“Okay, Annie, why are you avoiding me?” he said, lingering after the last of the kids had left the kitchen.
“I’m not avoiding you.”
“No? How would I get a crazy idea like that, then?”
“Your imagination?” she suggested, inching toward the door.
He shook his head. “Nope. I think it has more to do with the fact that you have not been in a room alone with me since last Saturday afternoon.”
“We’re alone now.”
“For how long? You have one foot out the door. The only thing that’s kept you here is that you’re too polite to walk out on me in midsentence.”
Flustered, Ann returned his challenging gaze. He was right. She had been avoiding him. When they’d come back on Saturday night to find that Jason had taken off, she had realized anew that there were too many things standing in the way of their making any sort of future plans. She owed him an apology for blaming him for Jason’s running away, but beyond that they needed to keep their distance. They certainly couldn’t have a wild affair with six children in the house. And they couldn’t very well go sneaking around. Just look what had happened the first time they’d tried that.
So she’d made up her mind to think of Saturday as a wonderful interlude. It had proved to her that she could still feel, that she was a woman with a passionate nature and emotions that ran deep. Think of it as a test, she told herself. She had passed.
Now what?
Now she had to get out of this kitchen before Hank kissed her, which was what it looked as though he had every intention of doing. She scooted through the door. He was faster. He had one hand locked around her wrist before she could make the turn into the first hallway.
“Running, Annie?”
“I… I thought I heard one of the kids,” she said nervously as her pulse leaped wildly. His mouth hovered near hers, taunting her with the reminder of its velvet softness, its moist heat, its hungry demands.
“I didn’t hear a thing, except for the sound of your heart beating.”
She backed up a step. The wall stopped her. She pressed hard against it anyway, as if hoping it would yield to her desire to flee. “Hank, why are you pushing this? You don’t really want a relationship with me.”
He stared back at her. “I don’t?”
Admittedly, he did look incredulous, but she said firmly, “You don’t. It’s just an infatuation, a passing fancy. You know.”
He pulled her tight against him. His body was solid and hard and every bit as unyielding as that wall. He smelled of the slightly spicy scent of his soap. “What I know is,” he began, his breath whispering across her cheek, “you are the only thing in this life that I do want. I thought I proved that to you on Saturday.”
“No,” she said, ducking out of the circle of his arms. “All that proved was that there is some undeniable chemistry between us. If we ignore it, it will go away.”
He brought her right back against him, where it was very clear that the chemistry was hard at work again. Her heart skittered wildly, then settled into a galloping rhythm that proved her point. Chemistry. That’s all it was.
“This is not some high-school science experiment,” he murmured. “I am not trying to prove some theory about opposites attracting or what happens when two incendiary devices collide in the night.”
She cleared her throat. “What…what are you trying to prove?”
“That you can tell yourself from now until those dolphins of yours learn to speak fluent Italian, German and Spanish that this is nothing but a passing fancy, but I will be right here, in this house, in your bed, proving you wrong.”
She shook her head, but it didn’t seem to carry much conviction. She wanted to believe that fierce look of possessiveness in his eyes. She wanted to believe in the wonder of his touch. She wanted to believe so badly, she ached with it, but she wouldn’t let him know that.
“Accept it, Annie,” he said. His lips against her throat gave heated emphasis to the demand.
She swallowed back a gasp of pleasure and tried to rally indignation. “In your dreams,” she said boldly.
He grinned, blast him all to hell and back.
“That’s right,” he said sweetly. “In my dreams.”
And, then, with a final kiss that stole the last of her breath away, he left her to her dreams. She didn’t need a textbook to figure out what they meant. The tangled sheets and aching need swelling low in her belly told her all she needed to know.
Chapter 13
Ann badly needed to run. Maybe if she ran far enough and fast enough, she could reduce the stressful effect of Hank’s nonstop flirting. Her nerves were so ragged she could barely get through the day without wanting to scream.
Finally, in an act of sheer desperation, she set her alarm a half hour earlier than usual. Maybe she could sneak out of the house before he got up and put in five miles of hard running before breakfast. She spent most of the night rolling over and checking the clock, just to be sure she wouldn’t sleep through the alarm. Ten minutes before it was due to go off, she hit the switch and dragged herself out of bed. She tugged on her clothes in record time, ran her fingers hastily through her hair and tiptoed through the still-dark house. She went straight through the kitchen, not even pausing to put on the coffeepot or do her warm-ups. She’d do the exercises outside, where there was less chance of Hank hearing her.
She had put one foot on the porch when she heard the creak of a rocking chair, and Hank’s quiet, “Morning, Annie.”
It was all she could do to keep
