him?
Was she tucked away inside, afraid of him now?
Jake stuck his hands in his pockets, looked down at his boots.
He wouldn’t blame her if she were. He’d behaved like a crazy man and here he was this morning, stomping across her porch, banging on her door….
And why in hell would he think she’d made love with him out of pity? Had sex with him, whatever she wanted to call it?
She’d been as carried away as he’d been.
No matter how things had ended, she deserved better than those cold and ugly thoughts.
Enough, he thought, and he trotted down the steps, got back into his car and drove away.
Addison watched from an upstairs window as Jacob Wilde drove off.
Good. In fact, excellent.
The last thing she wanted was to deal with him this morning.
She was busy getting things in order inside this—this catastrophe of a house.
Despite her best intentions, she wasn’t going to be able to leave today. There wasn’t a seat on a New York-bound flight out of Dallas until the end of the week.
Not a problem.
She wasn’t fleeing Wilde’s Crossing, she was simply heading home.
There was plenty to keep her occupied for a few days.
Like what she was about to tackle. Emptying a hall closet on the second floor.
“Yuck,” she muttered.
It wouldn’t be fun, but it had to be done.
Over the weeks, she’d cleaned all the rooms, scrubbed the kitchen and ancient bathroom. She’d even done some touch-ups—polished the floor, painted the walls, bought some odds and ends for the biggest bedroom, which was the one she slept in.
She’d done the closet there but nowhere else, and she had not even looked at the attic.
She could put the house on the market as it was, but for all she knew, there was a treasure trove of interesting old stuff right here, under her nose.
Checking would be fun—
Okay.
Addison stepped away from the closet, sighed and sank down, cross-legged, on the floor.
Maybe not.
She’d probably find nothing but spiders and dust. Still, it would give her something to do instead of thinking about last night.
Thinking about it was pretty much all she’d managed this morning.
That man. Jake Wilde.
“Such arrogance,” she told the empty room.
Indeed.
Arrogance. Audacity. Ego.
The nerve of him to show up here today.
Why had he come?
She couldn’t think of a reason, unless he thought he could talk her into a repeat performance.
No. That hadn’t been it.
A man hoping to take a woman to bed wouldn’t have looked so damned angry.
As if he had anything to be angry about when she was the one who—
Addison froze.
What was that? A car?
Frowning, she rose, went into the closest bedroom and drew back a corner of the curtain.
Jake Wilde’s car.
He was back.
The man was persistent, if nothing else.
Jake stood on the porch and rang the bell.
Knocked on the door. Knocked, not banged. No answer, so he switched to ringing the bell again.
Eventually, he heard a window slide open somewhere above him. He took a step back, looked up, saw Addison, her face half-obscured by a flapping lace curtain the color of old gym socks.
He took a breath, let it out, cleared his throat.
“Ms. McDowell.” Did you address a woman so formally after you’d slept with her? But he hadn’t slept with her. He’d all but screwed out his brains and hers against a truck … and, hell, that kind of image didn’t belong in his head right now. “Addison,” he said pleasantly, “good—”
“You have ten seconds to turn around and get off my land, Captain. After that, I call the police.”
So much for being pleasant.
“Take it easy, okay? You don’t need the police.”
“I’ll decide what I need. The police, the FBI, the National Guard. How about the cavalry?”
“Look, I just want to talk to you.”
“You have nothing to say that I want to hear.”
“How do you know until I say it?”
“When I was in college, I took a class in Platonic dialectic. I’m not going to get dragged into this discussion.”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “I took a class in contract negotiation. Does that make us even?”
It was difficult not to laugh. He was quick, and he was funny.
As if either thing mattered.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Addison said. “We have nothing to talk about.”
“What about last night?”
“What about it?”
“We need to talk about that.”
“We already did.”
She was right; they had. And the excuse he’d given himself when he’d been here fifteen minutes ago wasn’t valid, either.
He hadn’t come to confront her.
He’d come because he just plain wanted to see her.
What if he told her that?
“Captain?”
Jake nodded. Looked up. “I’m still here.”
“And I’ve just proved that there’s no purpose to your visit. So do us both a favor. Go away.”
“I
