He didn’t, of course he didn’t. But neither did he believe that one just plopped down in someone’s kitchen and announced it. “What would your mother think, hearing you talk this way?”

Brenna inclined her head. “She’s not here, is she?”

He pushed the chair back, abruptly enough to have Betty leap to her feet. Since none of the thoughts whirling around in his head would settle, he just marched to the door. “I need air.”

For a moment Brenna sat where she was. She ordered herself to take long, slow breaths, to wait until she could be calm. To be reasonable and mature and clearheaded. Reason fought against temper for nearly ten seconds before it turned tail and deserted the field.

The nerve of the man! The bloody nerve of him. What was she, some kind of gargoyle a man couldn’t think of cozying up to? Did she have to strut around in short skirts with her face painted before Shawn Gallagher took notice? The hell with that.

She was up and out the door and striding into the wind. “You’re not interested, that’s fine. You just say so.”

She caught up with him, planted herself in front of him. He solved that problem by turning around and walking the other way.

And was a lucky man she didn’t have a weapon in her hands.

“Don’t you walk away from me, you yellow coward dog.”

He shot a look over his shoulder, his eyes a ripe, glittering blue. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He looked away and kept walking.

He was mortified, right down to the bone. And God help him, he was . . . stirred as well. He refused to think of her that way. And always had. Well, if a time or two his thoughts had veered off in that direction, hadn’t he cut them off, sharp and fast? And that’s just what he was going to do now.

“Ashamed?” Her voice punched like a fist. “Who the hell are you to decide what should shame me?”

“I’m the man you just offered yourself to as easy as if you were offering me a pint and some crisps.”

She’d caught up with him again, but his words struck her, drained the color from her face. “Is that what you think? That it’s nothing more than that? Then it’s you who should be ashamed.”

He could see the hurt in her eyes, and it only added to the mass of confusion he found himself tangled in. “Brenna, you don’t just go around saying let’s have sex to a man. It’s just not right.”

“But it’s fine for a man to go around saying it to a woman?”

“No. I don’t think that either. It’s a . . . it should . . . Mother of God, I can’t have a conversation like this with you. You’re all but family.”

“Why is it the men I know can’t speak of sex as a normal human function? And I’m not family.”