Something crossed his handsome face and then . . . froze. She couldn’t think of how else to describe his expression. He suddenly seemed as cold and aloof as he’d been on the beach during their first meeting.
“Are you all right?” he asked quietly, sitting on the edge of the mattress and turning in her direction. His face looked shadowed, but she could make out the glint of the gold in his eyes beneath his lowered brow.
“Yes,” she replied with a fake laugh. She felt cast out to sea. The way he’d made love to her, the way he’d touched her with such a single-minded focus earlier, had seemed almost alarmingly intimate and exciting. Now he was back to being polite? “Are you all right?” she countered uneasily.
She couldn’t read his expression. Her discomfort grew when he didn’t reply for a moment. Then he turned away from her.
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She made a sound of disbelief at his sharp tone. He heard her, and his head whipped around.
“I just meant—” he began, then just as abruptly cut himself off. His mouth pressed into a rigid line. “I just meant,” he repeated, this time more evenly. “I was very hard on you. I’m sorry.”
“You are?” she asked shakily.
“I meant to show you I could be patient.”
“Were you even there?”
“What?” he asked, his brows slanting dangerously.
“I enjoyed it. All of it,” she snapped, highly aware of her understatement. She’d loved it. The first thought she’d had when her brain was once again capable of logic was that she wanted to do it again. Now he was treating her like a stranger.
Which—face it, Harper—was what they were to each other, for the most part.
Then why had he felt like the opposite of that earlier? She’d allowed her imagination and her lust to mislead her yet again.
He didn’t respond. He just stared at her, his jaw tight, his face like a shadowed, hard mask.
“Jacob?” she whispered, searching his face for some hint of their former, charged . . . amazing connection.
“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this,” he said.
It stung more than she either expected or liked, that he could be so aloof after what had just happened. Annoyed at herself for making more of their sexual encounter than she should have, she shoved her feet off the lounger in the opposite direction from him and tossed the pillow aside. She grabbed her discarded dress and stood. Pointedly avoiding looking at him, she stepped into the opening of the garment and slipped it up over her arms.
Why didn’t he say anything? What was he, some kind of a robot, to make love to her with such pointed tenderness and heat, and then to act so coldly?
What was she? An idiot, to have been so taken in by him?
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She looked up from buttoning her dress.
“Then why are you acting so distant all of sudden?” she demanded, fury making her voice tremble slightly. She felt very vulnerable. “I mean, granted, we agreed this was just sex, but really? Talk about running hot and cold, with nothing in between.” She bent to grab her discarded sweater, the garment making the memory of his touching it and her breasts at once, of his wry teasing about a sweater fetish, rush into her consciousness.
“You don’t understand,” he said. His terse tone struck her as condescending, like she was a
stupid child.
“No,” she agreed hotly, shoving her hands into the armholes of her sweater. “I don’t understand you. So why don’t you just take me home?” She bent and snagged her underwear and walked to the front of the chaise lounge, where she snapped up her sandals. “I’ll be downstairs.”
“Harper—” he said sharply, and yes. There it was. There was barely restrained fury in his tone. What did he have to be mad about? She turned around, completely confused, but half-hopeful he’d say something to apply a bandage to their quickly unraveling date. She couldn’t figure out how things had gotten so volatile.
“Don’t walk away from me.”
“Why?” she demanded after a pause. “What is it you want to say? Jacob?”
His mouth remained hard, his posture stiff. She waited. Apparently, he didn’t want to say anything. He just didn’t like it when people walked away from him. Undoubtedly he was the one used to doing the walking.