“I can get with that plan.”
“What happens after that?” Paxton asked. “Would you really consider there being anything more between us than just sex?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Do you really believe your own bullshit about the two of us not being together because I grew up with money and you didn’t?”
Her shoulders deflated as she suddenly became too exhausted for this conversation, especially after the whirlwind emotional roller coaster she’d been on with this morning’s tour.
“I don’t care how you slice it, Sawyer. It’s the same pie. You get the bigger piece because you come from money.”
He pitched his head back and let out a curse. “This is insane.”
“I agree, just not on the same thing that you do. I think it’s insane for you to think that there could ever be more between us than that one night. We are too different, Sawyer. We’vealwaysbeen too different.”
His jaw grew rigid as he stared at her with an intensity that made her nerves stand on end.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said, his voice low and thick with accusation. “If the thought of the two of us being together is so damn improbable to you, why did you sleep with me at all?”
“Simple,” Paxton said with a casual shrug, hating herself for the lie she was about to tell. “I wanted sex.”
The sting of those three words hurt more than Sawyer could have imagined. The defiant lift to her chin stung even more.
But the sting only lasted for a second. Because he wasn’t buying it.
She’d tried this before, when she told him she was over that night they’d shared together, and he’d proven her wrong. He would prove her wrong again, because it hadnotbeen about just sex that night.
She could tell herself that lie all she wanted to. But he would be damned if he let her go on believing it for one more day. She was going to admit that she felt something for him.
“So, that’s all I was for you that night?” he asked in a deceptively casual voice. “Just an available body?”
He relished the discomfort he caught when her eyes flashed to his.
Good.She deserved to feel uncomfortable.
Instead of answering his questions, she asked her own. “Are you saying it was more than just a drunken night of sex for you?”
“Only one of us was drunk that night,” Sawyer said.
And it had been him. He knew she wasn’t drunk because when he’d first offered to buy her a drink she declined, telling him that she never drank when she tended bar. She eventually relented after he’d pleaded with her, indulging in only one shot of tequila.
“And I wasn’t all that drunk,” he continued. “I had a few, but it’s not as if I got trashed that night. I was alert enough to do”—he made a slow and deliberate perusal of her body—“things.”
He caught the way her chest rose and fell with her swift intake of breath, and he knew she was thinking of all the things he’d done to her that night. Things he’d wanted to continue doing to her, over and over, well into the morning.
If she had bothered to stay in his bed.
But she hadn’t. She’d run from him. And despite the small size of the town, she’d managed to avoid him for weeks after their night together. When he finally saw her again, in the parking lot of the grocery store of all places, she’d quickly stuffed her packages in her car and peeled out of the parking lot.
If it had meant nothing to her, why in the hell had she run?
“You can lie to yourself all you want to,” he whispered softly. “But that night wasn’t just about sex, and you damn well know it.”
“Please, just stop it. Stop trying to make it more than it was.” She stared at him, her expression resolved. “You were hurting. You needed comfort. I decided to provide it. It was a pity fu—”
“Don’t you dare,” he cut her off. He crowded her, invading every inch of her space. “Don’t ever reduce what happened between us to some kind of pity fuck.” He pointed to his chest. “I was there. Ifeltit. I felt the way you shivered in my arms. I felt the way your body clenched mine, the way you clung to me as if it would kill you to let go. That had nothing to do with pity.”
Her chest expanded with the deep breath she inhaled as her eyes fell shut.
Sawyer captured her chin in his hand and tipped her face up. “It was more than just sex, Paxton. You know it was.”
