His Wedding Date (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 2) (20 page)

How could this have happened to them? He was a careful and cautious man. He was raised to treat a woman with the utmost respect, and he'd always done that.

He'd never hurt a woman the way he'd managed to hurt Shelly. And the awful irony was that he cared for her more deeply than any woman in his life, save for his mother and the woman he'd once planned to make his wife.

And what had he done? Selfishly he'd pulled her into the middle of one of the worst days in his life—Rebecca's wedding day. He'd screwed up his own head royally with a stupid combination of prescription drugs and alcohol, and then he'd taken her to bed with him.

And called her Rebecca.

Brian swore, regrets and recriminations making a bitter mixture inside him.

How was he going to make this up to her? How could he make things right between them? He just didn't see what he could do to make it right.

Although, if he could get his head screwed on straight, he was sure he could find a way to do it.

Trouble was, he simply couldn't think straight anymore. He was too busy trying to recall every minute detail of what it had felt like to have her naked and warm and willing beneath him in the bed that night.

"Damn," he said aloud in the darkened car. Those kinds of thoughts hadn't gotten him anywhere.

How could he think of her that way? This was Shelly, the scrawny little kid with the puppy-dog eyes and mangled braids that her father never quite figured out how to make properly. He kept thinking of her that way. At least, he tried.

But she wasn't that little kid or simply his friend anymore, and he wasn't sure he couldn't handle the reality of the woman she'd become.

What a damned mess he'd made of things.

His judgment was obviously shot all to hell these days. The woman he'd loved forever, the one he'd believed he'd spend the rest of his life with, had dumped him for another man. He still had trouble believing that. It wasn't that his ego was so big he couldn't imagine losing a woman to another man. It was just that he'd been certain for years that he and Rebecca were meant to be together.

Obviously they weren't.

And now? Now the woman he'd thought of with fondness and devotion for going on twenty years—he'd taken her to bed with him. Brian could think of only one reason why she had gone, a reason that made things even worse. Obviously she cared for him, and not in the innocent way he had believed he cared for her.

Brian wondered how long she'd felt that way, wondered how many times in the past he'd hurt her without even realizing it. It was unforgivable, he knew.

So was wanting to have her in his arms again.

Chapter 13

Brian didn't get much sleep that night. Shelly was driving him insane, and he was handling the whole situation badly. He had pushed her when he should have backed away, time and time again.

The work-related problems weren't helping, either, and he was worried about Shelly being caught in the middle of it. He was afraid they might be in real danger, that Charlie hadn't had an accident, that he'd been murdered and the tampering with the plane had been the first attempt.

He wanted Shelly out of here, but he didn't see how he'd be able to talk her into leaving. So he wanted things cleared up quickly. He needed to be free to concentrate on her and her alone.

He didn't know what this thing between them was. He didn't know when it had all begun or where it would lead them, but he intended to find out. Until then, he wouldn't let the woman out of his sight for long.

So that's why, at a little before seven the next morning, he was standing outside her apartment with two cups of steaming coffee and a lot of sugar.

Shelly had a weakness for sugar. He was counting on that to get him inside the door to her apartment this morning. He wondered if she did hate him, if not for the things he had done, then for the way he'd made her tell him about what had happened between them that night.

And he kept remembering what she'd said before when he'd asked her if he'd hurt her that night. "Not that way," she'd told him. Not her body, but her feelings—not that one was any easier to excuse than the other.

No, he thought, resigned to it now. She wasn't going to be happy to see him. He'd come prepared for that, with a bag full of bribery from the bakery on the corner.

He hadn't been prepared to find her hair still wet from the shower, her cheeks still pink from the steam, and her body encased in what he'd bet was that damned man's shirt and nothing else.

"What do you want?" she demanded, peering through the narrow opening left by the chain lock, which was still in place.

He swallowed hard and held up the foam cup for her to see. "I brought coffee."

"I have my own coffee."

He turned to his secret weapon, still warm from the oven, and hoped the smell alone would keep her mind off what he had put her through the night before.

"I brought breakfast." He held the bag practically under her nose.

She stood there for a minute. Brian couldn't help himself. Through the narrow opening in the doorway, he watched while a drop of water fell from the end of one of her curls to the open V-neck of the shirt, then trailed downward to her...

Damn.
This wasn't the way he'd planned to start this day.

When he wasn't looking, she reached through the door for the bag.

"Wait a minute," he said, snatching it away just in time. "I was counting on these to get me inside at least."

"A bag of doughnuts?" she said indignantly. As she tilted her head to the side, another drop of water fell from the ends of her hair.

"Chocolate doughnuts," he said, his throat tighter than he would have liked. "With chocolate icing."

She liked chocolate. He hoped she liked chocolate more than she disliked him at the moment.

Her mouth opened, then snapped closed. She looked from the bag to him, then back to the bag again.

"We can eat them while they're still warm if you hurry up and let me in," he said.

It was close, but the smell must have done it. She unchained the door, then held it open while he came inside.

Brian knew better than to waste any time handing over the goods. Shelly took a cup of coffee, too, watching him while she peeled off the lid and had her first sip.

Business
, he told himself, watching her mouth curl around the rim of the cup. He'd planned to keep things strictly business this morning.

They would dispose of the business problems, then get on with the personal side of things later. It was a good plan, a logical plan.

But he'd forgotten certain things, and he was discovering some new things, as well—like how good she looked, still dripping from the shower. And that damned shirt—he hadn't expected to get jealous all over again, wondering about the man who'd once worn that shirt or the situation in which he'd come to give it to her.

It wasn't doing his head a damned bit of good to wonder about what the man still meant to her or why she still wore his shirt. Neither had he realized, when he'd headed for the bakery, how sexy a woman savoring a chocolate-covered doughnut could be.

Brian set his coffee down on the counter before he spilled it.

Below the ends of that long shirt were a pair of smooth, sleek thighs that were, from what he remembered, surprisingly strong. He wondered if she still liked to ride her bike and whether she wore those stretchy, form-fitting pants that cyclists favored. Or maybe just a pair of shorts. Short shorts. Those would work, too.

Her hair was still dripping, and the front of the shirt was getting damp, clinging to her skin in a way that made the curves of her breasts all the more obvious. And she'd gotten a little of the chocolate icing caught at the corner of her mouth. He wanted to fix that, and he had a feeling, from the way she blushed all over again, that she knew it, too.

"Why are you here?" she asked, catching him staring at her.

She had to know what this thing she was wearing was doing to him, and she'd made no move to go put on a robe or something else—anything else.

Was she testing him? Or tormenting him? Hell, what did it matter? Whatever she was doing, it was working.

"We have work to do," he said, desperately trying to stick to his plan, despite the temptation to do otherwise.

He watched the fingertips of her left hand search in vain for the chocolate smear on her lips, and he wanted to find it for her. He wanted that very much.

So much for a clear head. Brian worked to clear his throat instead and tried to ignore her mouth. "The financial records," he managed to say. "It's Saturday. The office is deserted. I thought we could spend the day sorting through things there."

She nodded warily.

"We are going to have to work together to get to the bottom of this," he said.

"I know. I just..."

Hoped that she would find a way out of doing that without him?

Yes, he knew she'd be wondering just that. That was why he'd felt it was important to get here first thing in the morning, to catch her before she'd had a chance to rebuild her defenses against him.

"I'm going to the office," he said, trying to sound as if he didn't care whether she joined him. "I can go by myself or... "

"I'll go with you. Give me a minute to get dressed."

Gladly
, he thought, not allowing himself to turn around and watch her walk out of the room. He gulped at his hot coffee, not caring that it burned his mouth as it went down.

A damned doughnut, he thought. That and some jerk's dress shirt was all it took to leave him here with his brain short-circuited all over again, in a matter of seconds.

* * *

She was dressed in minutes. Brian was amazed. He hadn't known it was possible for a woman to get ready that quickly.

She'd put on jeans. How long had it been since he'd seen her in a pair of jeans? They weren't that tight. They just clung to every curve. She had some very nice curves, and he wasn't sure when that had happened. She'd been such a scrawny little kid, all arms and legs and pigtails.

Well, as she'd been trying to tell him, she wasn't a kid anymore.

She had on a plain red, V-neck T-shirt, tucked into the jeans. There shouldn't have been anything sexy at all about that, but there was.

She'd braided her still-wet hair. She didn't have any makeup on, just lots of smooth, soft skin. She had an incredible peaches-and-cream complexion, and she blushed so easily. Her eyes were a warm brown, her mouth wide and generous.

She must not have even looked in a mirror, because that speck of chocolate was still there, caught in the corner of her lips.

Damn.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

No
, he told himself.
Don't do it
.
Don't you dare touch her
. But he did. Inside of five minutes, he'd already abandoned his carefully thought-out plan. All for an enticing speck of chocolate on those warm, soft lips of hers.

"You have... a little bit of chocolate—" he put up his hand to brush it away "—right here."

Her lips parted as his fingers cupped her jaw and his thumb settled into the corner of her mouth, and if he'd had any sense left at all, he would have stopped at that.

Instead, he left his hand there, against her soft cheek. "Wait a minute," he said when she would have pulled away.

He moved slowly, giving her time to get away, if she wanted to. But she never tried. He fit his lips to the corner of hers and brushed them lightly with his tongue. "I didn't get it all."

She didn't move. He doubted she was even breathing. God knows, he wasn't.

She smelled of some perfumed soap from the shower and tasted of chocolate and cream. He caught just a hint of it as his tongue teased her upper lips, working its way slowly from one end of them to the other, not daring to slip in between them, into her mouth.

Her lips parted easily, her breath mingling with his, as he found a bit of the sweet, sticky mixture and licked it off her lips.

His body roared to life, his arousal straining against the confines of his jeans, and he knew he couldn't let himself pull her any closer to him.