I’m In No Mood For Love

country and eventually the globe, Jane had stuck around Seattle. She’d eventually landed a job at the Seattle Times, where she’d met and married hockey goalie Luc Martineau. They’d been married for a few years and lived in an apartment not far from Sebastian’s. They had a one-year-old son, James, and Luc’s sister Marie lived with them while she attended school.

“Are you sure Clare’s just a friend?” Jane asked as she handed him a Pyramid ale.

Sebastian stared down at the five-foot-one woman beside him, then turned his gaze to Clare, who was talking to a tall thin blond woman, her red-haired boyfriend, and a beefy Russian defenseman. “Yeah, I’m sure.” Clare wore a shiny silver tube of a dress that looked like she’d been wrapped up in tinfoil, then had someone take their hands and press it against her body. The dress wasn’t exactly scandalous, but several times during the evening, Sebastian noticed a few muscle-necked hockey players unwrapping her with their eyes. When they found out she was a romance writer, their interest intensified. He knew what the bastards were thinking.

“’Cause you look like you’re ready to cross-check Vlad,” Jane said.

Sebastian carefully unfolded his arms from across the chest of his blue dress shirt and took a drink of his beer. “Do you think I can take him?”

“Heck no. He’d kick your sissy reporter butt.” Jane had always been almost as smart as she was a smartass. “He’s ‘Vlad the Impaler’ for a reason. Once you get to know him, he’s a nice enough guy.” She shook her head and her short black hair brushed her cheek. “If you didn’t want these guys to hit on her, you shouldn’t have introduced her as your ‘friend.’”

Jane was probably right, but introducing her as his girlfriend seemed too soon. And Clare probably wouldn’t have appreciated it if he’d said, “This girl is mine so back the hell off!” Clare might not be his girlfriend, but she was his date, and he didn’t like watching other men move in on her. “You do know that I was kidding, don’t you?”

“About taking on Vlad? Yeah. About Clare being ‘just a friend,’ I think you’re kidding yourself.”

He opened his mouth to argue but Jane walked away to join her husband. Later that night as he watched Clare sleep, he wondered what it was about her that drew him in and refused to let go. It wasn’t just the sex. It was something else. All that shopping she’d subjected him to should have cooled his interest. But it hadn’t. Perhaps it was that she had no expectations. She didn’t seem to want anything from him, and the more she kept her distance, the more he wanted to pull her closer.

At six the next morning Sebastian woke, restless, and yanked on a T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants. While Clare slept, he started a pot of coffee, and as it brewed he called his dad. It was seven o’clock in Boise, but he knew Leo was an early riser. His relationship with his father was improving slowly with each visit. They weren’t exactly close, but both of them were making a real effort to repair the damage of the past.

He hadn’t spoken with his father since Christmas, but he was fairly certain Leo didn’t know about his guest asleep in his bed. He hadn’t mentioned it, and he didn’t know how the old man would feel about what he had going on with Clare. Okay, that was a lie. Leo wouldn’t be thrilled, but of course, he’d known that going in. He knew it the first time he kissed her, and he knew it the last time he made love to her the night before. He’d come to the conclusion that he and Clare were consenting adults and what they consented to do was between them and no one else.

After he got off the phone with Leo, he moved into his office. The last few months he’d been toying with the idea of writing fiction. A series of thriller/mystery novels with a recurring central character much in the vein of Cussler’s Dirk Pitt or Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Only his main protagonist would be an investigative journalist.

Sebastian sat down at his desk and booted up his computer. He had a sketchy plot outline and a vague notion of character, but after two hours of solid writing, it became more concrete in his mind.

A noise from the kitchen drew his attention from the drama taking place in his head, and he glanced up from his computer screen as Clare walked into the room wearing a plain blue nightgown that matched her eyes. It was short and had little straps and was sexy as all hell simply by virtue of not trying too hard. A lot like Clare herself.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, and stopped in the doorway. I didn’t know you had to work.”

“I don’t.” He stood and stretched. “I’m not really working. Mostly just playing around.”

“Solitaire?” She moved farther into the room and took a drink of coffee from the mug in her hand.

“No. I have an idea for a book.” It was the first time he’d been this excited about writing anything in a while. Probably since before his mother had died.

“On a story you’ve covered recently?”

“No. Fiction.” It was also the first time he’d mentioned what he was doing. He hadn’t even told his agent yet. “I was thinking more along the lines of an investigative journalist who uncovers government secrets.”

Her brows rose up her forehead. “Like Ken Follett or Frederick Forsyth, maybe?”

“Maybe.” He came out from behind his desk and smiled. “Or maybe I’ll become a male romance novelist.”

Behind her mug her eyes got wide and she started to laugh.

“What are you laughing at? I’m a romantic guy.”

She set the mug on his desk, and somehow her laugher turned into a choking jag that lasted until he threw her over his shoulder and carried her back to bed like Valmont Drake from her latest book, Surrender to Love.

On the third day of March, Clare turned thirty-four with real ambivalence about becoming another year older. On one hand, she liked the wisdom that came with age and the confidence that came with that wisdom. On the other, she didn’t like the ticking time clock in her body. The one that kept track of every day and every year and reminded her that she was still alone.

A few weeks ago she’d made plans to celebrate the day with her friends. Lucy made dinner reservations for the four of them at The Milky Way in the old Empire building downtown, but they were expected to meet at Clare’s house first for a glass of wine and to give Clare her birthday gifts.

As Clare dressed for the evening in a Michael Kors jersey dress she’d picked up on sale at Nieman Marcus, she thought of Sebastian. As far as she knew, he was in Florida. She hadn’t spoken to him in a week, when he told her he’d decided to write a piece on the most recent wave of Cuban immigrants to hit Little Havana. In the past two months she’d seen him at least every other week when he’d drive or fly into Boise to see his father.

Clare hooked a pair of silver hoops in her ears and sprayed Escada on the insides of her wrists. For now, her nonrelationship with Sebastian was working. They had fun together and there was no pressure to try and impress him. She could talk to him about anything, because she didn’t have to worry about whether he was Mr. Right. He clearly wasn’t. Mr. Right would come along. Until that time, she was happily spending time with Mr. Right Now.

When he came into town, she was glad to see him, but her heart didn’t race or pinch, and her stomach did not get light and queasy. Well, perhaps a little, but that had more to do with the way he looked at her than what she felt for him. She did not lose her ability to breathe or think rationally. He was just easy to be around. The day it no longer worked was the day she would end it-or he would. No hard feelings. That was the deal. They might be exclusive for now, but she knew that it wouldn’t last forever, and she didn’t let herself think too far ahead.

She reached for a tube of red lipstick and leaned toward the dresser mirror. She wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. Not yet. Just last week she’d decided to test the waters and had met Adele at Montego Bay for the restaurant’s eight-minute date night, in which a person spent eight minutes getting to know someone before moving on to the next table. Most of the men she’d met that evening had seemed perfectly fine. There’d been nothing really wrong with them, but two minutes into her first “date,” she’d opened her mouth and said, “I have four children.” When that hadn’t totally turned him off, she’d added, “All under the age of six.” By the end of the evening she’d somehow become a single mother who collected stray cats. When that hadn’t totally turned off one stalwart dater, she’d alluded to “female troubles,” and he’d practically knocked over the table in his haste to get away from her.

The doorbell rang as Clare finished with her lipstick, and she moved through the house to the front door. Adele and Maddie stood on her porch, gifts in hand.

“I told you two not to get me anything,” she said, knowing full well that they totally would.

“What’s this?” Maddie asked as she pointed to an express mail box at her feet.

Clare wasn’t expecting any mail orders or anything from her publisher. When she knelt to pick it up, she recognized the Seattle return address. It had a Florida postmark. “I think it’s probably a birthday present.” Sebastian had remembered her birthday, and she tried to tamp down the pleasure of it before it reached her heart. When she heard footsteps walking up the drive, she half expected to see Sebastian. It was Lucy, of course, and she