Boo walked into the kitchen as I shrugged off my jacket and threw it and my purse on the table. Boo immediately started complaining about my absence and other imagined kitty insults. I scooped him up and walked down the hallway then wandered around the living room, turning on lamps, Boo in my arms.

Boo talked through this. “Meow, meow, meow.”

I finished with the lamps and looked at Vance who was leaning against the hall entryway watching me.

I really wished he wasn’t so good-looking. It would make sustaining being pissed off at him a lot easier to do.

“Shut up, Boo,” I said, eyes on Vance.

“Meow,” Boo replied, eyes on me.

I looked at Boo. “You already had your treats.”

“Meow.”

“No more, you’re too fat.”

“Meow!”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I told Boo.

“Meooow!” Boo returned.

“Are you talkin’ to a cat?” Vance asked.

I looked at Vance but didn’t answer him. I gave Boo a cuddle and then bent over a bit and dropped him.

“Meow,” Boo said after he landed on his feet, always one to get in the last word.

He went over to Vance, rubbed against his ankles and then walked down the hall likely heading to his dry food bowl.

“How long you gonna stay pissed at me?” Vance asked. Throughout Boo’s exit his eyes never left me.

“Until the end of time,” I answered.

For some reason, my snotty comment amused him.

Whatever.

“That should make tonight interesting,” he said, pushing away from the wall and coming to me.

I turned away from him and pulled off Roxie’s wrist cuff and dropped it on the pub set. Then I brought my hands up to take off my earring. My heart was beating like a jackhammer and the butterflies, which had gone away to struggle valiantly elsewhere throughout our terrible date, came back clearly prepared to put up an epic battle of good versus bad in the pit of my stomach.

I felt Vance behind me and he swept my hair from one shoulder and over the other. I bit my lip, put the back on the pierced earring and dropped it to the table then went after the other one. His arm wrapped around my middle and he pulled my back to his front then his lips went to my neck.

This felt nice, too nice, melt-your-anger nice and I stiffened my body in response.

I got the earring out and put the back on it and Vance said quietly against my neck, “Stop bein’ angry, Jules.”

“You can’t tell me to stop being angry. You can’t tell me who to spend my time with. You can’t break into my house and get into bed with me while I sleep. And you can’t make me have sex with you in return for you doing something nice for a kid who’s had no nice things happen to him in his life,” I declared then dropped the earring, turned and looked up at him or, more appropriately, glared up at him.

He watched me for a few seconds one arm still around me then he said, “I can see you aren’t in the mood. We’ll sleep on it tonight. Tomorrow, after we meet with Darius, we’ll talk, then we’ll do what we should have done two days ago.”

Damn.

I’d forgotten about the meet with Darius.

Was I ever going to get Vance Crowe out of my life?

I took a deep breath and nodded, grasping on to his out like a lifeline. “Perfect. Wonderful. Sounds good to me,” I agreed, deciding that tomorrow I’d definitely be in Nicaragua by dinner time.

He watched me again and then said, “We sleep together though.”

Hmm.

Maybe it was not so much of a lifeline as a noose.

“I don’t think so,” I returned.

I could tell he was making a decision. I watched him as he made it.

His face came closer to mine and he said, “Then tonight we do what we should have done two days ago.”

“Crowe –” I started to pull back against his arm but his other one wrapped around me.

“Jules, I’ll tell you now what I would have told you at dinner if you’d been speakin’ to me. This,” he said, one hand dropping to my bottom and pulling my h*ps into his, one going up my back to press my torso to his chest, “is the sweetest thing I’ve had in my life and I haven’t even f**ked you yet. I never expected to get a chance at anything so sweet and now that I got it, I’m not gonna let it go. If you think you can act like a bitch and make me back off, you’re wrong.”

Was I being a bitch?

Okay, so the “until the end of time” comment was a wee bit bitchy but he was telling me what to do and saying bad things about my friends!

“You were telling me what to do,” I said quietly, still fighting my corner.

“I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

This was true. He knew more about Zip, Heavy and Frank than I did and he certainly was more of a badass mother than I was.

“They’re my friends,” I said.

“I’m your friend,” he told me and I couldn’t help it, I stared.

At his words, the good butterflies trounced the bad butterflies and the bad ones retreated to Siberia.

“Vance,” I whispered, my emotional Rottweiler deciding to take an inappropriately-timed nap and my anger started to melt away.

“Stop bein’ angry,” he repeated his earlier command but in his soft, silky voice.

I kept staring at him a beat. Then it wasn’t just my anger melting away, my body melted into his.

“Okay,” I whispered.

At my whisper, his lips turned up, his head came down and he kissed me. I kissed him back. I wound my arms around his neck and pressed into him and his hand at my bottom came up, then went down again, this time inside my pants and I liked the feel of it there, as in really liked it.

My mouth opened under his and his tongue slid in. I realized in some hazy recess of my mind that somehow managed to be unaffected by his kiss that this was actually going to happen.

His mouth moved away from mine and slid to my jaw then to my neck and his hand at my behind went deeper.

“Vance,” I whispered against his neck.

“Yeah?”

“We have to talk about something,” I said, thinking perhaps I should share my virginal status. It might turn him off and, if that was the case then I had nothing to lose because, if it did, and he didn’t understand, then I didn’t want to be with him anyway. If it didn’t turn him off, it might make things go easier for the both of us.

His head came up and he looked at me, his lips still turned up at the ends.

“Princess,” he pressed his h*ps into me at the same time his hand pulled mine to him and I felt his hardness. It freaked me out and made my belly flutter at the same time. “The time to talk was at dinner.”