“I don’t recall agreeing to have dinner with you tonight,” she reiterated.
He shrugged and pulled a pair of dark-green nylon track pants from a hanger. “I think we should have dinner together tonight. If steak doesn’t appeal to you, I’m open to negotiation.” Undeterred, he carried his fistfuls of clothing back to the bed. “Maybe we can rent a movie or something. I see the kids getting DVDs out of those box things all the time.”
His phone began to buzz again, but he paid it no mind as he patiently waited for her response.
She glanced at the screen, saw Mari’s face, then eyeballed him. He stood in the middle of the room wearing nothing but briefs that left little to the imagination, holding the pants as if he needed her say-so to put them on. Looking past him, she spotted a dozen pairs exactly like them hanging in an orderly row in the closet. A flash flood of feminine resentment rose in her.
Life seemed so easy for them. I’m a man. I don’t have to think about what to wear, but I do think I want a steak. I’m picking you up at six. We’ll have dinner, then sex. Lots of sex. So much sex you won’t be able to walk right or think right or keep a decent stash of rubbers on hand.
He might as well have said, I’m going to pick you up, fill you up, use you up, and then I’ll shrug and hike up my pants and go on home to my freaking McMansion and watch sports and drink scotch.
Then I’ll make you fall in love with me.
And in the end, I’ll leave you when someone shinier comes along.
“No, thanks,” she answered tersely, barely aware the last bit of conversation had taken place entirely in her head. Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she started to gather the clothes she’d discarded with such fervor the night before.
Like an animal scenting danger, Ty stood stock-still before starting a cautious approach. “No thanks to the steak?”
“To all of it. I’m busy tonight,” she said, stepping into the pale-peach panties he hadn’t even bothered to admire.
“Busy.”
He repeated the word as if the syllables were entirely new to his vocabulary. In all fairness, rejection was probably an unfamiliar concept. After all, he’d been married for a few years, and she’d bet he hadn’t struck out often on the dating scene when he was single. But she wasn’t the kind of woman who invited assumptions on her time or her person. If he wanted to spend time with her, the man was going to have to figure that out sooner rather than later. She spotted her bra half-hidden under the bench at the foot of the giant bed and stooped to retrieve it.
“I’m sorry. Did something happen?” Ty took another step in her direction but stopped when she popped up, the expensive bits of lace and satin crushed in her hand. He cocked his head, a look of baffled bewilderment overtaking his expression. “Are you mad at me?”
“Nope.”
He blew out a breath. “Well, that was convincing.”
Shrugging into the bra, she avoided his gaze as she untwisted the straps. “We’ve had the conversation about presumptions before. You don’t dictate my time, Ty. You don’t get to assume I want to have dinner with you tonight.”
He let loose with another exasperated breath. “Sorry.”
He bit the word off. The fixer in her wanted to stop him before he went a word further and point out all the tactical errors he was making, but the woman in her wasn’t about to buy the man a clue if he didn’t already own one. A teeny part of her felt sorry for the oblivious creature when he went on in a manner several shades short of placating.
“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight, Millicent?”
“No. Thank you.” She added the last bit with a saccharine-sweet smile. “I have other plans.”
“Other plans to do what?” he persisted.
All shreds of sympathy gone, she pulled on her blouse and started buttoning. “Well, first I plan to make a list of all the things I do that are none of your damn business.”
He was beside her in three long strides. His hand closed around her elbow, stilling her motions.
Her gaze flew to his. “Okay, so presumption, sarcasm, and effrontery haven’t been effective tools. Are we resorting to physical intimidation now?”
As expected, he released her before she could draw her next breath, but he didn’t step away. Millie added a point to the deficit he’d been running. She admired a man who stood his ground.
“I’m not trying to intimidate you, nor do I mean to make presumptions.”
“God, it’s sexy when you look all muscly jock guy, but then you use your fifty-cent words,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him in a way that could only be construed as mocking.
“They were your vocabulary words, Mil. I was only trying to explain myself,” he retorted.
“And doing a really crappy job.”
“I don’t know why I have to explain at all,” he cried. Throwing his hands in the air, he spun away from her and stalked to the dresser. “All I wanted to do was have dinner with you.”
She watched as he yanked a gray athletic department T-shirt from the drawer and shook the wrinkles from the fabric. “Are you afraid of being alone or something?” she asked.
His head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “What?”
Millie shrugged, then bent to grab her pants from the floor. Without pausing to give the wrinkles a second thought, she plunged one foot into a twisted leg opening. Beyond caring about how graceless she might look, she stumbled around until she got the other leg lined up and then gave a couple of good hops to yank them into place.
“Look at you. You’ve been divorced less than a week, and you’re trying to line up a date for every
