What I Love About You by Rachel Gibson Page A

told her, “You look like a woman who needs to date and with a man who knows how.” He lowered his gaze to her mouth. He wasn’t touching her, but it felt like it. “You look like you need a man to date you all night long.”
    She sucked the warm, tingly scent of pheromones into her lungs. She couldn’t help it. They surrounded her like a sexually charged fog. “Are we talking about dating?” It felt like he was talking about something else. Something that made the clog in her chest get all hot and heavy and fall to the pit of her stomach.
    He nodded. “No.”
    Was it yes or no? With him staring at her mouth, she couldn’t think. At least not beyond the urge to slide her hand up his chest and curl into him. “How can you tell I don’t date?” she asked as if she wasn’t getting bombarded with impulses and urges and dark cravings. “Do I have a sign above my head or something?”
    He slowly raised his gaze to hers. “Your eyes.”
    “My eyes?” Her brows lowered. “You can see I want a date from my eyes?” Again, she didn’t think they were really talking about dating.
    “There’s a difference between want and need.” His eyes were sending her a message, too. Beneath lowered lids, he sent a message so hot it made the knot in her stomach tighten and threaten to burn up her thighs. “You need a man to get you in his bed and keep you there all night. You need it bad. Real bad.”
    She did. She hadn’t realized how much she needed it until that day in his wine cellar. But it wasn’t going to happen here. In her kitchen. Not now, with her daughter in the next room and her dinner boiling on the stove. And not with this man. This hot, sexy man who was rude and overbearing, and she was sure wasn’t interested in any sort of relationship beyond sex.
    On a purely physical level, she might like to have sex and forget about it the next morning. She wouldn’t mind just using a man for his body. For just one night she’d like to use men like Lilah did, but she was a single mother and a small-business owner. She had more respect for herself than to be any man’s one-night stand. “I don’t need anything that bad,” she said, and stepped around him. “I’m a busy woman.” She moved to the stove and took the boiling pot off the heat. “Believe me, I am not the kind of woman to answer a booty call. I have more respect for myself.” She poured the hot water and pasta into a strainer in the sink.
    “Uh-huh.” She heard him move to the back door and open it as a cloud of steam rose to her face. “More respect for yourself than to stare at pictures of Frankie Cornell’s monster junk?”
    She turned, and her flushing face had nothing to do with the steam. He had heard her and Lilah that day in the store.
    He smiled. “If you want to see a monster dick, you know where I live.”
    Then he was gone and she was left standing in her kitchen with an empty pot in her hand and a steam cloud around her head. Good Lord, she couldn’t recall exactly what she’d said about Frankie. Other than his mutant penis, of course.
    She set the pot on one side of the sink. Blake had a monster penis, too? She looked across her shoulder and out the kitchen window. Trees blocked the view of his house. She wondered if he was telling the truth about that. Her brain conjured the image of his button fly. No, he probably wasn’t lying.
    She moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of whole milk and some butter. Michael had always said he had a big penis. She’d been a virgin and a faithful wife, and hadn’t had any personal experience when it came to size. She didn’t have a lot now, but she was older and wiser and had enough to know that Michael was average. Nothing to lie about, but that was Michael. No way would he ever let himself be average at anything.
    She looked at the clock on the stove. She had an hour before homework and bath time. Half an hour before she and Charlotte sat down to eat. She pulled out a casserole