I stopped what I was doing and looked up at him. “Why?”
Cal frowned. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to know what I read, Cal?” It didn’t make sense. I had given him what he wanted: easy sex with an easier out. Why wasn’t he taking it?
He shrugged. “I’m curious. Humor me.”
“Fine,” I grunted and went back to work. “Biographies and murder mysteries.”
“Not romance?”
I heard the smile in his voice and bristled. Of course, he probably thought I lost myself in romantic fiction because I had no romance in real life.
“If the plot is good enough, sure.”
“Who, me? I love biographies, too, and science fiction and detective novels. Thanks for asking.”
“I didn’t.” It was unnecessary snark, but his behavior had me off my game.
“I noticed.” Silence fell between us; the only sounds filling the room were from Cal slurping his coffee and chomping his toast loudly. “You ever think about living someplace other than Jackson’s Ridge?”
All right, that was enough. I straightened my back and turned to Cal with a glare. “What is this, Cal?”
His brows dipped in confusion. “What?”
“This.” I motioned between the two of us. “What are you doing here, and why are you asking all these damn questions? What’s the point of this?” I sounded like a crazy person, but he was the one not following the script.
Cal blinked, his long, curly lashes fanning over clear blue eyes. “I’m trying to get to know you, Teddy.”
“Why? You never made an effort to know me before now, and I already slept with you, so why?” I knew more about him than I cared to admit, and he probably knew next to nothing—and I was finally alright with that.
His broad, bare shoulders lifted and fell in a nonchalant shrug. “So we can get back to being friends.”
“Friends?” I tossed my head back and laughed. “We were never friends. I’m Hannah’s best friend and you tolerated me back then, barely. There’s no need to do even that much anymore.”
“What? We were friends,” he insisted. “You were always there for birthday parties and even some holidays. We weren’t best friends, but we were friends.”
“No, we weren’t.”
“We were,” he growled.
“Okay, when’s my birthday?”
He shrugged. “Sometime in April.”
“July, but good guess, friend. My favorite color?”
His lips parted into a smile. “That’s easy, purple.”
“Wrong. Green. My mom loved the color purple and thought it looked good on me. Dad kept buying me purple clothes after she died, even though it made me look like that silly purple dinosaur. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hated it, so I endured it because the color of my clothes was the least of my worries back then.”
“I had no idea.” He sounded guilty, and that wasn’t the point of this little exercise.
“I know, because it’s something a friend would know. A friend like Hannah.”
“Okay, fine, we weren’t friends back then. We can be friends now, as adults.”
“No thanks.” There was a time I would have jumped at the chance to be friends with Cal Rutledge, but that was a lifetime ago, and these days I respected myself too much for that. “It’s not necessary.”
“Why not? We’re in each other’s lives anyway, we might as well find a way to be friends.” His words sounded logical on the surface, but they didn’t ring true.
“Cal, stop.” I sighed, upset he was screwing with the flow of work and annoyed he wasn’t doing what I wanted him to do. “Friday was good—it was really good, actually. It was great. But it was just a night. I don’t need you to pretend to suddenly be interested in me, because I don’t want you to be interested. And I have no plans to tell Antonio, so please, let’s just move on with our lives now, yeah?”
His blue eyes stared into mine for a long time and I started to relax, sure he understood where I was coming from now. Then his lips parted into a slow, teasing grin.
“No, I don’t think I will move on. I think we should be friends, and I always get what I want, Teddy. Always.”
“You already got what you wanted, now just leave me alone.”
I returned to work with my back to him, refusing to answer another question, refusing to even look his way. I knew Cal, and eventually he would grow tired of being ignored and then he would move on.
I just had to wait him out, which I intended to do.
No matter how long it took.
Cal
“Dammit!” I woke up disappointed and covered in sweat. The dream I’d been having—the one where Teddy’s long legs were wrapped around my waist as I thrust into her over and over, pulling those sexy throaty cries from her lush mouth—was just a dream.
Another dream, actually.
Why? Why couldn’t I get Teddy out of my mind? Why had she infiltrated my dreams? I wasn’t a guy who had fantasies about women I’d already had—I had them and then I moved on. Always. Sure, I might have ideas on what we could do next time, but actual fantasies? No, that wasn’t me. Except, for the past few days, it was me.