Marriage With Benefits by Kat Cantrell

a good enough mood to return them.”
    “Then why are you so scared of men touching you?”
    “I’m not scared of men touching me.” Just you. History proved she couldn’t trust herself, and she didn’t plan to test it.
    She shrugged and prayed her expression conveyed boredom or nonchalance or anything other than what she was feeling. “I’m just not interested in you that way. And that little interlude was four exits past practicing. We’ll never have a public occasion to be lying in bed together.”
    Her tone could have frosted glass, and he didn’t overlook it. In his typical fashion, he grinned and said, “I might have missed the exit for practicing, but the one I took had some great scenery. Meet me downstairs at six?”
    She tried to be irritated but couldn’t. He’d apologized and put them back on even ground effortlessly. No point in sulking about it. “I’ll be downstairs at six. I’ll expect you about ten after.”
    Chuckling, he left and shut the door behind him, sucking all the vibrancy out of the room. She took a not-so-hot shower and washed her hair twice but couldn’t erase the feeling of Lucas’s fingers laced through it. The towel scraped across her still-sensitized flesh, and she cursed. She couldn’t give him any more openings. It was too hard to fake a nonreaction.
    In deference to Lucas’s parents, she spent an extra couple of minutes on her hair and makeup. Lucas would likely complain about her lack of style regardless, so it certainly wasn’t for his sake. The less she encouraged the trigger on his libido, the better.
    With a small sigh, she twisted Lucas’s diamond ring onto her finger, the only jewelry a man had ever bought her, and pretended she hated it.
     

Four
    A fter firing off at least half a dozen emails and scheduling a couple of walk-throughs for early Monday afternoon, Lucas descended the hardwood and wrought-iron stairs at six sharp. Dinner was important to Mama, which meant being on time, plus he’d already done enough to provoke Cia today. Though she should be apologizing to him for the solid fifteen minutes it had taken to scrub the coconut and lime from his skin.
    Why did that combination linger, like a big, fruity, tropical tattoo etched into his brain? Couldn’t she wear plain old Chanel like normal women? Then the slight hard-on he’d endured since being in Cia’s bed, her luscious little body twisted around his, would be easy to dismiss. Easy, because a blatant, calculated turn-on he understood.
    This, he didn’t.
    He shouldn’t be attracted to her. Keeping his hands to himself should be easy. Besides, he scared the mess out of her every time he touched her. That was reason enough to back off, and there were plenty more reasons where that one came from. He’d have to try harder to remember them.
    Cia had beaten him to the living room, where she paced around the sofa in a busy circle. The demons drove her relentlessly tonight. There must be a way to still them for a little while.
    “Ready?” he asked, and caught her hand to slow her down. It was shaking. “Hey. It’s just dinner with some old people. It’s not like barging into a birthday party and proposing to a man you’ve never met.”
    “My hands were shaking then, too.” She actually cracked a tiny smile. “It’s not just dinner. It’s a performance. Our first one, and we have to get it right. There’s no backup parachute on this ride.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong, darlin’. I always have a backup parachute in my wallet.”
    “Only you could twist an innocent comment into an innuendo.” Her eyes flashed deep blue with an unexpected hint of humor. How had he ever thought they were brown?
    “If you don’t like it, stop giving me ammo.”
    Her bottom lip poked out in mock annoyance, but he could see she was fighting a laugh. “You really are juvenile half the time, aren’t you?”
    And there she was, back in the fray. Good. Those shadows flitting through her eyes needed to