LITMIR.BIZ

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time? After this did he seriously think she would let him back in?

      Who was she kidding? Of course she would.

      She folded her arms. “Get off my bed.”

      He grinned. “You didn’t say please.”

      “Please get off my bed,” she said, feeling a little desperate. The urge to jump in there with him was almost too strong to fight. She felt a little winded and tingly all over, as if her libido had just awakened from a long hibernation.

      “No need to shout,” he said, pulling himself to his feet and walking to the door.

      “I don’t like having people in my bedroom. I like my privacy.” She straightened the covers where he’d been sitting. They were still warm from his body heat, and the slightest hint of his aftershave lingered in the air.

      She turned to him to say that it was time for him to go, but he wasn’t there!

      “Are you kidding me?” she mumbled. “Parker!”

      She found him in her craft room next door. He’d switched the light on and was examining the quilt samplers she had sewn and tacked to the wall. “Oh, my God, are you for real? Did I not just say that I like my privacy. You have the attention span of a three-year-old!”

      “You said you don’t like having people in your bedroom. This isn’t your bedroom, is it?”

      She didn’t justify that one with a response. And her thin-lipped glare only seemed to amuse him further. “The truth is, I just wanted to hear you say my name again. Or shriek it, as the case may be.”

      She ignored the warm shiver that whispered across the surface of her skin and raised the fine hairs on her arms. Or tried to at least. He wasn’t making it easy. “I’ll say it a thousand times if it will make you go downstairs.”

      “These are fantastic,” he said, gesturing to the wall. She wasn’t buying it. He was the kind of guy who knew quality when he saw it and this was definitely not quality sewing.

      “Compliments won’t get you anywhere,” she told him.

      “I’m actually serious,” he said, leaning in closer. “Where did you get them?”

      “I made them, and for the record, they suck. The fabric is puckered and the rows are crooked. My stitching is totally uneven. Which is why I keep them in here. Where no one will see them.”

      “But the colors are striking,” he said, and she realized that he really wasn’t bullshitting her. He was genuinely impressed.

      Weird.

      “You have a gift,” he said.

      “It’s just a hobby. It relaxes me.”

      “Did you do these drawings, too?”

      He was looking at the pages she’d laid out on her craft table.

      “I couldn’t draw my way out of a paper bag. I just colored them in. It’s the new big thing in stress relief for adults.”

      “Coloring?”

      “Absolutely. There are like a million adult coloring books to choose from.”

      “No kidding. It seems a little...pointless.”

      “That’s the whole point.” She gestured to a pile of coloring books on the shelf beside her craft table. “I’ve finished all of those. I did a lot of coloring in the park last summer. And look how calm I am.”

      “Yeah,” he said with a wry smile. “You looked pretty calm in the stairwell today.”

      Of course he would point that out. But it was hard to get angry when he was flashing her that adorable grin.

      “May I?” he asked, nodding to the pile.

      No one had looked at her coloring books before. It had never even occurred to her to show them to anyone. “Go ahead, but they’re nothing special.”

      He took the top book, a panoramic foldout of a magical fairyland. “Wow, you sure do have a way with color.”

      The compliment made her feel all warm and squishy inside. “I just pick what looks right.”

      “That’s the weird thing. Normally these colors don’t even go together, but you make it seem like they do.”

      She shrugged, thinking he was making a way bigger deal about this than he should be. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. You can rave all you want and I’m still not going to sleep with you.”

      “You should frame some of these,” he said, looking through a book of flowers, ignoring her completely. Or, knowing him, he was only pretending to. She had the feeling that he didn’t miss much.

      “Why?” she asked him. “They’re not art.”

      “No, this is definitely art.”

      “Okay, but it’s someone else’s art.”

      “Yes, the shapes are already there, but the color adds dimension. It brings it to life. That’s the hardest part.”

      Maybe, maybe not. Either way, his enthusiasm was giving her warm fuzzies all over the place. Her inability to resist his charms bordered on the absurd.

      “How many finished books do you have?” he asked her, flipping through a collection of mandalas.

      She didn’t even want to go there. “Too many. I don’t get out much.”

      “Me neither,” he said, and she gave him a dubious look. “I’m serious.”

      “That’s not how I hear it.”

      “Keeping tabs on me?”

      She was making it sound that way, wasn’t she? “Word gets around. You’re reputed to have a very busy social calendar.”

      “When I first got here I was going out pretty frequently. But I was in a new place and meeting lots of new people.”

      “New women, you mean.”

      He shot her a sideways glance through the curtain of his unfairly thick lashes, then winked. He actually winked. “Be careful, Clare, you almost sound jealous.”

      Probably because she was. A little.

      He moved closer, looking like a tiger on the prowl, his eyes shining with male heat. If this were the wild, he would take her in an instant. And because it was the wild she would be helpless to stop him. He looked as if he was going to kiss her, and she wanted him to.

      His eyes locked on hers, he started to lean in, slowly, cautiously, as if he was expecting her to hit him over the head with something.

      Up until today he had been subtle but consistent. He had never pushed, exactly, but he’d made sure that she knew he was around. Something told her now that all bets were off.

       Five

      Downstairs in the kitchen the kettle whistled but Clare didn’t move. She stood totally still, her eyes locked on Parker’s, the energy whirling between them electrically charged. Parker knew that he could have her right now if he wanted to. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, but half the fun of a relationship was the chase. No matter who was doing the running. And call him a megalomaniac, but it would be much more fun if she made the first move. If she came to him.

      Just for fun, he dropped his gaze to her mouth. Her chin lifted a fraction and her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

      Oh, yeah, she wanted it bad.

      “Your water is boiling,” he said.

      Clare blinked several times, as if waking from a daydream. “Huh?”

      “The kettle,

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