She hit a nerve. She could tell from the way his features hardened and his eyes narrowed into slits. Not that she had a clue why she’d brought it up in the first place. Thanks to her mediocre Internet-searching skills, she’d only managed to dig up a few details about Ben’s involvement with Gretchen Goodrich, but enough to suspect how touchy a subject it must be.
Goodrich, heiress to a salad dressing empire and wife of an Academy Award-winning director, had lost the battle with breast cancer three months ago, and from what Maggie read, she’d left Ben close to ten million dollars in her will. The press hinted at an affair between Ben and the fifty-three-year-old heiress, but since there was no evidence or confirmation of that, Maggie had decided it was most likely a rumor. Still, Ben must have been pretty close to the woman if she’d left him a part of her fortune…
“You can’t believe everything you read,” Ben said in a mild tone. The frown left his face, but his stiff posture said he was still on edge.
Before she could say anything else, he breezed past her, bare feet padding against the tiled floor. She figured he would head for Summer’s room to get dressed, so when he flopped down on the living room couch and reached for the remote control, she bolted to her feet and scurried into the living room.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I just told you, I’ve got tons of stuff to do.”
“I’ll wait.” He flipped on the TV and turned it to ESPN.
“You can’t wait,” she said, exasperation climbing up her chest. “I have a really busy day.”
Ben pressed the mute button and shot her an expectant look. “Doing what?”
“You want me to write you a list?”
“No, a verbal break-down would be fine.”
Oh, she’d give him a verbal break-down, all right. She didn’t care how sexy he looked in those jeans or how enticing his chest was. It was Sunday, and Sunday was her day. The only day she didn’t work or volunteer or take notes in a classroom. Sure, she spent the free time studying and doing homework, but it was free time nonetheless.
“I have to finish writing a paper,” she said, setting her jaw. “Then I have to research child abuse law and make notes so I can write another paper. Then I need to study for my exams.” She took a breath. “And when I’m done all that, I was going to wax my legs. Satisfied?”
He furrowed his dark brows. “Why do you wax your legs when the only guy who sees them comes to town twice a year?”
“Sometimes three times,” she snapped. “And I don’t need to justify my leg-waxing routines to you. So get dressed and go do some movie star things like, I don’t know, golfing or staring at your reflection in store windows.”
The laugh he gave sounded like honeyed sandpaper. “Is that what you think movie stars do?”
“I don’t care what you do,” she replied, starting to grow annoyed. “I just want you to go away. My schoolwork requires silence.”
“So I’ll be quiet.” He shrugged and directed his attention back to the sports highlight reel flashing across the TV screen.
It took all her willpower not to pull her own hair out by the roots. What did he want from her? Obviously not sex, considering he hadn’t touched her since last night.
“You’re seriously not going to leave?” Her voice was a cross between a squeak and a groan, with a growl thrown in for good measure.
Ben’s blue eyes never left the screen. “Nope.”
“But…I…you…just keep the volume down!”
Spinning on her heel, she stormed into her bedroom and cursed herself for not being strong enough to physically throw him out.
As she got dressed, she heard him chuckling from the other room.
Because he’d taken a vow of silence, Ben spent most of the afternoon fighting back soundless laughter and watching television with the volume off and the captions on. In the dining room, Maggie sat at her small desk, typing away on the computer keyboard and stopping every now and then to rustle through the pages of a textbook the size of an encyclopedia.
She’d been working for hours, her eyes glued to the monitor, her fingers on the keyboard, and the way she kept biting her bottom lip in concentration made Ben want to walk over there and capture that plump lip with his teeth.
He wasn’t quite sure why he was forcing his presence on her, especially after last night. If any other woman had grumbled that much about the idea of fucking him, he’d have shook her hand goodbye and moved on.
This morning he’d asked himself if pursuing a woman who viewed sex as a complication was worth the hassle. He had nothing against playing hard to get, but in Maggie’s case, it went beyond a coy little game. She seemed genuinely annoyed with him. And what was the deal with her whole ‘I have sex twice a year’ declaration?
Their night at the Lester Hotel proved she was a passionate woman, so why did she save all that passion for that loser Tony, a guy who offered a few clandestine trysts a year?