LITMIR.BIZ

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      “If it was nothing, why’d you shriek? What happened?”

      “Nothing happened!” Face still burning, Neely crouched down and snagged up the kittens, clutching them to her chest and gently kneading their small squirming bodies to make sure they weren’t hurt.

      Sebastian jerked open the door and glowered accusingly. “Don’t tell me you were shocked to see me. I live here.”

      That wasn’t what had shocked her. She cuddled the kittens closer. “I stumbled,” she said. “I landed on the kittens.”

      He looked skeptical, but finally he shrugged. Why did his shoulders look even broader in a T-shirt than in a dress shirt? Unfair.

      “You should watch where you’re going,” he told her.

      “Obviously.” And she wasn’t about to tell him why she hadn’t been. Instead she buried her face in their fur and took a few more deep breaths until finally she lifted her gaze again and said, “You don’t have to paint.”

      He rolled his shoulders. “It’s my boat. Or were you going to say it’s your paint?”

      Neely pressed her lips together. “It is, actually. But that’s not the point. The point is—” she took a breath, then plunged on “—I want to buy the boat. Still. From you.”

      He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “You can’t really want it. You didn’t have any idea it even existed twenty-four hours ago. It’s some spur-of-the-moment mad purchase for you. Maybe you think you want it now, but you won’t.”

      He started to say something again, but Neely knew she had to get it all out now without interruption, had to make it clear how very badly she wanted the houseboat. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it would make him even less likely to sell to her.

      But yesterday, when Harm knocked him in the water and he didn’t take it out on her, when he actually sounded just slightly bemused. “More harm than good,” he’d said. And it was so unexpected that she couldn’t believe he was totally unfeeling.

      “Hear me out,” she insisted. “I know you think you want it now. But you’ll get sick of it. You’ll hate the way the dampness makes your computer keys stick. You’ll get tired of the fog. You won’t want birds pooping on the deck. You’ll crave your penthouse again. I’m sure you will! So, I just want you to know that, when it happens—and it will happen—I’ll take it off your hands for what I agreed to pay Frank—or even ten thousand more,” she added recklessly. “And I will get financing.”

      She’d let Max help if she had to.

      She stopped and looked at Sebastian, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t say a word. Half a minute ticked by. Then he said, “Are you finished now?”

      “Yes.” Tick, tick.

      “So tell me why. Why do you want it?”

      She wished he hadn’t asked that. Neely loved people and made friends easily. She’d had to, given how often she was in a new place. But she usually took her time exposing the personal side of her life. And she really didn’t want to do so to a man who formed judgments faster than the speed of light.

      But he hadn’t said no. And he stood there now, waiting expectantly, those green eyes assessing her from beneath hooded lids.

      Right. So be it. “It felt like home the first time I walked in the door,” she told him. “I don’t know why.” And she’d given it a lot of thought, too. “We lived all over the place. Here. In California. Montana. Minnesota. Wisconsin. To say we moved around is putting it mildly. We were always somewhere different and nothing was ever permanent…not until I was twelve, anyway.”

      “What happened when you were twelve?”

      “My mother got married.”

      His eyes widened, as if she’d surprised him.

      “My parents weren’t,” she said bluntly. “My father was a workaholic and my mother was a free spirit. Chalk and cheese. Worse,” she said, “they split before I was born. We stayed in Seattle for a year. But then my mother joined a commune and we went to California. Like I said, we moved around a lot. And then she met John. And something clicked. They got married. It was wonderful.”

      Now he really did look shocked.

      “It was,” she insisted. “We had a home. I loved it. For six years it was the best. Then I went away to college and—” she shrugged “—you know what college is like—nothing is ever ‘home.’ Then, after I graduated I lived in first one apartment and then another. Even when I came out here, at first I rented another apartment for a month. When Frank said he was looking for a roommate, I came to see the houseboat—and I felt it right away. Home. Still is.” She had been looking around at everything in the room as she spoke. But when she finished she looked straight at him. “That’s why.”

      “All emotion,” he said.

      She bristled. “Something wrong with that?”

      He didn’t answer. “Are you going to paint it pink?”

      “What?”

      It was the accusation he’d thrown at her the one time they’d worked together—that she had wanted to paint everything pink. She had ignored the accusation because it was the client who had wanted pink, and in the particular funky magazine editorial offices she was designing, the color had worked.

      Now she glared at him. And he looked back impassively, one brow lifted in that sardonic way he had of making you feel two feet high.

      And then his cell phone rang.

      Sebastian dug in his jeans’ pocket, making her aware once again of the way they fit his body, of how they gave a whole new tough rugged look to the smooth cool consummate professional she was accustomed to.

      Not, she reminded herself, that he behaved any differently.

      Are you going to paint it pink? What kind of a smart-ass remark was that? He’d opened her cans of paint. He knew perfectly well none of them was pink.

      She scowled at him as he flicked open his phone, glanced at the phone number coming in, made a slightly wry face, then said, “Excuse me. I have to take this.”

      Of course he did, Neely thought. “Go right ahead,” she said. But he wasn’t even listening. He’d already turned toward the door.

      Neely was listening, however. And she was surprised he didn’t say, “Savas here,” in that steely businesslike tone she always heard at work.

      On the contrary, his voice was totally different with a much softer edge. And he almost seemed to have a smile on his face when he said, “Hey, what’s up.”

      So it was a girlfriend.

      She didn’t know why she should be surprised. He was certainly good-looking enough. And maybe there was another side to him than the one she saw at work. Maybe he was Mr. Charm after hours. Though according to Max, Sebastian worked as many hours in the day as he did.

      What he said next she didn’t know because he stepped out onto the deck. Not that she wanted to eavesdrop. She had no desire at all to hear Sebastian murmur sweet nothings to his girlfriend. She couldn’t quite imagine that.

      But she didn’t have any trouble imagining, however, the sort of cool svelte ice goddess who would appeal to him. Tall and blond and minimally curvy. Expressionless. But she might have one of those slow smiles that never quite met her eyes.

      Would they, between the two of them, generate enough heat to melt the ice?

      But even as she had the thought, she realized that it seemed at odds with the flicker of emotions—gentleness and calm followed by impatience and what looked like eye-rolling irritation.

      And then he spoke loudly enough that Neely had no trouble hearing him at all. “Don’t cry,

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