“Huh.” She was definitely going to Google My Little Pony.
He detected a softening. “Aw, c’mon, Britt,” he cajoled. “Just one night. Just a few hours. We’ll sing badly, have a few drinks. See where the night takes us. I’m a person, same as you.”
She almost snorted. The “same as you” part wasn’tremotelytrue.
“J. T., it’s just...”
She had no idea how to finish that sentence.
“Yeah?”
The moment was as taut as harp strings, suddenly.
“I’m busy.”
His face all but blanked.
He was probably paralyzed by the crushing lameness of this excuse.
“Busy,” he repeated, finally. As though he was tasting milk that had gone ever-so-slightly off.
He sounded more disappointed in her lack of originality than anything else.
She would have laughed if she didn’t have a whomping case of vertigo caused from being asked out by amovie star.
One who had slept with RebeccafreakingCorday.
It was so wholly unexpected, she was as at a loss, and as breathless and panicky, as if her kayak had tipped over in the Pacific.
J. T. McCord made her feel way too many things all at once. Things she wasn’t ready to feel again. She needed a wading pool before she entered the dating pool, and he was the whole damn ocean.
She wondered if he’d ever in his entire life heard the wordnofrom a woman.
At least he’d remember her for that reason.
And as the silence stretched, his incredulity seemed to give way to a sort of curiosity. He was studying her as if he was determined to crack the code.
“Kayla Benoit is single,” she volunteered desperately. “And she’s very pretty.Andshe owns a boutique. It’s right there on the sign over her door. Kayla Benoit.”
His face instantly became a flickering battlefield of emotions.
The one that settled in was pure hilarity.
“Are you seriously trying to distract me with another woman? Like throwing a steak at a rottweiler so you can make your getaway?” His voice was hoarse. “Are you attempting toconsoleme in my disappointment with another woman?”
When he put it that way, itwaspretty funny.
And pretty insulting.
“You sure came up with that rottweiler analogy pretty quickly,” she hedged.
“I was on a cop show. That was in the script more than once.”
That one tugged up one corner of her mouth, and then the other went up, and she was smiling, because that was pretty funny, too.
And that made him smile, too. It was an amused and wholly determined smile.
But a subtle little war was taking place. Something complex and dangerous and exhilarating was sparking between them. They were both pretty damn stubborn and accustomed to getting their own ways. Britt had forgotten just how stubborn she could be, in fact. And how much fun a well-matched sparring partner could be.
