Along Came Trouble(54)

He’d like to think so. Unfortunately, given the lack of eye contact and the abrupt scuttle, it had come across more like I’ll be right back, but feel free to get dressed and get the hell out of here while I’m gone. Which was a shock, since he’d sort of assumed he would spend the night. He’d sort of assumed he’d just made love to a woman he was starting a relationship with.

A relationship he’d sort of assumed would turn into something.

Now that he thought about it, those were a lot of assumptions. He’d brought her a pizza, planted himself on her front porch, and she’d seduced him. Normally, he didn’t get into bed with a woman without having some kind of conversation with her about where they were headed—usually one version or another of Let’s keep this casual, shall we?

This time, he hadn’t wanted to set that particular parameter. But maybe Ellen had.

And maybe it was time for him to get dressed.

As he was zipping up his pants, she emerged from the bathroom wearing an oversized T-shirt. She’d combed her hair and pulled it into a tight knot at the back of her neck. He wasn’t sure what she’d done with the open, sensual, abandoned woman he’d been burning up the sheets with a few minutes ago. Stuffed her in the trash, maybe. This Ellen had tight lips and eyes that skipped right past his face as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. He didn’t need a message written on the door to figure out that this Ellen wanted him to leave.

Crossing to the windows, he pushed them open several inches. He found the switch for the ceiling fan and flipped it on, then moved a pair of her jeans off the butter-yellow leather chair in the corner of the room and sat down, throwing one leg over the side.

Ellen watched him with her arms crossed over her stomach, nervy as a fawn about to bolt for the woods.

He wasn’t going anywhere until he got some answers.

“Will you go out with me?” he asked.

“What?” She looked as though he’d smacked her with a wet fish.

“Will you go out to dinner with me? Tomorrow night?” When she didn’t answer right away, he added, “That’s what I planned to do when I came over here tonight. Other than stand on your porch. The plan was to apologize and to ask you out.” He pointed at the bed. “That wasn’t in the plan. Though I’m certainly not complaining.”

She didn’t return the smile he gave her. Her expression morphed from wet-fish surprise to something close to out-and-out horror before she got a handle on it and wiped it clean. “No,” she said. “I mean, thanks, but no. I can’t really—I don’t really date. I don’t have the time.”

“You have to eat. We’ll grab something quick.”

By now, there was no doubt in his mind she’d say no. What he was trying to figure out was why.

She flicked her eyes to his face, then stared at the carpet beneath her feet. He’d seen it, though. The fear again. They’d been buck naked together not five minutes ago, as close as two people could get, but the idea of going out to dinner with him scared the pants off her. Or it would have, if she’d been wearing pants.

“That’s—no. Sorry. I have so much work to do when Henry’s gone, and I don’t really leave the house much. I can’t . . . date.”

“Ellen.” She didn’t look up.

“Look at me, Ellen.”

She could hardly refuse. Her eyes made a slow journey from the floor up his body and settled on a point in the vicinity of his left ear.

He pitched his voice low and soothing. “You said you’d tell me anything I wanted to know. So tell me. Why won’t you go out with me?”

“That’s not fair,” she protested. When she met his eyes, she asked him silently to drop it. Let her go. Be nice to her.

He was being nice. He hadn’t asked, What are you afraid of, Ellen? He hadn’t demanded that she tell him why she was trying to get rid of him after what had been the hottest, most intense sexual experience of his life. Those were the questions he really wanted answers to.

“You didn’t mean it when you said you’d tell me anything?”

She glanced down at her hands, then wiped her palms on her hips. “I was . . . coerced.”

That made him smile, though he couldn’t keep the tension out of his shoulders. He felt strung tight, and not in a good way. Half-cocked. It was a new situation for him, this postcoital vulnerability, and not a comfortable one. “I did not coerce you.”