LITMIR.BIZ

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her heels hitting the floor.

      “You’re the last person I expected to show up here,” he continued.

      So he had been expecting some other tense and edgy woman who couldn’t wait for him to finish before getting laid. Not that she was tense and edgy.

      Well, she was—but with outrage, not desire. Her gaze kept slipping, though, down to his chest. To all those muscles, his skin glistening with sweat. A bead trickled from between his pecs and trailed over washboard abs to disappear into the waistband of his shorts.

      Her throat suddenly very dry, she struggled to swallow. And to pull her gaze up—back to his face. But that wasn’t much better. His square jaw was dark with stubble, and his black hair, slick with moisture, clung to his muscled neck. Her fingers itched to touch his face again, but not to slap it. Then she met his eyes, saw the amusement there, and she reconsidered...slapping him.

      “Why are you here, Fiona?” he asked, his mouth sliding into a slightly crooked, sexy-as-hell grin. Sounding almost hopeful, he added, “Are you feeling tense and edgy?”

      She lifted her hand even though she had no intention of losing control enough to swing it. “Do you want me to slap you again?”

      “Are you into that?” he asked and arched a black brow over one of those twinkling eyes. “I didn’t figure you for the S&M scene. Didn’t actually figure you for any scene. Didn’t think sex was your thing...”

      She didn’t know what infuriated her more. That he’d thought about her and sex. Or that he’d thought about her not having sex. Ever.

      She wasn’t frigid. Not at all...

      At the moment—standing too close to his sweat-slick, musky-smelling body—she wished she was, though. Then she wouldn’t have noticed how muscular he was. Muscles bulged in his arms and chest and back. Did he spend all his time in the gym?

      Or in some woman’s bed?

      His gaze skimmed down her body to her high heels. “But now I can see the whole dominatrix thing.”

      “I’m here because I’m mad,” she admitted. If only she could have controlled her temper long enough to realize that it was pointless to try to talk to a man like Wyatt Andrews. He was infuriating. “And you’re only making it worse.”

      “We aren’t equipped to put out those kinds of fires here,” he remarked.

      “Pointless,” she murmured as she spun on her heel to turn toward the door.

      Long fingers wrapped around her arm, tightly enough that she jerked against his grasp as she tried to walk away.

      “Wait, wait,” he said. “I can try to help. Why are you mad?”

      “Because of you.”

      He sighed. “I told you I didn’t realize you were the one who’d walked in—”

      “No, I’m not mad about that.” Not anymore. Not now that she had calmed down enough to be rational. Of course he hadn’t known who’d walked in. Since she’d driven over here anyway, she might as well talk to him. She drew in a deep breath to brace herself and turned back around to face him. “I want to talk to you about my brother.”

      His hand dropped from her arm and he stepped back. “Has he done something?”

      “You know what he’s done,” she said. Since she was pretty sure it had been Wyatt’s idea, or at least his influence. “He’s dropped out of college in order to join the Forest Service Fire Department.”

      “So why, exactly—” he spoke slowly, as if he were dealing with someone unstable “—are you mad at me?”

      “Because he wants to become you.”

      His mouth curved into that slightly crooked grin again. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

      God, he was arrogant. But maybe he had a reason to be. He was sexy as hell—so sexy that women were apparently unable to wait to have sex with him.

      “Pointless,” she murmured again. “I made a mistake coming here. I can’t reason with you.” She could barely reason with herself at the moment—his bare skin and rippling muscles were too distracting.

      “I don’t know what you want to reason with me about,” he said, “but I’m willing to talk to you.”

      Frustration gnawed at her. She had practiced her argument the entire drive across town. But now she could remember nothing of what she’d rehearsed.

      “Let me shower first,” he said, “and change. I’ll meet you at the bar around the corner and you can reason with me.”

      She doubted that. “Why?” she asked.

      He arched the brow again. “Why what?”

      “Why are you willing to talk to me?” She’d expected the arrogance and the argument. She hadn’t expected him to be open to reason or even to a conversation. “I thought you had a date.”

      She swallowed a groan as she remembered that she had one. She had intended to call Howard on the drive across town to cancel their date. But then she’d gotten distracted rehearsing what she would say when she confronted Wyatt Andrews. All those words had left her mind the moment he’d made his suggestive comment.

      He glanced to the doorway behind her and remarked, “Here’s my date now.”

      So much for that conversation. She doubted he would pass up a sure thing to instead just talk to a woman he’d figured was frigid. She turned around to leave and to check out his date. But a man—as tall and muscular as Wyatt—blocked the doorway. He was the one who had directed her where to find Wyatt.

      The man laughed. “You should be so lucky as to date me.”

      Wyatt grinned. “You wouldn’t turn me down,” he said. “You’re so tense and edgy, you’d definitely go home with me at the end of the night.”

      Both men laughed. But Fiona failed to see the humor. Her pulse quickened instead. Was Wyatt expecting her to go home with him at the end of the night?

      “If you’re busy...” They could do this another night. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t expect her to go home with him that night, too.

      “Have you changed your mind about making me listen to reason?” Wyatt teased.

      The other man laughed again—harder. “If he’s willing to listen to reason, you should take him up on that,” he advised. “And we didn’t actually have any plans. He’s just messing with me.”

      Was he just messing with her, too? Probably. But she hadn’t driven across town to just yell at him. Or slap him. She’d wanted to talk to him—to get him to help her. His influence was why Matthew had dropped out of college; he was the only one who could get her brother to change his mind and get his life back on track.

      “The bar around the corner?” she asked. “Which way?”

      “To the right,” he said. “I’ll be there before you finish your first drink.”

      She had no intention of drinking with him. And she definitely had no intention of going home with him.

      She wanted only to talk.

      But since she wasn’t going to see him with so few clothes on again, she couldn’t resist letting her gaze slip once more—over his chest and down his six-pack abs. She was definitely not drinking with him; she couldn’t risk losing control. And because she never risked losing control, she hadn’t built up a tolerance for alcohol. She was the proverbial lightweight when it came to drinking.

      If she had too many drinks, she might go home with him. She jerked her attention away from all that naked flesh and muscle and turned toward the door.

      “I’ll be there right after I hit the shower,” he promised.

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