Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses. Jackie Braun

as being relegated to the position of a friend but never a girlfriend.

      “Yup, you are.”

      “Well then you don’t know very many girls.”

      “We both know that’s a lie,” he said smoothly.

      “Okay, you don’t know very many girls who hang out at the library instead of at Doofus’s Pub and Grill.”

      “You don’t have to say that as if it’s a dirty word. I’m a part owner in Doofus’s.”

      Which explained why a place with a name like Doofus’s could be so wildly successful. The man had the Midas touch—not that she wanted to weaken herself any further by contemplating his touch. She had to be strong.

      Hard, with him gazing at her from under the silky tangle of his soot-dark eyelashes. “Do you hang out at the library?” he asked.

      How could he say that in a tone that made her feel as if he’d asked something way too personal, like the color of her underwear. She could feel an uncomfortable blush starting. “You don’t have to say that as if it’s a dirty word. The library is beautiful. Have you ever been to the Hillsboro Library?”

      “Have you ever been to Doofus’s?” he shot back.

      “Oh, look,” she said, changing the subject deftly, “it’s starting to rain. And me without my zip-on sleeves. I’ve got to go, Dylan. See you at the library sometime.”

      But his hand on her sleeve stopped her. It was not a momentous occasion, a casual touch, but it was the second one in as many minutes. But given she had not wanted to even think about his touch, it seemed impossibly cruel that she now was experiencing it again. He probably touched people—girl people—like that all the time. But the easy and unconscious strength in his touch, the sizzle of heat, made her heart pound right up into her throat, made her feel weak and vulnerable, made her ache with a treacherous longing.

      “Tell me something about you,” he said. “One thing. Anything you want.”

      “I just did. I like the library.” No wonder he had a woman a month! When he said that, his eyes fastened on her face so intently, it felt as if he really wanted to know! She knew it was a line, so she hated herself for feeling honored by his interest.

      “Something else,” he said.

      “I live with three males,” she said, no reason to tell him they were cats.

      He laughed. “I bet they’re cats.”

      The thing you had to remember about Dylan McKinnon was that underneath all that easygoing charm, he was razor sharp. She glanced down at herself to see if had completed her glamorous look today with cat hair, but didn’t, thankfully, see any.

      “I’m divorced,” she reminded him, hoping that failure would be enough to scare him off, unless he enjoyed the horrible stereotype some men had of a divorced woman, a woman who had known the pleasures of the marital bed, and now did not: hungry.

      “That is a surprise about you,” he said. “I would have never guessed divorced.”

      Had she succeeded in making herself look so frumpy that he didn’t believe anyone would have married her? If that was true, what was his sudden interest in her?

      “Why not?” she demanded.

      “I don’t know. You seem like a decent girl.”

      “Divorced women are indecent?” she asked, and then found herself blushing, looking furiously away from him.

      “Sorry.” He touched her chin. He had to quit touching her! “I didn’t mean it like that. You just seem like the kind of woman who would say forever and mean it.”

      “I did mean it!” she said, with far more feeling than she would have liked.

      “So it was his fault.”

      She was not going to have this way-too-intimate conversation with Dylan McKinnon on a chance meeting on a public street.

      “Does it have to be somebody’s fault?” she asked woodenly. Who, after all, could predict how people would react to tragedy? She had miscarried the baby she wanted so badly. It had all unraveled from there.

      Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep at night, she tormented herself by wondering if it had been unraveling already, and if she had hoped the baby would somehow glue it back together, give her someone to love in the face of a husband who was distant, from a life that was so far from the fairy tale she had dreamed for herself. This was exactly why she now dedicated her life to her business. Business was not painful. It did not cause introspection. It did not leave time for self-pity or self-analysis.

      “Come grab a burger with me at Doofus’s,” he said, and laid a persuasive hand on her wrist.

      She heard something gentle in his voice, knew she had not succeeded in keeping her pain out of her eyes.

      “They make a mean burger.”

      “I’m a vegetarian.”

      “Really?” he said skeptically.

      “If I went there, would you come to the library after?” she said, sliding her arm out from under his touch as if she was making a sneak escape from a cobra. Maybe the best defense was an offense. He’d be about as likely to visit a library as she would be to visit a turkey shoot. Still, as he contemplated her, her heart was acting as if she was in a position of life-threatening danger, racing at about thirteen million beats per minute.

      “Sure. I’ll come to the library. I like doing different things. Surprising myself.”

      Right. He just had all the answers. He’d never go to the library, just say he was going to, and then send a bouquet of flowers when he didn’t show.

      “Why are you doing this?” she asked, folding her rescued limbs over her chest, protectively.

      He sighed, looked away, ran a hand through the rich darkness of his hair. “I want a change,” he said, and she was pretty sure he surprised them both with his sincerity.

      Still, to be asked out because he needed a change from his bevy of bimbos? It was insulting!

      “And you’d like a new toy to play with,” she guessed, with a shake of her head.

      He regarded her thoughtfully. “I bet your husband didn’t deserve you. He probably wasn’t worth the sadness I saw in your eyes when you mentioned your divorce.”

      The comment was unexpected, his voice quiet and serious, a side of him she had never seen.

      Dylan McKinnon’s charm was dangerous when he was all playful and boyish. But it turned downright lethal when he became serious, the cast of his face suddenly accentuating the firmness around his mouth, the strength in the cut of his cheekbones and chin.

      “I have to go,” she said.

      She whirled away from him. Her eyes were stinging.

      “Hey, Katie,” he said, jogging up beside her now, blocking her attempt to escape from all his sympathy with some dignity, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

      “Would you go away? Guys like you always hurt girls like me.”

      He stopped. Stared at her. She saw her arrow had hit.

      “Not every man is going to be like your ex-husband,” he said evenly.

      “How do you know? You didn’t know him.” Or me.

      The truth was it didn’t really matter if Dylan was like Marcus, if she was still like her. It was herself she didn’t trust after her whole life had fallen apart. She did not trust herself to make good choices, and certainly not to be able to survive that kind of pain ever again.

      But it was true Dylan was nothing like Marcus had been. Dylan had his faults, but he didn’t