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 was beginning to wish she hadn’t bothered to stop in his office on her way to the gym. “Why would you say that?” She couldn’t be that obvious, could she?
“You never felt the need to get out every night when you were living with Frank.” Max shrugged. “And you didn’t last week when Seb was in Reno.”
Neely glared at him. “Don’t you have anything better to do than work out my motivations?”
A grin flashed across Max’s face. “You’re my daughter. I’m catching up on all the years I never got to be a father.”
“If you want to practice all the things you missed, Mom’s coming out this weekend.”
Abruptly Max’s smile vanished and he straightened up in his desk chair, put both feet on the floor and gave Neely a hard look. “Your mother and I are past history.”
Neely gave an airy wave of her hand. “Just thought you’d like to know.”
Max grunted. “Go bowl.”
She did. She even went out for a beer with the group afterward. It was nearly nine when she got home. Sebastian was working at the computer. He didn’t turn around when she came in, but kept working while she made a fuss over the kittens, then scratched Harm’s ears and said, “Hang on. Let me put my stuff upstairs and I’ll take you for a run.”
“I already did.”
She blinked as Sebastian spun his chair around and met her surprise with an unsmiling stare. “Oh. Well, um, thanks.”
“And I fed the cats and the rabbits and the guinea
