“Let me get that for you.”
She stepped back with a soft thanks, then continued with what she’d been saying. “Then you get ripped out of that routine and all you can think about is getting it back. That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?”
“Sure it does,” he said, idly noting how the sunlight drifting in through the small garage windows shone on her hair like fire. His body was tight and his breath was strangling in his lungs. But he didn’t let her know that.
“Nobody likes having their place invaded and their life turned upside down.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have a routine you don’t want upset?”
He gave her a quick grin and set the bag of charcoal at his feet. “Men don’t have routines,” he corrected. “We have schedules.”
“Ah.” She leaned against the front fender of the van. “And your ‘schedule’?”
“Same as everyone else’s I guess,” he said after a long minute, when he took the time to remind himself to be vague. He couldn’t exactly tell her about time spent with his brothers, or at King Construction. “Work, home. Play.”
“I know what you do for work. What’s your idea of playtime?”
“Well now,” he mused thoughtfully, meeting her gaze and allowing her to see exactly what she was doing to him, “that’s an interesting question.”
She sucked in a breath of air and straightened up and away from her car. He liked seeing her nervous. That told him she was feeling the same kind of attraction he was. Good to know. But he’d let her catch her breath before he pushed any harder. He wasn’t used to dealing with a woman like Katie.
The women he generally spent time with were, like Rafe, only interested in a few hours of pleasure. There were no hidden agendas, no emotional traps and no expectations. Katie was different. She was new territory for him and damned if he wasn’t enjoying himself.
“So?” he asked, picking up the bag of charcoal, “Barbecuing?”
She looked grateful for the reprieve. “Yes. Hamburgers sounded good to me and they’re just not the same if they’re not barbecued.”
“Agreed,” Rafe said, turning for the door. “Want me to set it up for you?”
“Only if you’ll stay for dinner.”
He stopped, half turned and looked at her. A slow smile curved his mouth. If he was here for dinner, he’d be damn sure staying for dessert, too. “That’d be great. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll go home and shower and change first.”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
She looked nervous again, chewing at her bottom lip. His gaze locked on that action and his insides tightened even further. Oh, yeah. He’d make it a cold shower, too.
“Okay,” he said, “give me an hour? I’ll get the barbecue going when I get back. I’m good at starting fires.”
“That,” she said, “I absolutely believe.”
Four
“It doesn’t mean a thing,” Katie told herself while she quickly mixed up a batch of pasta salad to go with the burgers. “It’s just dinner. A barbecue. Friendly. Non-threatening. Not sexual in any way…”
Oh, even she didn’t believe that. She’d felt the tension mounting between them when they both went to reach for the bag of charcoal. For a second, she had been sure he was going to kiss her and she still wasn’t sure if she’d been relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t. And, she had seen his eyes when he promised to start her fire for her. He probably knew that he’d already started it.
Cooking helped center her. It always had. As a girl, she’d helped Nana out in the kitchen and slowly learned her way around a recipe. Then, she started creating her own. And she had learned early that no matter what else was happening in her life, the kitchen was her comfort zone.
She chopped celery, then mushrooms, carrots and broccoli, and added them to the cold pasta, giving it all a good stir together with the homemade pesto. When she was finished, she stored the bowl in her fridge and started on dessert.
She had to keep busy. If she stopped long enough to think about what she was doing, she’d talk herself out of it.
That brought her up short.
“Out of what exactly, Katie?” she demanded. “He’s coming for dinner. Nobody said anything about sex.”
Oh, boy.
The problem was, she really wanted Rafe Cole. She’d been around him almost nonstop for the last week and every day, he’d gotten to her just a little bit more. He was friendly and helpful and, boy, he looked darn good in his jeans. Those blue eyes of his were starring nightly in her dreams and her fingers itched to slide through his thick, black hair.
Yep, she was in bad shape and no doubt asking for trouble by instigating this dinner. But maybe it was time she had a little trouble in her life. She’d always been the good girl. Always done the “right” thing. The safe thing.
Heck, she’d dated Cordell King for three months and hadn’t slept with him. She’d wanted to take it slow because she’d been so sure that he was the one.
It had seemed, at the time, as if fate had thrown them together. After all, it wasn’t as if she stumbled across billionaires all the time in her everyday life. He had ordered an extra-large cookie bouquet to be delivered to his assistant, who was taking off for maternity leave. Katie’s delivery girl hadn’t been able to take the runs that day, so Katie had done the job herself.
Cordell had slipped out of his office to watch as his assistant cooed and cried over the beautifully frosted cookies that Katie presented to her. And after that, he’d walked Katie to her car and asked her to dinner. After that night, they’d been together as often as each of their schedules had allowed.
Looking back, Katie could see that she had been flattered by Cordell’s attention. That the thought of a rich, successful man being interested in her had fed the flames of what she had believed was the start of something amazing. He was so handsome. So attentive. So damned sexy. Her heart had taken a leap before her mind could catch up.
Shaking her head, she realized that she had felt at the time as if she were living in a fairy tale. Where the handsome prince swooped into her poor but proud cottage and carried her off to her castle.
“Silly,” she whispered, thinking back to her own actions. Thank God she hadn’t slept with him. That would have only fed the humiliation when she looked back on a time where she had been involved in what she thought was something special.