“Which is?”
“If we’re sleeping together!”
Dillon watched as Hayley hauled a suitcase off the shelf in her closet, marched to the bed and flung it open. “I told the guys we weren’t,” he said flatly.
“With a glint in your eye and a smile on your face!”
“So sue me for laughing at those guys! It was funny!” Dillon defended himself hotly. Hayley knew how conventional the residents of this suburban Connecticut community were. Hell, he had even joked about it before they went to the party.
“Well, I’m not laughing,” she informed him between tightly gritted teeth. Hayley stalked to her dresser drawer and pulled out a handful of some of the most filmy, lacy lingerie Dillon had ever seen in his life. Shoulders back, she flung her hair out of her face.
Dillon bit down on a string of curse words. It was too late to take back all the kidding around that he’d done. The most he could do was manage a save. And, judging from the thundercloud looks she was giving him, that looked like it was going to be one hell of a task. “Hayley, come on,” he coaxed softly, stepping as near to her bed as he dared. “Be reasonable here. I said I’m sorry.”
She whirled on him. For a moment he thought she was going to try to deck him. Instead she planted her balled-up fists on her slender hips. “Sorry doesn’t cut it here, Dillon. We had one chance to be accepted in this neighborhood. One. And you blew it with your macho antics.” She’d hoped, foolishly it now seemed, they could be friends. Even more than friends.
But she’d been wrong. Otherwise Dillon never would’ve joked with the other men about her. Worse, he had blown her chance to be really accepted by the women in the community. She didn’t want to lose her dream, especially when it had all seemed just within her grasp. But she would if this was the way Dillon intended to act, and apparently he did.
Dillon sobered. He ran a hand across his jaw and realized that although he’d used a razor before the party, he needed another shave. “I’ll set them all straight,” he promised. He didn’t want to lose Hayley. Didn’t want her to bail out on him before he’d had a chance to somehow do right by Hank and see that his widow and infant child were not just surviving all right, but were well situated for their future. Not to mention the fact that for the first time in his life he looked forward to coming home at night.
“It doesn’t matter what you say now, Dillon. They won’t believe you. After what you intimated tonight, the only way our relationship could be legitimized in their eyes is if we were to admit everyone else was right about us all along and marry.”
“So marry me,” he said.
Her eyes were liquid pools of pure dark green. “That isn’t funny, either,” she said.
Dillon felt even more guilty. He’d never meant to hurt her. “Who’s being funny?” he said softly, trying once again to approach her, his hands outstretched. “I don’t want you to leave.” Damn it, he liked having her here, even if she did turn his house and his life upside down.
She elbowed him aside and strode militantly toward her closet again. “Well, isn’t that just too bad!” She pulled out a handful of negligees, hangers and all. Dillon was disconcerted to see those were even sexier than her undergarments.
His mouth dry, he paced toward her beseechingly, then followed her back toward her suitcase. This was no time to be thinking about what a great body she had or how incredibly enticing she’d look in those filmy garments. “You can’t leave me with this mess.”
She folded the negligees and placed them neatly in her suitcase. “Just watch me.”
Dillon tore his eyes from a lace gown and thought about all the tiles she had ripped up, the light fixtures she’d torn out, the cabinets that had been sanded to bare wood. “I’ll never be able to finish.”
“So what?” Was she supposed to care about that? When she had just lost the one and only chance she’d ever had to live her dream, even for a little while?
“So there goes your share of the profits,” Dillon pointed out smugly. Her face fell. But only for a minute.
“So I’ll come in days while you’re gone and finish,” she shot back triumphantly.
Dillon crossed his arms over his chest. He stood, legs braced apart. He hadn’t expected her to be so damn stubborn. “And live where in the meantime?” he asked. Because he knew it would irritate her, he let his eyes trail slowly over her honey blond hair before returning with laser accuracy to her thick-lashed green eyes. “You already sublet your apartment in the city, remember?”
Hayley’s chin shot up another notch. “You think I’m backed into a corner financially, do you?”
Dillon smiled and twisted the knife in a little deeper. She wasn’t the only one who could threaten with impending disaster. “You know you are, sweetheart.”
“You did this on purpose.”
“Yeah, sure I did,” he agreed. “I went to that party tonight determined to start a fight with you that would force you to leave my employ. I want my house to look like a nuclear disaster. I want to lose my entire life savings over this.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t want it, but you sure got us into this mess, and now we’re stuck with it,” she said, looking equally distressed with herself and with him.
Her chest rose and fell with each furious breath. Color flooded her cheeks. Her eyes glittered. Her sensual lips pursed. She had never looked more beautiful to Dillon, or more inaccessible. He had never wanted to kiss her more. Suddenly he knew he couldn’t let her go. Not like this, anyway. Unfortunately she was right; there was only one way she could stay and retain any shred of reputation there.
But damn it all, he didn’t want to get married. Didn’t want to fall into some dull domestic trap. On the other hand, who said they had to do things the usual way? God knew they hadn’t so far. “Look, Hayley,” he said impatiently. “You know what the solution to this is. We have to—” he choked out the words in a strangled voice “—get married. But don’t worry,” he soothed. “It’ll be purely a business arrangement.”
“You really are an egotistical jerk, aren’t you?” Hayley tossed her mane of golden hair and sent him a withering look. “For your information, Dillon Gallagher, I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”
She meant it. Desperate not to be left alone to deal with the rubble the interior of his house was in, he searched for a way to keep her. He had already offered her ten percent of the sale profits. “Okay, okay,” he said frantically, as she closed the first suitcase and glided regally to the closet to pull out another. “I’ll up the ante. I’ll give you thirty percent of the profits from the sale.” Surely, he thought confidently, she couldn’t turn that down! Not when he desperately needed her to stay.
She stared at him with a hauteur that would have turned a lesser man to ice. He knew then she’d stop at nothing to make him pay for what he’d done to her. “Fifty percent of the profits,” she demanded in a cool, calculated tone, “and you’ve got a deal.” Her soft pink lips formed in a brittle smile. “One penny less and I walk!”
“That’s highway robbery!” Dillon exclaimed.
“You’re catching on,” she said.
Dillon’s jaw set. “That’s way too much money!” he volleyed back.
She lifted her delicate shoulders in a careless shrug. “Considering all you’ve asked me to do here, Dillon, I don’t think so. Besides,” her voice turned practical again, “we’ll easily get double the money you paid for the place when I’m done with it, if we bide our time during the sale and pick the right realtor. Marge was right, you got this place at a steal.”