“Fuck no,” he answered, and I felt my body go still.

He dropped his hands, his head turned to me, the look in his eyes not heated, glittering, intense, burning into me. It was conflicted and—I stared, not believing it but seeing it—filled with regret.

Oh no. Oh God. Oh shit. Oh no.

I pulled the blanket closer to me, thinking Martha had been right.

Damn. She’d been right.

His eyes dropped to my hand clutching the blanket to my chest, then lifted to my face. I watched them melt to quicksilver as they lingered, his face gentling, his body turning my way, his hand coming out and then his phone rang.

His hand stilled and he muttered a pissed off “Fuck.”

He rolled the other way and reached out with a long arm to grab his jeans. I was staring at the contours of his back, the sleek skin, the defined muscles, thinking that wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for me. None of it.

I knew it.

I’d always known it.

From the instant four months ago when his silver eyes hit me, traveled the length of my torso, all he could see of me behind the display cabinet, and when his eyes again came to mine, he’d smiled sexy, lazy, and slow, I knew it.

He wasn’t for me.

There was no dream man for me.

But he was so beautiful, I went for it anyway.

“Yeah?” he asked into the phone and I felt his mood hit the room and it grated against my skin like sandpaper.

In the four months we’d been together, Jake did not hide his moods. Ever. Not even in the beginning. And Jake had a lot of moods. If he was pissed, you knew he was pissed. If he was happy, you definitely knew he was happy. If he was feeling playful, annoyed, frustrated, amused, distracted, content, whatever, you knew it, you sensed it. It was like he controlled the atmosphere of the room.

And whoever was on the other end of that phone was pissing him off and frustrating him.

“Give me an hour,” he said into the phone, paused then went on. “No, man, I’m tellin’ you, I need an hour.” Another pause then, “Fuck, you’ve got to be fuckin’ shitting me.” Pause then, “This can’t happen now.” A very short pause, then, “I’m tellin’ you, this cannot fuckin’ happen fuckin’ now.” He shifted his powerful body to sit on the edge of my bed, back bowed, elbows to knees, phone to ear, and he growled low, “All right, motherfucker, but you fuck this up, you fuck her over, mark this, you answer to me.”

He flipped his phone shut and bent forward to grab his jeans.

Then he announced to the other side of the room, “Babe, gotta go.”

I closed my eyes.

Okay. Okay.