nostrils flared and he had to press his lips together to keep from smiling. He really hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It was just that she provoked the beast inside him. Something about her fired him up and set his every nerve on alert.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he admitted. He’d come to smooth things over with her, but so far he’d only managed to make things worse. “Listen, do you need any help setting up for tonight’s job?” There. That was a safe enough topic.
“No.” Her tone was clipped. “Everything’s in order.”
“Good.”
“Yep. Good.”
They looked at each other, looked away. He didn’t know what else to say at that point and for a long while silence slithered between them, a poisonous snake ready to bite, so uncomfortable it was almost painful. The ticking of the wall clock became audible, a time bomb. Detonation imminent.
Should he leave? Try and stick it out?
Things still weren’t amicable between them, so he should probably stay. At least he wasn’t hard anymore.
“So,” he said, just to break the silence.
“So,” she said.
“Oklahoma has had warm weather lately.”
“Yep.”
“I haven’t been here long. Is it always this warm?”
“No. It can change in an instant,” she said, glancing anywhere but him. “Hot one minute, bone-chilling the next.”
Like Jillian herself, he thought, but didn’t say that out loud. This had, without a doubt, developed into the most blah, boring conversation he’d ever experienced. Or maybe he just wished it was boring, because talking about the weather should have been a fucking nightmare. And would have been, with any other woman. But here he was, on the edge of his seat, wanting to hear Jillian’s husky voice again, even if she told him more about the goddamn weather.
If he’d been on top of his game lately, he never would have reacted to her this strongly. At least, that’s what he told himself. But…why had she broken through his lack of interest when no one else had been able to?
He almost wished she’d yell at him. That he understood. Yelling equaled anger and anger equaled passion. Passion he liked. Passion he could control. Wait. He liked those things with anyone except her. No passion with Jillian. Too dangerous.
“Maybe tomorrow will bring rain,” she said.
Argh. How had they gone from snipping at each other, which was exciting and wrong and practically foreplay, to this, a fucking weather forecast—which still wasn’t boring the way he wanted it to be, but instead was exciting and wrong and practically foreplay. He pictured her naked in the rain and hello, Marcus Jr.
“So,” he said.
“So,” she reiterated.
Why the hell did he need to get along with her, anyway? At the moment, he couldn’t recall. They worked together—so the hell what. She’d make life at the office uncomfortable—that didn’t seem so bad now.
“You still want that beer?” she asked, casting a wistful glance toward the kitchen.
That eager to get away from him, was she? Either she found the direction of their conversation as disturbing as he did or she just found him boring. “Yes,” he said and thought, I’m not boring! “Thank you.”
With a relieved breath, she popped to her feet and beat a hasty retreat out of the living room. Sweet solitude—he wished. He was tempted to make his own escape out the front door, maybe a window, just so he would stop weirding himself out about what was going on here.
She had him so turned on he couldn’t think straight. If she’d started talking about snowflakes, he might have been able to come. Leaving now would mean Jillian won, though, and he refused to let her win even this minor skirmish.
Marcus had a long time to think about the skirmish and its victor and what would happen during said skirmish if things got a little out of control—calling each other dirty names and breathing hard and liking it way more than he should—because Jillian was gone way longer than necessary. That seriously irritated him. Like he was the problem in their little tête-à-tête of weather and insults and horniness.
“Here you go,” she said when she finally returned, holding out an uncapped amber-colored bottle.
He didn’t take it at first, just stared at it suspiciously. “Will I need to be rushed to the E.R. if I drink this?”
Her eyes flashed that delicious blue fire at him. What a shame so much sexiness was wasted on someone completely off-limits to him. “No,” she snapped. “Unfortunately.”
Oh, good. Anger again. That was more like it. But he could feel his excitement mounting, his pretend boredom receding. He took the bottle without further comment, careful not to touch her. One touch and he might push for another. Then another, until they were naked. Until they were writhing together, panting, part of a wild dance that would damn them both to hell.
She reclaimed her seat across from him. Her jean skirt rode up her thighs, revealing several delectable inches of pure temptation. He gulped back a drink, but the cool liquid did little to douse the raging fire in his bl
ood.
Stupid hormones. Stupid chemistry. Stupid penis. If he weren’t so attached to it, he would punish it until it screamed for mercy. Mmm, screaming. He frowned and shook his head. Dumbass.
“So,” he said.
“So,” Jillian reiterated. She hooked several silky curls behind her ear.
He caught a glimpse of multiple diamond studs. They circled the shell of her ear. The effect was surprisingly erotic and he wondered what it would feel like to run his tongue over each of those earrings.
“What agency did you used to work for?” she asked. She studied her cuticles as if she didn’t care about the answer.
“The Ultimate Test in Dallas.”
“Why’d you leave?” She brushed a piece of lint from her leg. “Or were you fired for pissing off your coworkers?”
He shrugged. He wasn’t ready to tell her the truth yet, that he owned TUT and had wanted to expand. That he was now her boss. Was it wrong of him to so anticipate her violent response when he did tell her? If she played her cards right, he might just introduce naked Tuesdays to the company. “I wanted a change of scenery,” he finally said. “And no, I wasn’t fired.”
“You’re from England, right?”
“Manchester.”
“Cool.” She twirled a denim string around her finger.
She didn’t sound impressed by his origins the way most women were, just curious—and even that, not so much. Maybe he’d done what he’d set out to do in the first place: made her dislike him so much she’d never be tempted to sleep with him. Which was exactly what he’d wanted. Really.
“I’ve lived in the States half of my life, though,” he said, just to expand the conversation.
“Cool,” she repeated, clearly still not really caring.
I’m not fucking boring. He chugged another gulp of beer and glanced at his wristwatch. One hour and forty-seven minutes before they were due at the club. Surely he could spark her fury again—uh, continue to smooth things over—in that time.
“Well,” she said. She, too, glanced at her watch, a silver chain that looped around her small wrist bone. “I guess I should start getting ready for tonight’s assignment….”
Catch a Mate Page 5