Fueling Her Fire by Piper Trace Page B

looked at her, hesitating.
    “Thanks again and sorry for making you come out on a
holiday,” she said, a little too loudly, hoping to encourage him to leave. He
shifted from foot to foot, not moving toward the door.
    He counted out half the money and pushed it toward her.
“Here,” he said gruffly, “I can’t take all that.”
    She put her hands up. “No, now, I put you out on Christmas
Eve, you missed dinner with your friends and…you earned it.” The corners of her
mouth crooked. Oh, he’d earned it.
    He shoved it toward her again and his voice held an edge of
anger. “Kip, I was never going to take it. The fact that you were willing to
give it to me was a measure of how desperate you were for the wood. It just
made me decide to deliver it.” He shook the money toward her. “I can’t keep it.
It wouldn’t feel right, especially not at Christmastime.”
    She held firm. He studied her, his lips pressed into a thin
line. “All right, Kip,” he took a deep breath and looked down. “I don’t know
what things are like in Chicago, but around here in the ‘backwoods’ we don’t
take advantage of folks in trouble. If you won’t take this money, you tell your
mom she has a credit with me for one delivery of wood, okay?”
    “Fine, that’s real nice of you,” she said, irritated. “Now
you have a Merry Christmas.” She retrieved his coat and handed it to him.
Taking it, he dropped his arms to his side and stood looking at her.
    “What?” she asked sharply, more than a hint of
self-consciousness obvious in her voice.
    “Really? After that, you’re really just going to throw me
out?” His voice was plaintive.
    “Yes,” her voice turned icy and she crossed her arms, “I am.
It was your idea and you said no strings. Besides, I don’t know if you
remember, but the last time I saw you I was incredibly angry at you and,
honestly, I still am.” She jutted her chin at him in preemptive defiance of any
notion he might have that their high-school situation was ancient history.
    “Kip, c’mon,” he pleaded, “you don’t understand. Can we at
least talk about it?”
    “No.” She walked to the door and pulled it open allowing
frigid air to pierce through the small rooms. “I really don’t see the point.”
    He stood for a moment longer, looking at her and then opened
his mouth to say something. She didn’t let him. “Please, Dylan. Good night,”
she said firmly.
    He closed his mouth, his lips slicing a thin white line
across the angular, rugged planes of his face. Yanking his coat on over
shoulders tight with frustration, he walked heavily toward the door. He stuffed
the fistful of money into his coat pocket and pulled his knit cap down over his
tousled hair. Suddenly, she had a powerful urge to run her fingers through it.
She loved the way it fell messily over his forehead. She wanted to brush it
back from his handsome face, kiss his cheek and then move her lips to his
mouth, which would be soft and then insistent…
    “Please, Dylan.” She closed her eyes and indicated the door,
knowing her voice sounded desperate.
    “It was good to see you, Kip,” he said gruffly. He brushed
past her and out the door without looking back. She slammed the door and leaned
against it, relieved that she’d narrowly missed doing something really stupid.
She took a deep breath, forcing away any guilt over the situation. Letting
Dylan give her an orgasm and then throwing him out felt rather justified, given
what he’d done to her in high school. Didn’t it? She was not going to let him
use her body again now for his own satisfaction.
    But the problem remained that she wanted him. She wished so
badly things could have been different. He still made her heart leap and her
pulse pound, even after the pain he’d caused her, even after all these years.
But she needed to stay strong—she couldn’t go from one mistake of a
relationship right into another. No. This time she was going to do it right. She had an