Call Me Irresistible (Wynette, Texas #5)(44)

"I don't live with my parents."

"Close enough. You have a house on the same property."

"It's a big property, and they like having me nearby."

Unlike her own parents, who'd booted her out the door. "How sweet," she said. "Does Yummy Mummy tuck you in at night?"

"Not unless I ask her to. And you're not exactly in a position to make Yummy Mummy cracks."

"True. But I don't live with mine." She didn't like him looming over her, so she uncoiled from the floor and wandered toward her only piece of living room furniture, the ugly brown upholstered chair Ted had left behind. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. Just relaxing." He meandered over to a window and ran his thumb along one side of the frame.

She perched on the chair arm. "You have a tough life for sure. Do you actually work? I mean aside from your so-called mayor's job."

Her question seemed to amuse him. "Sure I work. I have a desk and a pencil sharpener and everything."

"Where?"

"Secret location."

"All the better to keep the women away?"

"To keep everybody away."

She thought that over. "I know you invented some kind of whiz-bang software system that made you a gazillion dollars, but I haven't heard much talk about it. What kind of job do you have?"

"A lucrative job." He gave a quick, apologetic tilt of his head. "Sorry. Foreign word you wouldn't understand."

"That's just mean."

He smiled and gazed up at the ceiling fan. "I can't believe how hot it is in here, and it's only the first of July. Hard to imagine how much worse it'll get." He shook his head, his expression as guileless as a saint's. "I was going to put in air-conditioning for Lucy, but I'm glad now that I didn't. Adding all those fluorocarbons to the atmosphere would have kept you awake at night. Do you have any beer?" 

She glowered at him. "I can barely afford milk for cereal."

"You're living here rent free," he pointed out. "The least you could do is keep beer in the refrigerator for company."

"You're not company. You're an infestation. What do you want?"

"This is my place, remember? I don't have to want anything." He pointed the toe of a scuffed, but very expensive, loafer toward the jewelry laid out on the floor. "What's all this?"

"Some costume jewelry." She knelt down and began to gather it up.

"I hope you didn't pay real money for it. Eye of the beholder, I guess."

She gazed up at him. "Does this place have a postal address?"

"Sure it has an address. Why do you want to know?"

"I want to know where I live, that's all." She also needed some things sent to her that were packed away in her closet back home. She found a scrap of paper and wrote down the address he gave her. She nodded toward the front of the church. "As long as you're here, will you turn on the hot water? I'm getting tired of cold showers."

"Tell me about it."

She smiled. "You can't still be suffering from the effects of Lucy's three-month sexual moratorium?"

"Damn, but you women sure do like to talk."

"I told her it was stupid." She wished she were evil enough to pass on the news that Lucy had already taken a lover.

"We finally agree on something," he said.

"Still . . ." She returned to putting the jewelry away. "Everybody knows you can have any brainless woman in Wynette. I don't exactly see what your problem is finding sexual companionship."

He looked at her as though she'd just joined the Idiots Club.

"Right," she said. "This is Wynette, and you're Ted Beaudine. If you do one of them, you'd have to do them all."

He grinned.

She'd intended to annoy, not to amuse, and she took another swipe. "Too bad I was wrong about you and Torie. A clandestine affair with a married woman would answer your problem. Almost as good as being married to Lucy."

"What do you mean by that?"

She extended her legs and leaned back on her hands. "No messy emotional crap. You know. Like real love and genuine passion."

He stared at her a moment, those tiger eyes inscrutable. "You think Lucy and I didn't have passion?"

"Not to be insulting-okay, maybe a little insulting-but I sincerely doubt you have a passionate bone in your body."

An ordinary mortal would have been offended, but not St. Theodore. He merely looked thoughtful. "Let me get this straight. A screwup like you is analyzing me?"

"Fresh viewpoint."

He nodded. Contemplated. And then he did a very un – Ted Beaudine – like thing. He dropped his lids and gave her a wicked eye-rake. Starting at the top of her head and sliding down her body, lingering here and there along the way. Her mouth. Her breasts. The apex of her thighs. Leaving hot little eddies of desire behind.