The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,67
at this woman, this chameleon I see something new. She’s a good person. A sexy, irresistible, woman who cares about me. She’s the perfect combination, and I’m still too afraid to go for it. “Do you understand?” I ask her when she doesn’t say a word.
She stares at me defiantly. “You make it sound as if I’ve been the one pushing this.”
“I didn’t strip down to my shirt,” I remind her.
“I was washing myself in my room when you walked in,” she asserts.
“You stood there letting me have a good look.”
She lifts her chin, because she knows I’m right. “You rolled your pen all over me.”
“You took my pen, and then you claimed you found it.”
Her mouth twists. Is it only me who isn’t good at communicating with women? I’m a master of the written word, but I clam up when in person. “And because you think I took your pen—”
“Didn’t you?” It’s the second time she’s refuting that and it makes me stop and backtrack. Is there a possibility that she didn’t intentionally take it? What if it was an accident, as she claims? Then I’d be left looking like the fool. I only used the pen on her because I believed she was playing games with me.
Fuck. The longer she looks at me like that, as if I’m clearly delusional and desperate, the more I know it was an accident.
My twisted writerly mind jumped to the wrong conclusion completely.
“You came to me in the study,” I remind her. I’m grateful that she did. I relive that moment many times. Her skin, her softness, her wetness, her breathless sighs, these very things I can’t erase—nor want to.
“I came downstairs because the noise of the thunder woke me up. I made a mistake, and one I sorely regret.”
She made a mistake? I was her fucking mistake?
“It’s not like me to do things like that. I’m not that type of woman.”
“I’m not that type of man.”
For a reason I can’t fathom, she looks nervous. “Are you …”
I’m too busy staring at her neck, and her lips and eyes, and the parts I want to kiss, to notice her hesitation. “Am I what?” I ask.
“Are you going to replace me?” The tone of her voice snaps my attention away from her lips and to her eyes. She looks timid. “I can’t lose this job.”
I tilt my head. “You won’t lose this job.” Her irrational fear makes her weak. I like her when she’s the other way; a woman who knows what she wants and sets out to get it. The woman before me is nothing like her. Mari wrings her hands together. “I wasn’t thinking. I saw you all alone, and you looked sad. I shouldn’t have come into the study.” There is fear and trepidation in her voice, something new and unlike the wild creature who seduced me.
“I asked you to come in.”
She presses her lips together and gives a tiny shake of her head as she looks down. Her heated cheeks are the first sign that she is embarrassed. This other Mari unsettles me. I’m so used to her being bold and brash, and in charge.
In control.
I can’t help wondering if this is an act, but then I remember what Rob told me about her getting laid off her other job abruptly. I’m not familiar with that type of life changing event. I can’t relate. “I shouldn’t have even been there.”
She’s so worried about the lousy job. “You won’t lose your job. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
She won’t lift her gaze to me, but her cheeks are even more red. “Thank you.”
“But we can’t do this.” Even as I tell her this, I don’t really mean it. Not deep down inside. Not really.
“You’re right,” she says, staring at me. “We can’t.”
“We need boundaries.”
“We just need to stop.”
Her saying that, making the decision, annoys me.
“I need to finish my book—”
“And I need to finish my chores.”
I was about to explain to her that I spend most of my waking hours thinking of her, but she’s turned her back to me and switched on the vacuum cleaner again.
Chapter 28
MARI
I want to bury my face in shame, but I hoover away, needing to be busy, and praying that we won’t cross paths again today. Ward leaves the room after making me feel like a cheap slut.
I turn on the vacuum cleaner, not because I’m in a hurry to clean the house, but because I need him to know that I’m okay, that he hasn’t