Just Deserts - Brenda Jackson [36]
Crazy?
He wanted to laugh. He was in love with her, was acting like a besotted fool, and she thought he was acting crazy? Something snapped inside him. “I guess knowing that other men want you the way I have had you the last few days is making me crazy, Dani.”
She shrugged out of his arms and moved toward her bedroom door. Before opening it, she paused and said, “Then I think you need to get over it.”
She disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and he could swear he heard it lock. He was tempted to check, but changed his mind. He was mad enough as it was.
He went into his own bedroom and all but slammed the door. Crap. He couldn’t recall the last time a woman had gotten on his last nerve, had pissed him off to the point where he wanted to break something.
No, he hadn’t liked the way those men had looked at Dani. He had seen lust in their eyes. When she had crossed the room to seek out the bathroom, they had watched her runway walk—straight and confident, hips swaying. It was a wonder Craven’s and Stewart’s eyes hadn’t popped out of the sockets.
Tristan had just taken off his shirt to take a shower when he heard a knock on his bedroom door. Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, he crossed the room and snatched it open. Danielle was standing there, and from the expression on her face it was obvious she was still mad.
“Furthermore, Tristan,” she said with hands on her hips, “I don’t like it when you act jealous. There’s no reason for it. It’s not like we’re real lovers or anything. We’re just best friends.”
He stared at her. Real lovers? He rested a shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Please define ‘real lovers’ for me, Dani.”
His question evidently caught her off guard, and he watched her frown deepen as she thought about how to answer him. Finally she said, “Real lovers are two people who are an item. They are…they are…”
He raised a brow. “They are what, Dani? Enemies? Then that would explain why we aren’t a real couple, since we’re friends. Or is it that they’re strangers? That wouldn’t work, either, because we aren’t strangers. Or I guess you can say they’re in love. But I guess you’ll blow that away, too, since you think we aren’t in love.”
“We aren’t!”
She had answered too quickly to suit him. “Okay, so we aren’t in love,” he said through clenched teeth. “Is that what makes us not a real couple?”
“Of course not. We’re not a real couple because we’re only doing this—”
“Doing what?” he butted in to ask.
She waved her hand through the air as if brushing away something. Like his nonsense. “Doing this. You know, sleeping together and all that stuff. We’re only doing it because you needed it and I did, too. We were getting desperate. We’re good together in bed. We’re friends. But we don’t own each other.”
“Fine. You’ve made your point. Is there anything else, Dani?”
She shrugged. “No, I guess not.”
“All right, then, if you don’t mind I’m about to take a shower.” He knew closing the door on her would be rude, but more than anything he wanted to be left alone and deal with his hurt. Each and every time they’d made love he’d thought of it as just that, making love. Apparently, though, she had seen it as nothing more than a case of satisfying needs.
“I’m going to order a movie on television later. Do you want to watch it with me?” she asked in a somewhat softer voice.
A part of him wanted to say yes, but another part—the one that was hurting—said, “No, I think I’ll go over all those documents Stewart gave us to look at. If we’re seriously thinking about taking on Shipping Source, then we need to know everything about the company, as well as its employees.”
“All right, but if you change your mind, I’ll be in my bedroom.”
He watched as she turned and walked away, crossing the sitting room to her bedroom and closing the door behind her.
He ran a tired and frustrated hand down his face. Damn, it wasn’t Danielle’s fault that he loved her so much and that for the first time in his life he had wanted to hurt someone, a couple of people, over a woman.