It wasn’t that she was a terrible cook—okay, yes, she was a terrible cook, but she enjoyed trying. Except with such an intense filming schedule, she had zero time. She was either at the studio or sleeping. Thank God she only had two more days to go.
And all of that, she thought as she detoured to her room to drop off her purse and kick off her flats, was just an attempt to distract herself from the fact that Noah was in her house. She could smell him in the air, and this time, there was no alcohol. Just Noah.
Warm and intrinsically male.
Fisting her hands, she made herself remember what he’d done, remember the sight of his body moving sinuously on another woman’s. It twisted up her gut, but the sick feeling was coupled with an anger that had been growing and growing and growing. Tonight it drove her out of the bedroom and to the kitchen, where Noah was stirring something on the stove.
He looked up with a wary smile, his jaw still shadowed but his hair clean and his T-shirt white, his jeans a faded blue. She knew those clothes, had been telling herself to throw them out since the hotel-room ugliness. Pathetic as it was, in the month after it happened, she’d hurt so much with missing him that she’d even put on his T-shirt once.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s not gourmet anything, but I found a pasta sauce mix in your pantry and some spaghetti.”
“Why?” she asked, the question too violent to be kept inside any longer. “Why did you do it, Noah?”
His expression grew dark. Switching off the stove, he gripped the edge of the counter. “Because that’s what I do, Kit,” he said, his voice gritty. “I fuck women. As many as I can.”
She flinched but didn’t back down. “Don’t you do that,” she said across the distance between them. “Don’t you give me some pat, Noah St. John-is-a-bad-boy answer. Did what we had together mean nothing to you?” They hadn’t slept together, hadn’t even kissed, but the thing growing between them, it had been rare, precious. And he’d shit all over it.
“It meant everything,” Noah snapped back, his eyes blazing at her with an intensity the world never saw. “But I’m never going to be that guy, Kit. The one who makes you happy.”
“I was happy. So were you.” She hadn’t imagined his crooked, sexy, private smile or the welcome in his eyes. She hadn’t imagined the hours they’d spent talking. She hadn’t imagined the music he played for her or the way he called her Katie just to rile her up.
“I wanted you as my friend!” Noah’s eyes glittered, strands of golden-blond hair falling across his forehead. “I didn’t—don’t—want to sleep with you!”
The blow landed again, just as hard as it had when he’d said it at the motel. No, harder, because he was sober now. Feeling brittle and bruised, she gave him a tight smile. “You’ve made that crystal clear.”
Noah’s head fell forward, shoulders slumping. “Shit. That didn’t come out right.”
“Don’t worry, Noah, I get it. You’re just not that into me,” she said, mocking herself.
Noah’s laugh was broken. “Kit, I—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Say it.” She needed this dream to die a final death.
His head jerked up, dark gray eyes brilliant with fury and with a need so vicious it rocked her. “Why can’t you just be my friend?” he asked, his arms rigid he was holding on so hard to the counter. “I fuck everything female that moves. I don’t want that with you.”