You’re a lawyer. You could negotiate on the deck of the sinking Titanic.
Okay, yes, that was true. She simply needed to approach this as a professional. Preferably not spread-eagled, then.
She sat up and propped a pillow against the headboard. Clothes would be nice. Caleb had done something with her T-shirt; it was no longer in evidence. Peeling back the comforter, she found the sheet and tugged, trying to pull it up over herself.
Unfortunately, she’d tucked it in under the mattress when she made the bed, and it wouldn’t budge. Stupid sheet. She yanked at it ineffectually for a moment, and then Caleb helped her out, gathering the fabric in his fist and liberating it with one rapid jerk that made his biceps bunch and his pecs flex and his stomach tighten and oh boy howdy, did she ever want to get those pants back off him.
It wasn’t a good position from which to begin negotiating.
She tucked the sheet under her arms and closed her eyes briefly, willing herself into lawyer mode. Caleb was rustling around, distracting her, and when she opened her eyes he’d positioned himself cross-legged at the far end of the bed. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he still had a rather impressive hard-on, and she still wanted to ravish him. Plus, he was smiling at her. You weren’t supposed to smile at the enemy. Negotiation 101.
“All right, Clark. What do you want?”
“You,” he said. As if this were the sort of thing people declared all the time. Combined with the smile, it made her blood fizzy and her head ditsy.
Reset. Reboot. Lawyer mode. “Can you define what you mean by that?”
The smile widened so she could see his dimple, and this time it hit her between the thighs. Would he have the same effect if you put the dimple in a suit and tie and met with it across a couple briefcases and a tray of litigation pastries?
Yes, damn it, he would.
He counted on his fingers. “I want to take you out on dates. I want to get to know you better. I want to get to know your son better. I want to make love to you repeatedly, in every position I can think of. And I want to spend the night.”
Holy hell, Caleb wanted to be her boyfriend. How had she gotten herself into this mess? She needed a boyfriend like she needed an emergency appendectomy.
She often counseled clients who were having trouble keeping a cool head to take five deep breaths before responding to a difficult statement. She tried it, but it didn’t work at all. Not at all.
“We’re not doing that,” she snapped after two and a half.
He spread his hands wide, palms up. Innocent as a baby bunny. “I’m just saying what I want. Isn’t that how you open a negotiation? Now it’s your turn to tell me what you want.”
I want to be a Chiclet.
Well, she couldn’t very well say that. She needed to think of a more appropriate way to express what she was looking for. Which was, essentially … “Sex.”
Maybe that had been a little blunt, but lawyer Ellen was all about honesty in negotiation.
He raised an eyebrow. “Can you define what
you mean by that?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Sex. Physical intimacy. Penetration of the woman’s—”
“I know what sex is, sweetheart. How much? When? Where? Who initiates?”
She glared at him, but he simply shrugged. “I’m trying to figure out what kind of lover you’re in the market for.”
Two could play at this game. She counted on her fingers. “I want lots of sex. After hours, when I’m not working. Or in the morning would be okay, too, but not after eight o’clock Pacific time, because that’s when I have to make calls. We do it at my house. Either one of us can initiate, but not when Henry’s here and awake. Oh, and no sleepovers. No dates, no deep conversations, no getting-to-know-you-better.”
Caleb smiled. He wasn’t supposed to be smiling. He was supposed to be surprised, or disappointed, or outraged, or something other than smiling.
“What?”
“This is good,” he said. “We can work with this.”
“It’s good?”
“Mmm-hmm. We have something in common. We both want to have lots of sex. The rest is going to be easy.”