He pushed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans—mainly to keep from punching the wall—and headed upstairs. By the time he reached the top and glimpsed Sara shivering in his doorway, wearing a towel and a grimace, his anger had ignited from simmering to full boil.
“Brad,” she said, her already huge eyes widening. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Kim turned unsteadily, and he reached out to grab her elbow while she struggled to balance herself. “Yeah, well, you know how it is when you’re doing the walk of shame. Gotta be quiet.” His smile strained his cheeks. “Didn’t expect there to be a party in my doorway either.”
“Walk of shame? I thought you had to fix Sara’s car.” Kim looked back and forth between them, her dark brows fused together. “And I saw your truck in the drive last night.”
“I borrowed it,” Sara put in, still giving him that pleading look that made him feel like nails lined his throat. “While Brad worked on my car. Right?”
“Sure thing.” He couldn’t believe he was such an idiot. He’d even hummed on his walk to the shop this morning. Boy, he never learned, did he?
“How is it?” Sara asked. “All fixed?”
“Just a dead battery, clogged filter and some corrosion. I took care of it.”
“Thank you so much. What do I owe you?”
Terrific. Now she was going to piss him off by offering to pay for his work on her car, because you know, he needed every spare dime. He was practically indigent compared to the big fancy doc, right?
“Doubt you’ll ever be able to repay me, Sara Smile,” he said in his own equally loud voice. Did Sara think that shouting would add veracity to her story? Kim didn’t look like she was buying it, and he’d be damned if he helped Sara one iota. Not when she’d had the perfect opportunity to be honest, and yet again she’d shafted him without benefit of lube.
He strode up the hall and shifted around her to get into his room. As he squeezed past, he pinched her ass and she jumped. “Might want to get dressed, Doc. You’ll catch another cold.”
As he closed the door in their faces, Kim demanded, “Did he grab your ass?”
“No. Of course not. He, ah, stepped on my foot.”
His gut twisted as he put as much distance between himself and the door as he could. He took out a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his dresser and slammed it shut. Seemed like he’d be closing the book on a lot of things today.
He rushed through a shower, his only thought to get the hell out of the house before Sara could corner him. He wasn’t interested in talking to her at the moment. Maybe ever.
It was one thing for her to lie, quite another to make him lie to his own sister. And for what? If she was really that ambivalent about seeing him, he should’ve taken no for an answer the first time he’d broached the subject of wanting her. One-way streets weren’t meant for two drivers.
He went through his morning routine and changed into his standard attire—God forbid a guy not wear a suit to work—then stared at his glowering face in the bathroom mirror. In the mood he was in, he’d punch out the first person who questioned a line item on their bill.
Five deep breaths didn’t help, so he tried ten. It took fifteen for the haze behind his eyes to clear. He’d just reached for the doorknob when the knock came, soft and hesitant.
“Brad, it’s me. Can I come in?”
He yanked open the door so abruptly that she almost fell into his arms. “No, because I’m coming out. I have to get to work.”
She righted herself and shook back her long fall of brown hair. Of course she’d had to leave it down so it swirled over the shoulders of her form-fitting navy blue dress. Blue pumps revealed her pink, polished toes—toes that, even now, he wanted to suck on with all the fleeting conviction of a virgin leaving convent school.
“This won’t take long—”
“Neither will this.” He stepped around her and glanced back at her framed in his doorway. The picture she made would remain in his head forever. So defiant and resolute, with only that hint of a quiver in her shiny lower lip. “You were right.” He forced the words out despite the fist locked around his throat. “I shouldn’t have pushed this. It was a mistake, one we need to rectify.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean us.” He chuckled without humor, shaking his head. “Not that there is an us, but for the sake of argument. We’ll end things here and part as friends while we still can.”
Of all possible reactions, he didn’t expect her to back up as if he’d burned her with his words. “If we could—” She blew out a breath that stirred her perfectly arranged bangs. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
No, he didn’t fucking want this, not any of it. If he’d ever guessed she could be so blasé about them, he never would have laid a hand on her. She’d resisted his advances for a while, but he’d been convinced he could get her to see what was right in front of her.
He’d been wrong.
“Is that what you were coming to tell me?” he asked, unable to let it go that easily.