Then she lifted her huge, wet eyes to his. “It was the commercial,” she admitted. “Those long-distance commercials always make me cry.”
Her mouth was a fraction of an inch from his, and he found himself leaning toward it until what she said sunk in. Long-distance commercials made her cry.
She rescued spiders.
She wanted everyone around her to be happy, to the point of risking her own neck on a stupid blind date. She was sweet, whimsical and funny.
And she was his biggest nightmare, because not only was his body clearly attracted to her, she would be higher maintenance than any woman he’d ever met.
And any woman he’d ever met had complained about his maintenance habits.
6
CAMI TRIED to forget what happened.
Denny’s. Being ditched by Ted. Then rescued by Tanner. How she’d mortified herself afterward by crying all over him.
And she might have managed, if she could have just forgotten how she’d felt in Tanner’s arms.
Amazing. Special. Cherished.
It left her speechless even now, a full day later.
She was in bed-which was really the couch, smack in the middle of the living room-the blankets pulled over her head so she couldn’t hear Tanner, who had the radio blaring and tools banging at the other end of the town house. It wasn’t even eight in the morning.
The phone rang, and though she wanted to ignore it, a client might be calling, and clients couldn’t be ignored. Neither of them. Not if she wanted to eat something that wasn’t out of a can his month. Reaching from her perch on the couch, she fumbled around on the floor for the phone, grabbing it just as she stretched too far.
And fell to the floor.
Tangled in blankets, hair in her face, she decided against fighting like a beached whale and lay still. “Hello,” she said into the phone, eyes still closed as she discovered the floor wasn’t so uncomfortable.
“Cami. It’s Ted.”
Well, that ruined her tranquillity in nothing flat.
“Cami?”
“Hold on, Ted, I’m deciding whether to hang up or yell at you.”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to-”
Before Cami could hear what he just wanted to do, the phone was yanked out of her hand. Blinking her bleary eyes open, she saw Tanner standing over her in jeans and that tool belt, grimly holding the phone to his ear. “Ted. This is Tanner James.
You don’t know me, but I’m Cami’s-” His gaze dipped to Cami, and she would have sworn his eyes heated to sizzling before his lashes came down and shuttered them from her. “Business associate,” he finally said. He listened politely for a long moment, during which time Cami didn’t breathe.
She wondered what Ted could be saying, but then Tanner put her wondering to rest.
“So this is all a misunderstanding, you say? That you left a woman-your date-alone in a broken-down car on a deserted strip of highway in order to hitch a ride with another beautiful woman who offered… What was that she offered, Ted? Dessert? Even though you’d already had it?… Uh-huh, I see. You risked Cami’s life for a slice of pumpkin pie. Nice move, Ted.”
He listened again. “No, that pathetic apology won’t work. You know what? Let’s get to the point here. My point. Basically, you’re slime. A real bottom feeder. And if you call here again, if you come here, if you even so much as think about her, I’m going to find you and beat the shit out of you. Do you understand, Ted?”
“Tanner!” Cami gasped, trying to sit up, but not only was a blanket wrapped around her as if she were a stuffed sausage, Tanner leaned over and casually stepped on the edge of it.
Surely he hadn’t done that on purpose. She tugged.
In response, he set his other foot on the blanket, as well, and looked at her from beneath those lowered lashes.
“No,” he said firmly into the phone. “You’re right. You must have gotten the wrong phone number. No problem, Ted.” You could only call what he did then smiling, because he bared his teeth. “Goodbye.” And with shocking politeness given what he’d just said, he clicked the phone off and tossed it to the couch.
“What was that about?” she demanded, struggling to free herself, to no avail.
“Oh, it’s just some caveman technique a woman wouldn’t care to understand.” He hunkered down beside her, careful to leave a booted foot on her blanket so she was still wrapped tighter than a pretzel. He studied her for a long moment, making her aware of things, such as the fact she had on no makeup, and that her hair was undoubtedly out of control, and that she hadn’t yet brushed her teeth.
“You okay?” he eventually asked.
“You’re stepping on my blanket.”
“I meant did you get enough sleep? You must have been tired after the night before.”
Short of reading his mind, she had no idea what the hell he was thinking. His eyes were guarded, his expression neutral. But she could have sworn she heard genuine concern in that low voice of his. “Funny time to worry about how much sleep I got, you’ve been banging around for hours.”
“But I’ve been banging with consideration,” he said. A slight smile softened his features. Then his gaze dipped down and heated, leading her to believe he could see right through her blanket to the large T-shirt and men’s boxers she’d worn to bed.
“I’m not naked under here,” she said. “You know, just in case you were wondering.”
“A guy can hope,” he said huskily.
“What would you have said to Ted if he’d said that to me?”
Tanner had the good grace to laugh, and surged to his feet. “You still have that other stupid blind date tonight? With your client’s son?”
The thought made her want to groan and cover her head again. “I need that client.”
“Enough to go through another Ted?”
“There can’t be another Ted.”
“Honey, beneath our masks of civility, all of us males are Teds.”
“You mean all men like buffets?”
“Of different types,” he said cryptically.
“What does that mean?”
“Not all of us get excited over food, but we’re all reduced to basic stupidity when it comes to our weaknesses. Ted’s weakness just happened to be food.”
“What’s yours?”
“Ah, that would be telling.”
With that, he walked away, leaving her to watch his long, long legs, the way his hammer slapped against his hip with each step.
He has the most amazing tush, she thought ridiculously, then had to laugh at herself. Seems men weren’t the only ones wearing masks of civility.
The phone rang again, and before Tanner could come back and step on her blanket, she grabbed it. “Hello?”
“You sound breathless,” said Dimi.
Breathless? She was. It hadn’t been Ted to do that to her, and it certainly hadn’t been a sexy dream, not with all that banging going on, so it must have been Tanner. Oh, boy. “Yeah, well.
I’m recovering. Oh, and gee, thanks for calling me back in a timely fashion.”
“I was busy. Working. You might not know that concept.”
“Hey, I work. I work hard.”
Dimi sighed. “Sorry. I know you work hard.
And I know you’re trying to get your business going. But mine is the pits at the moment. Literally. I just screwed up today’s show. Somehow left a pit in one of the peaches we canned, so my guest host swallowed it and choked.”
“On the air? Live?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Ouch.”
“That’s not the worst of it. When I gave her the Heimlich maneuver, she coughed up the pit and it beaned the camera man right between the eyes. Gave him a concussion.”
“Holy smokes.”
“I might get a ratings boost out of it, though. If people think someone might do it again, they’ll tune in.”