Sincerely stunned, Jenny gaped at him for a second or two. “Flirting?” she repeated as anger bubbled and churned in the pit of her stomach. “I was talking about paint. About the mural I want on the wall in the lobby.”
“Yeah, I heard the end of the performance.” Mike cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Deep, breathy voice going all dreamy and soft. Hell, you had that carpenter standing there with his mouth open and his eyes bugging out.”
“Dreamy? Soft?” Had she really sounded like that, she wondered, then shook her head to dismiss the question. Didn’t matter if she had, Jenny thought. She hadn’t been flirting, she’d been sort of lost in her own vision.
Mike inhaled sharply and said, “You sounded just like you did when you woke up in my arms.”
Now it was her turn to drag a deep breath into her lungs. Reminding her of their most recent night together wasn’t playing fair. “You’re wrong.”
He took a step closer, grabbed her upper arms and pulled her up against him. Jenny’s heart leaped into a gallop and as he was holding her so tightly to him, she felt his heart raging in the same rhythm.
“I know what I heard,” he said, staring down into her eyes. “What I saw.”
She fought the natural impulse to wrap her arms around his waist and hold on. To go up on her toes and kiss him. To feel that rush of incredible sensations one more time. Instead, she reminded herself just how little he really thought of her. Of the fact that he didn’t want her—it was only desire driving his reactions.
“I wasn’t flirting,” she told him. “But even if I had been, what business is that of yours? You’re my boss, Mike, not my boyfriend.”
“I am your boss,” he agreed. “And I don’t want you playing with the crew. I want them focused on the work, not you.”
Stunned all over again, Jenny demanded, “Can you hear yourself? Do you even realize when you’re being insulting? I mean, is it just instinct or is it deliberate?”
“Insulting? I walk into a room in my new hotel and find you practically salivating over some guy with a tool belt and a set of dimples, and I’m insulting?”
“You are, and what’s worse is you don’t see it,” Jenny said and slapped both hands against his hard chest to shove her way free. He let her go. Taking a few steps away from him just because she really needed the distance right now, she faced him and said, “I’m here to do my job, Mike. You’re my boss, not my lover.”
“I remember it differently.”
She flushed. Damn it. Jenny could actually feel heat race into her cheeks and could only hope that with the sunlight behind her, her face was in shadow enough that he wouldn’t notice. “A couple of nights together doesn’t make you my lover. It makes you...”
“Yeah?”
“A mistake,” she finished. “Isn’t that what you yourself called that first night? Oh, and the last one we spent together?”
He shoved both hands into his pockets and stared at her with an intensity she could feel. “I did. It was. That doesn’t mean I enjoy standing by, watching you work some other poor guy into a frenzy.”
“I had no idea I had so much power,” Jenny said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Didn’t realize I was so oblivious, either. I didn’t see Rick—”
“Hmm. First-name basis already, huh?”
She ignored that and punched home what she most wanted to say. “I didn’t see Rick in a frenzy—but you surely were.”
“I was angry, not in a frenzy.”
Was he jealous? Was it possible that Mike Ryan had seen her talking to Rick and had felt territorial over her? If he had, what did that mean? “Really. Angry that I was ‘flirting’ with someone other than you?”
“That you were flirting on the job, that’s all,” he said, and pulled both hands from his pockets to fold his arms across his chest. “Don’t read more into this than there is.”
“I don’t think I am,” Jenny said, moving close to him again. This was the weirdest conversation she’d ever had. Just a week or so ago, she’d pledged that she wouldn’t be sleeping with Mike again. She already knew that this was a ticket to disaster. That the man had believed her to be a thief. Maybe he still did, she couldn’t be sure. And yet, here she was, surrendering to the very need and hunger that had led her to his bed in the first place.
No. She couldn’t. Not again. She would not allow herself to willingly walk right into more pain. With that thought firmly in place, she stopped where she was, looked up at Mike and said, “We’re not going to do this again. I won’t go to bed with you again.”