Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

Sean came back in the room and stretched out beside her. His hand found her stomach.

“We’re sssupposed to be working,” he said. He kissed her throat.

“I know. But I’m really hungry.”

He lifted his head. “I d-don’t have any food.”

“I’m sure I can throw something together.”

“No, I mean I really d-don’t have food.”

“Well, come on,” she said, dragging her sated body into a seated position. “Let’s go see what there is.”

He gave her a T-shirt to wear and pulled on his jeans. Downstairs, he showed her the cupboards, where she found some dusty cans of tuna, a container of salt, and a bag of expired wheat germ. He didn’t even have nonperishable food.

What he did have was approximately forty coffee mugs of various sizes and ages. He had flowery dishes, a collection of miscellaneous Tupperware, and, on the counter by the coffeemaker, a bag of Peet’s coffee beans that appeared to be the one item in the kitchen seeing any action.

He had a black ceramic urn on the countertop that almost certainly contained all that was left of his mother.

Oh, the man was a mess.

And he didn’t live here. The conclusion had been solidifying ever since she walked in the door, but the kitchen clinched it. The house was fussy, overstuffed, and dim. There was nothing to suggest Sean in any of it except the computers camping out on the dining room table.

Sean had an immaculate wallet, a car completely empty of junk, and understated, unwrinkled clothes. This was his mother’s house, and he wasn’t inhabiting it. He was squatting in it.

He really was a self-punishing bastard.

“I m-mostly eat at the Inn,” he said. “We c-could go out to d-dinner if you want. Maybe go into Mount P-pleasant for Chinese?”

She indulged herself and imagined it. Katie and Sean at the Hunan Garden, sharing crab rangoon and swapping funny stories.

But there wouldn’t be a Katie and Sean. He wasn’t going to stick around Camelot, because his whole life took place somewhere else, and whatever wounds he was nursing here would heal eventually, or he’d gnaw off the limb that had trapped him and limp home.

Either way, he would leave, and she would get left.

It was different this time, though. Levi had promised to love her until death did them part. Sean had never promised her a thing. He didn’t love her. He barely even knew her.

She didn’t love him either. She liked him a lot. There was nothing on earth she’d rather do than have sex with him. She respected his intelligence and his humor and his basic goodness and his … well, his everything, but she didn’t love him. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to let herself make the same mistakes all over again.

She could be with him and enjoy him—even care about him—but she wouldn’t try to keep him.

Better to make this simple, so she couldn’t forget what it was.

“Let’s order a pizza,” she said, closing the cupboard door with a louder thud than she’d intended. “And then we should get to work.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

“Sir, you’ll have to remove your watch. Sir?”

Katie poked him in the lower back. “That’s you, Buster. You have to put your watch through the X-ray thingy.”

Sean had already been prompted to throw away his water, pull out his bottle of eyedrops and stick it in a plastic bag, remove his shoes and his belt, and place his car keys and wallet in a tray that looked like a dog dish. Now the dog dish was gone, and he was at a loss.

“Where am I supposed to p-put this?”

“Give it to me, I’ll put it in my purse,” Katie said.

Sean handed over his watch, and the TSA agent beckoned him to step up to the full-body scanner.