“That’s just dandy.”

Her temper was a live thing, a nest of vipers curling and hissing in her gut. She had no intention of beating them back to keep them from sinking their fangs into Brody.

“So, we’re not dating. We’re just…” She came into the room on the pause. “Would that have been sleeping together? We’re just sleeping together. Or do you have a simpler term for it?”

“Jerry put me on the spot.”

“Really? Is that why you told him—so decisively—that you and I are ‘sort of seeing each other’? I didn’t realize that defining our relationship was such a dilemma for you, or that whatever that relationship might be causes you such embarrassment with your friends.”

“Just hold on.” He set the drill down again with an impatient snap of metal on wood. “If you were going to eavesdrop on a conversation, you should have listened to the whole thing. Jerry wanted me to take his sister out, and I was explaining why that wasn’t a good idea.”

“I see.” She imagined she could chew every nail in his pouch, then spit them into his eye. “First, I wasn’t eavesdropping. This is my place and I have every right to come into any room in it. Whenever I like. Second, in your explanation of why going out with Jerry’s sister isn’t a good idea, did the word no ever enter your head?”

“Yes. No,” he corrected. “Because I wasn’t paying—”

“Ah, there. You are capable of saying no. Let me tell you something, O’Connell.” She punctuated the words by stabbing a finger into his chest. “I don’t sleep around.”

“Well, who the hell said you did?”

“When I’m with a man, I’m with that man. Period. If he is unable or unwilling to agree to do the same, I expect him to be honest enough to say so.”

“I haven’t—”

“And, I am not an excuse to be pulled out of the bag when you’re scrambling to avoid a favor for a friend. So don’t think you can ever use me that way, and with your pitiful, fumbling ‘sort ofs.’ And since it appears we aren’t dating, you’re perfectly free to call Jerry’s sister or anyone else.”

“Damn it, which is it? Are you going to be pissed off because I brush Jerry off, or pissed off because I don’t?”

Her hands curled into fists. Punching him, she decided, would only give him delusions of grandeur. “Jerk.” She bit the single word off, turned on her heel and, tossing something in Ukrainian over her shoulder, strode out of the room.

“Females,” Brody muttered. He kicked his toolbox, and was only moderately satisfied by the clang.

An hour later, the cabinets were in place and Brody was at work on the pantry. He’d already run through the scene with Kate a half a dozen times, but with each play, he’d remembered things he should have said. Short, pithy statements that would have turned the tide in his favor. And the first chance he got, he was going to burn her ears with them.