Even though his father dating her mother could only end in complete disaster, Faith looked so distressed, he had to laugh.
“Oh.” She pointed at him. Her short nails were painted a light pink. “You think that’s funny? The man who never laughs?”
“I laugh.”
She turned her slim finger toward her chest. “At me!”
“Well, you’re so freaked out, it’s funny.” She also looked a little indignant and cute and sexy, standing there in her pink shirt and boots.
“If you’d seen what I saw, you’d be freaked too.”
“Believe me. I have seen it.” Pavel had never purposely flaunted his sexual exploits, but he’d never been all that discreet. “The first time was when I was about seven.” He’d walked into the living room and seen his father having sex on his mother’s antique credenza. His mother hadn’t been home at the time.
Her pink lips parted and she gasped. “I was five! And she’s sneaking him in at night and he leaves before I get up in the morning. He’s like a ghost. If they weren’t so loud, I wouldn’t know he was there.”
Ah. That explained his father’s sudden disappearances and sudden reappearances. Ty hadn’t seen much of the old man, and figured it had to have something to do with a woman.
“And they kick Pebbles out and make her sleep with me.”
“Pebbles?”
“My mother’s dog.” She pushed her hair behind her ears and dropped her arms to her sides. “Pebbles hates me and the feeling is mutual. She snaps and snarls at me all the time. Except when she needs something. Like a place to sleep.”
He tilted his head to one side and looked at her. “Why don’t you kick her out?”
“I tried,” she said through a sigh. “But she looks at me with those beady little eyes and I just can’t be that mean. Now every time Pebbles jumps in bed with me, I know that Pavel’s in the other room getting naked with my mom.” She made a face and shook her head. “I probably wouldn’t be so disturbed if it wasn’t my mother moaning and carrying on like someone is killing her.”
It wasn’t the sort of reaction he’d expect out of a former stripper and Playmate. Especially an unrepentant stripper and Playmate. He didn’t really know what he’d expected. Maybe someone who thought sex was no big deal, no matter who was having it. At least, that had been the attitude of the strippers he’d known. “Huh.”
“Huh what?”
“For someone who used to get naked for a living, you seem all uptight about sex.”
“That was a job.” She shook her head as she looked into his eyes. “Stripping was never about sex.”
Which made no sense at all. A woman getting naked was always about sex. “Neither was Playboy,” she added.
She should tell that to all the guys who looked at her photos, because it sure as hell looked a lot like sex. At least it had to him. It had felt like it too. He thought of her wearing those pearls and felt his sac get tight. “Bullshit. You sold sex.”
She shrugged. “That was acting.”
He didn’t believe her, but all this talk about sex had him thinking of sliding his hands up the back of her jeans and cupping her smooth, bare behind as she put her hot moist mouth against his throat again. He needed to get out away from her, but he didn’t want to stand up just yet. His jeans were loose, but not that loose. “Again, I apologize for kissing you the other night.” He looked at his Rolex as if he had somewhere else to go. “I’d had a few too many beers. That’s not an excuse, and I’m sorry.”
She took the hint—thank the Lord—and reached for her purse on the nearby chair. “It was inappropriate on both our parts,” she said.
“Let’s just chalk it up to alcohol and forget it happened.”
“I can do that.” She hung the gold chain strap over one shoulder. “Can you?”
He was going to try like hell. “Absolutely. You have my word that it won’t happen again.” She stood before him like a sexual buffet that he wanted to dive into headfirst. “You could run around naked in front of me and I wouldn’t do a thing.”
She raised one skeptical brow. “Really?”
“Yep.” He lowered his gaze down the full curves beneath her shirt then back up again. “You could go ahead and whip that top off and I’d just sit here kind of bored.”
“You wouldn’t move a muscle?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’d probably yawn.”