A muscle ticked in his temple. “I already said that.”
“Just making sure.” But at the same time she was extracting the promise, she was staring at him sprawled there in that chair. He was still wearing a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt that treated her to far too much visual stimulation. Sebastian Savas with his long bare legs splayed and his muscular arms flexing as he cracked his knuckles did disastrous and very unfair things to her libido.
It wasn’t fair that such an unsuitable man should be able to make her heart kick over and her pulse quicken and other intimate parts of her body tingle with the mere awareness of him.
Their gazes met. And held. And held some more.
Sebastian swallowed. And even the sight of his Adam’s apple moving in his throat was an enticement.
The discovery made Neely gulp. She moistened her lips with her tongue.
Sebastian shut his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, just get the hell out of here.”
There.
It was simple.
Mind over matter. Or libido. Or something.
It wasn’t as if she wanted to want Sebastian Savas, after all. He was the last man she should be interested in.
She wasn’t interested in him.
Much.
It would have been easy—or at least easier—if he’d had to go back to Reno. But he didn’t. He was there—on the houseboat whenever she got up in the morning, coming out of his bedroom just as she was getting out of the bathroom. Coming abruptly face to breastbone with his bare chest was not conducive to pure innocent thoughts.
And then he would come downstairs looking all polished and professional—long-sleeved pale-blue starched dress shirts and dark trousers that should have looked like body armor but on Sebastian looked sexy as hell because she had no trouble imagining the hard-muscled man beneath them.
He was there at work, too. Not often. They didn’t work together. She was working with Max on Blake-Carmody, and Sebastian was doing whatever it was Sebastian was doing—but every now and then she caught a glimpse of him, caught him looking at her.
And abruptly they would both look away.
And no matter what she was doing or saying or supposed to be doing or saying, in fact she was thinking instead about what it had been like to kiss him.
It wasn’t just one day or two. It was the whole week. Day in, day out.
“What’s the matter with you?” Max asked. “You don’t have your eye on the ball.”
No, she didn’t.
She had it on Sebastian Savas.
It was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
No kissing!
What was she, a department store dummy? No feelings? No urges? No needs?
Of course he could control his libido—but why should he? It wasn’t as if he was going to get emotionally involved.
Was she?
The thought brought him up short. He wasn’t used to dealing with women who wanted more from him than he was inclined to give.
Did Robson want more? Was she in danger of falling in love with him? Was that what she was saying?
Of course she wasn’t! She hated his guts for saying she designed doll houses. She was attracted, that’s all.
And resisting.
So she’d come up with a silly rule.
Well, fine. He could abide by it. It wasn’t as if he spent every day thinking about Neely Robson…imagining her lips under his…fantasizing about kissing her.
Well, he hadn’t until the day he’d actually done it.
And now, damn it, he couldn’t seem to forget.
It would have been easier if he’d got to go back to Reno this week. But no, he was stuck in Seattle the whole time, running into her first thing in the morning when she was still sleep-rumpled and soft-lipped.
“Oops, sorry!” she said, and skittered out of his way. But not before she’d brushed against him doing so. And how the hell was he supposed to just pretend his body didn’t leap in response to that?
And then he came downstairs to find her playing with the kittens or sitting in her rocking chair cuddling the rabbit under her chin or nuzzling the blasted guinea pig—and his fingers itched to take the animal out of her hands and pull her into his arms and do a little nuzzling and cuddling of his own.
Ordinarily he got away from her at work, but it was uncanny the number of times he ran smack into her in the hallway and she licked her lips, startled, and he couldn’t help staring straight at them.
Almost worse was going into the blueprint room to see her leaning over the drafting table, her derriere so neatly outlined in her navy trousers as she’d sketched something in for Max. At the sight he’d slopped his coffee on his hand, making him curse.
Worst of all, though, was seeing her disappear into Max’s office and knowing perfectly well that she wasn’t in there coming on to Max at all.
She was perfectly free.
And—by her own decree—totally off-limits. Sebastian ground his teeth at the pointlessness of it.
But then he reminded himself that sex was simply a biological urge. Any appealing woman would do.
Only his father seemed to feel the need to marry them.
Sebastian didn’t. Sebastian wouldn’t. So he either had to put her out of his mind and find someone else to occupy his wayward thoughts. Or he needed to change her mind.
Soon.
The best defense might be a good offense in football and war and all those sweaty fierce masculine pursuits.
But as far as Neely could tell, the best defense for dealing with the effect Sebastian Savas was having on her was going out, keeping busy—and meeting other men.
“Running scared?” Max said when she told him she was playing intramural volleyball on Monday nights and going bowling on Wednesdays after work. She had gone to book discussion group at the library on Tuesday and she was giving serious thought to taking Harm to obedience class on Thursdays.
Any dog who knocked people into the water needed obedience, didn’t he?
“Running scared?” Neely echoed Max’s words and tried to invest them with as much scorn as possible. “Of what, pray tell?”
“Your roommate,” Max said. He arched a speculative brow and regarded Neely with amusement.
She
