Just Like a Man (40 page)

"I don't like this place," she said as she stood up from the glass-and-copper dining room table and began to gather up her dishes.

Her complaint seemed to both surprise and disappoint Thomas. He still sat at his place, his arms folded over his expansive chest, leaning back in his chair as he observed her. But his expression was stunned and he sounded defensive when he asked, "You don't like it? Why not? What's wrong with it?"

"It's cold," she said. "There's no personality to it. I mean, this guy's got millions of dollars—"

"Billions," Thomas interrupted her.

"What?" she said, glancing back at him. He had his chair tipped back on two legs now, and all Selby could think was that the metal-backed seat looked so spindly, it would snap into pieces beneath him if he wasn't careful.

"Billions," he repeated. "The guy who owns this place has billions of dollars."

Her eyes went wide.
"Billions?"
she echoed. "Are you
serious!"

Thomas nodded. "Nineteen-point-six billion, to be exact. Not all of it liquid, though, natch."

She decided not to wonder how he would know that. Instead, she just continued, "Oh. Okay. So. So then this guy has
billions
of dollars, but he can't afford a couple of picture frames for family photos?" She gestured toward the living room beyond the dining room, indicating the stringent decor. "He can't get a couple of houseplants? Some candlesticks? He can't buy some paint? A little color would go a long way here. This place is just… harsh. I mean, what kind of person would enjoy living in a place like this?"

Thomas's eyes went flinty as he said, "Probably a really rich one."

"Yeah, well, there's more to life than money," Selby said as she gathered up her dishes and turned to take them into the kitchen.

He expelled a sound of utter hooey. "Oh, really?"

She spun around at his tone of voice. "Yeah, really," she said. "What? You disagree?"

He stared at her skeptically. "Of course I disagree. Do you mean to tell me if someone handed you a check for a million bucks right now, you'd turn it down?"

"What are you, nuts?" she said. "Of course I wouldn't. But I wouldn't use it to buy ugly furniture and artwork a blindfolded monkey could have executed better."

"Hey, that artwork is worth a small fortune," Thomas said.

He only assumed that because it was purchased by a billionaire, Selby thought. He really shouldn't be so trusting. "Doesn't mean it's any good," she said aloud.

He gaped at her.

She laughed as she turned again and headed for the kitchen. "Well, it doesn't," she threw over her shoulder as she went. "Don't tell me you're one of those people who buys into the myth that just because something costs a lot of money, it must be valuable."

She heard Thomas's chair scrape away from the table and knew he was following her. "You think that's a myth?" he said as he entered the stark white kitchen behind her.

Like the rest of the house, there was little decoration here.

Only white cabinets and chrome appliances. And precious few of those. Clearly the owner didn't eat at home very often. Thomas set his own dishes on the counter across the room from Selby, then turned to lean back against it facing her, his arms folded over his chest again, waiting for her reply.

"Of course it's a myth," she said. "Do you really think money's all that important?"

"Don't you?"

"Not for what you evidently think it's important for."

"Oh, and what would
you
do with that check for a million bucks?" he asked point-blank.

Selby smiled as she mimicked his actions, leaning back against the counter on her side of the room, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'd use it to travel," she told him.

He seemed surprised, and not a little bewildered, by her response. 'Travel?" he said. "Where?"

"Everywhere," she said. "All around the world. As many places as I could go."

He studied her intently for a moment, as if he were giving great thought to some matter. "You work four jobs," he said.

"Five, actually," she told him. "But how did you know? You only know about three."

He colored at that, his cheeks turning pink, and Selby was charmed by the fact that a man like him could actually get embarrassed about something. "I saw you," he said softly. "At Trino's one night. I would have said hello, but you were pretty busy."

"What were you doing at Trino's?" she asked. "That's a pretty expensive place."

"Yeah, I know. I know someone who works there," he said.

"Who?" Selby asked.

"One of the bartenders."

"Which one?"

"So why do you have five jobs?" he asked without answering. "And with all that money coming in, how come you live in the neighborhood you do?"

"First of all, it's not that much money," she told him. She made a quick survey of her surroundings again. "It's certainly not like this. And second of all, I don't like to spend money on material things. I'm saving as much of it as I can for something special."

"What?"

She smiled again. "Travel. All around the world. As many places as I can go. I'm planning to work for six more years, until I'm thirty, and stow away as much of my income as I can. Then I'm going to take a few years off to go around the world. East to west. North to south. I want to see it all. But I want to do it right. I want to take my time. That, to me, is where money can really be valuable. It can buy me time. And it can get me to places I want to go. And purchase a way of life for me. Not…" She shook her head dismally at the huge canvas that hung along the dining room wall, still visible through the kitchen entryway. "Not paintings that look like someone came in from the rain and wiped their feet on them."

Thomas studied her in silence for a moment, then, "What about jewelry?" he asked.

She didn't follow him. "What about it?"

"You don't like jewelry?" he said. "I thought all women went for that. Diamonds. Sapphires. Emeralds."

She laughed at that. "Oh, yeah, right. Do I seem like a diamond and emerald person to you?"

He seemed to give that some thought, too. But not for long. "No," he said. "You don't." And he sounded surprised when he said it.

"I don't care about stuff like that," she told him.

"Clothes?" he asked.

"Oh, I like clothes a lot," she agreed enthusiastically. "But I like old stuff. Vintage stuff. The kind of stuff most people's moms put out on the curb."

"Cars?" he asked.

"Thomas, you know yourself that I don't own a car."

"But if you did own one, what would it be?"

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "Volkswagen, probably. They're kind of cute. But I like the old bugs better than the new ones."

He nodded at that, but he still seemed to be thinking hard about something. "So then, if you met some guy who had a ton of cash on hand, you probably wouldn't be too impressed, would you?"

"On the contrary," she said. "I doubt I'd want to have anything much to do with him."

"Why not?"

"People who have lots of money have it because they've worked hard to have lots of money, and they stayed focused so they can have lots of money," she said. "I won't say money becomes the most important thing to them, because that's not true in all cases. But people who have a lot of money have a lot of responsibilities. And they have to spend a good part of their life making money, and a good part keeping it. Money is definitely their focus. I would never be a priority with a man like that. His priority would be his job or his investments or his portfolio. He'd be more concerned with his wealth than he would be with me. And me, when it happens for real, I want to be the center of man's universe."

"Why?" Thomas asked.

She met his gaze levelly when she told him, "Because when it happens for real, he'll be the center of mine."

Selby wasn't sure just when it had happened, or why, but as she and Thomas had talked about money and such, they'd started moving closer to each other, narrowing the space of the room between them. So by the time she told him that any man she'd get involved with—for real—would become the center of her universe, she was standing nearly toe to toe with him, a mere breath of air separating their bodies. So it was no trouble at all for Thomas to reach out to her. And it was no trouble at all for Selby to lean into him when he did.

And the next thing she knew, he was kissing her, only not the way he had that night outside her front door, all desperate and demanding and fierce. This time when Thomas kissed her, he was gentle and solicitous and tender, as if this time he was confident of the outcome and was content to take his time.

"Thomas, we can't do this here," Selby whispered when he dipped his head to brush soft butterfly kisses along her throat.

"Of course we can," he whispered back. Kiss. Kiss. Flick of the tongue. Kiss. "We can do this anywhere. That's the beauty of it."

"But this is someone's home," she objected halfheartedly. "Someone
else's
home. Neither of us lives here. We don't have any right."

"The owner won't mind," he said as he brushed his lips over her cheek and along her jaw. "I promise you."

"Of course he'll mind. Two people having sex in his home when he's not here?"

Thomas halted at that and pulled away from her enough to gaze down into her face. "Is that what we're going to do?"

Only then did Selby realize just how explicitly she'd spoken. Just how explicitly she felt. "Aren't we?" she asked.

He smiled then, a wicked, wanton, downright devilish smile. "We can use one of the guest rooms," he said as he lowered his head to hers and covered her mouth again.

"But—"

"Shhh," he murmured as he kissed her. Again and again and again.

Selby, though, was adamant. Well, sort of. "H-how do you know which ones are the guest rooms?" she asked, her body melting into his, her hands, even as she protested, curling around his nape to pull him closer still.

"I'll take a wild guest…"

And then he kissed Selby again, harder this time, deeper this time, and all her reservations fled. She didn't care about anything then except Thomas. Thomas and the way he made her feel. Thomas and the fact that she had wanted him this way almost since the night she'd met him. And maybe even before she'd met him. Because she'd dreamed about finding a man like him since she was a girl, one who was decent and kind and honest and good. Maybe Thomas Brown wasn't the most polished guy in the world, and maybe he didn't have the greatest prospects when it came to a career. But he was a good guy. Selby knew that much. And that was exactly the kind of man she'd always hoped to find. One who would appreciate her because of who she was—and, even more important, because of who she wasn't. One who would value her. One who would treat her with respect.

One who would love her. The same way she loved him.

Because she knew then that she had fallen in love with Thomas at some point. She must have. Otherwise she wouldn't be standing here with him now, in the home of a total stranger, caring about nothing except being with him in the most intimate way two people can be together. She wanted to share herself with him. All of herself. And that could only be because she was in love. Because she'd never shared all of herself with anyone before.

And then she stopped analyzing, because he slanted his mouth over hers and ran the tip of his tongue along her lower lip before skating it into her mouth. She welcomed him willingly, stroking her tongue against his as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. And in that moment, it was. Because in that moment, nothing had ever felt more right than having Thomas hold her this way, in this place, at this time, the rest of the world be damned.

He dropped his hand to her hip, moving his fingers inward until he found the place where her T-shirt joined her jeans and jerked it free. He bunched the fabric in his hand, then dragged it and his fingers back up along her heated flesh, skimming his fingertips along her ribs until he encountered the lower band of her bra. But he wasn't put off by so delicate an obstacle, because he pushed the fabric higher and let his hand wander over her in a more intimate exploration. And as he covered her completely with his hand, he buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, nipping the tender flesh lightly with his teeth, then laving the wound with his tongue as she softly cried out.

Selby dropped her hands to the hem of his sweater, pushing the garment higher until his chest was virtually bared. His skin was warm and alive beneath her fingertips, the finely sculpted musculature feeling like steel-fortified silk. As she tangled her fingers in the dark hair on his chest, Thomas pulled away from her long enough to shed the sweater completely, then went to work on the fly of Selby's jeans. He fumbled with the zipper twice, cursing quietly when his fingers failed him. Then he slowly… slowly…
oh,
so slowly… dragged the fastening open, dipping his hand unapologetically between the denim and her cotton panties, making Selby gasp.

"Thomas, no," she said softly, reluctantly.

"Selby, yes," he replied quietly, confidently.

And then he pushed his hand lower, extending one long finger to caress her in a place no man had touched before, and she had no desire to protest again. No, after that, her desire was for something else entirely. Thomas must have detected that, because he petted her again, channeling his fingers deeper into the damp creases of her flesh, sending a shudder coursing through her body she wasn't sure she'd survive.

"Oh, God, Thomas," she gasped. "That feels so… oh.
Oh. OH!"

Her eyes fluttered closed as he continued to stroke her, and the sensations that shot through Selby, one after another, dizzied her, weakened her, but made her want so much more.

"Thomas," she finally said on a hoarse whisper, "make love to me. Please. I want you so bad."

"Bad, huh?" he said as he rubbed his fingers against her, inside her, again. When she opened her eyes, she saw that he was smiling. "Well, then, Selby, I'll do my best to be bad for you."

And without awaiting a reply, he scooped her into his arms and carried her out of the kitchen. Selby had the sensation of movement, but Thomas was kissing her again, so she looped her arms around his neck and held on tight. Not that she was afraid he would drop her, but for some reason she was worried about falling…