Page 497 of Summer Heat
“I’ll help you.”
“That isn’t—” she began, but Cody had already stood up, shivering, and Lance wrapped the boy in a towel. He held Cody close, pretending to shiver, and Tamara’s protest died in her throat.
She wasn’t truly prepared to see the resemblance between them, but even with the softness of toddlerhood still on him, Cody was a carbon copy of his father. A sudden and unexpected fear stabbed her stomach. What if Lance turned around right now and looked in the mirror? Would he see what was so plain to Tamara?
But he didn’t turn. With typical little-boy trust, Cody yawned and put his head on Lance’s shoulder. Lance rubbed a big tanned hand over the little back, as naturally as he’d swung his fists in the bar.
The picture pierced her. Lance wasn’t supposed to be gentle—that much she knew. To hide her expression, she turned away, reaching to pull the plug from the drain. “If you put him down, he can go get dressed.”
“All by himself?” Lance said in an admiring tone. “Man, you’re really a big kid, aren’t you?” He set the boy on his feet and straightened, watching as Cody pitter-pattered from the bathroom, towel clutched around him.
Tamara picked up the bag and held it out firmly. “Take your steak and all your little charming tricks and leave, please.”
He didn’t move. For a minute, he only looked at her, his eyes sober. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“I don’t know you.”
“First impressions can be misleading. I don’t have a fight every time I go into a bar.”
She set the grocery bag on the edge of the sink beside him and crossed her arms. “I don’t want to be rude, but I have a headache, and a test to study for, and I don’t have time for all this.”
He nodded, and she tried not to notice the way the light broke in bright gold bands in his hair, like threads of fool’s gold in iron pyrite. “All right,” he said. “Keep the steak. It really will help.”
“No. Take it with you.”
He looked at her, puzzlement in his blue eyes. “I’m trying to make amends here. Help me out a little, huh?”
“I don’t want your amends, thank you. I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to leave.”
For a long, quiet minute, he simply looked at her. Tamara felt a fluttering disturbance in those private, untouched parts of her body she’d thought might have finally got the message by now.
Obviously not.
Pinned in the soberness of his formerly twinkling eyes, she wished she could accept everything he offered. Not just the steak. Much more—the promise of pleasure and laughter, the promise of a few hours unburdened with the worries that ate up her days. Men like this made an art form of sex—the kind of sex that made you forget everything and just live.
An unwelcome prickle of awareness moved on her shoulders, down her back. It had been so long….
The trouble was, a few pleasurable hours was the sum total of all he offered, and her life wasn’t that simple. Not anymore. She crossed her arms. “Please, just go.”
“I am sorry you got hurt, Tamara,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you around town.”
She said nothing. If she gave him nothing to embroider upon, he’d have to leave sooner or later.
At last, he did just that—turned away from her and ambled toward the bathroom door, then paused with his hand on the threshold. “See you around,” he said again.
And gave her the most wicked, charming grin she’d ever seen—replete with seductive dimples and twinkling eyes and a teasing promise of seduction that stole her breath. Before she could react, he was out the front door, closing it quietly behind him.
She stood in the middle of the bathroom, arms crossed, and shook her head in wonder as she remembered the steak on the sink. That rat—he’d known exactly what he was doing.
Well, he could grin and wink and flash dimples for a year and a day. It wouldn’t do him any good with Tamara. She had a real life to think about.
She got Cody tucked in, and heard his prayers. As he lay there on his pillow, printed with cartoon figures, Tamara reminded herself it was all worth it. For Cody, she could do anything.
Her headache trebled when she opened her accounting book. Dry figures lay dully against the page, and she took a breath, fighting the deep resistance she felt. As she had told herself a hundred times, bookkeeping and accounting were good jobs, with benefits. Later, after they were on their feet, maybe she could finish her English degree.
Resolutely, she took out her notes and began cross-checking herself. The page didn’t disappear, as it always had when she studied history and languages and literature, but she could do it.
She had to.
