LITMIR.BIZ

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the day would come when she would say she was happy to see the Tweedles, but thank goodness they had walked in, jaws flapping. They were the only thing that had stopped her from making another huge mistake.

      “Good shower?” Dillon asked, looking her up and down with warm, blue bedroom eyes.

      Every one of her billion or so nerve endings went on full alert. Her brain kicked into overdrive to compensate and threatened a complete shutdown.

      Why in the hell had she kissed him again? Hadn’t she learned her lesson the first time? Hadn’t she learned it ten stinking years ago?

      The lack of oxygen from staying under the water so long had clearly damaged her brain.

      Or May be he really was a virus, and she just didn’t have the antibodies to fight him off.

      “I know I locked the door before I got in the shower,” she said, doing her best to sound stern. So he wouldn’t know that she was thinking of how much better he would look out of his clothes than in them.

      He looked at the door, then back to her. “What’s your point?”

      Could he be more arrogant? Any cooler or more composed? More of a pain in the behind?

      “A closed, locked door generally means the person on the other side doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

      He just grinned. The frustratingly charming grin she both loved and hated. She would order him to leave if she thought he would actually listen. Hell, she’d even try hosing him down with Lysol. But she knew it was a futile battle. All the disinfectant and antibiotics in the world wouldn’t fend him off. Like every other virus she’d had, he would simply have to run his course.

      This time she wouldn’t give in and let him become a full-blown epidemic.

      She shoved her wet, tangled hair back from her eyes. “Do I even want to know how you got the door unlocked?”

      He reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a credit card. “I used my Visa.”

      So much for her plan of staying barricaded in her room for the rest of a trip. Not even a locked door could keep him out. Besides, wouldn’t that be like letting him win?

      This game he was playing was getting more complicated by the hour. It would be so much easier if she knew the rules, but she had the uneasy suspicion that there weren’t any.

      She tried to work up the enthusiasm to be annoyed but didn’t see the point. Her anger was wasted on him. If anything, he seemed to enjoy getting her riled up. “Was there something you wanted?”

      He flashed her that sexy, simmering grin and wiggled his eyebrows. “You know what I want, darlin’.”

      Oh, that. And here she had been hoping he wanted to play checkers.

      Then he—Oh, my God—pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the bed beside him.

      Hunk alert.

      All that bronzed skin and lean muscle was making her eyes cross.

      He patted the mattress. “Why don’t you slip out of that robe and squeeze in here beside me.”

      If only he knew how tempting that was.

      The bedroom was the one place he had never disappointed her. And it wasn’t just the sex, although, Lord knew that had been out-of-this-world marvelous. But, being something of a nerd, one of her favorite things had been to just talk. Back then, few people had had the privilege of meeting the intellectually intriguing man lost behind the rebellious, party-boy facade. Some nights they had made love for hours, then had lain awake until dawn discussing social issues and politics and world events.

      She wondered when that had stopped. When going out to the bar with his buddies had become more appealing than spending time with her. When the discussions had turned into arguments, the arguments to angry sex. Until even that had no longer been able to connect them. Until they had been just plain angry.

      When she didn’t move, he sighed and let his head fall back. His neck was lean and tanned, and she could see a tiny mark under his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving. “Is it safe to assume that we’re not going to pick up where we left off downstairs?”

      “What happened downstairs was a mistake.” A huge, monster-size, “ginormous” mistake.

      “Wouldn’t be my first, and I doubt it’ll be my last.”

      “That doesn’t justify what we did. It’s pretty obvious we have some unresolved issues, but I don’t think hopping into bed is the way to fix them.”

      Not that it wouldn’t be fun.

      He flashed her that hungry, devilish grin. “The only thing unresolved between us is that we still make each other hot. And hopping into bed together, right here, right now, is the perfect way to fix that.”

      “May be that was the problem with our marriage. May be it was only about the sex.”

      “Who could blame us, since we did it so well.”

      She shot him a look. One he would no doubt recognize as exasperation. “I’m serious, Dillon.”

      “So am I.” He reached over and pulled back the covers. “Come here, I’ll remind you.”

      She just stood there, arms folded over her chest. He blew out an exasperated breath and fell back against the pillow. It was so typically Dillon, so familiar, her heart ached the tiniest bit.

      “Darlin’, you’re sending so many mixed signals I’m getting whiplash. Did you or did you not kiss me? Twice in fact.”

      “Call it temporary insanity. Let me say this loud and clear so there’s no confusion. We are not having sex. Not today, not tomorrow, not ten years from now.”

      “How about Saturday? Could we do it then?”

      “Never.”

      He considered that for a second, then asked, “When you say sex, do you mean intercourse only, or are you lumping foreplay in there, too?”

      She wasn’t going to justify that with a response. “No wonder our marriage went to hell. You can’t be serious for two seconds.”

      A muscle in his jaw twitched, and she knew she’d hit a sore spot. She seemed to have a knack for doing that. “How’s this for serious? I can tell you exactly why our marriage went to hell. You didn’t trust me.”

      So, they were back to blaming her. How typical. And to think that only a few minutes ago she had seriously been considering sleeping with him. “If I didn’t trust you, Dillon, I had a damn good reason. You weren’t exactly reliable.”

      “Reliable?” Now he looked downright resentful.

      “Did I ever make you a promise I didn’t keep?”

      She wanted to be able to say yes. But the honest truth was, he’d never broken a promise. When he gave his word, he’d never failed to follow through. The tricky part was getting him to make the promise in the first place.

      Did that make him unreliable or self-centered? Or simply smart enough to know his own limitations?

      And what difference did it make now?

      “No,” she admitted. “You never made a promise you didn’t keep, but like always, you’re grossly oversimplifying. It wasn’t about lies or broken promises. In all the time we were together you never once showed an ounce of incentive. A drive to succeed.”

      “How do you figure?”

      Was he kidding? “Dillon, you were flunking out of school! All you did was drink and gamble.”

      He shrugged. “So?”

      So? Was that all he had to say? Just so? “You had so much potential. You could have gone so far.”

      “Could have? I run a billion-dollar

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