Tangled Up In Love Read online

  But while The Zone was great, almost like being inside a bubble that kept minor irritations at bay, it didn’t render her entirely deaf and dumb. Over the clicking of the keys and the humming of the laptop’s fan came an insistent, bothersome knocking.

  Ronnie’s fingers slowed, her mouth pulling down in a frown as she was yanked out of her nice focused cocoon and forced to identify the annoying noise. It took her a second, but she finally realized that someone was at the door.

  Muttering a creative curse, she saved her work, muted the television, and climbed to her feet, crossing the carpeted floor to peer through the peephole.

  Oh, God in Heaven, it was him.

  Glancing into the kitchen, she checked the time on the stove’s digital clock.

  What the heck was The Jackass doing outside her door at ten o’clock at night?

  She rested her head against the flat wooden panel and tried to slow her erratic breathing. Maybe he would go away, maybe . . .

  He pounded again, louder and longer this time.

  He wasn’t going away.

  All right, Veronica, you can handle this. Take a deep breath, open the door, and show this man you aren’t intimidated by having him show up at your apartment unexpectedly.

  Following her own advice, she steeled her nerves, twisting the dead bolt and slipping the chain loose. Dylan stood in the hallway, a dopey half smile on his face, blue eyes sparkling with mischief. Ronnie kept her own expression stoically blank.

  “What are you doing here, Stone?”

  He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, careless and nonchalant. “I expected you to show up at The Box after your knitting group. Where were you?”

  “I had things to do,” she answered shortly. “Why do you care?”

  From behind his back, he produced his needles, yarn, and the portion of knitting he’d gotten done the week before with her guiding him every step of the way. “Our lesson, remember? You said we’d start after tonight’s meeting.”

  For several long seconds, she stared. Yes, she’d told him she would tutor him in the art of knitting. Yes, she’d told him they’d start after this week’s knitting group. But when he hadn’t shown up, she’d decided he’d had a change of heart and put him completely out of her mind.

  “You want to start the lessons now?”

  He shrugged, continuing to grin at her with those crystal blue, spine-melting eyes. “Why not?”

  Because it was ten o’clock at night.

  Because she hadn’t agreed to work with him at her apartment.

  Because she wanted to finish her article and go to bed without being plagued by his exasperating presence.

  But what came out of her mouth was a deep sigh and then, “Fine.” She stepped back and let him in, shutting the door behind him with a click.

  “I like your jammies,” he said when she turned back around.

  Yet another reason she would never have invited him anywhere near her home. She didn’t want him seeing her in her pink basset hound lounge pants and matching top. She didn’t want him invading her space, seeing how she lived, knowing things about her that she let very few others become privy to.

  Some might say she was secretive, but she liked to think she merely valued her privacy and chose to reflect a certain image in public that she didn’t necessarily maintain when she was alone.

  And she would sincerely prefer Dylan only ever see her in her perfectly tailored power suits without knowing she came home and climbed into pink puppy-dog pajamas.

  As far as small favors were concerned, she supposed she should be relieved that she hadn’t opted for her pair of Austin Powers Do I make you horny, baby? Do I? shorty pajamas.

  There were some questions in life she really did not want Dylan to give her an answer for.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she asked, however reluctantly, ignoring his comment.

  He moved into the living area, making himself comfortable without an invitation to do so. “What have you got?”

  She thought a minute, picturing the contents of her refrigerator. “Milk, juice, water . . .” A bottle of wine in one of the cupboards, but she didn’t mention that. She wasn’t going to waste good alcohol on him.

  “No beer?” he asked.

  “No, sorry.”

  He glanced at the muted television screen as though checking to see what was on, then turned again to face her, towering over her low coffee table and small, overstuffed sofa.

  “Guess I’ll take some juice, then.” His lips quirked as he shot her a relaxed smile. “Although, if you had a little vodka to spill in the glass, I wouldn’t complain.”

  “Sorry, no vodka, either.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  Not bothering to reply, Ronnie turned on her heel and moved into the kitchenette to pour a glass of orange juice. When she returned to the living room, she found Dylan perched on the edge of the sofa, elbows on his knees, studying the open screen of her laptop.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped, more sharply than she’d actually intended.

  Lifting his head, he met her eyes and without a shred of remorse said, “Reading your column.”

  As she moved forward, he slid over on the couch, making room for her and reaching for his drink. “It’s good. But the deli you’re talking about isn’t Sardowski’s on East Ninth, is it? Because I stop there a lot for takeout, and I don’t even want to think about what I’ve been eating if all this is true.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched as she fought not to laugh. “You might want to consider finding somewhere else to pick up lunch,” she said by way of an answer, taking a seat on the cushion beside him.

  With an overly dramatic groan, he threw himself back against the arm of the couch. “Oh, man, I feel sick. Maybe you should drive me to the hospital so I can have my stomach pumped.”

  She chuckled, sipping from her own glass of water. “I think you’ll be all right. Though you may want to consider starting a course of heavy-duty antibiotics, just to be safe.”

  Dylan groaned again and clutched his midsection, making Ronnie laugh even harder. He listened to the sound, feeling it slide down his spine and warm him to the soles of his feet.

  A second later, she noticed him studying her and sobered. “What?” she asked, that same wariness that he noticed much too often creeping into her gaze.

  “That’s a nice sound, your laughter.”

  She rolled her eyes and pulled her shoulders back a fraction. “Don’t get used to it,” she told him, the words lacking any signs of warmth.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, fighting the urge to grin, “I won’t.”

  Sitting up straighter, he produced the yarn and needles he’d brought along . . . hell, the yarn and needles he’d been carrying everywhere with him, hoping for some miracle to occur and his fingers to suddenly get the hang of the sticks and stitches.

  With an exaggerated sigh, she reached for the jumble of yarn and slid closer to him. Intentionally. Voluntarily. Without baring claws and teeth.

  Dylan felt like calling Ripley’s and reporting a truly astounding event. It should be documented, investigated . . . duplicated, if at all possible.

  “All right,” she said, “the first thing I think we should do is pull this out and start over.”

  She yanked the entire collection of loops he’d worked so hard on off its needle and started tugging at the yarn until the stitches began to unravel. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have whimpered.

  “Watch carefully,” she told him, and proceeded to cast on several stitches. “See what I’m doing here?”

  “Uh-huh.” He saw. He’d seen this part before. He’d even tried it a time or two himself. It looked simple, but he might as well have been a giant playing with the individual strands of a spider’s web.

  She paused and held the needles out to him. “Now you try.”

  It was embarrassing for a grown man to break out in a cold sweat at the prospect of dealing with a couple of tiny m
etal sticks and some blue yarn—baby blue, no less—but that’s exactly what he did.

  Holding his breath, he took over and very slowly tried to mimic the movements she’d shown him. The yarn got stuck around his big fingertips, and he kept fumbling the needles. He knew almost immediately that he was screwing it up again.

  “Wait a minute,” Ronnie said, obviously noticing his awkwardness.

  She sat for a minute, tapping the palm of her hand against the side of her leg. Then she bounced up and paced across the carpeted room.

  “I think you’re having trouble because the needles are so small and the yarn is so thin.”

  She came back with a bright turquoise faux leather tote in one hand and a woven basket in the other. The basket was filled with a multitude of yarns and needles, and she began sorting through them, searching for exactly what she wanted.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing him a set of white plastic needles a couple of sizes larger than the ones he’d been using.

  Then she dug into the bag and drew out a small, fat skein of soft black yarn. “Charlotte gave this to me tonight. She spun it herself from fiber sheared from the alpacas she raises. I really think you’ll like it. Feel how soft it is, even though the strands are nice and thick.”

  He ran his fingers over the yarn, feeling the texture. He didn’t know jack shit about yarn, but it was definitely softer than what he’d bought at the craft store, even though the other stuff looked stronger.

  “Okay, let’s try again.”

  This time, when she plopped down beside him, their thighs touched from knee to hip, and the sensation shot straight to his groin.

  Great. Just what he needed was to be sitting flush against the woman who’d made his life a misery this past year, and whom he’d endeavored to make just as miserable, with a stiffy straining against his fly.

  She arranged the larger needles in his hands, then showed him how to start the yarn. He followed her instructions to the letter, trying to do exactly what she was doing, exactly how she was doing it.

  And he had to admit, the thicker needles and yarn did seem to make the task easier. He felt less clumsy, less like his fingers were fat sausages working to balance a couple of tiny toothpicks.

  “Good,” Ronnie said after he’d managed to cast on a good number of stitches. “See, size really does matter. I knew the bigger needles and thicker yarn would work better for you. Now we can start to actually knit.”

  “You mean we aren’t knitting yet?” he asked, jaw clenched in concentration.

  She chuckled, rearranging herself on the sofa cushions. “Not yet. That was just the setup.”

  Folding her legs beneath her, she leaned against him, hovering above him to observe his progress. Her arm rested on his back and shoulder, the side of her breast rubbing his bicep. The heat of her body burned through the material of his tan buttondown shirt, and they might as well have both been naked.

  Now he was thinking about her naked. Crap.

  He could picture her, too. All sleek, glowing ivory skin. Nice, firm breasts, full enough to fill a man’s hands and pert enough to make his mouth water. Her long, wavy brown hair falling down around her shoulders, a few stray curls framing those amazing breasts with their tight raspberry nipples, and drawing his gaze to her flat stomach, then lower . . .

  He swallowed hard, his nostrils flaring and vision going fuzzy at the edges. As if the snugness at his crotch wasn’t bad enough, now his diaphragm was growing tight, his palms turning damp, and his heart beginning to pulse beneath his rib cage.

  He needed a drink, a cold shower, to put about a hundred miles between him and Ronnie’s hot, luscious body. Those pajamas, with their funny-looking dogs on them, might have been more-than-adequate covering when he’d first arrived, but now the only thing he could think about was ripping them off to see if the reality of her naked body was as good as his imagination painted it to be.

  Oblivious to his inner turmoil or how close he was to spontaneously combusting, Ronnie remained pressed close to him, counting the number of stitches already lined up on one of the needles. She wiggled a bit more, ratcheting his temperature up another ten or twenty degrees, before covering his hands with her own.

  She was practically in his lap . . . crap, crap, crap . . . ready to show him the next part of the knitting process. Only he couldn’t follow her instructions because every time he took a deep breath in an attempt to calm his raging libido, all he smelled was Ronnie.

  She smelled fresh and clean from her shower, with a hint of sharp, sweet citrus, probably from whatever soap or shampoo she’d used.

  His fingers clenched around the needles, so tight, he was surprised they didn’t snap. He wanted to inhale her. Wanted to turn his head just a few degrees and lick the column of her throat like a cat licking cream.

  Admit it, Stone, you want to do a hell of a lot more than that.

  Yeah, he did. Way more.

  Slow things. Fast things. Hot, slurpy, sexy things.

  “Are you watching?”

  Blinking, Dylan raised his head to find Ronnie frowning at him. He shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position for his trapped, straining boner, and hoping she didn’t notice his predicament.

  “Yeah, I’m watching.” Watching, fantasizing, salivating.

  “Oh, really?”

  One of her dark, perfectly sculpted brows arched higher than the other, making him feel like a grade school student being singled out by the teacher.

  “Then what did I just show you how to do?”

  Damned if he knew. He was still trying to get the image of her long legs wrapped around his waist as he pounded his way to glory out of his brain.

  “Um . . . I forget. Can you show me again?”

  Row 6

  Counting to ten, she concentrated on her breathing and reminded herself that she didn’t care if he listened to her or not. Didn’t care if he learned to knit or not. In fact, for the sake of their competition, she preferred he didn’t. And either way, she was going to get her thousand dollars just for pretending to help him.

  The thought of that amount of money sitting all safe and sound in her bank account washed the tension from her body and relaxed her from the crown of her head to her polished toenails.

  She inhaled and exhaled once more, then leaned back in to wrap her fingers around his and guide his movements.

  “Try to keep up, Stone. You don’t want me telling folks you’re a slow learner, do you?”

  That seemed to snap him out of whatever haze he’d been in. He made a scoffing sound and replied, “I’m only a slow learner when it comes to certain subjects. With others, I catch on real quick.”

  His voice was low and husky and carried a hint of suggestiveness. Slanting a glance in his direction, she noticed a heat in his gaze she’d never seen before. Other men had looked at her that way, with lust and longing, but never Dylan.

  She licked her lips and swallowed, quickly returning her gaze to the needles and yarn in front of them before he caught her watching him.

  Having Dylan think of her in sexual terms wouldn’t have been so bad. He was a man, she was a woman, and that’s what men did around any woman who didn’t look like she’d just climbed out of the primordial ooze. They were horny bastards who could get turned on watching paint dry.

  That was fine. His lust she could handle.

  The problem was that she very much feared a similar desire would be visible in her own eyes if she let him meet her gaze. She was pressed up against him—how in God’s name had that happened? She didn’t even like him, didn’t think she’d ever touched him willingly before, but suddenly she was draped along his side like she was trying to share his skin. Gads!

  And she was suddenly warm, warmer than she suspected the temperature in the apartment called for. She could feel the flush of her cheeks, the blood pulsing in her veins, the shakiness in her limbs.

  That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The worst was that in addition to being warm al
l over, she was wet. Down there, between her legs, where arousal couldn’t be denied no matter how vehemently she tried.

  Oh, God. Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god. This couldn’t be happening. She could not be sexually attracted to Dylan Stone. She would rather eat glass . . . walk across hot coals . . . cover her body in paper cuts and jump naked into a vat of lemon juice . . .

  Panic pressed in on her from all sides. She tried to breathe, but her lungs refused to expand. Her head began to spin as she fought for oxygen, but the seconds ticked by with little success. She had to get out of there and away from him, before she freaked out.

  “Water,” she croaked, jumping to her feet.

  Dylan leaned back slightly, cocking his head to stare up at her. He looked as confused as she felt. “What?”

  “Water. I need a drink of water.” She plucked her glass from the coffee table before he could notice it was still half full, sloshing water over her fingers in the process. “Do you want anything?” she asked, making a beeline for the kitchen.

  She was already at the sink, splashing cold water on her face and, unfortunately, down the front of her shirt, when he answered from the living room.

  “Only that beer, if you find one.”

  She didn’t have beer, but she did have wine, and suddenly keeping it for a special occasion didn’t seem nearly as important as it had an hour ago.

  Shutting off the spigot, she dug in the cupboard for the hidden bottle of Pinot Grigio in the back. It wasn’t an expensive brand, but it was tasty—one of the best she’d found within her price range—and would do the trick.

  “How about a glass of wine instead?” she called back.

  “If that’s the best you’ve got, I’ll take it.”

  She already had the cork out and was pouring herself a glass, draining it in one long gulp. Feeling the smooth, slightly fruity, pale liquid rolling down her throat and into her belly fortified her and steadied her nerves.

  “Mind if I use your computer to check my e-mail?”

  Even from a distance, his voice rolled over her like a warm ocean wave. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the edge of the counter and tried to slow her out-of-control heartbeat.