Page 53 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

But he washere. In hercabin. They werealone, and, oh God, all she could think about was sex. Which was wrong. So, so, so wrong. She was not going to have sex with him. They couldn’t even kiss without getting into a fight. My God, what would they do after sex?

Stop. Thinking. About. Sex.

“What did you want to talk about?” Was that her, sounding high-pitched and panicked? She needed to employ some of her usual office calm. Except that was half the reason theyhada problem—she couldn’t seem to learn how to separate things.

“The other night.”

“Oh.” Oh. She focused on scraping the cookies off the pan and lining them up on a cooling rack.

“We should clear the air. We do have to work together after all.”

He sounded so calm and rational, damn him. If they’d been having this conversation anywhere else, she might have had the wherewithal to put those masks she wore so well in place.

But he washere. Where she lived. Where she slept and showered and had maybe had a few inappropriate thoughts about the man standing in her kitchen.

More than a few, if she was honest. She hadn’t exactly done benign imagining either. OhGod, she could not think aboutthatwhen he was standing right there. In her house. Her house.

“Monica?”

“What?”

He tilted his head, studying her all too closely. “You okay? Your face is all red.”

“Oh, just…the stove. Heat.” She gestured stupidly. “The heat from the stove.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m great. Great.” She shoved a cookie in her mouth. “Great,” she repeated between chewing.

“You’re acting really weird.”

“You’re in myhouse.”

“So?”

“So? So.” She swallowed her cookie. “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!”

He grinned at that, and it was not fair. Not fair he could grin like that and her whole stomach would drop and parts of her body she’d thought long since dead would spring to thrumming life.

“I don’t know how you want to clear the air, Gabe. I… You think I’m out to get you or something, and I’m not. But nothing I say can convince you of that because you’ve decided actions speak louder than words. Well, Gabe, words and actions aren’t that simple. People aren’t that simple. Sometimes people say and do things that don’t make sense to someone else, and sometimes…you say and do things to protect yourself, purposefully or just instinctually.”

“What are you protecting yourself from?” he asked, his grin gone, arms crossed over his chest. He looked so intimidating, closed off. Funny, that wasn’t what she was protecting herself from.

But it was a fair question, and in that fair question, she found a little bit of her courage. Whatwasshe afraid of? A man? One she might be attracted to? It was silly, but it also made sense.

She took a deep breath and then went ahead and blurted it out. “I haven’t been with anyone since my husband.”

His eyebrows shot up, but that was his only reaction. She swallowed, encouraging herself to keep talking. Clear the air? Well, that was good and healthy. So that’s what she’d do.

“I was twenty when he died. I was basically a child myself, even though I had a child. So, I didn’t…date or anything. At first it was grief and Colin, then it was a time issue, and it just spiraled until… Well, you know, I don’t think I’d had a sexual thought in about five years or something.”

He muttered something that sounded a lot likeJesus, but she kept going.

“Iamattracted to you, which is a first since all that. And the thing is…being a therapist has become armor I get to hide behind. I used it when I was still sad about Dex. Told people everything was great because I was going to school and I was going to help people. I used it to talk myself out of my Colin anxiety. Oh, it’s normal after a tragedy to have certain worries, but if I acknowledge them, it’s totally fine. I’m mentally healthy because I am a mental health professional.”

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