Call Me Irresistible (Wynette, Texas #5)(69)

"We use too damned much power in this country." He pulled open the refrigerator door. "I've got some leftover roast beef. Or there's stuff in the freezer."

She couldn't keep the wonder out of her voice. "Is there anything you can't do?"



       
         
       
        

He slammed the door and whipped around. "Apparently, I can't make love according to your specifications, whatever the hell they might be."

Once again, she'd inadvertently ventured into the killing zone. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"Yeah. Telling a guy he's a bust-out in the sack is guaranteed to make him feel great."

"You're not a bust-out. You're perfect. Even I know that."

"Then what the hell is your gripe?"

"Why do you care?" she said. "Did you ever think it might be my problem instead of yours?"

"You're damned right it's your problem. And I'm not perfect. I wish you'd quit saying that."

"True. You have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and you've gotten so good at hiding what you're really feeling that I doubt you even know what you feel anymore. Case in point. Your fiancée left you at the altar, and you barely seem to have noticed."

"Let me get this straight." He leveled his finger at her. "A woman who's never held a job, who has no direction, and whose own family seems to have given up on her-"

"They haven't given up on me. They're just-I don't know-taking a short break." She threw up her hands. "You're right. I'm jealous because you're everything I'm not."

Some of the wind went out of his sails. "You aren't jealous, and you know it."

"A little jealous. You don't show anyone what you feel. I show everything to everybody."

"Way too much."

She couldn't hold it back. "I just think you could be so much more."

He gaped at her. "You're driving a drink cart!"

"I know. And the sad thing is, I don't entirely hate it." With a snort of disgust, he reached for the refrigerator again. She gasped. Lunging forward, she grabbed his hands and stared at his palms. "Oh, my God. Stigmata. "

He snatched them away. "A marking-pen accident."

She clutched her heart. "Give me a second to get my breath back, and then show me the rest of the house."

He rubbed at the red smears on his palms and sounded sullen. "I should throw you out is what I should do."

"You don't have it in you."

He stalked from the kitchen, and she thought he might really do it, but when he reached the main living area, he turned away from the front door toward a floating staircase that led to the suspended, glass-walled room. She followed him up and entered his library.

It felt a little like walking into a well-appointed tree house. Walls of books surrounded a comfortable seating area. An open archway in the back wall led to a glass-enclosed walkway that connected this part of the house to a small, separate room constructed against the hillside. "Bomb shelter?" she asked. "Or safe zone to hide out from the ladies?" 

"My office."

"Cool." She didn't wait for his permission but crossed the walkway. Twin panels of ceiling lights came on automatically as she went down two steps into a spare room with high windows; a massive computer workstation of tempered glass and black steel; several ergonomic chairs; and some sleek, built-in storage cabinets. The office was spare, almost sterile. All it revealed about its owner was his efficiency.

"No nudie calendars or I-Heart-Wynette coffee mugs?"

"I come here to work."

She retraced her steps and returned to the suspended library. " The Chronicles of Narnia, " she said, taking in a shelf of well-read children's classics. "I loved that series. And Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I must have read it a dozen times."

"Peter and Fudge," he said, coming back into the room from behind her.

"I can't believe you held on to these."

"Hard to get rid of old friends."

Or any friends, for that matter. The whole world made up Ted's inner circle. Yet how close was he to any of them?

She surveyed his collection and found both literary and genre fiction, biographies, nonfiction on a head-spinning variety of topics, and technical volumes: texts on pollution and global warming; on plant biology, pesticide use, and public health; books about soil conservation and safe water; about creating natural habitats and preserving wetlands.

She felt ridiculous. "All my yammering about how golf courses are destroying the world. You've been on top of this from the beginning." She pulled a volume called A New Ecology from the shelf. "I remember this from my college reading list. Can I borrow it?"