Thorn's Challenge - Brenda Jackson [11]
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, wondering if Chase had mentioned anything to him about the charity calendar.
He met her gaze. “About us.”
She lifted an arched brow. There was no “us” and decided to tell him so. “There’s no us, Thorn. In fact I’ve always gotten the distinct impression that you don’t even like me.”
Boy, was she wrong, Thorn thought. If anything he liked her too damn much. There were several emotions he’d always felt toward Tara Matthews from the first and dislike hadn’t been one of them.
He took a couple of steps forward, bringing him right in front of her. “I’ve never disliked you, Tara.”
She swallowed deeply against the timbre in his voice and the look of melting steel in his eyes. That’s the same thing his brothers had claimed when she’d told them how she felt last year. They had argued that Thorn was just a moody person and told her not to take it personally. But a part of her had taken it personally.
“My brothers think you’re my challenge,” he added, not taking his eyes off her.
“Why would they think that?” she asked. She had wondered about it the first time the brothers had mentioned that very same thing to her. But none of them had given her any further explanation.
“Because they don’t think I can handle you.”
She frowned. “Handle me? In what way?”
His gaze ran provocatively down her full length before coming back to meet hers. “Evidently not the way I originally thought,” he said, thinking just how much he had underestimated his brothers’ cleverness. They had set him up from the first.
“Of the five of us, I’m the one who’d always had a better handle on Laney than anyone, so I assumed they meant that I couldn’t handle you because you were as headstrong, willful and unmanageable as she could be at times. And although you seem to have those traits, too, I now believe they meant you were my challenge for a totally different reason. I think they meant that I couldn’t handle you as a woman. There’s a big difference in the two.”
They gazed at each other for a long, intense moment and then she asked. “And what’s the difference?” She knew she might be asking for trouble, but at the moment she didn’t care.
The room crackled and popped with what she now recognized as sexual tension and physical attraction. It hadn’t been dislike the two of them had been battling since they’d met. It had been primal animal lust of the strongest kind.
He took another step closer. “If I were to group you in the same category as Laney, I’d have no choice but to think of you with brotherly affections since I’m almost eight years older than you. But if I were to forget about the age thing and place you in the same category as I do any other woman, then that would make you available.”
Tara frowned. “Available?”
“Yes, available for me.”
Tara swallowed again and ran her sweaty palms down over her slender waist to settle on her hips. She wondered what his reaction would be if he knew that in all her twenty-seven years she had never been available for any man. Although she and Derrick had dated for a number of years, they had never slept together, which meant she was probably the oldest living virgin in the state of Georgia. But that certainly didn’t make her open game and she resented any man thinking she was his for the taking. Derrick had taught her a lesson and she had no desire to forget it any time soon. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m not available