Page 128 of Confessions

“She can be pretty persuasive.” Carlie tossed her purse on the couch.

“Can she?” he asked, one corner of his mouth lifting skeptically.

“Very.”

“I guess I’d better avoid her.”

“Like you do with all women,” she challenged, and his head jerked up, his smile fading quickly away.

“Only the ones that I think will be trouble.” He reached into his open toolbox, withdrew a plane and turned back to the sill, as if he planned to fix the damned window this very night.

“And that doesn’t take in the entire female population?” Carlie was spoiling for a fight and she couldn’t control her tongue. It had been a long week, worrying about her parents, thinking about Ben, wishing she could just start over.

“Not quite.” He glared pointedly at her and she blushed. He seemed so much more real today. The last time she’d seen him at Nadine’s wedding, he’d worn his military uniform and he’d seemed untouchable and remote. Distant. A soldier on a three-day pass. But today, dressed in faded jeans with worn knees and thin fabric over his buttocks, a tool belt and work shirt with the sleeves rolled over his forearms, he was decidedly more human and, therefore, more dangerous.

“You obviously don’t want me here,” he said as he shaved off some of the casing. Sawdust and wood curls fell to the floor.

“You got that right.”

“Look, it’s just a job, okay?” He scowled, as if he felt uncomfortable.

“A job in my house.”

“Live with it, lady.” He uncinched his belt and it fell to the floor with a thud that echoed in her heart. She averted her eyes for a second; she couldn’t even stand to watch him remove one article of clothing without thinking back to a time when she would have liked nothing more than to lie naked with him in a field of summer wildflowers.

But she couldn’t afford to feel this way; the strain on her already stretched emotions would be too much. She couldn’t be around him until they’d dealt with the past, cleared the air and started fresh. She wasn’t in the mood to pick up the old pieces of her life and start fitting them together, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Not if she was being forced to see Ben on a daily basis.

“This job going to take long?”

“Are you asking if I’m gonna be underfoot for the next couple of weeks?” He frowned, then ran his fingers over the newly smoothed wood. “That’s a distinct possibility.”

“I’m not crazy about the idea.”

“Neither am I.” He glanced up at her, and when their gazes touched, the breath seemed knocked from her throat. Damn the man, he had no right to look so sexy. “Couldn’t one of your men—”

“So far I am my men.” He set the plane back in the toolbox. “Does it bother you so much—that I’m here in your apartment?”

“It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She rested one hip against the back of the couch. “I guess there’re about a million reasons,” she admitted.

“Name one.”

“You’re an arrogant bastard.”

He grinned. “Name two.”

“You’ve tried your best to do nothing but insult me from the minute you stepped into town.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she added, “I can read all sorts of accusations in your eyes, Ben, but I don’t understand them.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Like hell! Every time we’re together you insinuate that I’m some kind of...of criminal or something—that I did something terrible and wrong and God only knows what else.” She took in a long breath and asked the question that had haunted her for so many years. “Just what was it I did to hurt you so badly?”

“You didn’t hurt me.”

“I damned well did something. You took off out of town like a dog with his tail tucked between his legs.”