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around six or so if we start walking toward the dining room now.”
    “I’m not really that hungry,” I replied. I wanted to continue the conversation, to learn more about her, but she was shutting me out. Cadence was content to remain an enigma. In fact, she preferred it.
    “Well, I could leave you here, because I’m starving.”
    “Yeah, you’re not running away on me,” I told her.
    She blinked and then laughed. “I told you I wouldn’t ditch you.”
    “Yeah, well, trust is a funny thing, isn’t it?”
    Her eyes darkened, and she was silent for longer than I expected. Her voice was quiet when she said, “Yeah. It sure is.” I’d struck a nerve I hadn’t expected. But she didn’t stay lost in her thoughts for long. She smirked at me and walked to the floor, throwing a look over her shoulder, expectant. “You coming, or what, Bambi?”
    And now we were back to Bambi.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Cadence
    I really needed to be more on my guard. I’d slipped up with Dylan yesterday. I’d let it, for a second, become personal. What was I thinking, telling him about my dad? Was what I going to do? Talk to him about how sad it was that my dad had a heart attack and died three months after losing my mom to breast cancer? What would that accomplish, other than letting him get too close?
    I learned my lesson after Jack. He’d manipulated me, lured me into trusting him. He’d listened to me when my parents died, when I was more upset than I could imagine. He’d let me cry on his shoulder more times than I could count. As a result, he knew me far too well. He knew exactly how to seduce me. He knew just what to say to make me trust him. I’d gotten him that power over me.
    He’d anticipate me coming after him. It was likely that he even knew just how much he’d managed to peak my interest, and just how I would have tracked him. I was good with tech. Electronics and I were besties. He’d know that, too. I had to be better than him. I had to keep him from having that power over me again.
    “Hey, did you use the last clean towel?” I turned at the sound of Dylan’s voice and inwardly cursed. Water dripped off his sculpted body. He had a small hand towel in his hand, covering his privates, though I could see a hint of dark hair just above his hand.
    I smiled and picked up the towel he’d used the night before. “Here. This is yours.” I tossed it at him fast, straight at his chest. By reflex, he let go of the hand towel to grab the big one, giving me a beautiful view of his flaccid cock. I knew from experience that it wouldn’t take but a touch or a strike to bring it to life.
    My insides contracted with need at the sight of it, even as he covered back up. He looped the towel around his narrow hips and tucked it closed. He shook his finger at me like I was the kid who stuck her hand in the cookie jar. “You’re trouble, especially for someone who doesn’t want sex.”
    “Who said I don’t want it?” I asked. I was playing with fire, I knew, but I couldn’t help myself where Dylan was concerned.
    “Uh-uh. You said, friends. That’s what we’re doing here. Don’t toy with me.”
    “I never said I didn’t want it. I said it was better if we didn’t.”
    He scowled, looking so boyish it made me feel cougar-like, even though I was only a couple years older. “My self-control is pretty damn good, but I’m not fucking invincible.”
    “Aww, too bad,” I told him. “I rather thought you were a little bit like Captain America sometimes.”
    “Fucking tease,” he muttered, escaping back to the bathroom.
    While he was occupied, I walked over to his bag, and glanced through it, trying not to disturb anything. He didn’t have much in there. A couple sets of clothes, his passport, a gun. I didn’t open the side pockets. He’d notice that. It shouldn’t have bothered me that he had a gun, but it kind of did. I had a gun too, and it was his job but seeing the weapon caused the phantom tinges of pain in my chest.