"What will you do?"
I shrug one shoulder. "Donnae know. May have to go back to Chicago."
"Stay with me."
My eyes widen as I blink several times, sure I must've misheard. "What?"
"I have a spare bedroom. You, um, can stay here with me. As long as you understand this does not mean I'm going to sleep with you."
"Not yet."
She tries to look stern but can't quite pull it off. "Not ever."
"You want me, and we both know it." I take hold of her right hand, guiding it to my groin until her palm covers my semi-hard cock with only a single layer of denim between my skin and hers. "And you know how much I want you."
She pulls her hand away from my crotch. "You can stay here. But do try to behave yourself."
I grin. "Why? You don't behave yourself with me."
Before she can think of any reasons not to let me stay here, I trot out the front door to retrieve my bags from the hired car. I can't believe she offered to let me stay in her house, and she rushed to make that offer. I'd expected she'd need a minute or two to consider the idea. But no, she blurted out her offer the second I said I might need to go back to Chicago. Though I could go back to Erica's house, I'm glad I don't need to do that.
Calli will be my roommate.
I saunter back into the house carrying my things. "Where am I, then?"
"Follow me." Calli guides me to the far end of the hall where an open door leads into a bedroom. She points at another door, on the left, one that faces sideways to the other bedroom that must be hers. "There's the spare room. Bed's made, and extra pillows are in the closet."
I glance from the spare room to her bedroom, a mere arm's length away. "You want me close, don't you? Convenient for midnight cravings."
"You are incorrigible."
I smile brightly. "Thank you."
"I think you're the strangest man I've ever met."
"You like the way I make you feel, though." Setting my bags down, I sling an arm around her waist. "One of these nights, maybe you'll show me how you touch yourself."
Her mouth opens, but she seems unable to speak.
"Think about it," I say, then I pick up my bags.
While I lug my things into the spare room, I feel better than I have in a long time. Seona hasn't harassed me today, and if she tries to ring me again, I won't answer. Her problems don't matter to me anymore. Whatever she blames me for, I have no time to waste on thinking about it. I'm sleeping in Calli's house. She let me give her an orgasm. The lass wants me and likes me, that much I'm sure of, and she's granting me unlimited time to show her we can be good together as a couple.
How long will it take for me to seduce her?
A few days at most. She wants me that much.
Chapter Eleven
After lunch, I need to change my shirt because one of the puppies had spilled tomato sauce all over me when she tried to leap up onto my lap and give me a "doggie smooch," as Calli called it. I had offered to make lunch. The lasses always love it when I cook for them, especially since they assume I don't know what a spatula is, much less how to whip up spaghetti and meatballs. My sisters know how to cook, but every man in my family also picked up that skill because our mother insisted we learn. Sorcha MacTaggart doesn't let her sons get away with claiming manly immunity.
"You will learn how to cook," she'd told me when I was fifteen and complaining about having to help her make dinner. "No son of mine will force his wife to do all the household work. You'll learn how to dust and polish the table too."
And I had learned. I doubt Ma drilled all of that into me so the lasses would be impressed, but that has been an unexpected benefit of my mother's approach to child-rearing.
I want bairns of my own—so I can torture them with feather dusters and bread kneading. No, that's not the only reason I want bairns. Since I met Calli, I want sons and daughters of my own more than I ever have before.
After we ate, I had insisted on cleaning up. Calli seemed surprised, but in a good way. When she tried to help anyway, I chased her out of the kitchen.