LITMIR.BIZ

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“I’m not arrogant.”

      “You’re arrogant.”

      “How am I arrogant?”

      Cait pushed to her feet. She crossed to the door, but she wasn’t leaving. She stopped there and rested one shoulder against the frame, a wide, cocky grin on her face. “‘Looking for someone?”’ she mimicked him.

      He watched her, mystified.

      She left the door and turned around to face it. She put a simpering look on her face and tossed back an imaginary mane of hair. “‘As a matter of fact, I am. You,”’ she said in a falsetto.

      When she turned around this time, she saw the light dawn in his eyes.

      “Kimberlie Leon?” he asked. “You were too far away to hear what I said to her.”

      “Obviously, not far enough.” Cait leaned back against the wall.

      “Regardless. That wasn’t arrogance.”

      “Okay. Cockiness, then.”

      “I was flirting.”

      “Well, if the way you slammed your office door was any indication, your technique needs work.” She came back at him quickly, because she hated the hot shaft of something unseen and inexplicable that hit her in the gut, something bizarrely like jealousy. “She was all over Kenny Estrada the moment you were gone,” she added.

      “The intern?” Sam scowled. “She was?”

      “She was.”

      “I guess that took you down a peg.” He shot at her.

      It had, actually. “Why would it?”

      “You were flirting with him.”

      She crossed her arms. “I don’t flirt.”

      “Maybe not two weeks ago, but you were sure as hell doing it today.”

      “No, I wasn’t.”

      He got to his feet and proceeded to pick his steps across the room. He looked coyly out of the corner of his eye and gave a high-pitched little giggle as he tucked invisible hair behind his ear. “That’s flirting.”

      Cait opened her mouth in outrage. Then a laugh came up from her belly. She clapped a hand over her mouth in an unsuccessful effort to stifle it, and then a sobering thought hit her. This was just the way he had been in that underground room. Whenever she’d started to come undone, he’d made her laugh until her panic had subsided.

      Cait dropped her hand and turned around again to reach for the door handle. “I’m leaving.”

      “By the way, you’re not less substantial than Wonder Woman,” he said suddenly, stopping her. “Not in all areas.”

      She whirled back to him. Her heart kicked her chest and vaulted into her throat. “What?”

      “I guess I would know.” His gaze fell to her breasts.

      Heat poured through her, almost making her knees buckle. Why was he talking about that? “Don’t talk about that. It was a one-time thing.”

      “Yeah, it was. But I was just making an observation.”

      “Well, don’t.”

      “You’re blushing,” he said.

      “I don’t blush, either.”

      “Right, and you don’t cut men off at the knees.”

      “What? I never did that!”

      He needed to talk about this, Sam realized. Coming back to this room sure as hell wasn’t doing it for either of them. She was still just as unpredictable as she’d been all day. So he needed to put what had happened between them right out there in the air and toss it around a little, he decided. Then he could forget about it.

      “Show me how,” he whispered.

      “Show you what?” Sam noticed that her voice went thin. It was almost a squeak.

      “That’s what you said to me when I kissed you.” He watched more color fly into her face. “Face it, lady, you were the instigator in all that.”

      “That’s preposterous!” Now her eyes were shooting fire. “You kissed me! It was the farthest thing from my mind! We were sitting there sharing that bag of peanuts you found in your pocket, then you started feeding them to me and then you just…you just…kissed me!”

      That was exactly how it had happened, Sam thought, so he wouldn’t win any points trying to argue it. He tried another tack. “And you needed me to tell you how to kiss? Was that why you said, ‘show me how’?”

      “No!”

      “Then the rational deduction is that you were not talking about kissing when you said those words.”

      “I don’t even remember saying them!”

      “Oh, honey, you said them. Trust me on that one.”

      “Well, then, I was…I was…”

      Sam waited.

      “Go to hell!” she shouted.

      He threw back his dark head and laughed. “I was waiting for you to say something like ‘You, sir, are no gentleman.”’

      She sniffed. “Except we always knew that.”

      Sam found himself closing the distance between them. “Four years, and I never knew you had such a tongue on you, Nurse Matthews.”

      She backed up against the door. “You’ve seen the last of my tongue.”

      “Have I?”

      “What’s gotten into you? It was a one-time thing!”

      “So was the burning bush, but people are still talking about it.”

      “I don’t want to talk!”

      “That’s a change, then. You did it nonstop the whole time we were in that room. The only thing you didn’t tell me was at what age you were potty-trained.”

      She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “There was nothing else to do but talk.”

      “Oh, we thought of something.”

      She moved her hands to clap one against her tummy. “Stop this.”

      Okay, he thought, relaxing for the first time all day. He knew a rattled woman when he saw one. She wasn’t as indifferent to that whole business between them as she pretended to be. His ego was assuaged.

      Now, he thought, he could put it behind him.

      He took another step toward the door and she jumped back again, hitting it so hard the collision hurt him. His first instinct was to ask if she was all right. He touched a finger to the underside of her chin, instead. “Relax.”

      She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

      He backed up gladly. Her skin was too soft. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to move so I can leave and go home?”

      Cait jerked aside so he could get to the door. “Be my guest.”

      He opened it and stepped through.

      “You said I was rigid, too,” she said suddenly. “You didn’t just call me a sparrow. You said I was rigid.”

      He looked back at her. The conversation was supposed to be finished. He’d done what he’d meant to do. He’d gotten her out of his blood. But now something in his gut hitched all over again.

      “You were rigid,” he said, “right up until you started taunting Hines like some kind of madwoman.” And that had blown his mind away.

      She gave a quick little nod. “Okay, then. I just wanted

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