Page 74 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

“You were the one who didn’t want to tell anyone,” he said, not wanting her anger anymore, because it was spurring his on. If he let his boil over…well, things could go wrong. All wrong.

Like earlier. Too much feeling. Too much want, and not the sexual kind.

“You agreed!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t care.”

She hefted out a breath, some mix of exasperation and some emotion he didn’t understand. Would prefer not to.

“I care,” she said, her voice grave, still standing all the way across the room.

“I know, hence the whole ‘let’s not tell anyone’ thingyousuggested.”

“No,” she said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest, holding his gaze. “I mean I care. About you. About this.” She waved her hands up in the air. “I have an obnoxiously big and uncomfortable amount ofcare.”

The panic was back. From this morning when she’d been sleepy and beautiful and he’d had this idiotic flash of desiring all the things he didn’t want, perfectly imagined in front of him. As if he wanted them so desperately he could conjure them out of thin air.

“No,” he said, putting the sandwich down carefully.

“No?”

He lifted his gaze to hers because he needed to make his point. Once and for all, so she couldn’t keep needling him, getting under his skin, changing who he was. “No.”

“Gabe, that wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.”

“I reject it.”

“You can’t…” She threw her arms up in the air. “I could punch you.”

He spread his arms wide. “Go ahead.”

“I wish I could be like you,” she said on one of those whispers that ripped out his soul and stomped on it a few times. “So damn untouchable, aren’t you?”

“That’s me.”

She laughed. Bitterly. “Do you think I’m that dumb, or are you just that good of a liar? Or do you just lie to yourself? You don’t seem like the type to believe your own lies, but I’ve been wrong about you before. I could be again.”

He didn’t say anything, though he had to clamp his jaw shut to make sure he didn’t. She wanted to think him untouchable, well, he’d prove it. All night long, just like this if he had to.

He’d survived far worse hells than Monica looking like she was about to cry, saying shit about him that was probably true.

She stepped toward him though, one foot, then the other, and he didn’t feel as good about his chances. He might have survived a grenade, a crash,war, but Monica Finley with that soft look in her eye, desperate and a little lost, was somehow worse.

“How do you do it? Lock it all away? I wish I could do that.”

“Ignore it and it’ll go away,” he managed to croak. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with bullies?”

“Bullies, maybe. Emotional issues, not so much.”

“We don’thaveto figure it out. Sometimes in life, you don’t figure things out. You just go on and nothing is figured out. That’s life.”

She paled and flinched as if he’d reached out and backhanded her.

She shook her head. “You have to figure things out to move forward.”

“No, you don’t.”

* * *

---