“Your girl. I heard her on the phone before you got here. She was all into whoever she was talking to. Just sayin’, you should watch your back, man.”
His muscles contracting, he realized he should tell the guy to go screw himself, that he and Candace weren’t a couple and if she had been on the phone with anyone else, that was her business. Not his.
Instead, he simply ignored the jock, tossed some bills on the table and got up. No, he had no business questioning who Candace talked to. But she’d sure made it sound like she was single, and she’d certainly acted that way yesterday during their erotic encounters.
Could she really have a lover somewhere? Was she the type who got bored easily and was simply killing time with Oliver while she was stuck up here in Sonoma?
The thought bothered him more than he cared to admit. So much so that he couldn’t even force a tight smile when she got back and walked over to him.
She spied the bills on the table. “I told you I’d pay for mine.”
“Forget it,” he insisted, his tone brusque to match his attitude. “Are you ready to go? Because I’m leaving.”
He didn’t plan to walk out and leave her here, not now that he knew just how closely the table full of men had been watching her. But he didn’t need her to know that.
“Sure,” she said, blinking in surprise at his here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry attitude.
He didn’t enlighten her. Telling her what the nosy softball player at the next table had said would only open up a conversation he really didn’t want to have. The only reason he’d need to know if she was available was if he intended to sleep with her.
He didn’t.
Right?
They walked outside to the parking lot. While they’d been inside, the early signs of a storm had blown in. This area didn’t get a whole lot of rain, and what it got usually came in the winter. But sometimes the spring brought wicked storms and it looked like they would have one tonight. The air was wildly alive, with gusts that had the trees bouncing and a whistling sound coming from under the eaves of the building.
Instead of tightening her jacket, ducking against the weather and racing to her car, Candace tilted her head back, smiled and closed her eyes. She apparently liked the feel of the wind battering her body. Liking it, too, he understood. There was something freeing about being in a climate so variable and elemental. L.A. and San Diego were pretty standard all year round—sunny, warm, beautiful. In the winter and spring months he’d been up here, he’d realized you couldn’t really count on anything. You never knew when the winds would change and the air would crackle with electric excitement.
“I love this,” she said, raising her voice to be heard.
“I can tell.”
The gusts kept catching wispy strands of her honeybrown hair, blowing them across her face. She didn’t even try tucking them behind her ears or restraining the long curls. The longer they stood outside, the more primal and tangled it became. She was beautiful, sultry, exotic…he had a sudden image of being back at the estate with her, outside, naked, letting the wind batter them as they came together in an explosion as powerful as a spring storm.
Unable to take it anymore, he looked away, not wanting to be utterly entranced by the wild, erotic picture she presented, all windblown and sexy, with her lips moist and parted in exhilaration as she breathed in the cool night air.
“It’s going to break over us pretty soon,” he said. “And it won’t be a fun drive once it starts pouring. We should go.”
Her shoulders slumped. “All right.”
When they reached her rental car, she said, “It seems like a good night to stay inside. Maybe I could pay you back for dinner by picking up some candy and popcorn for our home movie night?”
He frowned. “It’s late.” It wasn’t that late, maybe ten o’clock. Ten minutes ago he might have leaped at the chance. But the fact that he didn’t know enough about her had been hammered home by the jock inside.
“Tomorrow maybe?”
“I don’t know if I’ll have time for that before you leave.”
Disappointment flashed across her face. “Oh.”
Part of him wanted to take it back, especially seeing the flash of hurt in her eyes. But it was better this way. Better that he put the walls firmly in place again. She’d be gone in a week, returning to her life and her…whoever the guy on the phone had been. Buddy would be home. Oliver would descend back into his self-imposed purgatory. Everything would be as it should. Hell, maybe once he’d gotten his shit together, he’d go back to L.A. and look her up. Find out if she was single or not. But who knew when that would be?
“Well, thanks for dinner,” she said as she got into her car. She wasn’t meeting his eyes. Embarrassed? Angry? He wasn’t sure.
Muttering, “You’re welcome,” he pushed the door shut. He strode to his own truck, not turning around as she revved up her car’s engine, threw it in gear and tore out of the parking lot like she had a dragon on her tail.
Okay, so she was angry.
Hell.
It’s better this way, he reminded himself.
Somehow, though, he didn’t feel better. In fact, he felt like crap. Crappy enough that, rather than heading right for the Sonoma Highway and home, he stopped at a liquor store and bought a six-pack. Not just because he had the feeling he could use a second beer, but because he didn’t want to get back to the estate until he knew she would be safely tucked inside Buddy’s house.
But after his stop, as he began driving home, leaving the highway and hitting some of the twisty back roads, he couldn’t get the image of her standing there, enjoying the wind in her face, out of his mind. Especially because that wind threatened to take the steering wheel out of his hands a couple of times. And now it had started to rain.
“Shit. You should have followed her home.”
Candace wasn’t used to driving in this area, with hilly roads full of dangerous switchbacks and steep drop-offs. The bad weather made it even worse. If he hadn’t been such an ass, he could have made sure she was safe, and he practically held his breath until he got to the estate and saw her rental car in front of the main house.
He parked his truck outside the cottage, breathing a deep sigh of relief that she’d made it, too. Replaying their conversation back at the bar, he knew he’d behaved badly. So much for the smooth gentleman he’d always been praised as being in his old life. He’d been a total dick to Candace half the time. He’d been like a kid who knew he couldn’t play with the toy he most wanted, so he’d pretended he didn’t want it at all.
Tonight, he’d reacted like a prosecutor instead of like a man who was getting to know an honest, refreshing, bright and sexy woman. He hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt. Was he so jaded, so used to being lied to and manipulated that he no longer had the capacity to give someone a chance?
He owed her an apology. And if all the lights hadn’t been off in the
