I would have thought he’d gotten the unspoken message by now. What guy keeps trying when a woman is ignoring him?
I’d seen Eli once a few months ago. He’d been having dinner with a friend in one of his restaurants in San Diego, and I’d been with all of my family celebrating my sister Brooke’s engagement to a man she’d met while she’d been on the East Coast.
My twin was now married to Liam Sullivan, and she’d chosen to stay in Maine with her new husband.
Eli and I had actually eaten in the same restaurant, just like he’d wanted. We just hadn’t been sitting at the same table.
The accidental meeting had unsettled me, especially when I’d felt him watching me during our family get-together. We hadn’t spoken, but Eli had made it clear that he knew I was there before he’d departed.
Maybe I hadn’t answered any of his messages. But I’d thought about him a lot. I wasn’t sure why, since all he wanted was to get me into his bed, and I didn’t do one-night stands. But the way my body had reacted to him was . . . unusual.
“I’m not dating him,” I confessed to my older brother. “I met him once, and he’s called me several times to ask if I’d do dinner with him. I haven’t even answered his messages.”
“Ouch! That’s cold,” Aiden answered.
If I told my older brother that Eli just wanted to screw me, which I wouldn’t because there was no way I was going to discuss sex with my brother, he wouldn’t have said I was cold. He would have wanted to beat the hell out of Eli Stone.
“I’m just not interested,” I told him as I slid off the raft and climbed out of the pool. “He makes me uncomfortable.”
Aiden flopped on a chaise lounge as he queried, “Is he stalking you? If he is, you know Seth and I can take care of him.”
I rolled my eyes as I finished toweling off my wet body, and then dropped into the lounger beside him. “No guy is going to stalk me.”
Aiden chuckled. “Most likely because you can bust all of their balls.”
My brother was right. I wasn’t exactly the helpless type, and I didn’t need a man. In fact, the majority of guys I’d met did give me a wide berth most of the time. Most of the men I’d met in the past were survivalists, just like me, and even though they might admire my skills, none of them really saw me as a female. They saw me as competition.
“Do you think that’s why nobody really wants to go out with me? Because I don’t need them?” I questioned.
I’d been on a dating hiatus since I’d broken up with the jerk I’d dated in college. The break wasn’t really by choice. I just hadn’t met anybody who showed very much interest in me as a potential date. And I certainly hadn’t met anybody intriguing, unless I wanted to count Eli Stone, which I didn’t.
“Honestly, yes,” Aiden said bluntly. “Some men want to feel like they can contribute something to a relationship with their superior skills. But you don’t want to date somebody like that. If they’re intimidated, they’re fucking insecure. You need somebody who doesn’t need to have their ego stroked constantly, not a primitive survivalist who gets annoyed because you know more than they do about hunting, trapping, foraging, and other survival stuff. You need somebody who admires your strengths instead of being intimidated by them.”
I shuddered as I remembered Eli saying he admired me. He might be an arrogant prick, but he hadn’t seemed the least bit daunted.
“I’m not very attractive, because I hate fussing with clothes and makeup,” I mused. “Brooke was always way better with people than me. I was the geek who wanted to get out into the woods and explore.”
“There’s plenty of things to like about you,” Aiden grumbled. “And I’m not just saying that because you’re my sister. But some men are put off by women who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.”
“So I have to act helpless?” I asked, horrified at the thought.
The idea of being some kind of shrinking violet was never going to feel good or right to me.
“Hell, no,” Aiden answered as he reached for his water bottle and took a long slug. “You don’t need to be anyone except yourself. So tell me about Stone. Why are you afraid of him?”
I grabbed my diet soda and drank some before I answered, “I’m not afraid of him. I just think he’s a jerk. I was trying to acquire a piece of property out near Lucifer’s Canyon, so I could make sure one of the wildlife corridors stays intact. I sent an offer and made an appointment. But he wasn’t willing to sell.”
“So you’re mad because he didn’t want to sell you some acreage?”
“No. I was pissed because he made me drive all the way to his offices, wait an hour until he’d see me, and then turned my offer down flat. He could have had somebody call me and let me know he didn’t want to sell. But he was curious about why I wanted to buy it. The jackass took up a ton of my time because he wanted to ask a question. Who does that?”
“Damn billionaires think they run the world,” he said with a grin as he put on his sunglasses.
I couldn’t help but smile back at him. My family handled our sudden wealth with as much humor as possible. It’s the only thing we’d ever had to lighten our decidedly heavy burdens when we were younger.
“I don’t think I could ever do that to somebody, money or not,” I told him.
“Do you want me to have a talk with him?” he asked. “If you’re sure you don’t want to speak to him, I can get him to leave you alone.”
I was raised by my three older brothers, so I was accustomed to hearing all of them trying to protect me in some way or another.
“No,” I answered, my voice sounding somewhat panicked. The last thing I wanted was one of my brothers threatening somebody like Eli Stone. We might all have money now, but Eli had a lot more friends in high places. “He’ll give up eventually. And I can handle myself.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Of course. That’s why I haven’t answered him.”
“He’s persistent,” Aiden observed. “And you must have made one hell of an impression if he’s still calling months after you met.”
“I don’t think I did,” I explained. “Honestly, I don’t understand what he wants. I think it’s some kind of game for him.”
“His message sounded pretty sincere. He didn’t sound like a stalker.”
I had to admit that my brother was correct. Every time Eli left a message, he sounded as cool as a cucumber, and businesslike, almost like he wanted to schedule a meeting. If I didn’t recall every word he’d said to me the day we met, I’d have a very hard time believing he even saw me as a female.
“Aiden, he could have almost any woman he wants. Why would he want me? Why would he even want to play a cat-and-mouse game? Do you think he’s twisted?”
“Did it ever occur to you that he might just like you?”
“No,” I admitted. “He’s Eli Stone.”
“He sounded like a guy who was asking you out to dinner. And no man is too good for my sister. Not ever. You’re beautiful, intelligent, driven, and empathetic. What in the hell else could any guy want? You can’t blame the man for his persistence. I kind of like the fact that he knows that you’re worth the work.”