Page 34 of My Favorite Mistake

“There’s no reason why you can’t come to afriendgathering, Liza. My friends don’t bite.”

“I know that. But, I mean, it’s the weekend. You’d probably rather hang out with them anyway. I would think you were ready to get me out of your hair,”

“I’m pretty sure if I want someone out of my hair, I don’t kiss them like that,” he said pointedly, cutting his gaze toward her.

Liza pulled her still-swollen lips between her teeth, and her cheeks colored. “And I’m sure later you’ll accuse me of being unprofessional.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe you’ll even call me aslut.”

He turned his head to scowl at her, but she maintained her gaze on the pothole-riddled road. “Why the hell would I call you that?”

“Because that’s what men call women they don’t care about when said women engage in physical intimacy with them.”

Connor uttered a quick, sarcastic laugh as he turned his face toward the road.

You are so fucking clueless,he thought,but that’s my fault.

It was also the way it had to be. For her own safety, she needed to believe that he didn’t want her. Butwantingandcaringwere two different things. While he couldn’t let on that there was still nothing more in the world that he wanted than her, Connor was suddenly gripped with the necessity to prove to her that he cared about her.

“Well, I guess that issometimestrue. However, if said mendocare about said women, they’d never say such a thing about them.”

Liza pulled up to another stop sign, and silence enveloped the small space in the car. And just so she couldn’t misunderstand him, and because it was a perfect opportunity to indulge himself one last time, he picked up her hand off the steering wheel, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it as he met her hard gaze.

“I’ve never called anyone that and never will. And even if I were the type of man to say something like that, I sure as hell wouldn’t say it about you.”

“Ha!” Liza pulled her hand away. “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”

The little rejection stung, but Connor knew he deserved it. He folded his arms across his chest and stared out the front window, and now this was a damn challenge. “Yeah, we will see about it, won’t we?”

“We will.”

Spite and assurance dripped from her words, andohhh yes.They certainly would see.

Shewould see that he cared. She would see it so clearly that it would call into question in her mind the idea that he ever hated her to begin with. And that was dicey because his self-control was obviously limited, and the only thing keeping her safe from him was her believing he hated her.

But it was worth the risk. The moment his lips touched hers after so long, his veins became infused with a necessity forsomething. And the onlysomethinghe could make happen without hurting Liza was assuring she knew he cared about her. A weak consolation prize for what he really wanted, but it would have to do.

9

Algiers Point, New Orleans

Kissing Connor was abadidea.

Liza’s body seemed to be blind and deaf to the fact that Connor was the root of all pain in her life, and the brief kissing in the car left her aching in all the wrong places.

Places like her neglected lady parts.

And not to mention her battered, bruised heart.

It didn’t help that Connor exponentially improved at kissing over the years. Not that he was ever bad at it, but there’s a big difference between a twenty-two-year-old kid and a thirty-two-year-old who was clearlyall man.And now he knew she wanted him—at least, that her traitorous body wanted him. Given that he no longer cared for her in an emotional sense, she wouldn’t put it past him to pursue her as a supposedly easy source of physical pleasure.

That was going to have to be a big, fatno. And she was going to have to keep reminding herself that it’s a big fatno,because merely sitting in the car with him drowned her in his scent, and that only intensified the unfulfilled ache between her thighs.

Brennan’s distinctive,expensivegunmetal silver BMW was parked at the curb in front of the house next to Connor’s, and Liza pulled up behind it. “Are there any ground rules you need to make me aware of before we talk to Scott?”

Glancing at Connor’s profile, she could see his brow furrowed, and a frown on his face. He stared at something between his house and the one next door and didn’t blink as if caught in a trance.

“Connor?”

He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and then pushed the door open. “Let’s go if we’re going.”

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