And his stupidity had fueled it.
Jake frowned.
Talk about a man making fool of himself …
“Hell,” he muttered.
Apologizing wasn’t going to be easy. How did a man look a woman in the eye and say, “Okay, I’m an ass.” Or, better still, exactly what she’d called him, an arrogant jerk.
What kind of justification could he come up with to explain his behavior?
Not the truth.
Not that that second he’d seen her, he’d wanted her, that he’d reacted to her in a way he’d all but given up thinking he’d ever react to a woman again—
That believing she’d put on an act had all but destroyed him.
There wasn’t a way in the world he could admit any of that to her.
Nothing showed ahead of him but the bright tunnel created by the Tundra’s headlights. He goosed the gas, the truck shot forward and his reward was another quick wink of red taillights.
“Wilde,” he said through his teeth, “she’s right. You’re an idiot.”
Maybe he’d be lucky.
Maybe a simple “I’m sorry, I was wrong,” would be enough.
Right.
And she’d tell him, in explicit terms, precisely what he could do with those words.
Jake flexed his hands on the steering wheel.
This was not going to be fun.
He could imagine how she’d look while he stumbled through an apology.
Her cheeks would be pink with anger, her eyes as bright as molten silver. That I-can-take-on-the-world chin would be lifted to an angle that spelled defiance.
She’d be a veritable portrait of rage.
And sexy as hell.
Just thinking about it made his temperature rise and, hell, that was not what he wanted right now.
He had to concentrate on how to approach her. What to say. He worked on that while the truck ate up the miles, but nothing logical came to him.
He’d have to play it by ear.
And she’d make him jump through hoops.
That was the one certainty.
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
There was a time he’d have looked forward to the challenge. A woman, standing up to him? Except for a couple of tough-as-nails nurses who’d taken him on when he’d tried to refuse meds or therapy, women had always tended to say yes to whatever he wanted.
No surprise there.