Afraid he was going to say no, she reached down and unzipped his jeans and took his rock-hard p.e.n.i.s in her hand. She caressed the silky length until Tynan lost control.

He shed the rest of his clothes, pausing only to grab a condom from his wallet. Lu grabbed it from him and rolled it down his length while he kissed her senseless. He pushed her panties down and slid a finger into her, stroking her honeyed heat and causing a sharp contraction deep inside her. His thumb pressed against her c.l.i.toris and she whimpered in pure pleasure.

She didn't want to talk. She didn't want to think. She just wanted to join with this man in the most primitive way. Her conscience poked at her, though, and finally got her attention. G.o.d, she knew she should tell him who she was. "Tynan, I want to tell you-"

"Lu, unless you're saying 'no' we aren't stopping. We're done talking and dancing around each other." He stopped kissing her long enough to look down into her face while he used one hand to caress her breast and the other to position his p.e.n.i.s at her entry. "Are you saying no?"

Her breath caught as she floated at the precipice of another o.r.g.a.s.m. Realizing he was waiting for her to respond, she shook her head frantically.

"You are saying no." Tynan's breath hissed through his teeth and he shifted his hips away.

"Not no!" Frantically, she wrapped a leg around him and pulled him back hard against her and he slipped inside her with a slow, electrifying thrust.

His body froze in place, his muscles tense. "Just to confirm . . . that was a yes, right?"

"Yes." She grabbed his b.u.t.t with her hands and pulled him in as tight as she could get him. "Definite yes."

Tynan groaned and then he pulled out and back in, using long, slow, controlled stokes, each one sending a jolt of pleasure along her nerves and short-circuiting her brain. He moved faster. Touched deeper. Lifted her higher. Wound her up tighter and tighter.

Good lord, it was almost too much. She leaned up and bit his chest.

"f.u.c.k, that's hot." He hissed in a sharp breath.

Waves of pleasure hit her hard. A shiver ran from her core, up her body and out to every limb. She moaned and cried out at the pleasure, her head tucking into the curve of his shoulder.

"Say my name."

"Wh-what? No, I . . ."

He jerked his body away, onto his back next to her, and stared up at the ceiling. "What the h.e.l.l am I doing?"

Lu rolled over onto her side, facing him, trying to get her breath and body back under control. She didn't know what she was doing either. It had been so wonderful, yet so different from what she'd known in the past. The knot in the pit of her stomach wound tighter.

He turned his head toward her, his gaze searching hers in the shadows. She didn't know what he wanted to see, but she didn't think he found it.

"f.u.c.k." He ran his hand down his face as he released a rough breath. Lifting himself out of the bed, he silently gathered up his clothes and dressed. He nodded once. "Okay. Glad we got that out of our systems. No more craving cake."

Her chest felt like a cold, empty cave as she watched him climb back out the window and leave. She'd lived the last three years without. . . cake. Now, with the sweet taste Tynan had given her, she had a hunger for more. Her body ached for it. Her soul cried out for it. She had a burning desire for more cake. Lu fell asleep trying to figure out how to talk Tynan into a second serving.

Chapter Nineteen.

Tynan Cates woke up the next morning a desperate man. Desperate to stop his fixation with Lulubelle Swan. If her goal was to drive him crazy, she shouldn't have wasted her money on stealing his cabin from him because she was doing just fine by simply breathing. Ever since he'd watched her eat the biscuits at the diner he'd been having s.e.x dreams about her and he wasn't even asleep for half of them. Throw in the fiasco that was last night . . .

Say my name. That had been a bone-headed move. The moment kept replaying in his head like a bad home movie. He felt her body stiffen under him, her hesitation, saw the heat extinguish in her eyes as her gaze cut away. d.a.m.n. It looked like he'd been right all along; there was someone else in Lu's life. The question was . . . was she running from him or figuring out whether to go back to him?

But the situation was worse even than it seemed because after he'd escaped out Lu's window last night, he'd fallen into a restless sleep. He had dreamed of the two of them painting a room together-and they both had their clothes on. That scared him so much that he'd called Barbara up first thing in the morning and accepted her invitation for the date he'd turned down the night before.

As soon as he'd hung up, he'd regretted his impulsive decision. He absolutely did not want to lead Barbara on. But just when he was feeling guilty enough to call and cancel the lunch date, he remembered Barbara was a Realtor. The only other Realtor in town except Frank. He could actually use the date to pick her brain, make sure he was ready to pounce if for some reason Lu's bid for the cabin went bad.

Contracts failed all the time. Bad credit. Trouble securing the loan. Bankruptcy. Loss of a job. Not that he'd stooped so low that he wished any of those to descend on Lu, but he wanted to be ready to swoop in and get his cabin back if it did.

He'd agreed to meet Barbara at the diner, even though she had about three different reasons why it would be better for him to pick her up from her office. Yeah, no. This was Barbara the Barracuda he was dealing with here. A smart man wouldn't give her too much line or she'd run with it as far as she could, hoping to drag him along with her.

He might enjoy p.i.s.sing Lu off and he might need to tap into Barbara's realty knowledge, but he wasn't about to become Mr. Barracuda number four. He'd seen her three exes around town over the years and he'd swear a couple of them still twitched.

Tynan had picked the diner for the date for a reason. He wanted Lu to see she'd had no effect on him. The woman had messed with his head enough, and once she saw him with another woman she would back off and leave him alone. She'd stop trying to make him fall for those deep brown eyes of hers and stop making him want to bite that soft bottom lip of hers or distract him with the gutsy, all-in way she attacked life. Once she backed off, he could stop thinking of her.

Sure he admitted it was a little lame to wave Barbara under Lu's nose, but it had seemed like a good idea first thing this morning with both the dream and last night still fresh in his head.

Barbara had been disappointed that she couldn't talk him into dinner in the city, but he couldn't very well make Lu jealous if she didn't see them together.

Wait . . . He didn't mean jealous. No, he meant disinterested.

Anyway, Barbara would at least appreciate that he wouldn't be showing up in his dusty construction clothes. He had a midmorning meeting with the town council to go over budget changes now that they'd examined the bones of the library and knew exactly what else was needed. At the top of his list was the new roof the council was delaying making a decision on.

Now that he had a way to handle his untenable situation with Lu, he could focus on his work. He was going to sit down and run over the budget numbers one more time before his meeting.

Lu was in the middle of the lunch rush cooking when she peeked her head out the serving window to look for Tynan for the millionth time. Aha! There he was, sitting in the far booth over on the left side of the diner. She wasn't sure if he'd want to see her after last night, but he was here.

She couldn't get last night with Tynan out of her head. It hadn't ended well, but she didn't want to examine that part of the evening too closely. Last night had been hot and sensuous and pretty d.a.m.n amazing-until that moment at the end. Say my name. She almost had. His name had been on the tip of her tongue. She'd known exactly who she was in bed with.

Tynan.

But as soon as she'd started to say it, a heavy weight had settled on her chest, as if she had one of Tynan's fifty-pound bags of mortar mix weighing her down, making it hard to breathe.

So she was choosing to ignore that and instead focus on her number-one need right now. She really, really wanted a repeat of last night. She needed a repeat of last night.

Since the first book club meeting all she could think about was Tynan touching her. She didn't need love, but she was in need of a mature s.e.xual relationship. Heck, she was a twenty-six-year-old woman who'd only had s.e.x once in almost four years. Four. Years.

She'd like some very much, thank you. And she refused to feel guilty about that because it meant she was alive. She hadn't died with Joe. She felt a bit like Snow White, who'd fallen into a deep sleep-only it wasn't true love's kiss that had woken her up. It was pure l.u.s.t. Tynan made her feel things she thought she'd never feel again.

So no more messing around. No siree, not this woman. As her daddy always said, it was time to fish or cut bait. And she was fishing. She'd styled her hair into a messy bun, a few strands loose in her just-got-out-of-bed look. She wore her lowest-cut top and had even tried a push-up bra-which, it turned out, only worked if you had something worth pushing up. So she'd ditched the bra and gone without. If a certain pigheaded man looked hard enough, he'd see her nipples since it only took one glance from his crazy eyes to perk them right up.

Every trick of womanly wiles was on the table. Darn it. If only she had some. Oh, well; she didn't need his heart or flowery words, and she especially didn't want commitment. She just wanted to feel hands on her body again. Tynan's hands. She lost her breath at the thought of recreating the scorching hot scene in chapter two of Love's Savage Secret with him. The one he'd read aloud in his smooth-as-aged-whiskey voice. If she was really brave, they could attempt the one in chapter three too. Oh, good lord, yes. She'd never, ever tried anything like chapter three.

So here was her plan: Learn how to employ at least one womanly wile. Entice Tynan with said womanly wile. (Use cooking if wile didn't work.) Have a few o.r.g.a.s.ms. Once that urge was out of her system, she could move forward with her life, focusing on helping Dave revise the diner's menu.

Lu figured she'd stay back in the kitchen until Renee turned in his order. Then she'd carry it out to him herself, looking as s.e.xy as she could manage. It was a sound plan until Renee leaned into the kitchen and hissed, "Holy cow! Tynan's on a date with Barbara! I've got to text this to the Grapevine!"

What? No. She had heard him turn Barbara down. She boosted herself up a little to crane her head out the kitchen pa.s.s-through for a good look. Yep, Renee wasn't lying. There they were, looking all-too-chummy in the booth. Tynan smiled his s.e.xy smile at Barbara and Lu suddenly wanted to throw up.

Pulling herself back into the kitchen, she leaned against the stainless-steel prep counter to pull herself together. Seeing Tynan and Barbara together felt like watching a souffle fall. She thought about what he'd done to her in bed and how he'd made her feel. She didn't want Tynan to do those things to Barbara-or any other woman, for that matter. She didn't like the thought of him sharing secret laughs or sitting snuggled up in a booth with any other woman. Oh holy heck, was she jealous?

She reached out and grabbed the nearest vegetable and began chopping. Onions. Perfect. Because suddenly she felt like crying and that was too illogical to unravel.

And with this revelation there was that guilt pressing down on her chest. The crushing fear that moving on was such a final good-bye to Joe. Her head told her she needed to move on, but her heart wasn't sure if she was ready.

"Order on deck!" Renee clipped the order to the wheel.

Lu pulled herself together and grabbed the ticket. "Two linguines, Dave."

She and Dave had made the pasta from scratch to prep for lunch. She started on the sauce, and when it was almost done, Dave dropped the noodles into the boiling salted water. A few minutes later he pulled them out, drained them, and then tossed them into her sauce. Lu plated the dishes and slipped them up on the pa.s.s-through.

Her hand might have slapped the bell in the kitchen window a bit hard, but whatever.

Renee came over to pick up the plates. "Tynan and Barbara. I'd never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I wonder how long it's been going on."

About twelve hours by Lu's calculation, which made her wonder if Tynan had brought Barbara here to make a point.

She stayed firmly away from the pa.s.s-through, refusing to watch Tynan and Barbara eat her homemade linguini with roasted pepper cream sauce. No, thanks. The last thing she wanted to see was the two of them acting out the scene from Lady and the Tramp, nibbling the same pasta noodle from opposite ends until they kissed. Ay!

Lu kept busy cooking up lunch orders while Renee poked her head in every few minutes giving her detailed, blow-by-blow progress reports of Tynan and Barbara's date. It took Tynan and Barbara thirty minutes to eat their pasta in between all the laughing and talking they were doing. She'd bet Tynan would have finished the pasta in five minutes flat if he hadn't been putting on a show for her benefit.

The longer they sat out there, the more her tension grew until her movements felt stilted and abrupt. Robotic. When Renee came in and announced Barbara had gotten a call from work and had to leave, Lu's tense muscles relaxed so suddenly she had to lean against the counter to stay standing.

She knew what was going on here. Tynan was making a point. What had he said to her last night? No more craving cake.

Well, she had a point to make too. Grabbing a dessert plate off the stack from the shelf on the wall above her, she cut a big, s.e.xy slice of her latest, most decadent chocolate cake.

She slapped the bell. "In the window, Renee! This is for Tynan."

Renee came over to pick it up, raising her brows when she saw the plate. "He didn't order that."

"No, he didn't." She lifted her chin a notch. "But he wants it; he's just being pigheaded. Tell him it's compliments of the chef."

"Hot dog! I love when the Cates brothers get women mad." Renee grinned and placed the dish on her tray. "It really livens things up around here. Heck, if Kaz and Paxton would get in on this, I could cancel my cable service."

Lu peeked through the window to watch Renee deliver the cake.

"Compliments of the chef."

Tynan looked down at the plate, then back up at Renee. "Oh, she's funny, isn't she?"

"I laughed and I'm not even in on the joke." Renee shrugged with a grin. "You may see things differently."

He pushed the cake to the edge of the table. "Could you send the chef out? And I don't mean Dave."

Lu pulled away from the window and sucked in her breath. Could she face Tynan right now? Sure. Sure she could. And she needed to. No point in stewing about this. They might as well lay all their cards on the table.

"Lu, Tynan would like to see you." Renee looked through, interrupting her pep talk to herself.

She swallowed her heart back down into her chest and went out to face off with Tynan.

"I'd like to send this back." He sat back in the booth, hitting her with his icy-cool gaze. "No more cake for me."

That hit its mark. She couldn't stand here and take his shots, so she just blurted out what she wanted-no, needed-to know. "Were you serious about that date with Barbara?"

He narrowed his eyes on her. "Why would it even matter to you?"

Because last night you craved cake. "What about us? Are you just going to pretend nothing happened between us?"

Tynan's face grew dark. He stood up from the booth, drawing himself up to his full height, and moved in close, probably trying to intimidate her. But then he leaned in even closer and lowered his voice for her ears only. "Nothing happened between us. Nothing of substance, anyway."

And Lu's only defense for what she did next was insanity. Because for some reason Tynan's words slashed at her, the pain going deep. Maybe it was a gut reaction to having another man leave her, even if this one had turned his back and walked away under his own free will. Before she could even filter the words, she called after him, "We made love!"

She saw the words. .h.i.t him. He froze in his spot, his hand on the handle of the side door, and like the soldier he used to be, his powerful body snapped to ramrod attention. Turning back around, his gaze burned into hers with such fierceness her impulse was to back up a step. Instead she lifted her chin.

He stalked toward her, and she had to lock her knees to stay standing where she was. When he was four feet away he stopped, his nostrils flaring.

"No, no, we didn't."

"Pfft." Oh, way to sound intelligent, Swan. It's just that he was so big and angry. "We did too."

"We did not make love. Just ask anyone in town." He tore his gaze from where he had her pinned to look around at the full restaurant, gesturing with his arms to indicate the avid listeners sitting around them. "Everyone knows, right, everyone?"

Everyone agreed in unison. "He can't get it up!"

"That is so not the truth," she snarled at him. "And you know it."

"Truth? Seriously, Lu? And, dude, do you think announcing that we had s.e.x in front of my mother is a problem?"

Oh. My. G.o.d. His mother was in the diner?

"h.e.l.l, it's not even unique or shocking. It's d.a.m.n near a tradition in our family. So yell at the top of your lungs in the middle of Main Street if you want."

"Oh, I don't think that's a good idea," a worried voice said into the nearly silent eatery. "She could get hit by a car."

She heard Renee from a few steps behind her. "Relax, Yvette, it was just a figure of speech."

Tynan leaned down close to her face. So close she saw angry sparks of yellow in both his blue and green eyes. His warm breath heated her face.

"But taking the cabin from me? That I will not forgive you for." His voice went menacingly soft. "And I will not forget. You knew what that cabin meant to me. I confided in you, for Chrissake."

"I apologized for that. I'm sorry, sincerely sorry, for what I did." She hoped he could see how much because this thing between them didn't feel like it was over. Could it really have meant so much to her and absolutely nothing to him? No, she remembered the look in his eyes. The pa.s.sion on his face. "And I don't know what this is, but there's something between us, dammit, or my name isn't Lulubelle Stanley Swan."

"Excuse me, what did you say?"

His ice-cold tone worried her. "I . . . I said there's something be . . . tween us."

"No." He shook his head impatiently. "Your name. What did you say your name is?"