“Mind telling me why?”
“You don’t take rejection very well, do you?” she asked irritably. His Southern-gentleman image was slipping. “The truth is that I’m not attracted to you,” she lied, almost expecting lightning to zap through the ceiling. “Now will you let go of my arms?”
“In a minute.” His hand returned to her chin, tilting her head back further. “First I want to check something out.”
She parted her lips to answer, only to find them covered firmly with his.
She had known it would be like this. Had known, and had tried hard to avoid it. The kiss was explosive, his touch the catalyst. Match to fuse. Gasoline to flame. Man to woman.
His tongue swept the inside of her mouth. Autumn moaned, but she could not have said whether the sound was one of pleasure or protest. She was afraid she knew, especially after he lifted his head to draw a deep breath, then lowered it again without one ounce of resistance from her.
The second kiss was just as powerful. Pressed closely together from chest to knees, Autumn was as aware of her own physical response as she was of Jeff’s. Things were getting entirely out of control, she thought with some distant, still-sane portion of her brain, even as her recalcitrant hands flattened hard against his back. His image of polite gentleman had definitely altered.
It was Jeff who finally broke the kiss with obvious reluctance. He stepped back a few inches, his chest rising and falling rapidly, face slightly flushed, hands still gripping her arms through her long-sleeved knit shirt. “You want to try again?” he asked, his voice husky, his blue eyes glinting with what looked suspiciously like amusement and something else that Autumn had no need to analyze.
“Do I…what?” she asked, her own voice raw.
“You said you weren’t attracted to me. Now we both know that’s a lie, so I wondered if you wanted to try another excuse for not going out with me,” he elucidated.
Autumn stared at him for a moment, her temper rising, then jerked herself out of his grasp, almost falling over the armchair behind her before catching her balance and whirling away. “You…you egotistical male,” she hissed, snatching her cap up from the floor where it had fallen. “I said I don’t want to go out with you and I meant it. I don’t need an excuse.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do,” he murmured.
Autumn glared at him through narrowed eyes, deciding that if he let loose the smile that he was obviously struggling to hold back, she’d throw something at him. How dare he laugh at her loss of temper? She took a deep breath, hid behind a facade of icy professionalism and grabbed her clipboard, holding it out to him in a curt gesture. “Sign this,” she ordered, making no effort to be pleasant.
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, lips twitching as he scrawled Dr. E. Jefferson Bradford across the bottom of the work order.
“I’ll be seeing you around, Autumn,” he called out to her as she climbed angrily into the cab of her pickup moments later.
“Not if I can help it,” she muttered, slamming the door. She was well aware that he stood in his driveway watching her until she was completely out of his sight.
2
“OKAY, JEFF, WHO IS SHE?”
Jeff blinked and frowned questioningly at the woman who stood before him, determination written on her impish face as she faced him with her hands on her well-rounded hips. “Who’s who?” he asked.
“The woman you’ve been mooning over all evening,” Dr. Pamela Cochran answered flatly. In a chair across the room her husband, Bob, chuckled as he rocked his infant daughter to sleep.
Jeff glared at Bob and turned a melodramatically fierce scowl on his partner. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he told her haughtily.
Pam laughed in disbelief. “Sure you don’t. Come on, Jeff, I know you. Who’s the woman, and what did she do?”
“Okay, I got shot down when I asked a woman out. Twice,” Jeff answered resignedly. “There, are you happy?”
Bob made a loud choking sound, startling the tiny bundle dozing in his arms. “You struck out?” he demanded avidly. “Will wonders never cease!”
Jeff flushed, his frown deepening as he glared at his two best friends. “Knock it off, Bob. It’s not like it’s the first time someone turned me down.” The discussion was strangely reminiscent of his one-sided conversation two weeks earlier, after Autumn had turned him down the first time.
“Yeah? So when was the last time?” Bob inquired perceptively.
Jeff muttered the answer he’d finally come up with after asking himself the same question that other time.
“What was that? I didn’t hear you,” Bob insisted.
“Eleventh grade, all right?”
Bob laughed. “That’s about what I thought.”