“Good to know. I’d hate to think I was your cover for having an illegitimate child. I don’t really want to end up on the Maury Povich show. Rhett Ford, you are not the father.”

Shawn laughed. “Yeah, me either. Do you want some wine?”

“What I want is something that’s not on the menu,” he told her, even as he glanced down at his steak. “Though this looks very tasty.”

She shouldn’t ask. She knew what he meant. It wasn’t exactly subtle. But for whatever perverse reason that meant she probably needed therapy, she wanted to hear him say it out loud. “What is it that you want?” she asked, ignoring her own plate of food as she walked across the kitchen, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor as she went for a bottle of merlot.

Any other man she’d ever dated would have said, “You” or “Isn’t it obvious?” or something generically similar. She knew that wouldn’t be Rhett’s answer. He would give specifics, and they would make her wish she hadn’t asked at the same time they would turn her on. A lot.

She was right, and she did like being right.

He said, “I want you, Shawn. I want you out of that dress, strewn across this table with your legs spread for me so I can lick your pussy until you scream. Until you beg me for my cock. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Shawn froze in front of the wine rack she had mounted on the wall next to the fridge. It was a rhetorical question, she supposed, and she knew what her answer was, but if she said it, well, would that mean she’d lost?

Then again, what would she lose? A bet that had no stakes, really? Or her dignity? No. He wasn’t trying to strip her of that.

More likely she would lose control, that’s what she was afraid of.

It was going to be a very long six months if she was terrified the entire time.

So she turned around and very slowly, she nodded. “I probably would like that.”

He smiled. Then said, “Sit down, babe. I can get the wine for you.”

“I’m fine. I have it.” Turning away, Shawn used her automatic bottle opener to uncork the wine and poured herself a healthy glass of red. This was nuts. How was she going to do this for half a year? “So I suppose I need to make a key for you. And you are free to come and go as you please, you know. No need to feel like you have to check in with me. I don’t want to . . . interrupt your life.”

Rhett pushed his chair back and stood up, and when he came toward her, Shawn shivered in anticipation. She had a feeling he was going to pull her dress down and suck her nipple, which was really a perfect way to kick off any dinner, wasn’t it? But he actually walked right past her and stared at her, expression curious, as he yanked open the fridge and rooted around, before emerging with a beer.

“Is that what you would like? For us to be roommates, accidentally sharing the same space?” He shook the beer. “Should we have separate shelves for our food and take turns supplying the toilet paper?”

When he said it like that, it wasn’t particularly attractive-sounding. “I’m trying to be accommodating.”

“Let’s not make rules. Let’s not stress out. Let’s just feel our way through it.” He popped open the beer with his bare hand, no bottle opener needed, apparently. “Now come sit down and enjoy the dinner you were so wonderful to make.”

What the hell was she supposed to say to that? He really left her very few options. She was just going to have to relax and behave like they were friends. It was maddening. Confusing. Because now she really had no idea whatsoever what it was she wanted. Did she want to sleep with him? Did she want him to go away? Did she want to sleep with him, then have him go away?

Good question.

She had no choice but to sit down and eat her meat. The answers would come later or never. Much like her.

The interesting thing was that Rhett was an easy conversationalist. She wouldn’t have expected that. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like the guy could smolder 24/7. At some point he had to make conversation. Presumably.

Which again made her feel at some sort of disadvantage. So he could toss out sexual comments and invade her personal space and then switch gears and talk casually about the weather and tell anecdotes about his family. It left her no way in which to gain the upper hand.

Though he almost never laughed. Maybe instead of trying to play a sexual cat-and-mouse game by wearing a sexy dress—a game she would most definitely lose—she could disarm him by making him laugh.

Shawn mentally eye-rolled herself. What was she going to do, dress like a clown? Do stand-up? So a priest, a driver, and a parrot all went into a bar. He’d think she was a freak.

She was starting to worry she was.

She was also full. Pushing her plate back, she said, “When I was a kid I always wanted a huge family. I felt sort of ripped off that it was just my mom, Will, and me. At the very least I wanted a sister.” Truthfully, what Shawn had wanted was some attention, any attention. Her mom had checked out emotionally the day her dad had left physically.

“You can borrow one of mine if you like. Seven sisters is a bit excessive.” Rhett had eaten everything on his plate, including the potato skin.

“They’re going to hate me, aren’t they? For ‘eloping’ with you?” Not that it mattered, since it wasn’t a real marriage, but hey, Shawn liked to be liked.

“I doubt my sisters will care. They just want me happy. Frankly, they’ll appreciate not having their kids dragged into a wedding as flower girls and ring bearers and whatever.”

“How many nieces and nephews do you have?”

“Fourteen. No, fifteen.” Rhett frowned. “Wait. Then Owen was born. Sixteen?” He started murmuring names and counting on his fingers. Finally he said, “Hell if I know. You’d have to ask my mom.”

Shawn couldn’t even imagine having a family that big. “I’m surprised someone doesn’t go missing on a regular basis. That’s a lot of kids to keep track of.”

“Once when I was five, my parents left me home by accident. They took two cars to go to my grandma’s house, and both thought the other one had me in their car. I was in my room getting my Power Ranger to take with me, and when I came out, the house was empty.” He gave a wry look. “It was my Home Alone moment. Thank God they just went down the road, not to France.”

“Were you upset? Did you cry?”

“No. I watched TV and ate chips, grateful for the silence. When the phone rang, I answered ‘Ford Residence,’ feeling pretty badass about the whole thing. It was my mom, and she burst into tears and told me to lock the front door, that they were on their way home.”

“Aw, your poor mom. I can only imagine how worried she was.”

It wasn’t hard to picture Rhett as a solemn, curious child, watching everyone, not reacting with any fear. In total control of his emotions.

Shawn had never been in control of her emotions. It was why she was so willing to dive into stupid situations.

“I bet you were a sassy little girl,” Rhett said, draining his second beer.

“I was the kind of kid who got into a lot of scrapes. Climbing trees, crawling in drainpipes, trapping snakes. Yeah, that was me. Eve and I were a force to be reckoned with on the junior racing circuit.” The memory made her smile. “Picture two dusty little tomboys talking smack, and that was us.”

“I have no problem picturing that. But Eve is more the smack talker than you. I bet you got your way with your charm.”

She snorted. “What charm? Though after I heard Eve had kissed Junior Spaulding behind the grandstand at the county fair the summer we were thirteen, I decided my life wouldn’t be complete until I got Ty McCordle to do the same with me. So I carefully laid the foundation with clumsy flirting all week at the track.” She shook her head, remembering all the hair flipping and lip gloss that had gone into that summer. She had walked around looking like she’d dipped her lips in the fry oil.

“So what happened? He kiss you?”

“Of course,” she told him. Hey, she may be thirty-two, but she wasn’t above a little bragging still. “Though it didn’t go off without a hitch. He was chewing gum and it ended up in my hair. I had to use peanut butter to get it out, and for days I smelled like a peanut butter cup.”

Rhett laughed. “Smooth, McCordle. I wish I knew him better so I could give him shit about that.”

“Well, the peanut butter seemed to make me instantly desirable. Boys were crawling out of the woodwork the rest of the summer because I smelled like a candy bar.”

“Or maybe because you were the thirteen-year-old version of hot.”

“Or because they heard I was up for tonsil tango.” Shawn grinned at the thought of that summer. She had been skinny, flat as a board, and sporting braces. Probably not every teenage boy’s fantasy. Then again, she hadn’t looked much different from the other girls. “I was taller than most of the boys my age that year. They needed serious motivation to overcome the embarrassment of coming up to my chin.”

“I bet. That’s a scary thing for a guy.” He gave her a look, the one that usually meant she was about to be sorry she had taken that bet. “Did you wear cowboy boots? I always had a thing for girls who wore cowboy boots.”

“I might have.” She’d had three pairs that she had rotated on a regular basis. She’d been particularly fond of a red pair, but he didn’t need to know all her secrets. “I bet you were a father’s nightmare in high school when you came sniffing around his daughter.”

He didn’t deny it. “I was harmless. For the most part. Like now.”

Harmless as a rattlesnake. If you didn’t get too close you wouldn’t get bit. Otherwise, you were dead. “Uh-huh,” she said noncommittally.

Rhett stood up. “Can I get you more wine?” He collected her plate and took it with his to the sink, where he rinsed them and loaded them into the dishwasher. For a second, Shawn thought she might have an orgasm just watching that. A man who cleaned up without being told? Without bitching about it?

“No, I’m fine, thanks.” Shawn stood up quickly, wanting to do . . . something. The truth was, she wanted to be near him. How utterly lame was that? His presence was so powerful that when he moved away, the air seemed colder.

And she was clearly drunk.

But that didn’t change the fact that the dishes still needed to be washed. She’d left the detritus of the broiler pans on the oven and several mixing bowls in the sink. Edging him aside with her hip, she rapidly pumped soap onto a sponge. And actually, she wasn’t drunk at all, she was just acting like she was. She only wished she could legit use it as an excuse.

She started scrubbing like a madwoman, wanting the heinous chore over and done with. This was the downside of cooking a decent meal. It also didn’t help that Rhett was still next to her and he had suddenly decided it made sense to run his tongue along her bare shoulder. His tongue. On her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she asked shrilly.

He didn’t bother to answer.

Of course he didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to think being polite was necessary when it came to sexual advances. Yet he cleaned up plates, opened her car door, and treated her with respect. How in the hell was a woman supposed to respond to that?

Well, Shawn’s response was to let out a little involuntary moan. She didn’t mean to. But that licking was so suggestive, so intimate, as his tongue traced the path of her clavicle bone up to her neck where he nuzzled into her flesh. How could she stay immune to that? Only a robot could remain unaffected, and hell, even a robot might short-circuit it was that hot.

Then he stepped back. “Here, I’ll rinse, and then we can watch a movie.”

On. Off. On. Off. He was killing her.

“Sure. Great idea.” Mr. Suckity-Suck. He was doing this on purpose, she was convinced. He would rev her engine, then stay in park. He wanted her to cave, to beg him to have sex with her. That was not going to happen, no matter what her lady parts had to say about it.

So she held strong as they sat on her sofa together, perilously close, his hand stroking across her thigh. He chose a thriller to watch, but it also had several steamy sex scenes in it, with lots of moaning and dewy skin, and arching backs as the hero of the movie pumped hard into his love interest. The woman was clearly enjoying it, given her pronounced moans and bouncing breasts, but Shawn wasn’t feeling it.

Or rather, she was feeling it too much.

It was almost impossible to sit still next to Rhett, where she could hear him breathing, could feel his thigh touching hers, and watch a couple having way more fun than she was. Shawn bounced her foot rapidly. Bit her nails. Cleared her throat. And finally jumped up.