Read Online The MacGregor Grooms by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

she had to leave, he was compelled to convince her otherwise.
    “No, I mean it.” She slapped a hand on his chest as he rolled on top of her. “This has to stop.”
    “Let’s call it an intermission.” Cheerfully, he kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m starving. You want Chinese?”
    “I said I have to go.”
    “Okay, let’s have pasta. More energy.”
    How could he make her want to tear out her hair and laugh at the same time? “You’re not listening to me.”
    “Layna.” He sat up, rolled his shoulders. It crossed his mind that he hadn’t felt so relaxed andcontent in weeks. “We both know by now we’re good in bed. And on the floor. And in the shower. If you leave now, we’re both going to wish you were right back here in an hour. So let’s just get something to eat.”
    Because the sheets were on the floor, she grabbed a pillow and pressed it to her as she sat up. “This isn’t going to happen again.”
    “Fettucini with red sauce okay with you?”
    “Yes, that’s fine.”
    “Good.” He picked up the phone, punched in some numbers, then gave the order to a local Italian place that delivered. “Be about a half hour,” he told her. “I’ve got a bottle of merlot downstairs.”
    He got up, tugged on a pair of jeans and strolled out.
    She sat where she was for a full minute. She’d let it happen again, she realized. With a sigh, she pushed back her hair. All right, she would do the sensible thing. She’d go down, have a civilized meal with him and discuss the status.
    Then she would leave and never see him again.

Chapter 7
    “You live like a pig.” Layna sat in the kitchen, sipping merlot and sampling pasta.
    D.C. merely grunted, broke a hunk of garlic bread in two and passed her half. “I keep thinking about getting a housekeeper, but I don’t like people around when I work.”
    “You don’t need a housekeeper, you need heavy equipment. How long have you lived in this apartment?”
    “Couple months.”
    “You still have things in packing boxes.”
    He jerked a shoulder. “I’ll get to them sooner or later.”
    “But how can you think with all this mess? How can you work?”
    He flashed that quick grin at her. “My sister says it’s because I was forced to accept order throughout a large chunk of my childhood. Somebody was always tidying things up in the White House.”
    She arched an elegant brow. “Don’t you think you should be over that rebellious period by now?”
    “Apparently not. You like things in their place, don’t you?”
    “Things were always in place when I was growing up. It makes life simpler.”
    “Simple isn’t always satisfying.”
    “I think we can agree that we have little to no common ground. Which is why this … situation is a mistake.”
    “Being lovers isn’t a situation, it’s a fact. And just because you like tidy and I don’t doesn’t have much to do with the fact that I want the bloody hell out of you.”
    “We can’t possibly develop a relationship.”
    “Baby, we
have
a relationship.”
    “Sex isn’t a relationship.” Brows knitted, she wound more pasta around her fork.
    “Seems to me we had something next door to a relationship going before we had sex.”
    “No.” But it worried her because it was uncomfortably true. “I don’t want a relationship, not a serious one. I don’t like what they do to people.”
    “Oh?” He might have cocked a brow casually, but his eyes had sharpened. Some underlayer here, he thought, that made her soft green eyes cool again. “Such as?”
    “People don’t stick. And because they can’t, they deceive each other, or ignore the deceptions.”
    She hesitated, then decided the circumstances called for simple honestly. “My family isn’t good at maintaining healthy relationships. My parents have an arrangement that suits them, but it’s not the kind of thing I’m looking for. The Drakes tend to be … selfish,” she decided, for lack of a better term. “Being with someone on a serious