“Isn’t it a good thing one of us has better sense,” she finally said. “I’ve got a long day tomorrow. I need to go.”
“You don’t have to. Stay, Alexandra.”
She could come up with a dozen reasons why she needed to slide off this porch swing, grab her dog’s leash and keep walking.
Sam needed someone soft and warm, giving, not a prickly, neurotic chef who sucked at relationships.
Beyond that, her restaurant was opening in less than eighteen hours. How on earth could she possibly indulge in this wild heat with him tonight and expect to have any powers of concentration left for Brazen, especially when she had a feeling once they started, she wouldn’t want to stop?
Finally, and most significantly, she was already falling in love. Contrary to popular belief, she didn’t sleep around. She had slept with exactly three men in her life and each had carved away a little chunk of her heart. She thought she had cared about each of them at the time but those feelings were nothing compared to this soft, seductive tenderness.
She could run a restaurant staff of two dozen, she knew exactly how much produce to order for a busy restaurant, she could juggle eight or nine deliveries at a time, but she had absolutely no idea how to keep fighting what she wanted so very desperately.
“I can’t,” she whispered, giving it one more try. She managed to make it to her feet but couldn’t seem to move down the steps and away from him. “I told you I’m not going to sleep with you. I’m not sure how many times I have to tell you I’m not interested.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I would believe you if you didn’t kiss me like I’m your favorite dessert and you’ve been on a hunger strike for weeks.”
Oh, he was so very right. Every time they kissed, she forgot all the reasons she shouldn’t indulge in all those wonderful, glittery feelings.
“I can’t be what you’re looking for, Sam.”
“And what’s that?”
He sounded genuinely curious but she didn’t miss the edge to his voice.
“You’re looking for a home. A warm hearth. You all but admitted it yourself. That’s why you moved to Hope’s Crossing. You need somebody sweet and giving who can offer the home you’ve never had. If she wasn’t five months pregnant and deeply in love with my brother, I would have said Claire was the perfect woman for you.”
“How do you know what I want or what I need?” His voice was tight, each word clipped, and she realized this might be the first time she had heard him angry.
“This porch swing, this house. Moving to Hope’s Crossing in the first place, just because a few people said hello to you in a pizza parlor, for heaven’s sake. It’s all proof.”
“That I’m looking for a woman like your friend Claire.”
“Maybe not Claire exactly but someone like her. Calm and serene. Sweet. That will never be me. I was born sarcastic. I’m moody and unpredictable. I can be downright bitchy. Just ask my two sous-chefs, who are both ready to quit right now.”
“Maybe I like that about you. You always keep me guessing. Don’t take this the wrong way but Claire would probably bore me to tears in about ten minutes. Maybe five.”
She bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean? Claire is my best friend. She’s a wonderful person!”
He shook his head and then had the effrontery to laugh at her, and she had to fight the urge to slug him.
“Yeah, moody and unpredictable just about covers it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Claire. I never said that. She seems lovely. But she’s not you. What if I like all those things you spewed out as faults? I like that I can never figure out how that mind of yours works.”
She could feel the ache of tears behind her eyelids and they completely appalled her. She never cried, damn it. It was only exhaustion, because she had been working so hard at Brazen. It certainly had nothing to do with Sam, sitting there so big and tough and wonderful on the swing he had put up to provide his son with a better life than he had known.
“I need to go. Tomorrow’s only the biggest night of my life and I don’t have the time or the energy for this right now.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue but he finally only stood up. The chains rattled a protest at the shift. “I’ll walk you the rest of the way to your place.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ve got Leo.”
“Tonight, you’ll have me, too.”
She supposed it took less energy to let him walk her the three hundred feet to her house than it would to stand here and continue arguing with him.
“Fine.”