Page 43 of Ruthless Claim

He sits with a glass of whiskey on the side table and his long legs stretched out in front of him, his shirt untucked and the collar open. He looks like he’s been waiting.

The lamp catches the auburn hair, the sharp line of his jaw shadowed with stubble, and those blue eyes find me the moment I step through the door. He doesn’t look away.

Neither do I, because I have my pride.

“You’re up,” I manage to say it with an even voice even though I’m startled as hell.

“I’m up,” he agrees.

I set my bag down and take off my coat and hang it up, purposefully fussing with the material just to buy myself thirty seconds to compose myself.

If he wants to talk, we’re doing it on my timeline, not because he threw me off balance by being in the living room when I had my entire evening choreographed around not crossing his path.

“We need to talk about the rules of this arrangement,” he tells me, from the armchair, in a tone that suggests he’s been thinking about this for a while.

I turn to face him. “We already talked about the rules.”

“We talked about it being a mistake,” he replies. “We didn’t talk about what happens next.”

“What happens next,” I answer carefully, “is that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Is it.” He holds my gaze, and there’s something in those blue eyes that isn’t coldness exactly—more like clarity. “Because I’ve been sitting here turning it over for four hours, and what I keep landing on is that we’ve been in this apartment and it took two weeks for last night to happen. Now we’ve acknowledged the dynamic.”

He picks up his whiskey, takes a sip, and sets it back down with a quiet click. “Telling ourselves it won’t happen again might be true.” He inclines his head. “Or it might be something we believe right up until the moment it stops being.”

Looking at him across the living room, I feel something move through me that I recognize, with some displeasure, as him being correct about something I don’t want him to be correct about.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” I keep my voice level.

His expression settles. Not satisfaction—he’s too controlled for that—just the faint shift of someone whose instincts have been confirmed by the simple fact that I’m still here, talking to him, instead of walking away.

“I’m suggesting we’re adults,” he answers. “Pretending last night didn’t establish something would be inaccurate.” He doesn’t shift or move. Instead, he holds that steady blue gaze on me. “If this happens again—and I’m saying if—there need to be rules. Clear ones. Nothing that makes this situation more complicated than it already is.”

I should tell him no and that the conversation this morning settled it. I’m not revisiting it and I have a twelve-step nighttime routine to get to. I should say a great number of things.

“What kind of rules?” I ask instead, which is not any of those things.

The slight settling in his expression again. I ignore it.

“No emotions,” he lays out and I fight a laugh because there are no emotions when it comes to him. “No expectations. No…entanglement.” A small pause, like he selected the word and then had second thoughts about it. “If the tension reaches a point where this happens again, then it does. But it means what it means and nothing further. It doesn’t change anything between us.”

I look at him.

He looks back at me.

“No feelings,” I confirm.

He nods. “No feelings.”

“No complications.”

“No complications,” he agrees.

I consider his proposal.

As much as I don’t want to admit it, it does make sense.

It gives last night a container that keeps it from becoming something larger. It is the most pragmatic available framework for an already absurd situation.