It was the way her mother had said kissing John made her feel. It was also the way she’d felt with Max.
In all honesty, Neely had longed for that feeling. Had begun to wonder if she ever would. And now she had.
With Sebastian Savas!
Of all the unsuitable men—a man who didn’t do love, who didn’t do commitment, who didn’t do marriage.
Not that she wanted any of those things with him. God forbid.
But why did she have to feel that way, need that way?
And why in heaven’s name did it have to happen now? With him?
A part of her wished she hadn’t admitted who her father was. If she hadn’t, she could have thrown herself into the charade of being Max’s girl.
But even as she thought it, Neely remembered telling Sebastian that she wasn’t hiding behind Max.
And she wasn’t, damn it!
Still, she would have liked to spend the rest of the day—or the rest of her life—in her room. But that was just another hiding place. So she dried her hair and got dressed and went back downstairs, not sure what to say now. Not sure what to do.
Only sure she wasn’t kissing Sebastian again.
No question about that.
He was sitting at his computer working with his CAD program as she entered the living room. He had his back to her, but she saw him stiffen at the sound of her footsteps. Harm padded over and nudged her hopefully, then ran to the door.
“Yes,” she said, relieved for the suggestion. “We’ll go for a run.” But she had something to say to Sebastian first.
She waited impatiently until he finished whatever he was doing, then she cleared her throat. For a moment she didn’t think he was even going to bother to turn around, but finally he spun his chair around her way.
“It’s not going to happen again,” she said.
He blinked. “What’s not?”
Oh, great, he was going to pretend it hadn’t happened?
“The kiss,” Neely said. “Any kisses.” She felt like an idiot saying it, expecting he would shrug and say, “Nobody asked you,” but he didn’t.
He scowled. “Because you think I’m coming on to you because you’re the boss’s daughter?”
That hadn’t even occurred to her. But before she could say so, he went on fiercely. “Well, forget it. I don’t do that sort of thing ever.”
“Oh.” She paused. “Um, good.” Pause. “I guess.”
He looked at her, apoplectic. “You guess?”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking you were. I mean, you didn’t know, did you? When you…kissed me?”
“No, I didn’t know! Then. But now I do and—” his tone was measured, but his gaze was not. It was simmering and intense “—I just want it to be clear.”
She nodded. “It’s clear. But really, it doesn’t matter.”
He blinked, then looked quizzical.
“Because it isn’t happening again. No kissing,” she repeated.
“Why?”
Now it was her turn to be apoplectic. “I told you why! Because kissing has to lead to something!”
“It does.”
“To love? To marriage?”
“To bed,” he said. “What’s wrong with that? Or do you never kiss without wanting a proposal first?”
“What I don’t do is kiss without any kind of possibility of commitment!”
“Ever?” He sounded stunned.
“Well, I just did, obviously.” And the truth was, she wasn’t that stingy with her kisses when they didn’t matter. It was when they did—when they threatened to make her lose all sense of propriety, when they could have her tumbling straight into bed without a thought for tomorrow or next month or next year—yes, then she was very stingy indeed. “No kisses,” she said again and met his disbelieving gaze with unblinking ferocity.
“You are a dinosaur,” he told her.
“I am a dinosaur,” she agreed. Better he think that than think she was a complete pushover.
He stared at her, then shook his head. “You just expect us to live together completely platonically when we could burn the boat to the ground with a kiss?”
“Yes.”
He barked a laugh, but it wasn’t a joyful sound. “Sure you don’t want to move out, Robson?”
“I’m sure,” she lied. She thought perhaps she ought to be running away as fast as she could. “We are, after all, adults,” she reminded him.
“I’d say that’s the problem, not the solution.”
“We have self-control,” she went on relentlessly. “Or I do,” she added. “Don’t you?”
His teeth came together. “I have self-control, Robson,” he said flatly, just as she had hoped he would.
“So it won’t be a problem, then. It will just be hands off,” she said brightly.
For a long moment Sebastian didn’t say anything. Then he agreed gruffly. “Hands off.”
“And…mouths off?”
“What are you, a lawyer?”
“Just covering…all eventualities. So, no kissing?”
A muscle ticked in his temple. “I already said that.”
“Just making sure.” But at the same time she was extracting the promise, she was staring at him sprawled there in that chair. He was still wearing a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt that treated her to far too much visual stimulation. Sebastian Savas with his long bare legs splayed and his muscular arms flexing as he cracked his knuckles did disastrous and very unfair things to her libido.
It wasn’t fair that such an unsuitable man should be able to make her heart kick over and her pulse quicken and other intimate parts of her body tingle with the mere awareness of him.
Their gazes met. And held. And held some more.
Sebastian swallowed. And even the sight of his Adam’s apple moving in his throat was an enticement.
The discovery made Neely gulp. She moistened her lips with her tongue.
Sebastian shut his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, just get the hell out of here.”
There.
It was simple.
Mind over matter. Or libido. Or something.
It wasn’t as if she wanted to want Sebastian Savas, after all. He was the last man she should be interested in.
She wasn’t interested in him.
Much.
It would have been easy—or at least easier—if he’d had to go back to Reno. But he didn’t. He was there—on the houseboat whenever she got up in the morning, coming out of his bedroom just as she was getting out of the bathroom. Coming abruptly face to breastbone with his bare chest was not conducive to pure innocent thoughts.
And then he would come downstairs looking all polished and professional—long-sleeved pale-blue starched dress shirts and dark trousers that should have looked like body armor but on Sebastian looked sexy as hell because she had no trouble imagining the hard-muscled man beneath them.
He