Shiver

breathing way too fast. She was so focused on the way his thumb moving against her skin was making her feel that she didn’t even realize she was staring at their joined hands until he said, “Sam,” and she looked up to meet his eyes.
    He was regarding her with a rueful expression that immediately made her brows twitch together.
    “What?” Her tone wasn’t quite snappish, but almost. The way he was holding her hand, the way he was kind of leaning in toward her, the intensity of his gaze, was throwing her for a loop. A relationship with this guy was the last thing she wanted, or needed, but something about the way they were together kind of felt like they were sliding down the slope of starting a relationship. Oh, no. Not happening. Reverse course. She wasn’t making any more bad decisions where men were concerned. She had already screwed (and screwed was definitely the operative word) up enough in that department. She wasn’t doing it again. No how, no way.
    Even if just having him hold her hand like this was making her go all jittery inside.
    “About last night,” he said. That wasn’t a surprise—from the second he’d picked up her hand she’d had a pretty good idea about what the topic of conversation was likely to be. But his expression wasn’t jibing with the racing of her pulse, or the buttery warmth that was starting to spread deep inside her. It wasn’t saying, I want to take you to bed. It was saying—what?
    Not anything she was going to like, she was starting to feel pretty sure.
    “I’m sorry, okay?” He was playing with her fingers now, which were long and slender but not elegant, not perfectly manicured—actually, not manicured at all—a working woman’s hands. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was a mistake. I blame it on the pain pills. You were right, I was high as a kite.”
    Talk about your wake-up call. He definitely wasn’t going all gooey inside. And sure as God made little green apples she wasn’t going to be going all gooey inside any longer, either. To hell with how he interpreted it; she gave the determined jerk necessary to free her hand from his.
    “Let me get this straight: you’re saying you only kissed me because you were high?”
    “I kissed you because I wanted to. But I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been loopy from those damned pain pills.”
    She felt affronted. She felt—okay, face it, a little hurt. It was all she could do not to get up, turn the appropriate part of her anatomy in his direction, say something like kiss this as she smacked it, and then stomp away from the table, but she didn’t, because above all else she was determined to keep her (outward) cool. The slight edge to her voice that she couldn’t quite seem to help notwithstanding. “Good to know. Thank you very much for telling me.”
    She got the impression that he almost smiled. If he had, the way she was feeling right at that moment, she would have decked him.
    “Sam.” He reached for her hand again. Forget that. Curling her fingers into fists, she crossed her arms over her chest. And did not glare at him, although it cost her a real effort. “Look. You’re beautiful. And sweet. And sexy as all hell. I want you. I’d give my right arm to sleep with you, but we’re in a dangerous situation here. I need you to be able to trust me. I don’t want sex to get in the way of that.”
    Affronted didn’t even begin to cover how she was feeling.Try—damned mad. For starters. “Me trust you? Probably not going to happen. Me have sex with you? Definitely not going to happen. So it’s looking like you strike out on both counts.”
    His expression turned rueful. “The thing is, I can’t afford the distraction.”
    “You say that like you think us having sex was actually a possibility. It wasn’t.” She seethed (invisibly, she hoped). “It isn’t. ”
    If that was humor she saw springing to life in the backs of his eyes, she would—she didn’t know what she’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.
    Impossible to tell. But there was a suspicious glint in those dark brown depths that made the glare she finally directed at him feel extra good.
    “Don’t give me a hard time, okay? I want you so much I’ve got a hard-on right now, just from sitting at this table looking at you. But I’m trying to do what’s best for everybody here.”
    She made a rude sound. “You know what? I don’t want to know about your hard-on. You ever hear, too much information? Anyway, I