Temptation

“And me,” Neil chimed in.

Good grief, didn’t anyone sleep in on Sunday mornings anymore? She threw open the door and planted herself squarely in their path, as if that would bar them if they were intent on coming in.

“To what do I owe all this?” she asked.

“We were on our way out to brunch, when Jason came along and suggested we all go together,” Terry explained, not quite meeting her eyes. “Get moving, dollface. We’re starved.”

Somehow Callie didn’t believe for an instant that this could be explained away as innocently as Terry was suggesting. “You just happened to meet in the hall?” she asked skeptically.

“Cross my heart,” Jason swore.

“Ditto,” Terry said.

“Neil, you’re awfully quiet,” Callie observed. “Do you have a different version you’d like to share?”

Neil exchanged a highly suspect look with Terry’s boss, then shook his head. “Nope.”

“Satisfied?” Jason asked.

Callie supposed she was going to have to be. Based on prior experience, she knew a woman didn’t have a chance of getting at the truth if men conspired to keep it from her. Her ex-husband had kept quite a lot of truths from her. It had tarnished her views on the male of the species for all time.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said, turning away and leaving them to decide for themselves whether to wait inside or out.

When she emerged from her bedroom fifteen minutes later, she found them sprawled all over her living room furniture. Jason was settled in an easy chair, glancing through a magazine. Terry was stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed. Neil was perched awkwardly on a dainty chair meant for someone far smaller than his six feet two.

Callie gathered from the lack of clutter that Neil had spent most of the time tidying up as he did every time he walked into her apartment. Neil was compulsively neat, which probably explained why Terry retreated to her place so often. His own always looked as if it was about to be photographed for some interior-design magazine.

“Ready?” Jason inquired, glancing up. “Ah, I see we’re back to casual wear.”

Callie’s cheeks burned at the implied criticism. It was true, she had deliberately tugged on a decrepit pair of jeans that had been ripped or worn through in several places. She’d topped the jeans with a badly wrinkled T-shirt in a fetching shade of faded blue.

“The peekaboo effect is really quite enticing,” Terry observed. “Don’t you think so, Jason?”

“That’s certainly one word for it,” he agreed.

Callie frowned. “I don’t have to come along.”

“Yes,” Jason said. “You do.”

“Says who?” she shot back.

“Play nice, children,” Terry instructed. “We’re all going.”

He ushered them out the door with the skill of a parent dealing with a couple of squabbling toddlers. Callie was pretty sure she saw him glance at Neil and roll his eyes. She couldn’t say she blamed him. There was some evidence that he was dealing with a couple of stubborn, spoiled brats. Callie resolved to behave for the rest of the morning. It wasn’t Terry’s or Neil’s fault that she and Jason couldn’t spend more than twenty minutes together before tempers flared.

She was about to fall into step with Terry, when Jason linked his arm through hers and pulled her alongside him.

“You know why you’re so cranky, don’t you?” he inquired with a lazy drawl, pitched for her ears only.

She had noticed before that he lapsed into something bordering on a Southern accent whenever it suited him. “Where are you from?” she asked, hoping to divert his attention. She’d guessed from his comment that whatever was on his mind was likely to set her teeth on edge.

“Virginia,” he said. “Trying to change the subject?”

“You bet.”

“I don’t blame you. Acknowledging that you’re sexually frustrated must be embarrassing.”

Callie stopped in her tracks, causing Terry and Neil to come up short or run right over her. Hands on hips, she scowled up at Jason.

“How dare you!”

“Actually, I dare quite a lot,” he said. “Come on. You’re blocking traffic.”

She dug in her heels. “I wouldn’t go anywhere with you if you had the key to a buried treasure worth millions,” she declared flatly.

Terry groaned. Neil sighed heavily.

“Well, I wouldn’t,” she insisted. “I’m going home.”

Jason shook his head. “See what I mean? She’s frustrated.”

Terry regarded the pair of them worriedly. “Jason, could I give you just the teeniest bit of advice? Pointing out that Callie is sexually frustrated may not be the most diplomatic, gentlemanly thing to do.”

“No, it’s not,” Callie concurred. “Especially since it’s his fault.”

The last slipped out before she realized the implication. “Oh, jeez,” she murmured, covering her face with her hands as Terry murmured, “My, my, Mr. Kane. I gave you more credit than that.”

It was Neil who took pity on her. He tucked an arm around her waist and urged her forward. “Pay no attention to the two of them. They’re in television, you know. No class. No manners.”

“You’re telling me,” she retorted, scowling at her two tormentors.

Neil continued to soothe her with his sympathetically derisive analysis of their companions. Before she realized it, he had guided her down the street and straight to a table at a sidewalk café near Lincoln Center. Terry and Jason, apparently content to let Neil smooth over the troubled waters they’d stirred up, slid up to the table as quietly as the pair of snakes they were.

When Jason hitched his chair a little too close to hers, Callie shot him a venomous look. He rested his arm across the back of her seat, then tugged her menu over so he could share it. There was a cozy sort of intimacy to his behavior that truly irked her under the circumstances.

“Do you have any idea how furious I am with you?” she inquired curiously.

“About?”

“That little remark you made back there.”

“Just telling the truth.”

“Don’t you think the topic called for a little discretion?”

“What’s wrong? We’re among friends.”

“My friends,” she pointed out. “Why would you say something like that in front of anyone?”