“No, he’s not, but the whole idea that I broke up with Matthew to appease my father is insane,” Laila said indignantly. “I’m not even speaking to my father, much less trying to win him over. He has nothing to do with this. I’m done trying to jump through hoops to please him.”
“I hope that’s true,” Nell said gently. “You’re a smart, thoughtful woman, Laila. You should be deciding things for yourself, especially when it comes to choosing the man you’ll love.”
“And that’s exactly what I did,” Laila said heatedly. “I decided Matthew was all wrong for me. He agreed.”
“If you say so,” Nell murmured. She seemed to be fighting a smile.
Laila couldn’t believe that Matthew was going around town psychoanalyzing her. Wasn’t that Will Lincoln’s domain? Jess’s husband was the shrink in the family.
“I have to go,” Laila said abruptly. She stood up, pulled a twenty from her purse and left it on the table. Though she felt like storming out, good manners had her bending down to kiss Nell’s cheek. None of this was her fault, and she was only expressing whatever nonsense Matthew had fed her. “If I don’t see you before the trip, I really do hope you have a wonderful time.”
“Happy Christmas to you, too, dear,” Nell responded.
Happy? Laila couldn’t imagine anything less likely, but at the moment she wasn’t concerned with holiday spirit. No, what mattered to her right now was straightening out the infuriating and apparently very chatty Matthew O’Brien before he managed to turn the whole town against her.
The last person Matthew expected to find on his doorstep on a frigid December night was Laila. She was shivering, either from the cold or indignation. Judging from the sparks flashing in her eyes when he opened the door, it was probably the latter.
“How dare you!” she said as she walked right past him, took off her coat and tossed it in the general direction of a chair. It missed, but she left it where it had landed.
When she whirled to face him, her eyes were blazing. He hadn’t seen that much heat in them since the last time they’d made love. In full fury like this, she reminded him of some kind of mythical goddess—statuesque, strong and wildly desirable. He jammed his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach for her.
“Something I can do for you?” he inquired mildly. “You look upset.”
“I just had a fascinating conversation with your grandmother,” she announced. “It seems she, and probably everyone else in town by now, is under the impression that I dumped you, that poor Matthew did nothing to deserve such a thing.”
“You did dump me,” he replied reasonably.
“We agreed,” she insisted, her agitated pacing starting to make him a little dizzy.
He shook his head. “Sorry to contradict you, sweetheart, but you said it was over, tossed me out of your apartment and told me never to darken your door again.”
She frowned, probably annoyed by his depiction of what had happened.
“It was hardly that dramatic,” she said.
“Pretty much,” he insisted, amused despite himself that she’d somehow turned herself into the victim here.
“But you agreed we were over,” she countered.
“No, I said it was pointless to try to argue with you when you were being irrational. Then you slammed the door in my face.”
“Well, of course I did,” she retorted. “Who wants to be accused of being irrational by some condescending man? And just so you know, I am never irrational. I thought the whole thing through and came to a sensible conclusion.”
“Not from my perspective, but you certainly did sound convinced about what you were saying. It’s little wonder I took you at your word and stayed away.”
She looked taken aback by his response, as if she’d never considered that, by avoiding her, he was only doing as she asked. “You never took me at my word before.”
At the surprising hint of wistfulness in her voice, he regarded her with confusion. “You wanted me to fight you, to keep coming back even though you’d told me rather plainly not to?”
She sighed and sat on the edge of the sofa, her expression a little lost. The hint of vulnerability made his gut twist. “I sound totally ridiculous, don’t I?” she said. “I’m not a woman who doesn’t know her own mind. At least I never was until I got involved with you. You confuse the daylights out of me, Matthew, and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t much like it.”
He sat a safe distance away from her to avoid the temptation to take advantage of all the mixed signals she was sending. Pulling her into his arms would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Sex wasn’t the answer, not this time. Sex between them might be mind-boggling, but it wouldn’t solve their problems. If he wanted her back in his life, he had to find another way.
“Understandable,” he said quietly. “You’re a woman who likes being in control.”
She gave him a startled look, as if she hadn’t expected him to get that. Then an even deeper sigh shuddered through her. “I’ve missed you,” she admitted. “I’ve hated not seeing you, not talking to you.”
“The lack of sex?” he inquired.
She gave him a wry look. “Yes, that, too, Matthew.”
“Well, if you came over here tonight for some kind of booty call, you’re out of luck,” he told her. “I don’t do that anymore.”
She regarded him with disbelief. “Since when?” “Since I grew up, matured, whatever you want to call it.” He grinned at her. “See, you’ve ruined me for other women. And, just so you know, I’m not sure I’m crazy about that, either.”
She sat in silence for a while, then regarded him with a helpless expression, or at least as helpless as a woman with her boatload of strength was ever likely to display. “What happens now, Matthew? I still think I was right to walk away. So many things happened. I lost so much. I already blamed you for that. I figured over time the resentment would only grow and destroy us. I figured it was better to cut our losses.”
Here was the opening he’d been waiting for. “Do you honestly want to know what I think?”
“Of course.”
“I think you panicked and ran because we’d moved way past your comfort zone. As long as you thought it was just about sex, you were fine, but then you threw away your job at the bank. That terrified you, because you’d never expected anything or anyone to matter more to you than that job. I obviously did, and it scared you.”
She blinked at his assessment, but she didn’t even try to deny it. “Have you been talking to Will? You sound way too much like a shrink.”
“Hey, I’ve been known to have an insight or two all on my own,” he protested. “But, yes, Will did share a few observations. So have Jess, Susie, Uncle Mick and just about everyone else in the family. We’ve been the talk of the entire O’Brien clan for a while now. Frankly,
