“Gosh…ya think?”
He had the good sense to finally look guilty. So guilty that she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“I think I hate you.”
He became quiet before setting down his fork and drawing a deep breath. “So…umm…you think this guy might be special?”
She gave a weary snort and made herself ignore the feel of his warm callused fingers as he lifted a hand to her face to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Well, I’ll probably never know now, will I? Not after that dog-and-pony show you put on tonight.”
She could feel his warm-brown eyes on her but refused to look at him. Finally he dropped his hand.
“Hate to break it to you, sunshine,” he said, “but if he scares off that easily, he’s not only not special, he hasn’t got what it takes to breathe the same air you do.”
Carrie crossed her arms on the booth tabletop, dropped her forehead to rest there and expelled an exasperated sigh. “All I wanted was dinner and a chance to get to know him. Was that too much to ask?”
Ry looked down at her riot of shiny red hair, at the weary slump of her shoulders and felt a curl of real guilt coil in his belly. He lifted a hand, let it hover over her slim back before finally giving in to the urge and letting it settle there. When she didn’t object, he gently rubbed. She was so slight. The flesh and bone and delicate muscle beneath her kelly-green sweater was warm and resilient.
He only meant to soothe her and assuage a little of his guilt. Instead, as his palm skated over what was obviously the clasp of her bra, he got lost in a fantasy that filled his mind way too often lately.
Would her bra be black, he wondered. Would it match her panties? The thought of seeing her in nothing but black silk and fragile lace warmed by her skin and peeled away by his hands had him swallowing hard. And yet he couldn’t make himself stop.
He could see himself tunneling his hands up and under that sweater, unfastening her bra, drawing her back against him and filling his palms with her breasts. He could imagine the heat of her, the weight, the giving softness surrounding the hard spears of her nipples pressing against his palm while his other hand slipped down across her ribs, and lower, lingering on her slim hip before his fingers skimmed past her belly, under her panties and found the silky heat of her.
The length of his erection pressed against his fly.
Again. Because of her. Trav’s little sister.
He let out a heavy breath. Withdrew his hand. Gave himself a mental head slap.
“How about some pie?” he asked in a voice that barely sounded like his own.
She lifted her head, looked at him.
Her hair was slightly mussed. Her cheek had a little crease from the pressure of her face pressed against her sweater sleeve. It’s what she would look like in the morning, he realized. After he’d made love to her all night. Sleepy and sated and…Whoops, the heat in her eyes was anger not passion, and burst him out of his little sensual haze like a pin pricking a balloon.
“Pie? That’s how you fix what you did just now?”
In spite of himself and his guilt and his arousal, he grinned. “Used to do the trick,” he said hopefully.
“Yeah. When I was twelve.”
“Takes a little more than pie to make you feel good now, is that it, bear?”
The moment he said it, he regretted it. Because it conjured a dozen thoughts about ways he’d like to make her feel good. Starting with her mouth, working slowly down from there. Oh, yeah. He’d make her feel good. He’d make them both feel good.
“What it takes,” she said, dragging her hair back from her face, “is a little…just a little…respect for my feelings.”
“I respect you, sweetie. I’m just not sure Nelson does.”
“Nathan,” she said with fire in her eyes. “His name is Nathan, and I don’t really care what you think of him, do you understand?
“Now, move,” she ordered in a mercurial shift from down-and-out to down-and-dirty mad. “And for future reference,” she added when he let her out of the booth, deciding he’d better make way or confront the wrath of a royally ticked-off redhead, “I don’t want to see your face in my face the next time I’m faced with Nathan’s face…is that clear?”
“I…um…”
“Good!”
Not good, Ry thought as he watched her storm out of the diner.
“When you gonna do something about that?” Sheila asked, sidling over to the booth and slapping his dinner check into his hand.
“Do something about what?” he asked, absently digging into his hip pocket for his wallet, his eyes still on Carrie’s sweet little backside as she sashayed at a fast, hot clip out the door.
“About that case you’ve got on her…about the case she’s got on you.”
He whipped his head around. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Cleared his throat.
“Yeah…it’s that obvious,” Sheila said, answering his unasked question with a “you poor bumbling buffoon” shake of her head before she walked away.
It crossed his mind to deny it…but he knew he’d only be digging a deeper hole. Like a six-foot-deep hole that Trav would dump him in to bury the body if he ever found out Ry had the hots—and possibly a whole lot more—for his little sister.
“Ain’t this just a fine kettle of catfish,” he mumbled as he tossed some bills on the booth top and resettled his hat. The best thing he could do for himself was stay away from her, and the only thing Trav wanted him to do was ride herd.
Lust or loyalty. Pared down to those two words, there could only be one choice. He headed for the door and hoped he had the strength of character to choose the right one.
Damn Ryan Evans. And damn this stupid cow town. He’d been trying to figure an angle to get to Carrie Whelan for days and when he finally found the opportunity, Evans had cut him off at the knees.
Seething with rage and still smelling of that row-rent greasy-spoon diner, he let himself into the apart ment he’d rented last month on the west end of Royal. He stormed straight for his bedroom, angrily tossing his keys on the top of the bureau. With jerky motions that relayed the extent of his rage over Evans’s interference, he unbuttoned his shirt and yanked it out of his trousers.
“You’re home early.”
He whipped his head toward the bed where a very blond, very naked woman lay beneath the sheets, smiling at him.
He closed his eyes, swore. “What are you doing here?”
“Ooo. Testy tonight, are we? What’s the matter, darling? Didn’t your little tryst with sweet Carrie Whelan go as well as you’d planned?”
“I told
