“Yours,” Katie repeated slowly. Of course. She should have guessed as much.
He nodded and reached for another piece of toast.
“Okay. That’s good. That’s very good. Another paying resident is always welcome. And I’ve always liked Henrietta, even though she is something of a busybody.” She slanted a look at Luke, who seemed very pleased with himself. “Just one question. Where do you and Robby intend to sleep?”
“I thought I’d turn the attic into a room for Robby.”
“Okay,” she said. “Right now it’s jammed with junk and doesn’t have any insulation, but I guess that could work. And you?”
“I was planning to move into our room,” he said, spreading a thick layer of strawberry preserves on his toast.
Katie smiled at him. Beamed, in fact. “When pigs fly,” she said cheerfully.
“Now, Katie.”
“Don’t you `now, Katie’ me, Luke Cassidy. We had a deal, in writing. If I need to, I’ll get it so you can read it again. It was very clear on this. You and I will not sleep together. Period.” She shrugged. “Seems to me you’ve outsmarted yourself. Maybe you’d like to try out the hammock. You seem to be partial to it.”
His blue eyes blazed. “I am not sleeping in the damned hammock.”
She shrugged indifferently. “Whatever.”
“Katie, I think you’re carrying this crazy rule of yours to extremes. How will it look to the judge if we’re in separate bedrooms?”
She glowered at him. “That is not my problem. You should have thought of it before you made the bargain. Maybe if you’d told me everything that was going on, we could have come to different terms.”
“Why can’t we do that now?”
“Because it’s too late. A deal’s a deal.”
“You’re just being stubborn and mule-headed,” Luke accused. “What difference could it possibly make whether or not I sleep in your room? We’re married, for goodness’ sakes. It’s hardly improper.”
“Propriety was the last thing on my mind when I drew up that contract,” she retorted. “You wanted a business deal. You got a business deal.”
Luke suddenly reached out and snagged her hand. Before she could prevent it, he’d hauled her onto his lap.
“And now I don’t,” he said softly. “I want a marriage, Katie, a real one.”
Katie struggled to free herself before she could succumb to that coaxing note in his voice. “Well, I don’t.”
“Liar,” he whispered, his breath fanning across her cheek.
“That’s certainly the way to win my heart,” she retorted. “Calling me a liar really makes my pulse race.”
He grinned unrepentantly. “Something I’m doing makes it race,” he pointed out as his fingers settled at the base of her throat.
“It is racing because I am furious.”
“I suppose that could be one reason,” he conceded, brushing an unexpected kiss lightly across her lips. He nodded in satisfaction. “Now that really seems to kick it into gear. I wonder what a real kiss would do.”
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” she warned.
“Oh?” he said, sounding amused. “What will you do? Last time, you kissed me back.”
“Last time I didn’t know the man kissing me was a low-down, conniving jerk.”
The accusation had him grinning. “Sure, you did. You just didn’t want to admit to yourself that you could fall for anyone with less than perfect personality traits.”
That much was true. Under the circumstances, she didn’t consider her feelings for Luke to be something to be proud of. She wouldn’t admit that to him if he tried to torture it out of her. At the moment with his lips barely a hairsbreadth away and his fingers caressing the sensitive bare skin at the base of her throat, it seemed a sweet, dangerous torture was definitely on his mind. Katie was not about to submit to it willingly.
Twisting unexpectedly, she broke free and stood over him, resisting the urge to wrap her arms protectively around her middle. “This can’t happen again,” she said emphatically.
Luke, blast him, just laughed. “Oh, but it will, Katie. I can guarantee it.”
She glowered at him. “Then you’re going to have a bigger problem than Tommy’s return on your hands,” she snapped and fled before he could say or do anything to weaken her already wavering resolve.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Well, if it isn’t little Katie. Just look how you’ve grown up.”
Alone in the backyard where she’d been weeding the vegetable garden, Katie shivered as the sleazily sensual tone and the voice registered. She knew without even looking that they belonged to Tommy Cassidy.
At one time she had tried valiantly to get along with Tommy because Luke had cared so deeply about his brother. But she’d never been blinded to his flaws as Luke had once been. The most offensive had been his tendency to regard all women as targets for his sly innuendoes and advances. Apparently he hadn’t reformed.
Before responding to him now, she drew in a deep breath and considered exactly how she ought to deal with Luke’s brother. Coolly polite seemed like the right approach under the circumstances. She certainly didn’t want to do or say anything that would worsen the situation.
“Hello, Tommy,” she said, turning slowly until she was face-to-face with the man responsible for Luke’s distress and, indirectly anyway, for her marriage. She wasn’t sure yet if that was something she ought to thank him for or not.
Feigning a nonchalance she was far from feeling, she deliberately continued watering the plants. She didn’t want Tommy getting the idea that his arrival had startled her or that she viewed it as being of any consequence. Besides, if he really got out of line, she could always hose him down.
“It’s been a long time,” she said.
“Not long enough, isn’t that what you’d like to say?” he challenged with a considering gleam in his eyes.
Those eyes were a faded shade of the same blue as Luke’s. In fact, everything about Tommy seemed to be a second-best version of his older brother. Maybe he recognized that. Maybe falling short in any comparison was the real problem between him and Luke.
“Why wouldn’t I be glad
