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pissed him off more. If she was trying to get under his skin she was wildly successful. “Because what happened in that closet,” he said, jerking a thumb toward it and biting out the last words, “was soul sex and you damn well know it.”
    “I think soul sex is an exaggeration,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry but a distraction is the word for it. The attraction was there and I guess it just gave us an excuse to give in to it.”
    An excuse, was it?
    “That’s bullshit.” The fact that she was maintaining her calm while he was rapidly losing his only made him angrier. Maybe at himself, as much as at her. Could he really have read things so wrong?
    Damn it, man, get it together.
    “Is it? I don’t think so,” she said carefully, marking her place in her law book with her finger. She dealt with him the way she’d deal with a hostile witness. Her voice calm and reasonable. It just enflamed his temper.
    “If what we did wasn’t soul sex what would you call it, then?” he asked. He really wanted to know. What was she calling this thing between them?
    She frowned. “Why do we have to put a label on what happened? Especially since it’s not going to happen again.”
    Ryder understood now what the phrase “blow his top” meant. He thought his head was going to literally explode. What in the hell was wrong with him? As a lawyer, he was accustomed to people trying to piss him off and throw him off his game. Is that what she was doing? And if so, why?
    He strove for calm. Took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was always, always cool under pressure. He was known for calmly, methodically destroying an opponent’s argument. Yeah, right . That’s me, Mr. Calm and Methodical .
    Addison wasn’t an opponent. She was the woman he . . . Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. He’d fallen in love with her. And it hadn’t happened just today. He’d been in love with her for months, he’d just been too pig-headed to realize it. He dropped his arm and stared at her.
    “Ryder, are you all right?” she asked, the concern in her voice just added to the storm inside of him.
    No, he wasn’t. How could he be all right when he’d finally admitted that the reason he thought about Addison daily, the reason he couldn’t get her out of his mind no matter how many women he went out with or how hard he tried, the reason he fantasized about making love to her was because he was madly, marry-me-and-have-my-babies, in love with the woman.
    Ignoring her question, he pulled the shreds of his composure around him and said, “What makes you think we aren’t going to make love again?”
    She sighed and closed her law book, put both of her hands on top of it and looked down at her fingers for a long moment. “Because I’ll be leaving after I pass the bar and get a new job. And you’ll be staying here in Whiskey River. Having sex again will only make the situation that much harder when it’s time for me to go. No,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ll just have to put today out of our minds.”
    He nearly laughed, except thinking of Addison leaving wasn’t funny. She really meant it. What had happened in her past to make her so leery of getting involved? “Do you honestly expect us to just go on about our business as if nothing has happened? Really?”
    When she didn’t answer he closed the distance between them. “Maybe you can forget it, but I can’t. I never will.” He leaned back against her desk, then reached for her hands to pull her up to stand between his legs. Bending his head down to hers, he nuzzled her ear.
    “What we have together is special. It’s not two people using each other for sex. It’s much, much more.” He drew back and looked at her, tipping her chin up so she was forced to look him in the eye. “Lie to yourself if you want but I’m not going to.”
    *
    O F COURSE HE wouldn’t. He was the kind of man who shot from the hip and laid all his cards on the table. There was no subterfuge