“I think I don’t recall giving the invitation,” she replied smoothly, careful to keep her voice low.
Casey smiled, his lips curving with cool warning.
“I don’t wait on an invitation,” he informed her, his tone warning now. “I was informing you, Sheila. You have a date. Period.”
Oh, now that just wasn’t going to do.
Sheila turned to him slowly.
“Choose your fights, sweetheart.” If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a sudden edge of anticipation in his voice. “And choose them wisely.”
Her mother had warned her of that once as well. She’d told her that one day she would come across a man who didn’t give a damn who her father was, or how strong she had become. He would sweep into her life and leave her heart, her mind, in disarray.
“Choose your fights, sweetheart, and choose them wisely,” Eleanor had warned her. “Otherwise, you’ll destroy yourself, as well as him, fighting against him.”
But her mother hadn’t known Nick Casey.
She was almost anticipating a fight with him, as much as he seemed to be anticipating one with her.
She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice.
Hell, she could feel it radiating in the sexual intensity that suddenly seemed to consume them both.
“They need to get a room,” Cooper grunted behind Sheila.
“You are becoming such a fuddy-duddy,” Sarah laughed. “Tell him, Morgan, he’s becoming a prude. Nothing like the wild man I married.”
Morgan was turning away as she spoke, his expression somber as he poured drinks, his eyes downcast.
“Sarah, sweetheart, you’re too nosy,” Casey warned her as he laughed back at her, though he didn’t release Sheila, and it seemed he had no intentions of doing so.
“And you are being way too intense, Casey.” Sarah shook her head.
“And this conversation is beginning to bore me,” Sheila informed them all, though the look she shot Sarah was filled with an apology.
She wasn’t bored, but she could definitely feel the fear beginning to travel up her spine.
Not a fear of harm. Or at least, not a fear of personal harm.
A fear of having her heart broken was another matter entirely.
“Bore you?” Casey growled. “I rather doubt it.”
“Dance with me or shut the hell up, Casey,” she finally demanded in exasperation. “If you’re going to stand around holding on to me like a damned junkyard dog, then the least you could do is make it worth my while.”
It was her mother’s advice to choose her battles wisely that rang through her head as Casey led her to the dance floor. A slow, sensual beat began to fill the air, drawing couples to the floor and heating the building with the power of human lust.
At least, that was what she tried to tell herself as she felt Casey’s arms wrap around her and allowed him to draw her to him. Possessively.
“What is with you and the ball-and-chain attitude?” she asked, genuinely bemused with the way he was acting.
“Trying to become a ball and chain?” he asked.
She almost stopped in the middle of the dance floor.
“Are you proposing, Casey?” She could feel her heart beginning to race in her throat. “Because if you are, then this is a lousy way to go about it.”
He snorted back at her, pulling her closer once again as he bent his head against hers and swayed to the lazy, sexually charged music filling the building.
“You’ll know when I’m proposing, Sheila. There will be no question about it.”
Son of a bitch.
Casey was cursing silently with every four-letter word he could come up with and a few he knew were illegal in several parts of the world. Probably in the States as well.
Yeah, it was sort of a proposal.
Casey was a man who accepted what he knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of changing. And the feelings burning inside him for Sheila weren’t going to change.
Fidelity being the key. In the months he had been slipping in and out of her bed, not even once had he found another woman attractive. It purely, simply sucked, though, that she seemed to think he was so horrible at the whole proposal thing.
What did he have to do, anyway? Get on one knee?
He scowled back at Cooper as they swayed around the floor. This had to be his fault. That big lug had gone down on his knee to Sarah and presented her with a diamond the size of a tennis ball.
Okay, so maybe it had been slightly smaller, but that had to be where she had come up with these ideas. Sarah had to have told her.
“You’re acting strange, Casey,” Sheila informed him. “Like a man making a claim, and I’m not some pretty doll you can claim and expect me to fall into line with it.”
“Darlin’, I wouldn’t expect you to fall into line with anything. We’ll just keep on keepin’ on till you see things my way, is all. I didn’t say I expected you to agree with me overnight.”
“Until I see things your way, huh?” He could hear the amusement in her tone, along with a rather vague confusion. As though she weren’t entirely certain how to deal with him.
That was a good thing. Keeping Sheila off balance was always a damned good thing if a man could manage it.
“Yep,” he agreed, hiding his smile in her hair. “We’ll get along better that way, you’ll see.”
“You know, I can’t decide if you’re truly insane, or if you’re just trying to make me crazy.”
And if it were the latter, he wondered, was it working?
Of course, it could be the former as well, because God knew she had managed to turn his life upside down.
“Does it matter which?” he asked softly against her ear, feeling that little shiver of response as it
