Silk Scarves and Seduction by Shiloh Walker Page B

you silly, until you stop worrying about other people and start paying attention to me,” he murmured, reaching down and cupping her breasts in his hand, nudging his cock against her back.
    Tessa gasped and arched into his touch. “Ummm…that sounds…pretty good.”

Chapter Nine
    Valery lifted her hand to bang on Tessa’s door a third time, her mouth puckered in a scowl. Damn it, she knew her friend was in there. Was she so damned mad at her she was ignoring her? Both cars were there.
    Hell, they were probably twisting on the sheets. Valery felt her mouth start to tremble and a streak of jealousy shot through her. Just before she banged on the door a fourth time, it opened and Caleb was there, a rag tossed over one shoulder, a tomato in one hand, an eyebrow lifted.
    When he saw her, a smile spread over his mouth and he pushed the door wider. Sympathy sparked in his dark eyes and reached out, brushing a corkscrew curl out of her eyes. “I’ve got Strawberry soaking in the tub,” he said, cocking his head to the side. “I’m tempted to go run another bath in the spare room and put you in there. You look even sadder than she does. But I don’t think I can fix what’s wrong with you.”
    “Tessa has a key to Marc’s house. I want it,” she said, lifting her chin.
    “No, she doesn’t,” Caleb said amicably, turning and walking into the kitchen, laying the tomato down and stirring the pot on the stove.
    Normally, the scents on the stove would have had her salivating, but she was too frustrated, too nervous. “The hell she doesn’t. You all take care of his mail, and water his garden and the houseplants when he goes out of town for conferences. I want the key. I’m not going over there to trash things. Give me the key—I’ll talk to Tessa later, I promise, but I need the key,” she said, reaching up and grabbing a fistful of curls, shoving them out of her face as she met his eyes and waited.
    “Well, yes, we have a key, but it’s mine,” Caleb said, crossing the room and reaching into a basket, pulling a key ring out and fishing a key off of it. He tossed it to her, his mouth canting up at one corner. “You realize, don’t you, that if you do something that’s going to cause me problems, Blush, I’ll never hear the end of it. That means neither will you.”
    She flung herself across the room at him and planted a loud smacking kiss on his lips before running out of the house without saying a single word.
    Caleb licked his lips and grinned, glad Tessa wasn’t in the room to see the male appreciation that lingered in his eyes for a moment.

    The house was empty when she got there.
    Good.
    She did, after all, have a plan. It would be easier to get it done if she had some time before he threw her out. She stripped out of her clothes and stashed them, toting her camera equipment in, setting up her photo printer and the laptop in the spare bedroom. Judging from the looks of the dust in there, it hadn’t been used since his sister had last come to visit.
    Then she started with the pictures.
    At the front door, on the steps, on the bed, in the shower…all the while running back and forth between her shots and the door, watching for him. Where in the hell was he? She started printing them off. And left them where she took them.
    She left the final one on his bed. With a letter. She didn’t exactly know what to say, so she just wrote,
    You seduced me, too. But I started loving you a long time ago. Will you forgive me?
    After pacing the house naked for a while, Valery started feeling stupid, so she got dressed. It was past midnight now.
    Damn it!
    Where was he?
    He had to work tomorrow. Had he forgotten that?
    Finally, at three a.m., she gave up and left, sighing as she locked the door behind her, throwing her camera bag over her shoulder, her eyes gritty with fatigue, her heart heavy with worry and grief.
    She got home at nearly four a.m. and fell face first on the couch, still clothed.
    After sleeping