Free Blind Date Disasters & Eat Your Heart Out by Jill Shalvis Page B

you’re a twin?”
    â€œWhat does that have to do with anything?”
    â€œYou never tell any man about me.” Dimi gentled her voice because they both knew why, that Cami always held a part of herself back on purpose, a very important part. She didn’t trust love, didn’t believe in it. “I’m using that as my gauge. Someday you’re going to tell a man you’re a twin, and I’ll know you’re serious about him.”
    â€œNot this man.” Cami’s heart hurt at that and she ignored it. “I don’t want to go tonight.” She wanted to stay home and think about the things Tanner would want from her, how maybe he’d coax them from her in that sexy voice of his.
    â€œThink mortgage.”
    Cami thought about Tanner instead, thought about how he’d said she went through mental hoops for everyone’s happiness but her own. She opened her mouth to say something of that nature to her sister, to maybe ask for advice, but Dimi was wise enough to hang up on her.
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    W HEN T ANNER heard the shower turn on, he imagined Cami in there, stripping down, stepping under the spray of the water. Imagined her wet,sleek, perfect body gleaming as she ran soapy hands over her limbs…
    And smashed his thumb with his hammer.
    While he was dancing and swearing, his cell phone rang.
    â€œGet lucky yet?” his father asked.
    â€œI’ve been working too hard to get lucky, thank you very much.” He sucked on his throbbing thumb.
    â€œLove’s more important than money.”
    â€œCan’t live off sex,” Tanner replied. Damn, that thumb was going to hurt all day.
    â€œI said love, not sex.”
    â€œWell, I don’t do love.”
    â€œI raised you better than that.”
    Tanner gave up on the conversation entirely, ignoring his father’s musing that maybe his son was overlooking something really special right beneath his nose simply to preserve his precious bachelorhood out of habit. Bad habit.
    It wasn’t bad habit that kept Tanner single, but dedication and hard work. No woman would want to play second fiddle to a struggling business and long hours and…oh, hell.
    He was ignoring something special—Cami—in order to preserve his bachelorhood, which meant his father was right.
    He could live with that.
    Tanner worked some more, and later watched Cami measure a customer for a spring wardrobe.
    She’d already explained to him that sewing was how she made money until she got her design business going, and with that news he should have worried about his own paycheck.
    Instead he watched her, fascinated. Watched her slim, capable hands spread material, saw her hunch over her plans and talk to herself as she stuck pins into paper and once into her finger.
    When she brought that finger to her mouth and sucked, he actually got hard.
    So he worked some more and told himself to stop watching her. Which lasted until much later, when she came into his view wearing yet another summer dress, looking nervous.
    â€œDon’t tell me.” He tossed aside his tool belt and studied her. “You’re going through with tonight’s date even after the last fiasco.”
    â€œI promised.”
    He opened his mouth to tell her what he thought of her promises to do things she didn’t want to do, but at the look of trepidation on her face he closed it again.
    The doorbell rang. They both looked out the window. A shiny red Corvette was parked in frontof her walkway. Every inch of the car had been well tended; the chrome was polished to a mirror shine.
    â€œThere won’t be any car trouble tonight,” she said, staring out the window.
    Any guy who drove a red Corvette with polished chrome was slick, Tanner told himself, and grabbed Cami’s purse off her shoulder.
    â€œTanner!”
    He pawed through the mysterious mess that made up the contents of a woman’s purse and didn’t answer.
    â€œWhat are