No matter, she still felt that unwelcome sizzle of awareness. And it seemed like every time she saw him now he was wearing less. Her cheeks warmed at the thought.
He raised a brow. “Have fun?” His tone was sardonic.
“I did,” Neely said, keeping hers flat.
“But you didn’t spend the night.” The brow went even higher.
Neely, remembering the eviscerated kappa maki, wished she had a chopstick on her now. She gave him a brittle smile. “It’s a work night.”
His expression hardened. “Nice to know you have some standards.”
“Indeed I do.”
He stepped past her to go into his room. The hall was narrow and he was close enough that she felt the heat emanating from his bare flesh as he passed. The sensation was almost magnetic, drawing her toward him. Quickly Neely stepped back.
He paused, one hand on the frame, as he opened the door to his bedroom. “I’m leaving for Reno as soon as Frank and I close on the houseboat at the bank.”
“Rubbing it in?”
“Just telling you. I won’t be back until Friday.”
“Good.”
A corner of his mouth tipped. “I thought you might think that.” He paused. “If you need anything—”
“I’ll ask Max.”
His knuckles tightened on the door frame. “Of course you will. Sweet dreams, Robson.” Amazing how much disparagement a man could get into so few words.
Neely ran her tongue over her lips. “Same to you, Savas.”
His bedroom door shut with a hard click.
Not until it had, did Neely breathe again. Even so her knees still wobbled. And for the first time she wondered if maybe she should spend the week looking for another place to live.
So what if she was sleeping with Max Grosvenor?
What did he care?
Well, he didn’t, Seb assured himself as he tossed clothes into his suitcase preparatory to tomorrow’s trip to Reno. Unless it interfered with the good of the company, it made no difference at all.
All the same, he was glad he was leaving. That way he didn’t have to be around to watch.
It had been bad enough before—when he’d simply caught glimpses of Neely Robson waltzing into Max’s office during the day. He’d been annoyed when they left together sometimes in the evening. And, yeah, he’d felt downright irritated Friday when Max had come late to their meeting because he was out sailing with a woman half his age!
But it had been worse over the weekend. At least when he was in Reno, Seb wouldn’t have to watch her chatting to Max on the phone while she fed the kittens. He wouldn’t see her razor on the shelf by the shower and wonder if she’d shaved her legs before she’d gone off with Max.
And he wouldn’t have to see her run out the door and down the dock to meet him when he came to pick her up.
Not that he’d been watching…
He’d been minding his own business upstairs in his bedroom, putting some books on the shelves of the built-in bookcase, when he’d just happened to hear the front door shut and had glanced out to see her dance away down the dock, waving madly at Max who was coming to meet her.
Max hadn’t been exactly reluctant, either. The grin Seb saw on his face was one of pure joy. And when she reached him, damned if he hadn’t wrapped his arms around her in a fierce hug.
Boss and employee?
Yeah, right.
Just good friends?
Not even close.
Not that they were claiming any such thing. They weren’t claiming anything at all.
They didn’t have to, Seb thought, banging his suitcase shut.
So it was far better that he was off to Reno for the week where he could focus on what was important—his work—rather than here where he would have to watch Robson work her wiles on Max and Max be no smarter than Seb’s old man.
And that was another reason to be gone. No whining from Vangie about when their father was ever going to call. And no more endless phone calls from all the rest of the pack.
As if living with Neely Robson and watching her kiss up to Max over the weekend wasn’t bad enough, the Savas sisters’ invasion of Seattle was driving him mad.
Now instead of simply having Vangie’s phone calls to contend with, he had the triplets and Jenna, as well.
Saturday night, while Neely was out having sushi with Max, he was listening to Ariadne whine about her boyfriend she’d left back in New York. Then Alexa moaned on about the three she had left behind in Paris. And just when he’d said, “Why do you need three boyfriends?” she’d turned the phone over to Anastasia who had rattled on about her fiancé who was heading to the Trobriand Islands to do field work for six months.
He didn’t even know she had a fiancé. And all he could think was, Not another wedding.
Maybe three boyfriends was better than one serious one. He hoped the guy stayed gone five years.
The next day—while Neely was, naturally, out sailing with Max—they’d called again. Not once. Not twice. Half a dozen times or more. To ask where the blender was. Then where the vacuum was. Then where the broom was. Didn’t he have a dustpan? Did he know if the recycler would take broken glass?
“What sort of glass?” Seb had demanded. “What’d you break?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” one of them said airily. He never had any idea which. “Nothing important.”
Probably it wasn’t, he’d lied to himself. But as he couldn’t make himself believe it, he’d made sure he had time, before taking them out to dinner, to drop in and survey the damage himself.
There was clutter everywhere. But it wasn’t much worse than he’d imagined—and he never did figure out what had broken. It hadn’t been a bad evening. The food was good, his sisters had behaved well, and he would have enjoyed himself except for periodically wondering if, while he was eating salmon, Robson and Max were feasting on each other.
It had seemed all too likely when he got back to the houseboat at ten and only Harm, the rabbit and the guinea pigs were there to greet him.
Of course, she could have come home and gone to bed. Maybe she had, he’d told himself. But after an internal debate about whether he should or not, Seb decided that, as owner of the houseboat, he was allowed to check his tenant’s room. So he cracked open the door, hoping to see her soundly sleeping.
He saw an empty bed. And all the kittens escaped.
Thank God he got them all back in and the door shut. But it was after eleven and he had just been coming out of the bathroom from taking a shower when she came up the stairs.
She looked tousled and tumbled and too damn beautiful.
And his shower had not been nearly cold enough.
“Savas here.”
Ah, yes. The Voice of Authority. Clipped. Precise. Pure business. And with an unfortunate slightly rough, very masculine edge that sent a frisson right down Neely’s spine even though she was determined to be immune.
“Your