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She heard his breath hiss between his teeth. “Look, Ms. Robson,” he began again in what she was sure were determinedly measured tones, “you don’t seem to understand. Your staying here is not an option. You can take my offer of a very nice studio apartment for the next six months or you can simply pack up and leave. You can’t stay here.”
Neely turned her body slightly so she could look down over her shoulder at him in the twilight. He looked big and imposing even below her, and she was grateful for the ladder’s height. “On the contrary, Mr. Savas,” she said in measured tones of her own. “I certainly can stay here. I have a lease. As in a legally binding contract. An agreement,” she added with saccharine sweetness. “In writing. Frank’s Cath is an attorney. She wanted to be sure he had all his legal i’s dotted and t’s crossed. Ironclad, she said. I believe her. Just try to weasel out of it.” The smile she gave him would have challenged the Cheshire cat’s.
His jaw tightened. “Then I’ll buy you out of it.”
Neely shrugged. “Sell me the houseboat. I offered Frank good money.”
“And couldn’t come up with it, apparently.”
Neely bristled. “I’m good for it. I have a good job, good prospects.”
He snorted. She’d never heard so much derision in a single sound. Now it was her turn to frown. “What’s that for?”
“Your prospects.” His tone was disparaging. “Is that what you’re calling Max these days? I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear it.”
“Max?” Neely’s jaw dropped as his meaning became clear. He thought she was…using Max?
She stared, openmouthed. Then abruptly she snapped her mouth shut. She’d have liked to tip the paint can over on his arrogant head.
At her silence he shrugged. “And I see you’re not denying it.”
“I most certainly am denying it!”
“Well, don’t bother. Just because he’s too blind to see what you’re after doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”
Neely’s fingers strangled the paintbrush. She wished they were strangling Sebastian Savas’s strong muscular neck. “The rest of you?” she forced the words past her lips. “Who exactly?”
“Me for one. Gladys.”
“Max’s secretary thinks I’m out to use him?”
“Oh, she’s delighted you’re humanizing him.” Sebastian sneered at her. “I can think of another word for it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him frostily.
A sardonic brow lifted. “Don’t I?”
“No, Mr. Savas, you don’t. And you shouldn’t presume.” So saying, she wrenched around and set to painting again. Slap, slap, slap. God, she was furious at him! She was positively steaming.
“So, what’s it going to take to shift you, Ms. Robson?” he persisted. “What’s your price?”
Neely ignored him. The sun had almost set. She needed to turn on the light if she were going to actually see that she was accomplishing something. But then again, who cared? If this was Sebastian Savas’s houseboat now, not hers, why should she bother to paint at all?
Because it was hers, damn it!
She was the one who had painted it, who had coddled it, who had taken care of it when Frank was more interested in just moving in with Cath. He’d promised her!
Maybe she should have taken Max up on his offer.
When it had become clear to him that he was never going to talk her out of her independence and into his glass and stone and cedar palace overlooking the sound, he’d said he would help her finance it.
Neely had refused, too stubborn, too proud to let him.
“No,” she’d said firmly. “I appreciate the offer. Thank you. But I want to do it myself.”
And look what it got her—out on her ear.
If Mr. Jump-to-Conclusions, Look-Down-His-Nose-At-Her Savas only knew Max had already offered, he’d blow a gasket. But then, obviously Sebastian thought he did know—everything. Pompous jerk.
He didn’t even want her houseboat. Not really. She was sure of it. He had a use for it now, though she had no idea what. But ultimately he’d move back to his penthouse.
She set down the brush and deliberately turned to look down at him once more. “What’s your price, Mr. Savas?”
“My price?” He looked startled.
But then his insolent gaze started at her bare feet and took its time sliding up the length of her legs, making her supremely aware of exactly what he seemed to be assessing.
Neely felt her cheeks begin to burn and she wanted to kick his smug face even as she waited for what would certainly be an unpleasant suggestion. And she had only herself to blame because she’d asked for it.
But then slowly he shook his head. “You don’t have anything I’d want to buy, Ms. Robson.”
Oh, God, she wanted to kick him.
But before she could react at all, Cody and Harm burst into the room as only thirteen-year-old boys and one-year-old blood-hounds can do. “We’re back! Harm got in the mud and I need a towel and—”
Cody wasn’t reckoning on a stranger on the boat. Harm loved strangers. Actually he loved everyone. There was no accounting for taste.
Still, in this case, Neely couldn’t complain. One look at a man on the deck and Harm broke loose from Cody’s grasp. Sebastian had moved the box to pursue her onto the deck. It wasn’t keeping the kittens in the living room. And it certainly didn’t stop Harm as he shot straight through the living room.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Hang on.”
Too late.
A ninety-seven-pound missile of canine enthusiasm launched his joyful muddy self at Sebastian Savas—and sent them both straight over the railing into the water!
As much as Neely would have loved to stand there and laugh, it would be just her luck for Sebastian to be a nonswimmer. Bad enough that he would probably sue her and her dog for everything she might ever own.
She scrambled down the ladder as he sputtered to the surface, water streaming down his face. “Are you all right?”
She wished he would yell or shout or even threaten her. She wouldn’t even mind if he tried to strangle her dog.
He didn’t. Jaw set, he took the two strokes necessary to reach the side of the houseboat, then began to haul himself out of the water. He didn’t say a word.
Neely watched with wary fascination, expecting to see steam coming off him, and supposing he would be entitled if it did. Two of the kittens were peering over the railing, leaning perilously close to falling in. Harm was dog-paddling cheerfully and grinning at her.
Staying well out of Sebastian’s way as he clambered over the railing, Neely scooped up the kittens, then stuck them back in the living room and dragged the box in front of the open doorway again.
“I told you not to move the box,” she pointed out to Sebastian as he dripped. “I’m, um, sorry,” she added. Though it would have been more convincing if she’d been able to wipe the smile off her face.
Sebastian, of course, didn’t acknowledge it. He turned to watch Harm paddling around the side of the houseboat to clamber up onto the dock.
“I’ll go get ’im,” Cody volunteered quickly, and darted out the front door to do so before anyone could blame him.
But Neely certainly wasn’t blaming him. And Sebastian still didn’t say anything.
She found it amazing that even dripping wet he could still look unflappable. The man really was inhuman.
And then he murmured, “More harm than good?” in a quiet reflective tone that made her blink. And blink again.
Was that a sense of humor?
She wasn’t sure. “Er, yes.” She laughed nervously. Probably it wasn’t.
Sebastian nodded gravely. “Does he do it often?”
Her lips twitched. “Knock people in the water? More often than I’d like, actually. Mostly it’s me, though. I’ve learned not to stand by the railing when he’s excited. He’s still a puppy. Just a year old.” Was that sufficient excuse? Probably not.
“I am sorry,” she said again, finally managing not to smile. She snagged up the last escapee kitten and clutched it in front of her as if it were a shield.
Green eyes met hers. “No, you’re not.”
Their gazes met again. And Neely remembered the first time they had confronted each other—over her “fluffy ideas” and his “phallic skyscrapers.” Something had sizzled then. And Neely, feeling it, had darted away, telling herself it was irritation.
Of course there was irritation now. In spades.
But there was more. If there had been steam before, there certainly was now, as well as something hot and electric and very very intense that seemed to snap between them.
Neely felt an unaccountable urge to fling herself into the cold Lake Union water.
Deliberately she took a deep breath, then strove for a calm she didn’t feel as she met his gaze squarely and said, “You’re right. I’m not.”
And who knows how long they might have stood there, gazes dueling, heat and awareness crackling, if Cody hadn’t returned with Harm just then?
“Got ’im. At least he’s not muddy anymore.” Cody looked hopefully at Neely, then his gaze went straight to Sebastian.
Neely went in and took the dog by the collar. “Thanks,” she said to Cody. But he barely seemed to notice her. He was craning his neck to see past her toward the man still dripping on the deck.
“Who’s he?” he asked.
“A man I work with.”
“Your new neighbor,” Sebastian said firmly, coming in the door.
Cody’s eyes widened and he looked a bit worried as he turned for confirmation to Neely. “Really? Where d’you live?”
“Here.”
That did make Cody’s eyes bug. “With Neely?”
“No!” they both said in unison.
“I’m not moving,” Neely said flatly.
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
Cody looked from one to the other nervously. “I got homework,” he said. “Math. Lots of it. Gotta go.” And he darted out the door before either of them could say a word.
In the silence that followed his departure, Harm shook himself vigorously, getting Neely almost as wet as Sebastian. She hauled the dog into the kitchen and began to dry him.
Sebastian came after her, loomed over her, still dripping. “I’m not leaving,” he told her.
Neely looked up and met his stony gaze. “Neither am I.”
“I own this boat.”
She took a careful breath. “And I have a lease to rent a room on it for the next six months.”
“I made you an offer of a better place to stay.”
“Oh, sure. With a dog and five kittens, two rabbits and a guinea pig?”
His jaw tightened. He glared.
Neely shrugged. “I’m staying, Mr. Savas. And if you don’t like it, that’s tough.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_279a30c7-8514-5ae5-b744-80ad8a8ffbfe)
“THAT,” Neely said when Frank opened the door to Cath’s apartment the next morning, “was low.”
She had been fuming all night, pacing and prowling. But only in her room, because Sebastian Savas had taken over. He’d come down from his shower, all clean and pressed looking and set up his computer on the desk by the window.
“My desk?” he’d asked with one raised brow.
“Your desk,” Neely had replied through her teeth.
And so he’d set to work in the living room. And she’d gone upstairs to fume because she certainly had no intention of betraying how upset she was to her new landlord.
She had no qualms about telling Frank exactly how she felt, though. “Really low. Sneaky, in fact,” she said now.
The look on Frank’s face said that he would have shut the door on her and bolted it fast if he thought he could get away with it.
He couldn’t. She’d have ripped it off its hinges to tell him her opinion of what he’d done.
“Um, hi, Neely. I, er…good morning.” He peered at her from behind the door as if it were a shield. As far as Neely was concerned, he needed one.
“Good, Frank?” She raised a brow. “Not exactly.” And determinedly she strode straight past the door, backing him into the living room and flinging the door shut behind her.
“Just a minute. Hang on now—” Frank was backpedaling and glancing behind him, as if to see if the window was open and might provide an escape route, no matter that they were on the third floor.
